Author's note: HOOO, BOY. This one was SO FUN to write! :D It's a long one, as it's one of the most important chapters of the entire story, but it's only the beginning of the unravelling of the mystery!
Reminiscent of the walk from the diner to the car when Audrey had made her getaway with Charlie and Jeep, a path was outlined before them with hundreds upon thousands of angels on either side, their wings varying in a gradient of shades between the dark grey that bordered the route to the vast sea of white beyond, and their gleaming, unearthly eyes followed them as they continued on their way.
Even with Gabriel's arm around her back and Lucifer's around her shoulders, all she could feel was the weight of the crowd's stare upon her. She kept her focus fixed upon the immense coliseum ahead, its layers of open, ivy-covered arches made of the same white marble as the gazebo.
The laddering vines were dotted with flowers, and from Audrey's distance they seemed to envelop the circular structure in a white and lilac haze. Around the circumference, built into the walls like pillars, were five trees – the largest she'd ever seen; easily twice the width of the Arbol del Tule, and reaching taller than the amphitheatre itself. Their branches mingled above it, creating a natural roof for the al fresco building.
As they neared the main archway into the coliseum, Audrey had forgotten all about their audience. They entered a long tunnel that ran under the tiers of seating above, towards the structure's centre at the other end. It was lit by giant, ivory candles set into alcoves in the smooth, marble walls, each of which had a ring of nine wicks, burning brightly and sending droplets of wax trickling down already-set trails.
"Palatio Angelorum," Gabriel murmured in her ear when they stepped out into the leaf-dappled light of the structure's core; "The Palace of the Angels."
The trees' branches overhead stretched just far enough to leave a hole in the centre of the canopy they created, and beams of radiant sunlight streamed down upon three tall, light-wooden chairs with low backs set out in the middle of the arena facing away from the door. The whole place was empty, but hosts of angels began filtering in from all sides the moment they sat down.
"Is this where you live, then?" Audrey asked Gabriel in response to his translation. Strange kind of home, she thought, looking around, with no beds, or even rooms...
"The five trees are mostly hollow; they've long since grown around the floors built into them. There's one for each of the four types of angels, and one for the Lord Himself."
He gestured towards the tree at the back of the building, where four beautifully bizarre creatures emerged on a balcony protruding from a hole in it, surrounding the sombre-looking God of all things. They were humanoid in form – female, though definitely not human: their skin was a vivid, translucent orange, under which their bones tinged it with a lighter shade, and the veins it displayed were lightning-white, as were their cascades of sleek, knee-length hair. They were clothed in iridescent, saffron yellow organza-type fabric that hung in handkerchief folds from their golden collars, with gaps in the sides for free movement of their arms. Layered behind each of them were three sets of wings, glittering like the sun itself.
Audrey raised an arm to shield her eyes from the intensity of the light they emitted, and Gabriel reached out to run his fingertips across her forehead, increasing her tolerance slightly to ease the headache it would eventually have induced. Her hand gradually lowered back to her lap as the glare became easier to endure.
"Seraphim," he whispered, knowing they would be scrutinising him closely from across the arena.
"Weird looking things, aren't they?" She replied conversationally, and Gabriel fought to smother a smirk. "Gorgeous, but weird."
I've always thought so, he secretly agreed.
Turning to her other side, Audrey found Lucifer scratching nervously at his bare chest as his gaze skittered around the amphitheatre. She captured his fingers tightly and looked him straight in the eye.
"Don't be intimidated. There's only one person here who can judge you and he better do it fairly or he'll have me to deal with." She gave him a small, droll smile and let go of his hand to slip her wrist around his elbow and nuzzle his arm with her cheek. "If worse comes to worst, at least then you'll have me to keep you company."
Neither he nor Gabriel could quite see the funny side of her words, but the arrival of another set of angels – eight in total – diverted their attention. They were all male, looking much like the Archangels, except that they were dressed in loose, sky-blue tunics, drawn in at the waist by light, leather belts from which their swords hung, and mid-calf boots of the same taupe material. They each had two sets of tawny, white-flecked wings which were tucked neatly away behind them.
Audrey looked questioningly over at Gabriel, who answered with another whisper:
"Cherubim."
"I thought cherubs were like, little naked, flying babies?" She queried, her brow furrowed slightly in confusion, and this time Gabriel couldn't help the grin that seeped across his face.
"A common misconception," he corrected, looking down at the soft, mossy ground below to try to reign in his amusement. "The creatures you speak of are called Putti, and they're a product of human imagination, not Heaven." Lucifer was quite conspicuously snickering at Audrey's mistake, causing Gabriel to add, "If you value the fact that your head is attached to your shoulders, I'd stop that rather swiftly."
It only made his brother laugh harder, but he at least tried to limit the noise and stifle it with his hand. Gabriel was only just holding on to his own composure by a very thin thread, which threatened dangerously to vanish when Audrey smiled warmly up at the assembly of surly Cherubim in greeting.
The three remaining Archangels were the last to join the congregation, and they took their seats below the balcony, in front of the row of Cherubim. Michael and Uriel's faces were expressionless, saving their verdicts for after Lucifer had spoken, but Raphael's hazel eyes shone with anticipation as he nodded at Audrey. His love for his convicted brother was utterly transparent.
Quiet suddenly fell over the coliseum and Audrey looked up: God had risen from his ornate, golden throne and stood at the stone balustrade, leaning his hands upon it. He wore a white, silk sherwani suit with a gold-embellished collar that left a blank rectangle at the front where his shirt was visible beneath, not unlike that of a priest. The gold embroidery followed the line of the fastened opening down the front, creating an intricate, patterned bib across his chest before dwindling to a lace-like design along the hem. His feet were bare, she could see between the railing-posts, and his crisp, white trousers were bunched slightly around his ankles where they narrowed.
"I trust you have good reason for reopening this old wound, Gabriel," he began, his dark, citrine eyes spelling out his pain even without his weary tone.
"Of course, Father," Gabriel assured, standing up with a determined manner that made Audrey's heart blaze with love. "It has come to my attention that... my previous allegations concerning your beloved son, my brother, Lucifer, may have been wrong." The Lord regarded him indifferently, guarding his heart vigilantly, and waited patiently for him to elaborate. "I told you truthfully what I saw," he continued, "but I have new reason to believe that what I saw was drastically far from what was really happening."
"And what reason might that be?" God propelled his son's address calmly, but his skill at hiding his bias was given away by the nectarine fingers that squeezed his left shoulder in support.
"I was recently forced to enter Satan's fortress," Gabriel explained reluctantly, knowing it would incriminate his brother further, but compelled into honesty by his faith in Audrey's judgement, "and discovered that the Coals of Conscience do not burn him."
The Lord raised an eyebrow, but he couldn't be sure whether it was out of intrigue or rebuke until his next question:
"What could possibly have led you to the ninth Circle of Hell?"
When Gabriel faltered, Lucifer sighed in resignation. There was no way but forward.
"He came to rescue Audrey," he articulated, gesturing toward her, "because I'd kidnapped her."
"And what, may I ask, made this particular young saint so interesting to you?" He spoke directly to Lucifer for the first time in two thousand years, though he looked around at the wall of angelic faces as he did so.
Audrey's brow quirked of its own accord and she took a breath to speak, but as if poised for such a reaction, Gabriel's hands shot out, one to cover her mouth, and the other securing it by cradling the base of her skull.
"Later," he breathed, not moving his lips as his brother justified himself before God.
"I thought that the prophecies came from you," he explained, "and that I faced my destruction. I acted out of fear."
"I see," God acknowledged stiffly.
"And I totally forgive him for it," Audrey announced, pulling herself free of Gabriel's grip.
The Lord looked at her evenly, considering her words carefully. Two of his Seraphim whispered something to one another behind him, and whatever they said seemed to light his eyes a little.
"Audrey," he addressed her, and she blinked in surprise; "It seems you've decided what kind of a soul Lucifer has – tell me, what is your impression of him?"
She glanced across at Lucifer with an affectionate smile, before returning her gaze to the balcony above.
"My first impression of him wasn't that great," she admitted with a wry grin, "but he proved to be... first merciful, then comforting, and understanding... valiant, compassionate... and he kind of has a knack for making me laugh."
The latter was received with a small smirk from God, and beside her, she heard a quiet snort of amusement as Lucifer no doubt recalled her dream-control 'methodology'. She couldn't help but chuckle and meet his peridot gaze.
"He always was the wittiest of his brothers," the Lord told her, sounding only slightly pained now. "Well, with such a shining report of his behaviour, I'd very much like to hear his reasons."
The entire arena listened with bated breath as the mask known as the Devil stood before his former Father to make what he hoped to be his last speech.
"When Pilate and the Sadducees conspired to have Jesus arrested," he began, looking up at the guarded, amber eyes above, "and we learned of the coming of the Antichrist, Satan came to me and offered to gift me with great power and strength if I agreed to let it contain a fragment of itself inside me." Gasps and whispering erupted all around; clearly, Heaven had known about the power, but had been unaware of the piece of Evil Lucifer had accepted into his heart. "I was naïve, and thought I could trick it into believing I was its servant so that I might wield its terrible power against it, in the hope that it would aid you, Lord, by giving you extra time to save your Holy Incarnation. I thought," he added, somewhat bitterly, "that my Father's love for me was strong enough that I could hold Evil at bay until Jesus had been moved to safety, thus allowing him to teach goodness to the world another day."
An acute ache lanced through Audrey's chest at his words, the betrayal smarting her own heart as savagely as it had Lucifer's. She watched his fingers curl into angry balls, and slid down from her long-legged seat. That's not going to get you anywhere right now, she thought, unravelling his fist to take his hand. She didn't need to look up to know the kind of agony upon God's face; his stunned, shameful silence said it all. Instead, she stared straight ahead at the Archangels, all of whom were blinking through glistening tears. Raphael appeared outright horror-struck at the revelation that his brother had paid so dearly for such a wholly selfless act.
Gabriel got up from his own seat on her right, and moved towards them, but instead of enclosing his fingers around hers, she was surprised to find, he strode to Lucifer's other side and followed her example in a bold display of support. With a jolt of satisfaction, she realised: He's standing up for what's right.
A harmonious buzz rang out through the arena, like a collection of struck tuning forks, as two of the fiery Seraphim beat their dozen golden wings, lifting the Lord into the air, and swept to the forest-like floor to set him down before them.
"By denying you my love... I made you the prophesied Antichrist," God whispered, realising aloud. "You've been fighting against it inside yourself all this time?"
He stepped closer now, his sparkling, ochre eyes aware of nothing but the two thousand years of agony his beloved son had been forced to endure, all because of his blindness over that dreadful second heartbreak. A tear tracked down his cheek as he raised his hand to Lucifer's torso.
Pulling it back slowly with monumental effort, a sob escaped him as a black, irregular, crackling ball the size of his fist emerged from Lucifer's scarred, heaving chest, and a shrill, inhuman screech permeated the air. God wrenched desperately on it, his face wet and contorted in unfathomable concentration, but his emotions were hindering his efficiency.
Audrey watched with a strange numbness, unable to think or feel – hardly even able to believe what she was seeing. Gabriel stepped forward, and she was vaguely aware of her own body moving to make up the fourth side of the square around the pulsing, shrieking atrocity clinging for all it was worth to Lucifer's heart. Her love's pointed look caught her attention as Michael appeared behind him; Uriel moved quickly around to stand behind Lucifer and a hand on Audrey's shoulder told her Raphael was with her.
There must be something I can do, she fretted, observing the Lord's unimaginable struggle to set his son free of Satan's hold.
"Will it," Lucifer's strained, tortured whisper cut cleanly through the fragment's howl as he tightened his grip on her hand.
In an instant, the coliseum was filled with blinding, cleansing light, growing even brighter as the Seraphim's bodies alit as though it were all they were made of, and the Cherubim encircled them with another layer, before swarms of angels surrounded them, swooping among one another overhead until the branches of the trees were no longer visible.
The dark orb hissed and crackled violently as it began to corrode, as though the light was like acid to its dense, onyx form. It gradually shrunk in size, making it easier for the Lord to tear away, and then it was gone.
Panting in the subsiding haze of divine light, Audrey wavered a little, which Raphael steadied, but to her thorough astonishment, she was still standing.
"I didn't pass out..." she breathed, not really having meant to say it out loud.
"No," Raphael murmured close to her ear, "because you participated."
Reeling, she saw the proud, tearful grin stretch across Gabriel's face before her view was obstructed by Lucifer and his Father's embrace. The Lord finally spoke the words his son had waited two millennia to hear:
"Can you ever forgive me?" He pleaded in a choked whisper.
"More than readily, if you'd just accept me back," Lucifer answered thickly.
God complied by placing his skilled hands over the two large scars upon his son's back, and beneath them, Lucifer felt a sharp twinge that transformed into a pleasant tingle across his shoulders and along his spine as his bones re-grew from his blades. As the skin stretched and the bones slowly lengthened behind him, God's hands were pushed upward, where they rested atop the bases of the new wings. They widened further along and fleshed out, the skin dotted with strange, black follicles that grew long, glossy feathers when the wings were fully formed. His plumage was slightly different to the other archangels, Audrey noticed, in that they had a lustrous, reddish sheen where the sunlight bathed them from above.
When they were done, Lucifer extended them between the throng of bodies to inspect them. He glanced back at his smiling Father in confusion upon noticing the unique pigmentation.
"Red for passion," God clarified, and pointed a finger skyward, where the hole in the canopy of leaves let through wide beams, setting his son's wings alight with colour, "in the honour of Light."
Lucifer folded his beautiful new wings with a wide, gleaming grin, and the Devil was no more.