Seven days. Seven days it took me to reach the top of the mountain. Seven days since the entire world was told that it was all going to end. They say that on the seventh day of Genesis, God rested. Unfortunately, on the seventh day of the Rapture, today, God will strike us down. As I climbed over the edge of the cliff, I was blinded on all sides by not only the natural radiance of the angels awaiting for my arrival, but the shine of their golden armor, as well as their spears and swords sharp enough to sever Demonflesh - all of which were pointing directly at me. Though, to be honest, I couldn't blame them for the hostility after the adventure I had getting up here, and the surprising number of their dead that lay at my feet, dead by my hand.
As slowly as I could, I unslung my rifle and tossed it over the side of the cliff. Then I unholstered my pistol and tossed it away, too. After climbing for two days, I wasn't sure if I would even hear either of them fall to the ground below, but I listened anyway. Sadly, no sound, or at least none that I could hear over the howl of the wind. Finally, I took off my jacket and lay it upon the dirt, the best blanket I could manage before placing the unsheathed sword upon it. A weapon taken from one of their fallen brethren, I figured it would be polite to return it. After all, this was the end.
An angel approached, four pure-white wings spread wide, spear in hand, golden armor glistening upon it's chiseled features. Immediately, I felt a warmth spread over me, driving away the cold. His face, however, was that of pure disdain, sending a chill down my spine. Before he could speak, I raised my arms. "I've come to negotiate on behalf of humanity. For our survival," I added, though that should've been obvious.
The angel turned to face the crowd and nodded. As if on cue, a single angel in the mass sheathed it's sword and took off, flying away toward the shining palace, The Kingdom come to Earth. Then the angel turned his gaze back to me. "You, mortal, will proceed no further," the angel said as he moved his spear to bar the path. The remaining army of angels enclosed on me, weapons still at the ready, as if it were actually possible for all of them to attack at once.
I shrugged my shoulders and sat on the ground, hands in my lap. An audience was all I wanted, and if this was as close as I was going to get, then so be it. I really couldn't blame them for their suspicions though: from their point of view, a mere human advancing this far at the height of the Apocalypse, the Rapture, Ragnarok, whatever word you had for the end of times, well I, too, would suspect that creature must be special, must be powerful, must be dangerous. And maybe, in today's times when God and the divinity has turned against us, maybe that quality was something that made me the most likely to survive - that I still had faith.
With nothing else to do, I thought about how I got here. I'd first set off on my own, thinking that it all had to be a mistake, that there's no way that God would order the destruction of his favored children. So I set off on my own, guided by faith. Along the way, others joined along and soon enough, I had a following of a dozen people: people enraged by what was happening and looking for revenge against The Divine; some hoping to rescue their family members from rapture; a couple who thought they were prepared enough to survive Armageddon; and one other who just needed to do something that would matter in the face of their inevitable destruction - all of them with their own reasons but none of them like my own. In the beginning I tried to discourage them, to turn them away, but still they followed. Before getting to the mountain, we didn't lose anyone: not to the random pits opening in the ground, swallowing buildings whole; not to the red lightning which stalked us like a predator from dark clouds before striking in random intervals; not to the True Believers, zealots who welcomed the end of days with open arms, seeking to redeem themselves by spilling the blood of "heretics", which to them meant less about faith and more about attacking those who were not as well armed as themselves.
"Thremmiskes' sword," said the angel, holding the sword I'd placed on the ground. "Where did you acquire it?"
I stared at the sword, then turned to the angel. "I won it."
The angel just stared at me, as if trying to decipher if I was lying or not, before just nodding and placing the sword back onto my jacket. "So it is yours," was all he said.
When my group finally got to the foot of the mountain though, we ran into ... something, something more monster than man. We riddled its body with bullets but still it advanced on us, speaking in tongues, saying that it was possessed by God's Will, by an angel. In the end, we managed to blow off its legs, losing a friend in the process. Though crippled, it continued to crawl toward us. I managed to get behind it and stab it in the back with the sword it had been swinging. Once the steel pierced flesh, the body glowed for a brief second before going limp. We buried our own and set the other body aflame, afraid that it might rise again. We knew at that moment we were definitely in the right place, where the divine met Earth. We met several more vessels on our way up, each of them angels riding in a possessed human, armed with more strength than should be capable of a normal human. We lost more of our friends to these creatures, but still we marched on. It was the only thing we could do.
"Tell me, human," said the angel, again breaking me away from my memories, "how were you able to kill so many of my kin, to take the life of a being superior to your own?"
I thought for a while, thinking about how those monsters killed my people. How was I still the one to survive? "I don't know. I just believed that what I was doing was right, and my faith would guide and protect me." I paused before adding, "As for the superior beings part, well, technically we're both creations of God, your kind imbued with the power of the divine but forced to serve, us with free will but no power of our own. Two branches of the same tree, if you ask me. Brothers even." I paused for a couple minutes. "Plus," I said, "we had some help."
On the last day, the day before I scaled the cliff alone, we fought an angel. Being that close to the point where Heaven met Earth, that close to the end of times, they were finally able to fully manifest themselves fully rather than force their will into human hosts. They were beautiful, strong, fast, powerful. We couldn't win, wouldn't survive. Almost immediately, Nancy and Tom were dead, and Luke and I were on the run. Mid-stride, Luke stopped and began convulsing, falling to all fours. I swear I didn't know he carried it in him, though I really should have guessed after all of those "lucky breaks" in our travels when he survived close calls which would've meant a dirt nap for anyone else. Because, technically, he didn't survive them. "Run" were his last words to me, then he spewed forth the darkest sludge I'd ever seen, gallons and gallons of the stuff, more than what should fit inside a human body. Then he slumped over, his body no longer alive but the used shell it had been for a past couple days. Quickly, the liquid began to form and harden, taking shape and growing limbs, horns, a tail, claws. A demon brought to our plane of existence using the same tear in reality which allowed the angels to manifest. It turned to face our pursuers and launched itself at them in a frenzy. I'm not sure if it actually managed to kill any of them as I was already heading in the other direction, determined to make it to the top.
"Human," the angel said, "tell me, why does your kind fight a war it cannot hope to win? Why do you struggle? Why do you persist? Your maker has deemed now as your time to end, for the best of you to be welcomed through the Gates, yourself included, why do you fight?"
I looked to the angel in his armor, at the entire horde of angels with their weapons. I just shrugged my shoulders. "That's the reason I came, on behalf of all of us. I'm afraid of dying. We're afraid to die. This isn't about getting revenge or justice for the ones I've lost, or fighting because it's all I have left, trying to save the ones who've been welcomed into Heaven, or struggling to keep myself from the punishments of the Pit. I really, truly just don't want to die. Terrified. After all, we were granted the gift of life and the freedom to choose. Why should that be taken from us for a reason we don't understand, without our consent?"
From the direction the other angel had flown to, there came a brilliant flash. The angel nodded and turned his back to me, as if my message had been delivered. The army of angels lowered their weapons and parted allowing me a narrow path back down the mountain from where I'd come. And so I stood and walked away. It seems anti-climactic, but what else could I hope to accomplish in the face of the Divine? Should I have tried to beg and plead louder until I knew my one voice would be heard, until I got the answer I wanted, or an answer at all? Did I really stand a chance fighting with mere force and will? We'll just have to wait to see what tomorrow brings.
A while back there was a huge influx of "God/s return to destroy humanity" type prompts on Reddit which prompted a bunch of these "Fuck you, humans are the greatest" type responses (I think someone's story ended nuking Heaven). Anyways, they got me back to thinking of this set of stories I was working on years and years ago: The Rapture Chronicles (see tag for the other 2 related stories). Originally, all the stories were supposed to be from multiple points of view with each character telling their story as journal entries (kind of like the epistolary style of "Dear Mr. Henshaw" though not letters, so maybe not like "Dear Mr. Henshaw" at all ... I really liked that book). Anyways, I got lazy so I didn't write a response to any of those prompts, but I decided to finish up at least the central character to those stories (I don't even remember what his name was supposed to be). Actually, as long as I don't get lazy again, there will probably be a bunch of posts in the next coming weeks as I finished up a notebook recently, and, like with most of my notebooks, there's a bunch of unfinished work/ just stuff I never got around to typing out. Anyways, I'll try to go through all of it.
