vacuum of space, Eden’s temperature plummeted. The ball of flooded water froze solid whilst the remnants of its atmosphere was sucked away.
Once fully exposed the rays of undeterred sunlight began to melt and evaporate the frozen planet, cascading great plumes of gas into the infinite void in a magnificent volatile display, until there was nothing left but a dead, barren crust, replacing what beauty Eden had once possessed.
Michael. He could scarcely make out the muffled voice that disturbed his hallucinations. Paralysis gripped him. It consumed his conscience as he struggled to inhale his final breaths. Before the malakhim lost all sense of awareness some light touch pressed against his thigh, with it his visor crawled back around his skull and the malakhim began gasping within his suit in efforts to refill his blood with familiar air. “Michael?” Again the voice sounded out. With his returning focus he looked up to see Samyaza laying by his side. Her wound wept dark blood, coursing from her bronze suit down upon the granite of Hermon.
“Why do you help me, commander?” He still felt horrendously weak despite his suit rapidly returning his body’s composition to normality.
“I understand now,” the commander wheezed. “The seraphim seek only dominance.” The high-malakhim breathed awkwardly, his throat pulsed in agony.
“How long have I been unconscious?”
“Too long, Michael. Heylel left Eden in an ophanim. He will drown this world. He will kill it. He will destroy all our species has left.” Michael paused for a brief moment at the thought.
“We must return to Heaven, Heylel must die. Our sets will only know existence once we are free of the seraphim.”
“What of Yahweh, he seeks to be gone from Eden.” Michael sighed.
“I have taken care of that matter, commander.” She strained to look up at her company.
“What do you mean?”
“We have no time to discuss the past, this world must be free of the seraphim’s destructive grip or it will join the fate of our last.”
“Then go, Michael, but please, give warning to these humanoids, should you fail, they will be all that is left of us.”
“The experiments are corrupt, they are riddled with the seraphim’s DNA. They are themselves tyrants. They enslaved the nephilim, these nephilim kill all that lives. This planet is already troubled because of the seraphim’s actions, and we have been upon its surface for but a minute fraction of its lifespan.”
“Perhaps their ancestors committed these sins, Michael, but these humanoids who live now cannot be judged on the actions of those who came before them. They know only what it is to be slaves, they will know better. Are you not so different, Michael? Please, do not throw away everything that Azazel gave his life for. Do not throw away what might be the only future our kind has left.” He stared at the watcher with hesitance. The very idea of these entities being held in higher regard than his own set was what drove his hatred of them. With a struggle the malakhim moaned, lifting himself up to his feet.
He limped past the ark’s remains feeling the heat of his craft’s still burning fuel billowing across Hermon’s desolate scenery. A lone humanoid which had been brought here by Behemoth cowered beneath the legs of Amazarak’s ophanim. He stared at the towering malakhim with dread in his eyes.
Approaching the aged male, Michael spoke out. “This world will be immerged, drowned, and all things which are evil and corrupt within it will perish. Go to your people, find them, take them to high ground, and prepare yourselves for a deluge, humanoid.” He abruptly grasped the being with force. “Not because I seek to see you live, but because of what I know to be my own existence sees it just. Go, be free of those who oppress you.”
“But what of the monsters in the dark?”
“My set hunts the last of them as we speak, these lands are safe now.” Whether those words were true, Michael cared not, these lowly things were not his concern. The petrified being nodded its head stiffly. Michael released him.
The malakhim turned without looking back, trekking his way towards Samyaza. He knelt, and with trouble scooped the slender watcher up into his arms. She whimpered as her body was disturbed. Once he held her securely Michael paused. He turned about, gazing up towards the peak of Mount Hermon. “Is she in there, Samyaza?”
“Yes, but we have no time.” For a period he stared in silence.
“But, you could take me to her?”
“Michael... better that you remember her face as your saw her last. That is the malakhim you knew, not who rests in the mountain. To see her now would not relieve you, it would break you. Please we must hurry.” After a moment of contemplation the enormous bronze entity began to nod. Inside however his heart sank.
“The deeds I have committed, Samyaza...” An unshakable weight of guilt engulfed him for knowledge Rafaela’s fate had been a result of his own objectives. A burden he would have to carry to the grave. With Samyaza in his arms he walked on to the closest ophanim he could see. He helped the commander up into its interior then dragged himself inside. It was empty. He closed the craft’s seal and began working away at its panels and controls.
“Rest, commander. Here.” He helped Samyaza into a secure position within the ophanim before igniting the vessel’s fuel. The legs burst to life with a ferocious roar of fire sprouting out beneath the craft and across Hermon’s rocky ground. Michael looked through the commander’s wreckage, feeling a sudden pang of guilt at the fact he had caused all the troubles she now knew, all in a blind pursuit of jealousy. The high-malakhim watched the cowering humanoid for a brief moment before his focus returned to the ophanim’s control panels.
Feeling the vessel’s velocity forcing him down against its floor he secured himself to the navigations. “If we cannot stop him, we have failed our species. Should these crude humanoids survive the flood they will inherit nothing but the corruption of the seraphim within them.”
“Should we fail or succeed, they will too inherit our sets’ likeness, Michael. They will not all be bad.”
"Some may be like us, Samyaza, but they will never be as we are.”
"Is that such a terrible thing?" The malakhim watched the commander sway without focus.
“The overwhelming destructive nature of the seraphim will always be strongest amongst them, commander. When we are gone, when their ancestors are trying to make sense of their past... they will know nothing. Drowned or not, we have doomed this world.”
"Whatever they turn out to be, Michael, they have life, at least." The malakhim exhaled through his nose viewing Eden’s rapidly shrinking terrain become nothing more than a blur of colours. The malakhim’s son rest on his mind. An enormous shroud of dread consumed him at thought of not making it back to the mother ship to see him safe. I am coming, my boy.
His attention shifted to the encroaching darkness of space, beyond Eden’s atmosphere and its ever protective ionosphere, up towards the gates of Heaven, to secure a future for his own species upon this most precious haven he hoped to one day call home.
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