Copyright 2011 Olaf Sachs
It was on a cool March afternoon as the sounds of children were dying away down the lane behind my garden that the archangel Michael appeared to me in splendour.
At first I reeled away from him in terror, unable to bear the awful beauty of his visage. I threw myself face-first on the grass and tried to shield my eyes against the brilliant whiteness that shone like the midday sun through his outspread wings. But he reached a hand towards me, and at once I felt a calmness wash over my mind and was still. He knelt beside me where I still lay prone, and something in his smile gave me courage to speak.
“Has – God sent you to me?” I asked. His hand seemed to radiate a soft warmth as he held it before my face.
“He has not,” said Michael, his voice so smooth and calm I couldn’t help relax. “And that, Andrew, is precisely why I have come.”
I didn't understand, then, what he meant – but he began to explain it to me, gently and patiently. It must have required a lot of patience, I suppose, for at first I was bewildered by what he was telling me and my mind refused to accept its implications. But he persisted, waiting through my confused questions and answering each in turn, and gradually I came to understand why he had come to me.
What Michael told me was that God was – indisposed. That was the word he used for it, but somehow I sensed that there was more to it than I understood. “Dead?” I asked. No, not dead. Not gone exactly, nor sleeping: being limited human concepts, none of these could really give a proper description of the Almighty’s condition. It was something somehow like these but not quite like them, or like some combination of them. He did try several times to give me a fuller explanation, but I never really managed to absorb it any more clearly than that.
But whatever the details, God's ability to affect the world had been waning. As a result, the angels had been required to take up more and more of His work themselves. This had gone on until before long (though Michael never made it quite clear whether these events had taken months, years or centuries to unfold) they were undertaking all of His work in the material world, and God contained his activities to Heaven itself. Eventually he became unable even to communicate with the angels, and they were left to fend for themselves.
This was distressing for the angels of course - but again, I got the feeling Michael was unable to really convey to me just how much so. It wasn’t just the lack of God’s guidance and instruction, he told me, but the absence for the very first time during their countless eons of existence of his presence itself. I remembered hearing that Hell was not so much about the torment per se as the simple fact of being utterly deprived of the connection to God, and tried to appreciate how harrowing that absence would be to creatures so used to living in His very presence.
Still, Michael told me, the angels’ troubles didn’t stop there. It seemed that their counterparts in Hell had recently learned of the situation - though again I had no real idea of the timescales involved here. Michael had learned, or at least had good reason to suspect, that the demons planned to take advantage of God's absence by pouring out of Hell and into the material realm, engaging on a great war of conquest to establish the world as an outpost of the damned.
But couldn't the armies of Heaven confront the demon horde and stop them, I asked? “Undoubtedly we could,” was Michael's reply. “Lucifer knows that his army is no match for mine, but the difference between our strengths is small. Any such war would most likely be slow and bitter, with little chance of a quick decisive victory. That war would wreak great damage on the Earth, and he knows also that we could never risk such an outcome. No, the Heavenly Host cannot afford to engage their forces directly.”
It was then that Michael revealed his reasons for approaching me. If direct battle was impossible, the only remaining option was subterfuge. An agent of Heaven would have to sneak through the gates of Hell unsuspected and strike down Lucifer himself, crippling their foes before they could sally out. But as no angel could hope to cross the river Acheron that marked the boundary of Lucifer’s realm without arousing the attention of his servants, a lesser being was needed.
Heaven had chosen me.
At first I protested: “I'm no great man,” I told the angel. “I've committed plenty of sins, and I have no idea how to fight a devil – surely there must be someone better you can choose as a champion?”
“It is true, my son, that your soul is not the purest of men’s,” came the reply. “But in truth that is an advantage to our cause. If we set a saint of great renown to this task, the lesser demons who guard Hell's gates would surely see something amiss in his presence and become suspicious. No, Andrew, you must trust in my wisdom on this. I have faith in your capability for the task.”
With that, he stood again and reached beneath his cloak. There was a sound like the slow ringing of a struck glass, and when he withdrew his hand he was holding the hilt of a gleaming sword some two feet long. It seemed to me that it was forged from diamond: a thousand light beams of every colour criss-crossed through it as he held it out in the sunlight, and I was humbled.
“This will be your weapon, champion of Heaven” said Michael, and placed the hilt in my hand. The grip fitted perfectly, and the sword was light as cobwebs. “It will not kill your enemy – nothing but the will of God could destroy even a fallen angel – but it will wound him, and while he lies incapacitated my Host will move against the gates of Hell, trapping his followers inside in their confusion and leaving the realm of Man safe from incursion.” I nodded numbly, still turning the blade over and over in my hand, fascinated by the colours twisting inside.
Michael watched me in silence for a long while, and it seemed that there was a new sadness in his eyes. Soon, when I had grown a little used to this beautiful wonder in my mortal hand and he saw fit to speak again, I understood why.
Michael could shield my thoughts from detection as I passed beyond into the realms ethereal, he told me, so that none would suspect my task: but there were things that even he, Seneschal of the Host of Heaven, could not do. He could not send my living soul into the afterlife, and he could not falsify the Judgement that would be passed on me when I voyaged there.
If I was to gain access to Hell, I would have to earn it.
I could tell it filled him with great sorrow to ask this of me, but I also saw that he knew there was no other choice. Once his armies had crushed the rebellion, he assured me, I would be lifted from that place to sit among the highest denizens of Heaven, forever lauded as a hero by all Creation. But if that was to come to pass – if I was to save the world from its encroaching doom – I must first give of myself to the Abyss.
It took many days of steeling myself for the task ahead. I prayed, thought and meditated, all the while remembering Michael's soft voice and his calm, grey eyes. Some days I would think myself unequal to the task, that I could never hope to live up to this expectation of me. Sometimes I found myself almost angry with Michael for having chosen me to carry this burden. And on still other days I would wake not believing any of it had been real, convincing myself it must all have been a distant dream and I was still the ordinary and unremarkable man I had always been rather than the unlikely champion of Heaven.
But through all of this that sword stood in the corner of my room where I had lain it, gleaming so spectacularly in even the dim light of my long doubtful evenings that I couldn’t doubt its miraculous origin. Often I would reach out and run my hands over the hilt, just hold it to feel it in my palm. Each time I did, a warmth and calmness seemed to flow over me from the sword and erase my doubts. Eventually, my mind was set.
I have no wish, now, to recall the deed that I committed, though I find myself unable to forget it. Still, there is no need to dwell on it yet another time. Suffice to say that it seemed an ample payment for entry into Lucifer’s kingdom. I did it with the knowledge of Michael's words in my heart but still I felt myself harden when I saw that it was done, and knew that I was changed for ever.
For a moment I fell to my knees and wept, despairing at the fragile beauty I had destroyed. But soon I felt the sword calling to me again, reminding me of my promise and my task. I seized it in trembling fingers, and with its blade I cast myself into the hands of fate.
When I awoke, the world was bathed in white. I felt myself floating gently upwards through vast, formless spaces which seemed to take vague shape around me before fading away as I rose - though I never caught any glimpse of them through the uniform brightness around me. My ascent continued for a timeless, dreamlike time, and it seemed that I could forget all of what Michael had asked of me, all that I had ever been and done; float for ever in that cool white emptiness.
Then, I felt a presence approach me as I rose. I can find no words now to describe the experience, nor can I say truly what that presence was. Perhaps it was God, perhaps Michael or some other angel; perhaps a thing altogether more basic and incomprehensible to man. But it touched me, and in that moment I felt that it knew me more intimately than anyone, more even than I knew myself: that it knew me and loved me; and that it judged me.
And it found me lacking.
I wept, screamed into the featureless void of light for a forgiveness I knew I did not deserve. In that moment I would have discarded my mission, my identity; would have rent myself into nothing a thousand times over rather than face the dismissal of this perfection which had known me so completely and seen my weakness. But no mercy was forthcoming, and I felt the thing receding rapidly from me. I am honestly not sure which was worse, then: being in that being’s presence and feeling its disappointment in me, or feeling it slip away beyond my power to call back.
As the presence faded I realised I had begun to descend again. My fall was swift where my climb had been gentle, but still it seemed an interminable time through which I dropped in agonised loneliness. Eventually the brightness all around me dimmed – and without warning I found myself standing on a patch of pale grey stone before an ancient wooden gate. On either side of it the stone ended abruptly and beyond was nothing, not even the empty whiteness I had travelled through before. Looking upwards too I could make out no sign of the place I had fallen from. The gate seemed my only option, so I stepped towards it.
As I moved forwards I felt the slight weight of the ethereal sword in my hand, and suddenly the memory of my task came back to me for the first time since I’d been engulfed by that white light. The gates swung open slowly and I stepped through them with a new sense of purpose now that I knew there was no going back.
On the far side of the gates I beheld Hell for the first time. Without having had any concrete idea of what to expect I was still amazed at the sheer scale of the vista: endless, rolling plains stretched away on every side beneath a sky that brooded grey and purple like a bruise the size of the world. A dry wind blew off the desolate moors and seemed to sap the moisture from my skin, all the while howling around me mournfully.
I wandered seemingly aimlessly up the slope from the gate, hunching my shoulders against the cruel wind. Far in the distance I could make out the shapes of figures huddled in small groups or marching slowly in single file across the arid landscape. None were nearby though, and I ignored them as I pressed onwards. Something in me felt that it knew the way forward, as though my weapon felt its target calling to it and drew me on, helpless as a sailor drawn by his storm-driven vessel.
It was on a low hill that I came to him. He stood facing half away from me, his face obscured by immense wings which wrapped around him like a shawl of dark leather. He seemed to brood over some distant sight and I approached him without waking his notice, my heart singing in my throat. I lifted the sword high above my head to aim as close to the centre of his back as I could reach, and I struck.
My blade hit the creature square in the spine, right below his shoulder blades, and shattered instantly into a million shards of light. I grasped at my wrist in pain – but that was soon forgotten when I realised that Lucifer stood still in ponderous thought, unmoved by my attempt. What had gone wrong, I asked myself – surely this could not have happened? Or was his very stillness evidence of the incapacity Michael had spoken of? Oh, how I wished that he were here now!
As if in response to that silent wish, he turned to face me. In the moment that I saw his face I knew. His grey-eyed face so familiar, that I had seen once before and thought angelic; but twisted now in red-hot hatred, a sneer of triumph at so terrible a deceit at last borne fruit.
The Morningstar bared two wicked fangs where once I had seen only a kindly and patient smile. And as I dropped to my knees in the dust and buried my face, wishing desperately to blot out so unthinkable a truth, he lifted his long head and laughed.