behindcloseddoors | CLOSED ♔ and who shall i blame for this sweet and heavy trouble

Oh my G- [Des cuts himself off.] Jesu- [He cuts himself off again.

Then he just rolls his eyes.]

Goddammit.

'Die? Why do that? I mean, what do you mean, die? Your soul will leave--' I broke off, uncertain.

He smiled.

'You do have a soul, don't you, Lord? I mean, you are my God inside this Son of Man and the light fills every particle of you, but you... you don't have a soul, do you? You don't have a human soul!'

'Lucifer, these distinctions don't matter. I am God Incarnate. How could I have a human soul? What is important is that I will remain in this body as it is tortured and betrayed and slain; and my death will be evidence of my Love for those whom I have created and allowed to suffer so much. I will share their pain and know their pain and teach them how much it is possible to bear, so that they might replicate what I have done, and prove their worth.'

'Please, Lord, forgive me, but there seems to be something wrong with this whole idea.'

Again, he seemed amused. His dark eyes were filled with a sympathetic and silent laughter. 'Wrong? What is wrong, Lucifer, that I shall take the form of the Dying God of the Wood, whom men and women have imagined and dreamed of and sung of since time immemorial, a dying god who symbolizes the very cycle of nature itself in which all that is born must die.

'I shall die, and I shall rise from the Dead, as that god has risen in every myth of the eternal return of the spring after winter in nations all over the world. I shall be the god destroyed and the god uplifted, only here it will happen literally in Jerusalem, not in ceremony, or with human substitutes. The Son of God himself shall fulfill the myths. I have chosen to sanctify those legends with my literal death.

'I shall walk out of the Tomb. My resurrection will confirm the eternal return of the spring after winter. It will confirm that in Nature all things that have evolved have their place.

'But Lucifer, it will be for my death that I am remembered. My death. It's going to be terrible. It won't be for my resurrection they'll remember me, you can be sure of it, for that is something many simply will never see or believe. But my suffering, my torment, my death will spring full blown into a confirmation of mythology, underscored by all the myths which have preceded it, and my death will be a sacrifice by God to know His Own Creation and to instruct them in how to achieve their own salvation. Just what you told me to do.'

'No, no, wait, Lord, there's something wrong with this!'

'You always forget yourself and to whom you are speaking,' He said kindly, the mixture of human and divine continuing to obsess me as I looked at Him, falling into His beauty and staggered by His divinity, and overcome again and again by my own sure belief that this was all wrong.

'Lucifer, I've just told you what no one knows but Me,' He said. 'Don't speak to me as if I can be wrong. Don't waste these moments with the Son of God! Can't you learn from me in the flesh as you learn from humans in flesh? Have I nothing to teach you, my beloved Archangel? Why do you sit here questioning me? What could possibly be the meaning of your word, wrong?'

'I don't know, Lord, I don't know how to answer. I can't find all the words. I just know this is not going to work. First of all, who will do this torturing and killing?'

'The people of Jerusalem,' He said. 'I will succeed in offending everyone, the traditional Hebrews, the callous Romans, everyone will be offended by this blinding message of pure love and what love demands of humans. I will show contempt for the ways of others, for their rituals and their laws. And into the machinery of their justice, I will fall.

'I will be condemned on charges of treason when I speak of my Divinity, that I am the Son of God, God Incarnate... and for my very message I will be tortured with such embellishment that it will never be forgotten; my death, my crucifixion, my sacrifice, is going to be the same.'

'By crucifixion? Lord, have you seen men die in this way? Do you know how they suffer? They are nailed to the wood and they suffocate, hanging as they do, weakening, unable to lift their own weight on their nailed feet, and finally strangling in blood and in pain?'

'Of course I've seen it. It's a common form of execution. It's filthy and it's very human.'

'Oh, no, no!' I cried out. 'This can't be. You don't mean to climax your teachings with such spectacular failure and execution, with such cruelty and sacrifice!'

'This is not failure,' He said, 'Lucifer, I shall be a martyr to what I teach! Blood offerings of the innocent lamb to the good God have been made since Humans began! They instinctively render to God what is of great value to them to show their love. Who knows better than you who spied on their altars and listened to their prayers and insisted that I listen! Sacrifice and love are connected in them.'

'Lord, they sacrifice out of fear! It has nothing to do with love of God, does it? All the sacrifices? The children sacrificed to Baal, and a hundred other hideous rituals the world over. They do it out of fear! Why would love demand sacrifice?'

I had clamped my hands over my mouth. I couldn't reason further. I was horrified, and uncertain what he meant by expecting man to follow in his footsteps. I could not sort out the thread of my horror from the overall stifling weave. Then I spoke, thinking aloud:

'It's all wrong, Lord. That God should be so degraded in human form, that in itself is unspeakable; but that men should be allowed to do this to God... But will they know what they're doing, that you are God? I mean, they couldn't... Lord, it will have to be done in confusion and misunderstanding. That spells chaos, Lord! Darkness!'

'Naturally,' He said. 'Who in his right mind would crucify the Son of God?'

'Then what does it mean?'

'Lucifer, it means I subjected myself to the human for the love of those whom I made. I am in the flesh, Lucifer, I have been in it for thirty years. Would you explain yourself to me?'

'To die like that, it's wrong, Lord. It's a filthy killing, Lord, it's a bloody horrible exemplum to lay before the human race! And you say yourself they will remember you for this? More than for your rising from the death, from the light of God exploding out of your human body and making this suffering fall away?'

'The Light won't burst from my body,' He said. 'This body shall die. I shall know death. I shall pass into Sheol and there for three days remain with those who are dead, and then I shall return to this body and raise it from the Dead. And yes, it will be my Death they will remember, for how can I Rise if I do not Die?'

'Just don't do either one,' I pleaded. 'Really, I'm begging you. Don't make yourself this sacrifice. Don't dip down into their most misguided blood rituals, Lord, have you ever drawn near to the stench of their sacrificial altars? Yes, I used to say to you, listen to their prayers, but I never meant that you would dip down from your great height to smell the stink of the blood and the dead animal, or to see the dumb fear in its eyes as its throat is slit! Have you seen the babies heaved into the fiery God Baal?'

'Lucifer, this is the way to God which man himself has evolved. All over the world the myths sing the same song.'

'Yes, but that's because you never interfered to stop it, you let it happen, you let this humankind evolve and they looked back in horror on their animal ancestors, they beheld their mortality, and they seek to propitiate a god who has abandoned them to all this. Lord, they look for meaning, but they find none in this. None.'

He looked at me if I was mad, truly. He stared in silence.

'You disappoint me,' He said softly and gently. 'You wound me, Lucifer, you wound my human heart.' He reached out and put His roughened hands against my face, hands of a man who had worked in this world, labored as I had never labored in my brief visit.

I shut my eyes. I did not speak. But something had come to me! A revelation, an insight, a sudden grasping of everything here that was in error, but could I reason it out? Could I speak?

Edited 2014-02-07 03:12 (UTC)

[Des cracks his knuckles in annoyance, glowering at the rocks as if he can see God there and God can see the disdain and anger in his eyes.]

Easy for Him to say.

I opened my eyes again, letting him hold me, feeling the callouses on his fingers, looking into his gaunt face. How he had starved himself; how he had suffered in this desert, and how he had labored these 30 years! Oh no, this was wrong!

'What, my Archangel, what is wrong!' He demanded of me with infinite patience and consternation.

'Lord, they chose these rituals which involved suffering because they cannot avoid suffering in the Natural World. The natural world is what must be overcome! Why must anyone suffer what humans suffer? Lord, their souls come to Sheol distorted, twisted by pain, black as cinders from the heat of loss and misery and violence which they have witnessed. Suffering is evil in this world. Suffering is decay and death. It's terrible. Lord, You can't believe that to suffer like this would do any good to anyone. This suffering, this unspeakable capacity to bleed and to know pain and to know annihilation, is what has to be overcome in this world if anyone is to reach God!'

He didn't answer. He lowered his hands.

'My angel,' He said. 'you draw from me even more affection now that I have a human heart. How simple you are! How alien you are to the vast Material Creation.'

'But it was I who urged you to come down! How am I alien? I am the Watcher! I see what others angels don't dare to look at for fear they'll weep, and it will make you angry with them.'

'Lucifer, you simply don't know flesh. The concept is too complex for you. What do you think taught your souls in Sheol their perfection? Was it not suffering? Yes, they enter perhaps twisted and burnt if they have failed to see beyond suffering on Earth, and some may despair and disappear. But in Sheol, over the centuries of suffering and longing, others are purged and purified.

'Lucifer, Life and Death are part of the cycle, and suffering is its by-product. And the human capacity to know it exempts no one! Lucifer, that the illuminated souls you brought from Sheol knew it, that they had learnt to accept its beauty, is what made them worthy to come to the heavenly gates! And it will be so again, for with the blood of my sacrifice, the angels will water a new tree which will be planted in Eden, and this will be a tree of Absolution, Lucifer. And I will show these human souls all that they are capable of bearing, until one human soul arises to prove what evolution has made of them - souls as strong as God's Incarnate! And my angels will guide these human souls through all I have suffered - betrayal, loss, hatred, poverty, and despair, and in the end, this soul will still choose to sacrifice themselves, all they are, their very memories, in crossing the River of Lethe to reach Eden and eat of this Tree.

'And when they do this, Lucifer, they will show that mankind has overcome their Original Sin! They will represent all that man may encapsulate, true strength and love and growth in the face of suffering! They will be my Chosen One, and they will redeem mankind, and guide them to rise above Nature and truly earn their race's place in Heaven. You will see, Lucifer. You will see what mankind may be, how they will rise to my challenge.'

They want it to be me, don't they? [Des doesn't even hesitate to think that. It makes sense, doesn't? If they're forcefeeding him eternities of suffering over and over again, then surely that's the endgame.] It could be anyone, but I'm a contender. I gotta be after all this.

[If not, then it's even worse than he thought. He's suffering as an experiment and some other asshole is going to get it twice as bad.]

[ lucifer casts an inscrutable look at des, exchanging a glance with azrael ]

For many reasons, Descant, it can't be you. Not only did you come before these new rules were established, but you don't fulfill God's criteria so to speak. It requires maintaining hope, grace, and love of God throughout ... as well as much more, from which you have already been rendered unqualified. You did, however, you might say serve as inspiration for the idea.

You could have lied to me. Made me feel all important. [BECAUSE NOW HE'S JUST THE ASSHOLE THAT SOME OTHER SCHMUCK HAS TO PLAY SUFFERING BINGO WITH.] Although if he wasn't a freakin' pointy-eared bastard with his own gods, Rafael could have made bank on this.

He would never have fit the bill either. [ lucifer is doing his best to not laugh at you des, you're adorable. ] He was looking for a Saint, not a cynic.

'Lord, that's not true,' I said to him. 'You've gotten it wrong. Utterly. Oh I see what's happened.'

'You do? What are you trying to say to me? That I, the Lord God, having spent 30 years in this body, have not struck the truth?'

'But that's just it! You've known all along you were God. You mentioned there were times when you thought you were mad or almost forgot, but those were brief! Too brief! And now as you plot your death, you know Who you are and You won't forget it, will you?'

'No, I won't. I must be the Son of God Incarnate to fulfill my ministry, to work my miracles, of course. That's the whole point.'

'Then Lord, you don't know what it means to be flesh!'

'How dare you assume that you do, Lucifer.'

'Lord, when you left Azrael in his fleshly body, when you cast him down for the Daughters of Men to heal and care for, in the early centuries of this very land, he had no promise you would take him back to Heaven. Lord, you're not playing fair in this experiment. You've known all along you're going back, you're going back to be God! You cannot expect man to do as you have done, without that assurance! Man will break under such pressure.'

'Who better than I can understand what this flesh feels!' He demanded.

'Somebody who doesn't fully rest assured that He is the immortal Creator of the Universe,' I said. 'Any mortal man hanging on a cross now on Golgotha outside Jerusalem would know better than you!'

His eyes grew wide as He stared at me. But He didn't challenge me. His silence unnerved me. And once again, the power of His expression, the radiance of God in man dazzled me, and drew upon the angel in me to simply shut up and fall at His feet. But I wouldn't do it!

'Lord, even when I went to the Void,' I said, 'I didn't know whether or not I'd ever come back to Heaven. Don't you see? I don't claim to have your understanding of anything. We wouldn't be talking here if I did. But I didn't have any promise I would be allowed back into Heaven, don't you see? So the suffering and darkness spoke to me and taught me, because I took the risk that I might never overcome it. Don't you see?'

He considered this a long time and then He shook His head sadly. 'Lucifer, you are the one who has failed to understand. When is Humankind closest to God than when they suffer for the love of another, when they die so that another might live, when they plunge towards certain death for the protection of those they leave behind or those truths about Life which Creation has taught them?'

'But the world doesn't need all that, Lord! No, no, no. It doesn't need the blood, the suffering, the war. That wasn't what taught Humans to love! Animals already did all that bloody, horrible catastrophe to one another. What taught Humans was the warmth and affection of another, the love for a child, the love in a mate's arms, the capacity to understand another's suffering and want to protect the other, to rise above savagery into the formation of the clan and tribe that would mean peace and security for all!'

There came a long silence. And then very tenderly He laughed. 'Lucifer, my angel. What you and Azrael learnt of life you learnt in bed.'

What an asshole.

[Des is pretty much done with God at this point.]

I didn't answer for a moment. The comment was charged with contempt and humor, of course. Then I spoke.

'That's true, Lord. And suffering is so terrible for humans, injustice is so terrible for the balance of their mind that it can destroy those lessons learnt in bed, magnificent as they are!'

'Oh, but when Love is reached through suffering, Lucifer, it has a power it can never gain through innocence.'

'Why do you say that? I don't believe it! I don't think you grasp it, Lord, listen to me. There's one chance for this to be proven my way. One chance.'

'If you think for one moment you will interfere with my ministry and my sacrifice, if you think you can turn the tide of the vast forces already moving towards this event, then you are no more an angel, but a demon!' He said.

'I don't ask that,' I said. 'Go through with it. Minister, outrage them; be arrested, tried, and executed on the cross, yes, do all of it. But do it as a man!'

'I intend to.'

'No, you'll know the whole time you're God. I'm saying Forget that you are God! Bury your divinity in the flesh the way it's been buried intermittently. Bury it, Lord, leaving yourself only your faith and your belief in Heaven, as if it had come to you through Revelation immense and undeniable. But bury in this desert the true certainty that you are God,. Then, you'll suffer it all as a man suffers it. Then you'll know what this suffering is at its heart. Then will the joy be stripped from agony! And you will see what men see when flesh is ripped, and torn and blood flows, and it is your own, and you will be broken as well and not ask this of your Creations!'

'Lucifer, men die on Golgotha every day. What is important is that the Son of God knowingly sacrifices himself in the body of a man.'

'Oh, no, no!' I cried out. 'This is disaster!'

He seemed so sad suddenly that I thought he might weep for me. His lips were parched and cracked from the desert. His hands were so thin I could see the veins. He was not even a great specimen of a man, only an ordinary one, worn down by years of toil.

'Look at you,' I said, 'starving, thirsting, suffering, tired, lost in all the darknesses of life, the true spontaneous evils of nature, and dreaming of glory when you exit this body! What kind of lesson can such suffering be? And who will you leave with the guilt for your murder? What will become of all those mere mortals who denied you? No, please, Lord, listen to me. If you won't leave your Divinity, then don't do it. Change the plan.

'Don't die. Above all, don't be murdered! Don't hang from a tree like the God of the Wood in the Greek stories. Come with me into Jerusalem and know women and wine and singing and dancing and the birth of little ones, and all the joy the human heart can contain and express!

'Lord, there are times when the hardest men hold infants in their arms, their own children, and the happiness and satisfaction of those moments is so sublime that there is no horror on earth that can destroy the peace they feel! That is the human capacity for love and understanding! When one can achieve harmony in spite of everything, and men and women do this, Lord. They do. Come, dance with your people. Sing with them. Feast with them. Throw your arms around the women and the men and know them in the flesh!'

'I feel pity for you, Lucifer,' He said. 'I pity you as I pity the mortals who will kill me, and those who will inevitably misunderstand my sacrifice and my laws, and what I would ask of them. But I dream of those who will be touched to the core by my suffering, and who will never forget it and seek to replicate it, and will know what love I felt for mortals that I would let myself die among them and grant them the chance to redeem themselves from Sin and Sheol. I pity you. Feeling as you do, your guilt will become too terrible to bear.'

'My guilt? What guilt?'

'You're the cause of all this, Lucifer. You're the one who said I should come down in the flesh. You're the one who urged me on to do it, who challenged me, who asked me to offer these humans a way to reach Heaven, and now you fail to see the miracle of my sacrifice.

'And when you do see it, when you do see souls perfected by suffering ascending to Heaven, when you see my Chosen One cross the River of Lethe of their own volition, after suffering all a soul may suffer, what will you think of your paltry little discoveries made in the arms of Daughters of Men? What will you think? Don't you see? I will redeem suffering, Lucifer! I will give it its greatest and fullest potential within the cycle! I will bring it to fruition. I will allow it to sing its own magnificent song!'

'No, no, no!' I stood up and railed at Him. 'Lord, just do as I ask. Go through with it, yes, if you must, found this miracle upon a murder, do it that way, if that is your will, but bury your certainty of your Divinity, so that you really, really do die, Lord, so that when they drive the nails through your hands and feet you know what a man feels and no more and when you enter the gloom of Sheol yours is a human soul! Please, Lord, please, I'm begging you. For all humanity, I'm begging you. I can't see the future, but I have never been more frightened of it than I am now.'

[ he breaks off, looking into the distance, his words echoing. ]

[Des rests his chin on his knees, saddened by the ignorance coming from someone who claims to Know All.]

You weren't asking much. [Suffer like us, then maybe you'd get it.]

And yet.

When He died He was man, but that man was never without the power of God.

[ lucifer seems too shaken to say more just yet. but something has changed in the landscape. a figure is seated in the circle of stones, the figure of a dark skinned, dark eyed man, emaciated and covered with the sand of the desert, and he's looking at them. and without one fiber of his flesh being other than human, He is obviously God.

His presence is petrifying, but not frightening. He merely looks at des with the softest sympathy in His face, and the same unbounded acceptance of them that had been felt in Heaven.

The Son of God.

"Come here, child," he calls out softly, over the desert wind, in a human voice. "Come closer." ]

[Des gets to his feet, but remains rigid, staying closer to Lucifer, but looking to Azrael as if unsure if this is part of the test or not. His fingers clench and unclench, and he ventures closer, anger outweighing his fear of what might happen if he gets too close.]

[ azrael gives him a bitter smile. ]

Des, it is always a good idea, no matter how He is behaving, to do exactly what He says.

[ "I want you to come into Jerusalem," He says. He reaches out and brushes back Des' hair, and the hand is as Lucifer described it: dry, calloused, darkened from the sun as his brow. But the voice hovers somewhere between natural and sublime and strikes a timbre beyond the angelic. It's the voice that spoke to him in Heaven, only confined to human sounds.

"Come into Jerusalem. It won't take you long, no more perhaps than a few moments, but come into Jerusalem with me, on the day of my death, and glimpse my Passion - see me crowned with thorns and carrying my cross. Do this for Me before you make your decision whether or not to serve Lucifer or the Lord God. Would you really return to Earth without this glimpse of what I offer? Would you really give up this chance to glimpse me crowned with thorns? When have you ever passed up a challenge, and think what I am offering to you now. No, you wouldn't back off from it, even if Lucifer urged you to do it." ]

[Des doesn't regard the touch with the contempt one would expect. He has made his decision. And everyone knows how stubborn he is.]

Fine.

[ "Lucifer," says God Incarnate. "Bring him, show him the way, let him but glimpse it. You be his guide, and then go on with your examination and your appeal."

He looks at Des and smiles.

"Remember. This is only the world. And you know the world. Sheol awaits. You have seen the World and Heaven, but you have not seen Hell."

With that, He vanishes. ]

What's that supposed to mean?

[HE DOESN'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT HELL, RIGHT? THAT'S NOT A THING, RIGHT?]

It means precisely what He said, Descant. If you would join our cause, you must understand it - and to understand it means to see it firsthand.

What? To give me incentive not to screw up? [GRUMBLE MUTTER. Everyone in this desert sucks.]

Because you need to understand what we do, and what Hell is. But come. Let us not keep Him waiting.

[ and lucifer leads them into the city, a city of deep brown and faded yellow stones and clay. there's a huge crowd of people, robed and veiled and ragged - the smell of human sweat overpowers, the heat of stagnant breath, and stench of human waste and camel dung. no one takes notice of them, though he can feel the press of people around them, feel unwashed men shoving against him, and brushing in front of him, and the sand salts the air here within the walls of the city, within these narrow streets.

people cluster in small rounded doorways, peep from windows above. soot mingles with the everlasting sand. women drawing their veils around their faces cleave to one another, pushing past. up ahead, they can hear screams and shouting. the crowd pushes around them so tightly that des can't even move further.

lucifer is right beside him, watching all calmly, no preternatural gleam now. ]

[Des snaps and glowers at the people who brush against him and pays them no heed, drawing closer to Lucifer without realizing he's doing it. The screams draw his attention and he hastens his pace, drawn to the sound of trouble instinctively.]

[ lucifer puts his left arm around des' shoulder, clutching him protectively, and divides the crowd in front of them, effortlessly it seems, until they emerge in the front line of those who wait at a broader thoroughfare as the procession advances. the shouts are deafening. roman soldiers move past, their garments soiled with grit, faces tired, bored even, dreary. across the way, on the other side of the procession, a beautiful woman, her hair covered by a long white veil, throws up her hands and screams.

she's looking at the Son of God. he's come into view. des can see the big crossbar of the crucifix first, on his shoulders, sticking out on either side of Him, and then His hands, bound to the beam, dangling from the ropes, already dripping with blood. His head is bowed, the brown hair is matted and dirty and covered over with the crude black crown of spiked thorns; spectators are pressed to walls on either side of Him, some taunting Him, others silent.

there's barely room for Him to walk with his His burden. His robes torn, His knees bruised and bleeding, but walk He does. The stench of urine overpowers from the nearby walls.

He trudges towards them, face hidden, then falls, one knee going down into the stones of the street. Behind Him, Des sees others carrying the long post of the cross which will be planted in the ground.

at once the soldiers beside Him pull Him up. they steady the crossbar on his shoulders. His face is visible, not three feet from where they stand, and He looks at Des and Lucifer. Sunburnt, cheeks hollow, mouth open and shuddering, dark eyes wide and fixed on them. He looks, without expression, without appeal. the blood pours down from the black thorns sticking into His forehead; it runs in tiny streams into His eyelids and down His cheeks. His chest is naked under the open rag of robe which He wears, and it's covered in the ripe, red stripes of the lash.

the crowd goes on screaming and cursing; and shouting and pushing; little children peep through; women wail. others laugh; a great horrid stinking multitude beneath the relentless sun that sends its rays throughout the close urine-stained walls.

closer He comes. He shudders in his agony, the blood running down His face into His shivering lips. He gives a gasp as if He will strangle, and des can see that the robe over His shoulders, beneath the rough wood of the beam, is soaked with blood from the scourging. He can not endure another instant, and yet they push Him, and He stands directly before them, eyes down, face wet with sweat and blood swimming in it, and then slowly He turns and looks at Des.

He stands there, staring at him and Lucifer, stepped out of time and holding the moment in its fullness, in its agony, as He looks at them both and speaks Des' true name. His voice is so feeble and torn he can scarce hear it. ]

[Des grits his teeth. He's not unmoved by this display- he's done his share of torture on this earth. This is the sort of cruelty he's endured for four thousand years, consolidated into a single moment. There's no real pity in his eyes- you get what you paid for- but his chest hurts all the same. It's the same side of him that would never let something that grants true immortality fall into the hands of even someone who wanted it, because he knows what it brings and it's not a curse he'd wish on anyone who couldn't possibly fathom what it feels like.

And God doesn't know. God is still God underneath all that. At the same time, however, Des has been bent and broken and knew, the whole time, that he would return to life when it was all over. Is the suffering not the same?

No, he thinks, because I didn't choose it.

So he watches, turning his eyes away from God, expression placid. This doesn't make him agree with God. This makes him want the suffering to stop even more.]

[ He comes closer, and as he stares into Des' eyes, Des experiences a falling sensation, as if the whirlwind were gathering around him again, the noise of the crowd swelling as he is suddenly barraged by sensation...

The cross, the nails driven through His wrists, not His hands, His body twisting and turning as if in the last moments, He wil escape, and His head bashes down on the crossbar, so that the thorns go into His scalp, and then the nails through His feet, and His eyes rolling, the pound and pound of the hammer, and then the Light, the immense Light rising as it had over the balustrade in Heaven, and filling the world, and then it is receding, swift, soundless, and leaving behind a long tunnel or path, straight from Earth to the Light.

Time presses in with suffocating heat, and He is before them, staring at them, tears spilling down out of His eyes, through that blood that already covers Him.

And then the sky is shifting, the blue sky over Jersualem, the sand-filled air shifts; the whirlwind mercifully surrounds him and the Light fills his eyes as the wind carries him in silence and stillness, his robes transposed once more to his own coat and shirt, what he'd worn in the snows of Chicago.

Smoke rises from the earth. Cries and screams again. With a hard, shattering blow, Des strikes a wall and a floor (13 dmg). Horses go by, the hooves barely missing his head, sparks flying from the stones. A woman lies bleeding and dying before him, her neck obviously broken, blood pouring out of her nose and ears. People flee in all directions. Again the smell of excrement mixed with blood.

It is a city at war, the soldiers looting and dragging the innocents from out of archways, screams echoing as if off endless ceilings, the flames coming so close they singe his hair.

A soldier's foot comes up and kicks the side of his face, hard, sending him sprawling on the stones (9 dmg). ]

[Des officially has no idea what the hell is happening.

He's been here before- again, not specifically here, but he's been in enough wars and street skirmishes to know the agony and the shock and the disorientation and he forgets all about God and the cross and Lucifer and Azrael in a panic to get away. He pulls himself up to his knees, blood oozing from a cut on his face and sucks in a breath, looking around desperately for a way out or any sign of Lucifer and Azrael. (Spot 18)]

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