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Something had happened to Madach as well. Remy could see that this wasn’t the same fallen angel that he’d first come in contact with. There was an air about him, the way he carried himself.
Almost as if he were somehow comfortable with the Hellish environment. As if he belonged.
“The weapons,” Remy said eyeing each of the pieces in the fallen angel’s possession. “How did you end up with them?”
Madach gazed down at the weapons, an expression on his face as if seeing them for the first time.
“I came through Karnighan’s passage into the middle of a battle,” the fallen said, eyes glassy as he recounted how it had been. “The Sentries were fighting Nomads just outside the entrance.” He went silent, continuing to admire the accursed weapons he’d acquired.
“I don’t remember,” Madach then said, managing to pull his gaze from the Pitiless to stare at Remy. “I’m not sure how that’s possible, but the next thing I knew, I was inside Tartarus… and then I found you.”
“And the gun,” Remy said, his own gaze fixed upon the weapon that he’d lost in his struggle. There was a part of him that wanted it back, that wanted to hold death in his hand again.
Madach looked at the gun with loving eyes, rubbing a smudge of soot from its body against his pants leg, smiling when he saw that it was clean.
“It’s as if I’m drawn to them,” the fallen said. “Maybe it’s because they know that I’m the one responsible for all this… for freeing them,” he said.
Remy could just imagine what it was like for Madach, having them in his possession, chattering away inside his head, the images of past violence and death they were so eager to show him.
The air became filled with an echoing, pounding sound, like the one he had heard earlier that had drawn him inside the icy citadel. The vibrations that followed shook the very foundation, rubble raining down on them from above.
The sound was coming from somewhere below.
“It’s the axe,” Madach said, his voice barely audible over the powerful noise.
It was the one weapon of the Pitiless that Madach had yet to recover, and the fallen turned away from him, hurrying down a descending path that led deeper into the bowels of the prison.
“What is it?” Remy asked, following.
“We have to hurry,” Madach answered. “The axe is being used. There isn’t much time.”
The words were enough for him to ignore the aching pain in his shoulder, and to drive him on. If they were too late the end result was more than he had the ability to comprehend at that moment.
They rounded the corner, their movements illuminated by the eerie yellowish glow that emanated from inside the still-occupied fallen-angel cells.
A memory from Remy’s human past flitted through his mind’s eye: a Sunday visit to the New England Aquarium with Madeline. She loved the penguins, perfectly happy to skip any of the other exhibits to watch the tuxedoed birds waddle about in the artificial environment that imitated their natural habitat.
He was suddenly, profoundly disturbed, the memory vivid right down to the penguin-house smells, but there was something horribly missing.
Madeline’s face.
Her features were blurred, as if she’d moved unexpectedly as a picture was being taken—or as if the memory of her was slowly fading away. It was something that he couldn’t tolerate, that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—allow to happen. As his humanity was squelched, pushed deeper and deeper into a smaller and smaller place inside him, his memories—the memories of his human life—were gradually being discarded, seen as useless by the angelic nature that had at last regained dominance. These fragile human remembrances were not what were needed at this time.
Now it was about the battle, the fighting skills, the fury. These were the memories that would allow him to vanquish his foe, to serve the Lord God Almighty to his fullest capacity. There was no reason for compassion, kindness, and love in a place like this.
His humanity was dying, and Remy realized that it wouldn’t be long before all the precious experiences and memories that he’d collected over the centuries he’d lived as a human would be gone.
But there was no other choice. If this was the sacrifice required of him to prevent this most heinous act from happening, then it was the price he would have to pay.
He returned his focus to the job at hand, descending farther and farther into the bowels of Tartarus. The air had become even thicker with despair, the lower levels where the least repentant of the Morningstar’s minions were kept.
He did not want to look at them, curled fetal-like within their small, icy cells, but could not help himself. Remy had known these creatures. No, it was Remiel who had called them family, his brain quickly corrected. But nonetheless, they had been part of his world at one time, and here they were confined to an eternity—or more—of suffering for their actions.
Remy had tried not to think of what had occurred after the rebellion had been thwarted, after he had left Heaven for the earthly plains. He knew it would be bad; how could it not? The Lord of Lords—the Creator of all things—had been challenged by His own creations. How could He not punish them?
Remy knew it would be bad, but he never imagined anything like this.
They rounded yet another corner, the pitching of the floor beneath their feet making it ever more precarious as they descended deeper and deeper into the prison’s lower depths.
From the corner of his eye, Remy believed that he’d seen movement from inside one of the cells. His gaze moved over the frozen wall, looking for what he’d seen, and he was about to dismiss it as a trick of the poor light when a section of cell wall to his left suddenly cracked, sounding like the snap of a bullwhip, and then exploded outward.
Remy and Madach reared back, immediately on the defensive as they were showered with razor-sharp fragments of prison wall. At first he believed it to be more of the fallen angels escaping, but he quickly came to the realization that it was something much bigger, as even more of the wall crumbled and gave way to reveal multiple Tartarus Sentries pouring into the winding corridors, locked in furious combat with recently escaped fallen prisoners.
The Sentries roared through their blood-streaked helmets, unleashing the full fury of their Heavenly weaponry as they attempted to beat back the prisoners that attacked them.
They were like locusts, swarming through the jagged break in the wall, attacking the guards in a frenzied rage. The Sentries swung their crackling swords wildly, the burning blades decimating their enemies with every swing, flaming body parts strewn into the air, but still they kept coming.
The Sentries’ attempts to defend themselves grew more frantic as the fallen numbers continued to grow unabated. Soon Remy could no longer see the giants, their armored forms covered in writhing bodies slick with the grime of confinement in Hell.
The corridor trembled from the ferocity of the struggle, chunks of ceiling dropping down to shatter at their feet.
“Go!” Remy yelled to Madach, pushing him farther ahead. But their way became blocked by one of the Sentries, who dropped to his knees to reveal fallen angels wielding jagged pieces of their prison walls like daggers, clinging to their keeper’s back like hungry ticks to a dog.
And the walls continued to shudder from the enormity of the struggle, more and more of the prison breaking away. Remy was certain the passage was about to come down on their heads, and knew that if they were going to continue on their mission, he had to make this fast.
Leaping in front of Madach he raised the sword that he had taken from the warden Uriel, lashing out at the fallen that swarmed atop the giant Sentry.
The prisoners screamed, leaping back from the devastating blade, shielding their eyes, sensitive from a mille