Two Sahaqiels.
An impossibility appearing before Jack and Sahaqiel as they lay stunned by the copy of the angel that stood beside the Black King.
Or was it a copy?
Jack didn’t know.
From appearances, she looked like Sahaqiel, felt like her with her essence clear as day to Jack's eyes. But her eyes bore no life, showed no signs of sentience with her body seeming to be more of a husk than a spirit.
“Surprise?” Micheal said as invisible chains of mana wrapped around Sahaqiel and Jack’s necks, dragging the pair into the inner sanctum. “I would have thought the failed project I left you in the Theocracy would have sufficed but I suppose not.”
Within the inner sanctum was a lavish chamber, one of gold opulence and stately pillars, a far cry from the ruins and debris from the hallway outside.
Ahead of Jack, a throne, one with skeletal remains at the foot of the chair with a myriad of ancient weapons and armor scattered about the room.
“It took me forty millennia to perfect the process,” Micheal said, the angel standing before the golden throne in triumph. “But I did it… I finally did it.”
He rubbed his hand upon the armrest of the chair, gently caressing the dusty furniture as if greeting an old lover.
“What is that? What did you do?!” Sahaqiel demanded, her eyes dancing between the copy of herself, the archangel, and the skeletons that lingered at the base of the throne.
“I saved you,” Michael replied as he sat up on his throne and let out a sigh, closing his eyes with his face twisting to one of satisfaction. “When the kill order was given, unlike you lot, I was prepared.”
The archangel waved his hand, revealing images to the duo of a bygone time.
Golden warriors stood within the sanctum, bloodied and injured with weapons at the ready as the enemy beat at the door.
Chief among them was Sahaqiel, the woman in regale splendor chanting as her eyes blaze with defiance against a shadowed figure.
Adam. The first fallen.
From the memory Jack could feel his power, feel the fear emanating from Sahaqiel who's eyes quivered at the sight.
Then, suddenly, a pulse, every living angel falling to the ground from some unknown force with even Sahaqiel dropping.
Silence. The last defenders of heaven resting in their tomb that would be forever undisturbed from outside forces.
Then, disturbing the quit of armageddon, a figure emerged, a child who stood before Sahaqiel’s body.
"No," Sahaqiel whispered, the angel realizing just how the archangel had survived.
He transplanted his consciousness. Using a non-awakened child as a host to drag away Sahaqiel’s body from the inner sanctum just as Sahaqiel's spell activated and sealed the chamber.
“I learned much from Eve. About the soul, about runes, about the lengths we would go to correct mistakes,” Micheal gloated as the images shifted to the boy pulling energy from Sahaqiel’s body. “But it would take me thousands of years. Hundreds of experiments. Millions of material wasted until my vision could come to pass.”
Thousands of images began to litter the chamber, hundreds of lifetimes lived through different bodies to continue his mission.
In one, Jack saw a girl in the likeness of Sahaqiel, flesh and blood who sang at a coven of nuns as the Black King, dressed in vestments of a priest, looked on.
In another, The Black King now in the body of a woman placing a golden eyed boy onto a manger.
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Dozens of lifetimes, all with the archangel Micheal perpetuating a cycle of Sahaqiel's rebirth and death. From cloning, to breeding, to creating constructs. Each time breaking pieces of Sahaqiel's soul to use as material but just enough to keep her soul largely intact.
From the stone age to the present, so many lives. So many deaths.
That was until he came to Lilith. When he decided to awaken Sahaqiel’s consciousness into a vessel he could control.
The final split.
The culmination of forty thousand years of testing, experimenting, and dying to produce the final specter that stood now beside him as his key.
Horror, Sahaqiel shook, realizing the depth of violation she’d been unknowingly subjected to. Her eyes were completely mesmerized on the lifetimes she knew nothing about with her gaze settling on the final version of herself singing at the top of her lungs as her body turned to stone, preventing the horrors from reaching the people fleeing into the mountains.
The Saintess of the Theocracy.
Micheal cast his eyes down, the man enjoying the moment to monologue as he called his version of Sahaqiel to wrap around his shoulders like a cape.
“And now, here at the end, I have not one, but two angels,” Micheal smirked, rising from his throne as an ominous presence tickled Jack’s skin. “My saviors.”
Micheal waved his glowing hand and the wall behind the throne fell away, the defensive enchantments disabled to reveal a chamber full of pulsating flesh and crystalline figures.
A sickness crept into the world, a horrid scar of anguish and pain that seeped from what seemed like an open wound.
Amidst the crystals was a shackled figure, a tanned-skin man wearing decrepit trousers who hung suspended above a pit by writhing tentacles and chains.
“No, impossible! You wouldn't!” Sahaqiel exclaimed, recognizing the figure.
Jack didn't need the angel’s memories to recognize the man. Instinctually he knew what he was looking at, knew the enormity of the threat before he and Sahaqiel.
The man from the memories of the angel, the one known as Adam.
If the Black King felt like a void, the man suspended was an abyss. A wretched creature in the guise of a man with crystals adorning his body.
“Oh but I will,” Micheal’s lips shifted, unveiling his trademark smile. He raised his arm, his hand radiating with sigils of gehenna that spurred his will.
Jack roused his mana, attempting to activate his own Gehenna but stopping as Micheal snickered and shook his head at Jack.
He wouldn't be able to activate an attack this way.
But at least he still had an ace up his sleeve.
Something the Black King didn't know.
“Adam. The first awakened. The first hunter. Able to hunt down the magically gifted from anywhere across the globe. Even in his weakened state, a direct confrontation with him would spell the end of any living being,” Micheal said, standing a few feet away from the suspended figure. “Oddly, he only ever pursued us angels… never lessers, almost as if he knows they're beneath him.”
Micheal turned to the duo, “Fortunately, you two fit his criteria for his hunt. Beings strong enough to draw his ire while I pursue the salvation of all mankind.”
“You… monster!” Sahaqiel exclaimed, “Why? WHY?! After all our sacrifices?! You want to awaken Adam?! If you free him he'll kill us all and doom the world!”
The black king laughed, his golden eyes faded as he looked down at the pair, “My dear little bird, I am not dooming the world, I’m fixing it. After all, were we not once exalted as beings of compassion? Consider your demise the foundation of a new… better world. Try not to die too soon will you?”
Suddenly the chamber shook, the world around Jack becoming pervasive as tentacles of flesh began to grow around the throne room.
Micheal rose to his feet as his throne crumbled away and the entire floor began to rumble.
The crystals upon Adam's body began to crack and shatter, the ancient seals that bound him being undone by Micheal.
Below the prisoner, the pit began to shine, bubbling forth brackish black light that drew Jack's eye.
He could see it. Data. Raw magical information rising from the earth, pouring out of the wound in the earth to awaken the slumbering man.
But most shocking to Jack was the whirlpool of mana, the information twisting in such a way he recognized it as a teleport ability similar to Ivan's.
“At long last, I will take what should have been mine,” Micheal said as he turned away and dropped into the pit, cementing Jack's theory.
“Jack! The infinity machine! If he gets to it it's all over!” Sahaqiel exclaimed with her and Jack still bound by the Black King’s strength.
Neither could move, not while the magic of the Black King inhibited their mana flow.
At least, that's what Micheal assumed.
“Do you trust me?” Jack asked, sharing a look with the angel as the portal ahead began to shrink and Adam began to wake.
“Of course. With my heart and soul,” Sahaqiel replied, her eyes darting between Jack and the figure slowly raising his head.
“Now!” Jack spat, giving Lilith the go ahead to dispel Michael’s bindings.
He raced forward, grabbing Sahaqiel, picking up the angel in his arms as the being known as Adam made eye contact with Jack, his head snapping to track the nearest source of mana.
Time seemed to slow, a moment stretched out into eternity as fear gripped Jack's heart.
“FUCK!” Jack screamed, leaping forward, all his magical energy igniting all at once to propel him and Sahaqiel into the portal just as a hand reached out for him.