part one of four of the heaven breaker series
Eons ago, God sent a thousand of His angels down on Earth to protect humanity, to save it from its own demise.
San was one of them.
Through time, when the world eventually softened, and when people lived life as it was meant to be again, the angels returned to heaven in droves.
Five years ago, the hundreds of angels that remained until the second millennium began disappearing without notice one by one.
Four years ago, the council of angels organized a grand assembly to discuss the disappearances. They had been cut down to near a quarter of their number. The leader of the council, Michael, ordained that all angels go into hiding until the disappearances were accounted for. This was a highly unpopular decree. Angels knew that humans could not be left alone. They would turn on each other on the soonest given moment.
The archangel Michael assembled a special team to find their lost brothers and bring them safely back into the fold. He led that team himself.
Three years ago, Michael was found dead on the snow on the streets of Moscow. His wings were clipped and burnt; its ashes laid beside his body. Angels could never die. Angels could only be banished, exiled, punished, or a gruesome combination of those three, but not die. Not until now.
No human can lay eyes on an angel unless he was your predetermined divine guardian. But everyone saw Michael that day, and how his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and how the gunshot wound on his heart was crusted with hardened blood. San could have sworn the edges of Michael’s lone wound was tainted with a subtle tint of gold.
For the next few years, the angels’ deaths grew more rampant, more gruesome. The few that the humans saw were attributed to an unrelated series of brutal murders. As usual, they were wrong.
Yesterday, San found his brother, Met, hanging by his wings on a ledge of the Metrobank Center. His feathers were nailed to the concrete, and his feet dangled high above the streets of Bonifacio Global City. San retrieved his body before anyone could see.
Today, San buried his brother. He is the last angel on Earth.
***
Down by the shore of Taal lake, where the fallen ashes of decades-long past coat scarred ground, San wept. His wings drooped wistfully on the water.
Beside him, Hali sat, her eyes determinedly on the rumbling volcano ahead of her, soon to erupt.
They stayed like that for a while, Hali quiet, and San in mourning. Until San stood and used his white shirt to wipe the tears off his face, giving his glorious wings a good stretch.
“What are you going to do?” asked Hali.
San stood smaller than he actually was. If he really wanted to show off, his head could touch the clouds. He was still tall, though, about six and a half feet. And every inch of him was boiling in anger.
Hali had never seen him like this before.
But with a sharp breath, San’s anger seemed to subside. His face managed to form a small smile, maybe in an attempt to make Hali feel comfortable. It didn’t, but she appreciated the gesture, nonetheless.
“I, in all truths, do not know,” said San. “Is it such a crime to feel so… alone?”
It had taken a while for Hali to get used to San’s voice, not that it was weird or anything. Well, maybe a little bit weird. San sounded like a normal person, a normal human for the most part. But when he speaks, his voice speaks directly to you, to your soul and heart and mind, and it echoes and reverberates ever so stunningly. Like there are two of him talking at once, but there’s only ever just one of him.
“I think, of anyone, you have every reason to.” Hali stood up too, stretching her legs a bit. “I can only imagine your grief, your shock—"
“Grief? Yes,” He paused. “Shock? No.” San shook his head. “I have known this would happen since the beginning of time. All has been foretold. Still, that changes nothing. Tragic things are tragic all the same whether you know of it or not. And death, though a necessary function, is the most tragic of all. Oh, I hate this so,” continued San. “This arrangement my Father has made. Why must He be so cruel to His sons?”
Hali stirred at that. “If you knew it was going to happen, why didn’t you do anything to stop it?”
The course of the wind changed, making small waves lap on the surface of the blackened lake. San looked at Hali, his eyes red with… with… Hali couldn’t be sure what emotion it was. “I know most all things, child. But that does not mean I am at liberty to change the course of His will.”
“But why?” asked Hali. “You did it before, when you saved me from the train. Do you remember?”
“I am your guardian angel. It is my duty to protect you.”
“But you told me it wasn’t supposed to be. That it was my fate to die on those tracks.”
“It was,” he whispered. “But us angels have this rebellious streak, you see. Perhaps my rebellion is you.”
“I’m not worth a rebellion,” answered Hali. “I couldn’t save my parents. I can’t get a part-time job to support my lola and lolo. I can’t even get in the college I wanted to get in. If there is some great reckoning to this, I’m not worth it.”
San turned and placed his hand on the crown of Hali’s head. Then he bent down, looking at Hali straight in the eyes. “You are worth everything.”
The ground rumbled furiously, as if in response. Hali had to crouch to steady herself, one of her hands pressed against the ash-covered ground. San stood tall, unaffected, positioning his body between Hali and the volcano.
Smoke bellowed from Taal’s crater, heaving wide and thick ash clouds to the sky.
“It has begun,” said San. For weeks, national news outlets have reported that the Taal volcano could blow any day, not an unusual reporting. The volcano has been relatively active for quite some time now, and the Filipino people have been getting used to its, er… outbursts. So when the Philippine government commanded the people to evacuate their homes and go to the nearest emergency shelters, most of them didn’t comply. Why would they uproot their livelihoods for something that was barely going to affect them anyway?
San knew differently. He always did.
That was why when he flew himself and Hali to the volcano’s perimeter this morning, Hali nodded without contesting. ‘Something grand was to occur,’ he mentioned then. ‘And I need you by my side.’
“Will you stop it?” Hali asked, her balance still slowly getting used to the quaking.
“I must,” San answered.
“Is this part of your rebellion too?”
“Everything is.” He smiled, and with a forceful motion, he flapped his wings and flew.
The sound of an angel’s wings beating to flight was special, divine. It rang like a chorus of violins, all unitedly harmonized. The strings ascended and descended when the angel did, like the melodies were what made them fly, not the air.
San flew ahead to the violent and blind rage of the Taal volcano, but the music he left in his wake was sad and melancholic, and for some reason it made Hali remember her childhood, and a short glimpse of a grudging train.
Halfway across the lake, San looked back at Hali, and his eyes glowed white. “Hide,” he said, his voice sounding deep within Hali’s skull. “The worst is yet to come.”
Hali scampered to the nearest tree and hid behind it. From there, she could see her angel fly high above the volcano’s crater, where the ash and smoke would make any normal man suffocate. But San shined through it all. He radiated like a star. He shimmered with hope.
The volcano was not amused by the angel’s presence, and it coughed a large spread of ash, blanketing the sky. Hali could see San shield his face before he disappeared within the ash clouds.
The ground roared, and Hali knew this was it. This was the moment that awaited them. Nature could no longer hold itself back. She felt the rocks beneath the ground rip and break. The very land itself seemed to topple over, and Hali had to bury her nails to the trunk of the tree she hid behind just to not fall.
But she wasn’t strong enough. Her hand slipped, splinters piercing through the crevices of her fingers. She stumbled on, desperately trying to find something that can keep her up and standing, but nothing was there. Her feet splashed on the blackened lake.
Foolishly, some helicopters, about three or four of them, circled the lake like stray metal birds inside the nest of its predator. They didn’t know what would be upon them. They couldn’t know.
Harsh winds slapped her face, making her hair whip about uncontrollably. All while the ground continued to rumble, and the lake continued to swirl. Hali could hear nothing but the wind and the Earth moving, and somewhere above, the helicopters’ rotor blades spinning senselessly.
Then, through everything, she felt a pair of gold eyes on her. Some force, like a bubble, a golden ethereal bubble, lifted Hali to her feet and muffled the sounds of chaos. Hali wasn’t sure how she knew it was gold since it was invisible, but she felt like it was. She only ever felt this once before.
Hali tried to reach her arm out to circling helicopters, to warn them or to make them leave, but the force kept her in. She shouted, but her voice was nothing against the force, and outside, against the chaos that reigned.
A column of crimson rose from the mouth of Taal volcano. Then steam and ash and smoke ascended with fury. The shockwave from the eruption pushed the lake outwards, emptying it to its basin. Around Hali, water and soil and trees whirled, scratching her shield. Inside, she stood readily, unaffected. She couldn’t see the helicopters anymore.
San did his best to contain the explosion. Hali saw him create something like a funnel or a straw for the lava with the same type of force that held her. But the ash made it hard to see anything else.
The ground shook again, hungrier this time. Hali felt, though she didn’t want to think it, that something was clawing and barging its way to the surface. Something large and incomprehensible. Something evil. Something that could never be stopped no matter how hard they tried. What they were doing right now was futile. There was no point. There is no hope.
No, no that’s wrong. She pinched her arm, urging herself back to her senses. There is hope, and he stood at the apex of the crater, staring straight down to the volcano’s mouth. To whatever it was that wanted to get out.
San formed a fist and pumped it to the clouds. At first, nothing.
But then the wind calmed, everything calmed.
A section of the dark sky cleared, and the ash clouds parted to give way to a colossal fist that lustered with white and gold. San drove his fist to the ground, and the massive fist from heaven followed, smashing through to the crater. BOOOOOM! Even inside her bubble, Hali could hear the crashing of the hand of God.
The calm dissipated as the impact threw everything in disarray. Rocks flew, and water flew, and trees flew, and everything was flying and whirling and in shambles. And then the world turned white.
***
When Hali opened her eyes again, it was cold, and wind danced on her ear. “Where am I?” she started. She was moving, she realized.
“Somewhere safe,” a familiar voice said. It was San. He held her in his arms as clouds whisked behind him. They were flying. Hali could hear the faint sound of violin strings.
“What happened?” she asked while she rubbed her eyes. Below, far below, it was mostly green. Grass. A long piece of road stretched to the horizon. A highway, probably back to the city.
San coughed. Hali looked at him then. He was ragged, and his shirt was torn in several different places. Ash and dirt-covered parts of his face. “We did it,” he said, straining a smile.
“What was that? The thing… inside?”
“You saw it?” asked San, not looking at her. His eyes were towards something beyond, something Hali could never see.
“No.” Hali shook her head. “But I felt it.” She tried remembering the moment her optimism was sapped from her being. Her moment of doubt and decay. “It was terrible.”
“Well, it has passed us now,” he reassured. “At least for the moment.”
“You’re telling me it’ll come back?”
“The worst of things always do.” And they flew, melodies ringing as they went.
It took them about an hour to reach Bonifacio Global City, and when they landed on one of the side streets beside Metrobank Center, the tallest building in the country, the sun was all but gone.
The city was a ghost town, volcanic eruptions tend to do that. Hali had never heard BGC this quiet, nor this deserted. Usually, people rushed at this time of the day, and red lights from perpetually stopped cars jammed the streets.
Now, nothing jammed the streets. Car honks grew as faint as whispers if there were any at all. And the only light that permeated were the streetlights, and the moonlight that reflected blissfully on the glass panes of the Metrobank Center.
Hali dusted herself off. “Why are we here? Why are we back?”
“There is something I failed to tell you.” San crouched, leveling with Hali. “Before my brother Met died, he left me with something.” San drew from his pocket a long thick and richly black strand of hair.
Hali eyed it curiously.
“This is the hair of Samson,” said San. “A figment of extraordinary power. With it, one can crack open the gates of heaven. The last one that has yet to collapse is directly above this building.”
“Your brother,” Hali trailed. “Was trying to go back?”
“And someone stopped him.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
San averted his eyes, and he shifted his feet. He glared to the sky above, to the moon. “Someone wants us gone, he told me. We have known this, but not much more than that. Perhaps, because, it is our fate to not know and lose. Maybe our time has truly come. This must be what it feels like to be human,” he said. “There is something grand afoot, and someone with a yearning desire to make the world burn.”
Hali gulped. Had it not already? Hasn’t it burnt enough? She remembered the beast beneath Taal. She didn’t want to, but she did.
“I will go back,” assured San. “I will warn them, and we will save everyone.”
He opened his wings, and he flew directly upwards. The orchestra of violins beckoned his flight.
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