HE'S COMING
Look:
Carved into the grey-white rock of the small moon that orbits the swirling, dark planet Lacuna, are two words so large that any being brave enough to look up at the night sky would see them.
HE'S COMING.
There a few theories as to what this message could mean, which upon first discovery were broadcast across every channel on every planet in the Mass Human Empire. The first theory concerns itself with the idea that the message is in fact an extremely elaborate advertisement campaign for the two-hundred-and-seventy-eighth Paul McCartney album, that according to said theorists, would be a real return to form for the long dead, and widely worshipped, musical magician.
Another theory suggests that a gigantic landslide along the west side of the moon's face caused the white rock to cover what would have once been trenches some miles wide shaping a large S - turning the message from HE'S COMING to SHE'S COMING. The theory hypothesises that a very proud and very large alien had finally given an orgasm to his wife and simply had to tell somebody about it.
One other theory links it to the Anti-Christ, and that since he didn't turn up on Earth before it blew up, then he was still long over-due humanity a visit.
There are no prizes for guessing which of these is true.
Look further:
Past the moon. Past the huge roaring star that lights this particular solar system, that man had only discovered some seventy years ago and had already half destroyed. Squint and focus in on the small dark dot trundling along between the countless other stars hanging in the sky like pin-pricks in the black fabric of the universe.
See how it melts against the dark? How, in many impossible ways, it is actually darker than the background of space? Notice the scarlet red tail that follows it, a perpetual stream of sulphur and hell-fire.
The darker than space dot is a space-ship. More specifically, it is the Anti-Christ's space-ship. Inside, he waits, slowly organising his forces, collecting the demons that fled his father. He has visited a dozen worlds so far, and left them in ruin.
HE IS COMING - it wasn't Macca fans prophesying the return of their messiah, nor an ecstatic alien with an even more ecstatic alien wife purring satisfyingly beside it.
It had been scarred into the unmoving white dust by something much more obvious - it had been put there by an Angel.
1
The Angel sat in a particularly horrible chair in a particularly wretched bar on a completely desolated planet. On the wet, stinking counter before it, where countless graffiti had been scratched into the wood with a lot less mystical mystery than the message on the moon, seven empty glasses sat. Another glass, half full of something that tasted so horrible it had to be good, waited amicably to be swallowed whole by the Angel holding it.
The Angel put the glass to its lips, tilted its head back, and let the vile liquid wash down its throat. Disappointment spread like languid smoke from a pathetic fire across the Angel's beautiful face. It didn't feel anything.
'Bastard.'
If it hadn't been immortal, the Angel would have been drinking itself to death. There wasn't much left to live for - Heaven and Hell were gone, and most of the grand, spectres of life that roamed within them. The great war was over, Satan had been defeated, but then so had God, and considering this particular Angel once led the forces of God against Satan, there was a particular feeling of regret about the whole affair that the Angel couldn't ignore.
The Angel ordered another drink and hoped that this time, after eighteen thousand similar drinks, it would finally start to feel tipsy.
It didn't.
The bar's owner, a Farlow (Lacuna's indigenous race that had taken to humanity's penchant for decadence, evil, and hard liquor like a duck to water) spat on a ragged cloth and started to wipe the counter. Over the Farlow's shoulder, which was lumpy and grey and covered in thick, oozing sweat, was a television.
The Angel watched it idly.
A newsreader turned to the camera and smiled magnificently, baring teeth that were whitened perpetually by nano-bots buzzing about his mouth armed with tiny white paint-guns. He shuffled his papers and said a name.
Borealis.
The Angel knew the name - everybody knew the name. Borealis, what any sane person would consider to be the last great planet left under human control, had been blown up some years ago by a man named Edward Corhaven. It seemed that the newsreader was commenting on its anniversary.
The Angel frowned. Hadn't that only just been? It shook its head, thinking that time had a funny habit of completely passing you by.
The Angel turned its clear, blue eyes - the colour of glaciers - away and tried to rid itself of the memories flickering through its mind. Earth's obliteration, much like Borealis', had not been pleasant. The Angel could remember fire and smoke, and the abhorrent realisation that neither Heaven nor Hell could ever truly win Earth back from the other, since Humanity had decided to take it away from them both, and especially, from itself.
God had perished with it, his Byronic counterpart, too. Most of their countless followers, the Angels of Heaven, and the Demons of Hell, had danced the macabre dance of finality as well, although some had survived. It was just a shame that the ones that had were very much like the Angel sitting at the bar - full of sorrows, and trying very hard to drown them.
And, of course, there was the Anti-Christ. Satan had always been more willing to accept modern technology than God had been, and because of that, he'd been able to propel his child out into the stars. The Angel had even seen it happen, and had known that it'd never feel truly safe again because of it.
HE'S COMING.
Two immortal words that the humans should have inherently understood, but very much didn't. The Angel sighed and dragged another mouthful from the glass, hoping that by some miracle it would finally get drunk.
Nothing happened.
Well, nothing to do with the drink, however.
Through the door of the Warhead - as this particular bar was called - came a tall, menacing looking man dressed in long, black robes. A huge, dusty tome was under his arm, linked together with chains. Around his red neck, which stood out with cords like ropes of muscle, was a dog collar.
A priest. The Angel groaned miserably. The Angel loathed priests - they read the Bible as if it actually meant something.
The Angel looked away and tried to focus on something else. Something like getting drunk.
A deep and troubling voice started to fill the room, however, and no matter how hard the Angel tried, it couldn't ignore the sense of impending judgement that would soon be washed across the bar's patrons.
And since this was a bar on Lacuna, there would be a lot to be judged for.
The priest cleared his throat and thwacked the book open.
'A vile pestilence broods here,' he began, snarling through yellow, spit strewn teeth. 'A concoction of devilry. A loss of the great love of God.'
God had been lost a long time ago, the Angel thought, but kept its lips shut. Telling humanity that God had perished in the nuclear fire that also took its home planet was not something the Angel wanted to spend its Saturday night doing - it wanted to get drunk.
'You there,' the priest said, pointing a blade looking finger at the Farlow owner. 'Is this your establishment? Are you the owner of this filthy, cankerous hole?'
The Farlow - being a Farlow - took what had obviously been an insult as a great compliment, and swayed its long, grey trunk from side to side quite happily.
The priest grunted and took a few brooding steps into the bar. A cold hatred radiated from him, the kind of warmth you expected from a priest of the Church. His tiny eyes, like knuckle dusters, examined the room with visible disgust, muttering what he saw.
'...harlot...murderer...queer...murderer...murderer...murderer...devil-spawn...'
His eyes fell on the Angel, and, with the kind of deep sense of sacrilege that many humans felt when looking upon the Angel, turned quickly away, reserving the bile and hatred he would have used for the other patrons.
Some of them were starting to brandish knives, but this didn't deter him. In the priest's head, God was on his side, and the Angel chuckled at such a thought. God wasn't on anybody's side - God was in the far flung non-realm of existence that God's went to after dying.
'The filth in this wretched hole pushes bile along my throat,' the priest snarled. 'You there - boy. You are infected with the Devil. I see his scarlet tail draped across your shoulders, his serpent tongue in your ear, his black soul eclipsing the light of the Lord. His wicked sin drips within you, boy. This, I see.'
The boy he pointed at shifted nervously in his seat and started to glance about as Satan really were there.
'Oust the serpent!' the priest declared, shaking his ugly hands. 'Oust Lucifer, he who waged war on Heaven, he who battled the valiant Archangel Michael-'
'Michelle,' the Angel corrected.
The priest blinked, his violently shaking hands stopping in front of him, his thin, scared lips slackening to reveal two rows of yellow, very confused looking teeth. He glanced around at the folk in the bar, who would have very probably killed him already if their appetite for blood hadn't been sated earlier, when a pair of innocent looking tourists wandered in looking for directions.
'Um,' the priest began, averting steely eyes that were becoming increasingly more brittle. He took a moment to compose himself and started again, hurling his blade-finger at the wide-eyed boy. 'Er, as I said. Oust Satan from your wandering soul! Accept the Lord and his Light, he who waged war on Heaven, he who battled the valiant Archangel Michael-'
'Michelle,' the Angel corrected again. This time she stood up, and for the first time that night the entire bar finally started to notice her, mainly because she had only started to let them notice her. But now that they were, her presence was all that they could feel, her crystal eyes all that they could see, her beautiful, liquid voice composed for sonnets and ballads all they could hear.
'I am the Archangel Michelle,' she said, striding over to the priest, who paled like a man instantly evacuated of all his blood. 'Not Michael, not Mikhail, certainly not Jesus Christ, as some of you wretched acolytes like to think.'
The priest, currently curled up against the wall like a kicked wood-louse, started to jabber about God and his Angels, and how they were men, and how Michael definitely wasn't a woman, couldn't be a woman, a woman is, a woman is-
'A woman is weak,' the priest breathed, fumbling at the cross around his neck. 'Michael defeated Lucifer. Book of Revelations - 12:7-9. I've read it. You couldn't...he couldn't be...oh Lord-'
Outside, the sterile landscape was still. A heavy, meditative moon turned silently and endlessly in the sky, shining white-grey light down on the world with two huge words scratched harshly into its face - two words that soon, mankind would come to learn the meaning of. A quiet wind picked up the traces of dust lingering along the sand dunes and lifted it towards the black outline of a low, dingy looking building.
The night was quiet, and although the air stank worse than anything a human could imagine, it was calm. The traces of dust, having travelled placidly from one side of a desert to another, passed by the rickety, wooden door of the Warhead, thinking to itself that it was another job well done.
The door exploded suddenly and a smoking black figure crashed out of it, spiralling the screaming dust off course like a rag caught in a tornado. Slewing through the sand, the smoking figure groaned hard and dragged itself up into a mangled sitting position.
The figure, who was a priest, and had only just had his first true heavenly encounter, thought to himself that insulting Angel's probably wasn't a very good idea at all. The thought following that also had something to do with woman being strong, and that if he didn't want to be rocketed out of another door with spurts of spitting lightening still dancing on his chest, then he'd never question such a thought again.
Inside the Warhead, the Archangel Michelle sat down calmly at the bar and ordered another drink. The other patrons, all having forgot to blink for the last two and a half minutes, realised what they'd just witnessed and fumbled for excuses as to why they suddenly had to leave.
The Farlow owner wiped a lake of grimy sweat from under his eye and passed the Angel her drink.
She took it, knocked back her head, and drank it, thinking that she'd hit the shimmering grey wall that was drunkenness soon.
But in reality, there was still a long way to go.
Against the stars He moves, the Dark One, the One That Was Promised, the False Messiah, the Anti-Christ, the Child of a Thousand Names and of a Thousand Nightmares. His ship spearheads the Universe, drags it along with its blackening glow, pulses with the malice of entire planets, radiates like a sickening blackhole that means to swallow the Universe.
It is the ship of legend, the one that will bring about the end of everything, and inside, He is waiting, searching for the Other that defeated his father, that brought down the armies of Hell, that was the saviour of Humanity when God and his son abandoned them.
The Anti-Christ searches for its equal.
2
She didn't have to worry about getting pregnant.
The Angel rolled over in the bed and wiped at her eyes, trying to figure out why so many humans had ruined so many things for this one simple act of carnal pleasure. She had to admit it felt good - there was definitely something to be said about the thing that he'd done with his tongue - but the Archangel Michelle could never envision herself doing even a slither of the things that Man had done in its name.
Maybe it's because they can love.
A hollow feeling melted out from her stomach. The Angel wanted to fill it with alcohol, and for the alcohol to actually work.
Beside her, the man she'd picked up - she couldn't remember his name - started talking, but she didn't listen. Concentrating, she willed the sweating man next to her to sleep, and as he began to snore she closed her eyes and-
A flash, then darkness, and something is pulling her away, far, far away to a yawning black pit dotted with stars like teeth-
A figure is standing, taller than Solar Systems, clutching a sword forged from entire planets, glaring with eyes like super novae-
And she is falling, falling, falling deep into the stomach of existence, pain and hunger and misery skewering her like a-
The Angel grabbed her chest. Sat up. Blinked, breathed hard, and tried to still the maddened beat of her heart. For a long time she listened to the silence of the room, the heartbeat of the Universe.
In it, she could hear Him coming.
No. She shook her head and wiped her eyes. No. She was being stupid. He was coming, he was always coming, but not yet. Not now.
Outside, something rumbled. The Angel pulled back her covers and clambered out of the bed. She left the room naked, as beautiful as only a God could fathom, and left the dingy hotel fully robed. She wanted to see the grey, murky Lacuna sky, to hear the confluence of insults and jeers, to see the muddy slums that made up Lacuna's one great city.
But the Angel only saw horror.
It loomed in the sky like a great, black moon. Already, the people were screaming. Around her, yes, but the Angel was a greater being than Man, second only to the Gods of the Universe themselves, and so each scream, each tremor, every cry out for help or for God, she could hear.
And it terrified her.
The Archangel Michelle backed away. His ship covered the sky, wrestled the clouds, disturbed reality on the most fundamental level. The Universe was a delicate thing - its laws, its science, its fundamentals, all were things once created, things that could never be breached, that could only be broken in a way that could never be repaired - and now it was cracking.
Thunder rumbled. Black clouds scoured the sky. A spray of rain dampened her face, then soaked her glowing body as the heavens opened.
And through it all, He descended.
The Anti-Christ was tall, menacing, a creature illustrated by the purest evil, beautiful in the same way a rose could be, but as sharp and unforgiving as a thorn. Blue eyes burned beneath a perfect brow the colour of moonscapes. The Angel had fought His father - had bested His father - but even with such a victory, she felt dread. Her heart slammed in her chest. Sweat dripped from her perfect, golden locks. She wanted to run, to hide in the darkest, farthest corner of the Universe, but the Archangel Michelle knew that she couldn't.
She was all that was standing between Him and the destruction of everything. The places Man had conquered, the sciences (although still far, far, behind that of the Angels) it had developed, the people it had nurtured - all would be destroyed. It was her duty to stop Him. Her purpose.
Delicate feet padded towards her. The Anti-Christ wore a gown the colour of ash, His loose black hair falling to his shoulders. The Archangel Michelle had seen beauty - had looked upon the face of Lucifer himself, God's greatest Angel - but never before had a heart been stilled by such a thing.
The Anti-Christ bowed. Grinned. Spoke in a voice that could quell trillions, that could put fire in the hearts of countless others. His father had designed Him to be the Great Deceiver, to seduce of all Mankind so that He could break it apart, piece by piece. His blue eyes glinted with glory.
'Auntie,' He smirked. 'My beautiful, wonderful Auntie. Finally, finally, I have found you.'
The Archangel Michelle didn't say anything. She thought that even if she'd tried to scream, she wouldn't be able to.
'I've been looking for you for a long time,' He said, glancing some side to side like a serpent. 'I've passed thousands of planets, searched countless star systems, crossed distances that would make even the most stoic of men's eyes water. All for you, dear Auntie. You know, when my father spoke of you, it was with such hatred. Such bile. He wanted you, Auntie. He wanted to lock you away in the darkest dungeon where even the light of God couldn't reach. He wanted to hurt you. To pull apart the pieces that make you you. But not me, dear Auntie. No, not me, for I respect you, dear Auntie. You defeated my father, pushed back his armies, forced him to hide and to think and to inevitability create me, his son.' For a second, He was silent. The screams of millions burned in her ears. 'I like your message, by the way,' he grinned. '"He's Coming". Very scary, not just for everyone else, but for me also. Now I've got to live up to such a horrifying ideal. Don't you know I'm quite prone to stage fright?'
Something stirred inside her. The Angel cleared her throat and spoke. 'Have you come to kill me?'
For a long time, the Anti-Christ simply stared at her. The heat of Hell radiated from Him. Beneath His pale beauty she could see the full horror of what the Universe could be if it were only darkness, pain, and evil.
'No,' He finally said. 'No, of course not, dear Auntie.'
'Then why have you come here?'
He grinned. 'To offer you a deal. A get-out-of-jail-free card, if you will.'
She didn't say anything. Her nephew stepped forward and reached into His pocket.
'My father was always one for deals,' He said. 'Always willing to give a man what he wanted, and only ever for a completely fair exchange. I think I'd like to continue that tradition. Give people what they want. What they need.' His eyes pulsed. 'I have the power to do so, Auntie. This world of ours is limited compared to the ones our fathers now inhabit, but there are things I can do. Things I can manipulate.'
The Archangel swallowed, then made to turn away. 'If you aren't here to kill me, then leave. Please. I do not want to fight you today. I am weary.'
He grinned. 'An Angel should not feel weary.'
She stopped. Licked her lips, banishing the flash of a thought that glinted in her mind. 'You cannot trick me. I am no mere mortal.'
'No, you are right. You are Michelle, Archangel, the might of God's armies, the greatest of all his children save my father - well, depending on opinion, of course. I cannot trick you. I wouldn't even try. But, what I would do, is offer you something. A reward.' Behind Him, His ship hovered like a shadow of destruction. 'I'd give you what you deserve.'
'And that is?'
The Anti-Christ smiled. 'Happiness, dear Auntie. An end to your misery. How long have you been here, on this wretch of a planet? How long have you tried to dull your senses with alcohol? How long have you smashed your head against that same brick wall? Isn't it time for that to end? Don't you deserve for that to end?'
'I don't deserve anything. What happened...happened. There's nothing I can do about it. If this is my life, then so be it.'
'And if it doesn't have to be?'
The Angel breathed hard. 'I will not sacrifice anything to you. I won't let you roll over this world. I won't-'
'Blah, blah, blah.' The Anti-Christ sauntered over towards a bench, noticed the grime congealing there - a grime that contained a speck of life that would one day colonise a third of the galaxy - and then thought better of sitting down. He tutted. 'Don't make that face, Auntie. You know what will happen by the end of this altercation. So do I. I knew it from the moment you did something that no Angel has done before since my father - I knew it from the moment you lied.'
Dread eclipsed her heart. She opened her mouth to speak, but the Anti-Christ silenced her with a raised hand. 'Hush, dear Auntie, hush. It will all be over soon. You do not even need to ask. What you want - what you deserve - is through that door behind you. All you have to do is go through it. You'll never see this Universe again. You'll never have to suffer its pitfalls. You'll never have to mourn its death.'
She realised a moment too late that she was looking over her shoulder. Clearing her throat, the Archangel searched within herself for the same power, for the same glory and vindication that had defeated Lucifer when He'd tried to break down Heaven's gates.
But she found nothing.
Above her, the Anti-Christ's ship thrummed like the dying groans of the Universe. She pictured it eclipsing planets, laying waste to civilisations, the sciences of Hell like a sun compared to Humanity's candle. She saw children dying, people chained, masses screaming, the endless flames of misery coating and dancing and eating all that was good and pure in the world.
And deep down, in her most truthful of hearts, the Archangel found that she didn't care. Not any more. Not after all this time. Not after she'd lost everything, not after wandering like a giant amongst ants.
Her nephew's voice was soft. 'Go through the door, Auntie. Please. I do not want to hurt you. Believe me.'
She didn't move.
'Go,' He said. 'Leave this world to me. This Universe is mine, dear Auntie. It always has been. It is dark, and evil, and it deserves to be punished. You've seen them. Humans. The way they destroy everything they touch. How their filth is infectious. This planet - the slums, the rubbish, the disease, it is of their doing. They've spilled more blood than my father ever did, than I ever will. You know they are beyond redemption. You know that they deserve me, that I am the reminder to the guilt and sorrow that they should be feeling.'
The Angel looked over her shoulder. She thought of peace, of finally being able to forget the destruction of everything she'd loved. Aching, her heart called for her to move, to turn and march towards the door. She took a step back. And another. And another. The Anti-Christ grinned like a serpent, flashing teeth as white as stars.
'You're doing the right thing,' He told her. 'This is what you deserve, for everything you've done for them. It's your turn now to be happy, for Humanity to pay for your blessings with their blood, and not the other way around.'
Bile crawled up her throat. Her stomach flipped, her hands shook, she could feel sweat dripping down her temples. It was wrong, so very, very wrong. The Universe would be His, Mankind powerless to stop Him, even with their combined might, a quality that had taken them to the furthest stars.
Her feet kept moving. Her heart throbbed with sorrow, but she didn't care. She turned away from it, ignoring the pain, walking backwards, towards peace, towards the life that an Angel should live.
She thought of Earth. She thought of its people. She thought of the day that it'd been destroyed, and found that, when she thought deeply about it, and looked in her truest of hearts, that she'd been destroyed by it too.
Her hand grabbed the handle, turned it, and the Archangel Michelle stepped through.
For a while there was only silence.
The engine behind the Anti-Christ began to turn again like the clockwork of blackholes. He rose His hands, pressed them together, then dusted them off with three alternating sweeps. He turned to face the sky, rose up His face, and greeted everything that was out there.
And then, with the knowledge that nobody could stop him, the Great Deceiver clapped his hands and grinned.