Thomas Sniegoski - A Hundred Words for Hate

The Garden knew that this was wrong, that the things nestled inside her should not come to be, but she was helpless.

Those who could have protected her were long since banished.

She felt their presence out there in the ether, and she had reached out, singing for them to notice her, but they had been too far away to hear her voice.

To hear her pleas.

Until now.

After drifting for so very, very long, she was near her children again. There were more of them now: more to hear her cries for help.

Weakened by the goings-on inside her, the Garden called out as loudly as she could, hoping they would hear her call.

Hoping they would come as she grew nearer to them, and their world.

That they would come to the aid of their mother.

The sword cried out to him.

Remy gazed down to the floor, listening to the blade’s pleas. It was calling to him—begging him—to pick it up.

It wanted to tell him what it knew; it wanted him to be its new master.

He felt the Seraphim stir, the song of the blade incredibly powerful. It had been too long since the divine being had held a weapon forged in the fires of Heaven.

Before he could even question the action, Remy bent down, fingers wrapping around the sword’s hilt.

It was like taking hold of a live wire. His mind exploded in a searing flash of white, images forming from the fire that spread across the surface of his brain.

He saw the Garden. . . . No, he felt the Garden in every way that was possible. He saw through the eyes of the sword . . . through the eyes of Zophiel.

Something was wrong there. War was on the horizon, the air tinged with the acrid smell of blood, growing stronger as it drifted on the thick currents of air.

But there was something else. Something that had begun to affect the thick vegetation of the Garden paradise, tainting the earth beneath the sentry’s feet. The blade was warning him, driving him through the thick underbrush toward what would desecrate this most holy of places.

He emerged from the jungle to stand before the Tree.

The poison was there, and the Garden called out to him.

And then he saw that he was not the only of God’s divine creatures there.

The elder called Malachi was there at the Tree, and in his arms he held something that squirmed with life.

Something that did not belong.

The elder explained that everything was as it should be, though the sentry felt that something was wrong. Something was horribly, horribly wrong. Looking upon the pale thing that undulated in the elder’s arms, he felt a sense of revulsion, that what he was observing was not of God’s design.

Of God’s plan.

He was about to question the foul thing’s existence, but he did not have the chance. The elder moved faster than the speed of thought, a flash of burning dagger the last thing Zophiel saw before it plunged through the bone of his face and into his brain.

Turning the ordered world of the Lord God to madness.

There was a fire in Zophiel’s mind, a ravenous conflagration that consumed everything that he had ever known, replacing it with a jabbering insanity.

He could not remember what had led him to this, only that he was filled with a bloodlust that could not be quenched.

He must find what was responsible for this . . . and it must burn, and maybe then he would have the answers that eluded him.

Destruction would be his sustenance, feeding the madness that enshrouded him, and hopefully satisfying it so that one day, his sanity would be returned to him.

The images came in a torrential flow, the sentry’s ability to process what was happening, and the world around him, now nothing more than a jumble of sights, sounds, and smells.

For a moment Remy—Remiel—remembered who he was and that these were not his experiences, but the experiences of the Cherubim who had been given the sacred task of guarding Eden, but the recollections came furiously and the Seraphim was almost drowned in their relentless intensity.

The fires of madness raced across the surface of his mind, and Zophiel tried desperately to hold on to some recollection of the evil that threatened the Garden.

But it was gone, leaving only the insanity and a berserker rage over what had been stolen from him.

The battle in the Garden with the Seraphim Remiel was fierce. He had wanted to tell the warrior angel that something wasn’t right, but he was unable to do so. The thoughts and the words that needed to follow would not come. There was only the anger . . . and the disease of madness that plagued him.

The Cherubim fled the realm of Heaven to the stars, hoping to escape the insanity, but it clung like burning oil, eating away at him and his most holy purpose. Soon, the sentry knew, there would be little left; only the fury and destruction that followed in his wake would define him.

But in the world of God’s man, there came a change.

He could hear it far in the back of his mind, something that spoke to memories that had been buried so deep beneath layers of smoldering ash.

He did not understand what it spoke of, but felt the emotion that it roused in him, and knew that if he found this source, this irritating cacophony of visions, sounds, and smells, and destroyed it, that maybe . . . maybe he would remember what it was all about.

There were countless millennia of searching, most of the time the source of what he hunted having grown eerily silent, leaving him with only the jabbering insanity that had come to personify him.

The Cherubim haunted the Earth, searching . . . hunting . . . for the thing that would clear his mind, and free him from the slavery of madness.

He’d even worn the guise of one of God’s humans, hoping that perhaps whatever it was that he stalked could be tricked into emerging into the light so that he might see.

And eventually he did in fact see, and slowly, little by little, it was returned to him.

Zophiel recalled the dire threat to Eden, Heaven, and all the Heavenly hosts, as well as the one who was responsible.

Just in time to die.

Remiel felt the death of Zophiel as if it were his own, the fire of Heaven that burned hot and powerful at the center of his being suddenly burning so brightly . . . so furiously . . . and then it was gone, leaving behind a cold, creeping darkness that eventually became . . .

Nothing.

The shock of oblivion was enough for Remy to take his humanity back, to suppress his angelic nature enough to resume control, but it wasn’t an easy task.

The Seraphim was enraged by the thought of something that dared to threaten his Lord God, His Kingdom, and the Garden that He loved.

Remy placated the angry creature that lived inside him, promising him he would be set free to deal with the offenders in the only way that the Seraphim knew how.

Through the rite of combat.

The Seraphim knew that this was a battle that would test him, that there was a chance that he would not survive—that he could be vanquished by the Shaitan—but that was something the divine being always knew was a possibility.

And it made him yearn for the taste of violence all the more.

“All those years with the Sons of Adam,” Remy said, holding the blade tight, lifting it to eye level. “It wasn’t Malachi at all.”

“What?” Jon asked, moving closer, but stopping just before the pile of ash that had once been the Cherubim Zophiel.

“It was a Shaitan,” Remy explained.

“Shaitan,” Jon repeated. “And what exactly is that?”

“Something that shouldn’t even exist,” Remy said, his eyes drawn to the beauty of the blade that he held. He could feel it bonding with him, and he with it.

The Seraphim was very happy about this, a hum like some sort of prehistoric cat’s purr vibrating at his core.