How Devils Got Their Horns

Millennia ago, at the start of a bitter ending, a rift opened up in the firmament. Heaven split its seams and poured flesh into the galaxy—beings, no longer angels but not quite yet devils.

The librarian remembered, with perfect clarity, the moment it happened. The librarian, with perfect clarity, remembered everything: its moment of origin, the filling of the seas, the taste of Earth’s inaugural spring, and this, its first clumsy kiss with grief. 

It had no word yet for that feeling, but as the Heavenly City buckled, streets opening to the yawn of space, it knew, with perfect clarity, that something it loved dearly—something irreplaceable—was about to go missing.

In the candy soft light of morning, as angels winged about their duties, the center of eternity began to quake. Over hills of cloud came a cracking sound, and when the librarian looked up from its reading, it almost thumped into a host of other angels. 

All of them were frozen and hovering. Their wings swept lazily as their bodies buoyed, heads angled toward the sound that was settling unevenly into the street. The crack became a rattle, no more than a stomp at first, but it deepened as moments passed, rolling out like a wave.

In its wake there came a great buckling. A fracture reached through the city, branching greedily, and everything it touched fell away. As the city heaved, angels shrieked and scattered. Their limbs gnashed and they smashed into each other, blinded by the sudden roil of confusion.

While plumes of gilded dust rose from the spreading ruin, the librarian hastened toward the library. It feared for the scrolls still inside and meant to save the treasures, but as it flew, it heard something call its name.

            The voice bounded through the catastrophe, its precious lilt one that the librarian could've distinguished among the roar of thousands. It belonged to its friend, its brother, its most favorite other: the finest singer of all Heaven’s Host. 

The librarian had often felt the softness of that voice in the place where a heart should be, though angels had no hearts; only hollow places. 

Still, though it was empty, the librarian felt something in that place break then. 

Its friend's cry was ragged. Its friend was in pain.

Forgetting the scrolls, the librarian flew toward the screaming while all around it, the city crumbled, revealing a darkness below whose whistling devoured everything. Glittering bridges, pillowy cloud gardens, grand opal archways—all of it was siphoned, leaving a deep coldness in its place.

Innumerable angels dashed about, saving what they could, bodies twisting against the vacuum of the void. Their robes tore, their pearlescent skin scuffed, and their faces opened hideously, enormous mouths gaping around cacophonous screams.

The librarian sailed between them, following its friends' melodious panic to the square where angels often gathered to sing. It found that sacred place to be the quake's smoldering epicenter. The grand marble stage there was cracked down the middle, its halves charred by friction and the air around it shimmering with heat. 

The librarian couldn’t understand this. It beat its wings furiously and darted about, searching the wreckage for one whom it loved. 

Among the worst of the rubble, it found it. Its friend, the last remaining of a gathering, all hurtling now through the dead space below, clung to the broken platform.

Its fingers clawed at stone, blackened and welted by heat. The same heat burning away its hair, sandals, and robes. Its skin bubbled and dulled, the Light of Heaven inside its hollow place flickering weakly. The librarian stared, mouth agape, until its friend saw it.

Brother, it shouted, the pained and panicked word worse than anything, help me!

And the librarian wished, then, that it hadn’t come; for it knew, as certainly as anything, that it couldn’t help. Its friend's Heavenly Light was gone, winked out even then, as the librarian watched.

The great bone circlet crowning its head turned gray and dead. Cracks webbed it, weakening the arch that once made a proud halo. Something had rotted inside this angel, too deep to be cut out.

In its own hollow place, the librarian felt something go cold.

Its friend's throat shredded as it called the librarian’s name again, as it reached up with one hand while the other clung to stone. But louder than its friend's hysteria, louder even than the screech of the void, was the voice that floated down from Above, commanding: FINISH IT.

The librarian didn't have to question what this commandment meant, or whether or not it would obey. Words from Above planted clarity and purpose in its hollow place, and when those grew, no space for doubt remained.

The librarian sank down to its friend and treaded air, the powerful muscles of its back straining against the sucking void. Its friend wailed, reaching higher, fingers crumbling like charcoal. 

The librarian gripped its halo by the decaying center and snapped.

Its friend shrieked in high, lyrical pain and finally lost its hold. It slipped from the stage and tumbled down, down, down, following the specks of its mutilated kin—to where, the librarian didn’t know.

It watched its friend fall until the body was lost among stars.

The voice from Above didn’t return. Without it, purpose wilted, leaving too much room in the librarian’s hollow place. In the absence of all else, an unfamiliar ache grew there.

With shaking hands, it cradled a broken curve of bone.