How Devils Got Their Horns

Millenia 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 enemies.

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, opening the streets 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, and when the librarian looked up from its reading, it almost thumped into a host of other angels, all frozen and hovering. 

Their wings swept lazily as their bodies buoyed, their heads angled toward the sound as it settled unevenly into the street. The crack became a rattle, no more than a stomp at first. It deepened as moments passed, rolling out like a wave, and in its wake there came a great buckling. A fracture reached through the city, branching greedily, and everything it touched fell away.

While the city heaved around them, the angels shrieked and scattered. Their limbs gnashed and they smashed into each other, blinded by confusion. As plumes of gilded dust rose from the ruin, the librarian hastened toward the library, fearing for the scrolls still inside. 

            It meant to save the treasures, to bundle them up and wing them away, 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, 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. But angels had no hearts, only hollow places, little nooks to house shards of Heaven's Light. Still, though it was empty, the librarian felt something in that place break. 

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, their enormous mouths gaping around their 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 shimmered with heat. 

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

Among the worst of the rubble, it found what it’d sought. 

Its friend, the last remaining of a gathering of angels, all hurtling through the dead space below, clung to the platform. Its fingers clawed at stone. Heat blackened and welted them, burning away its hair, sandals, and robes. Its skin bubbled and dulled, the Light of Heaven inside it flickering weakly. The librarian stared, mouth agape, until its friend saw it.

Brother, it shouted, the 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 as the librarian watched. The great bone 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.

Its friend's throat shredded as it called the librarian’s name again, and 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 the librarian to FINISH IT.

The librarian didn't have to question what this 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 ever 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.

The librarian watched its friend fall until the body was lost among stars. The voice from Above didn’t come back. Without it, purpose wilted, leaving the librarian with only an ache in its hollow place, and, in its hand, a cutting curve of bone.