Pilgrimage of Angels

The endless fields of heaven burned for days on end, blades of grass stubbornly refusing to turn to ash, fires fed by the boundless energies locked within the celestial plain. At one time, a great many spirits had populated the heavens. Spirits of fire and water, of earth and trees, of the wind and the sky. Then, all was consumed by the wrath of the lesser gods. Monsters and giants had driven the spirits away, leaving nothing but grassy fields behind, where great forests and seas and mountains had once dwelt. The heavens were abandoned, and what little life was left behind now burned in an unquenchable fire.            I know this, because I watched God try to put the fires out and fail.            The lesser gods, the Titans and their Olympian children, had turned their full thoughts on the destruction of God and his heavenly home. I was among them, a foolish child hoping to please her parents, not realizing the weight her actions carried. Power flowed out of us in boundless waves of unchecked and unchallenged energy, blazing the earth black and the sky red. Yet for all our efforts, still the grass held its form. The essence of life was still protected by the might of the Father, a God who could do little else to stop the destruction his own creations were bringing against him.            I marched with the Titans across the whole length of heaven, burning everything in my sight and coming finally before the great throne of God, which lay protected inside a tower of marble and light that rose high above our heads. My eyes glistened with youthful pride as Cronus, leader of the Titans, and Zeus, his Olympian offspring, hammered on the doors of the great tower themselves, calling the so-called King of Kings to come forward and answer for his crimes. He’d withheld the Earth from us, denied us the birthright of the world we’d helped create. He would pay for his selfishness and pride. We would have what was ours.            One last laborious strike, and the great marble doors of the tower burst from their hinges, white light streaming out from the inside. I shielded my eyes at the brightness and, for the first time, doubted our cause. Could a being so pure as the Father truly be as evil as the Titans said? Was he keeping the Earth to himself, or did he understand some greater purpose that my creators did not?            But look, I thought. How he trembles in his tower, alone and defenseless. He hides his shame in the light.            What a fool I was.            “Come out and face us!” Cronus called from outside the bare doorway. “Come out and meet the judgment of the Titans and their children!”            A few moments of silence passed, where even the Titans themselves held their breath awaiting the answer of the greatest being in the heavens.            “Judgment belongs to me alone,” came a voice from within, weak and labored, tired from resisting our power as we marched across the heavens to reach his throne.            “Judgment belongs to the strong!” Cronus called. “And you have revealed your weakness. Against the combined power of the gods, you are nothing!”            “So you say . . .” the voice answered, more pained. “But would children truly turn against their Father so easily, for a cause they do not fully understand?”            “You call yourself the King of heaven, the creator of all,” Cronus responded. “And yet it is we who aided you in your labors of creation, who helped fashion the heavens and the Earth. We who conceived the nature spirits who now hide on the outer reaches of the heavens, where our fires will soon reach. Who are we, if not your co-creators? Who are we, if not your successors?”            As I listened to Cronus’s challenge, and to the weakened voice of the God I once loved, my heart was stirred to pity. How the mighty had fallen. God, brought to his knees by his own children, and Cronus, leading his own son Zeus in rebellion against a dying king. Would the heavens truly benefit from such a loss? Could there not be peace between us? In my heart, I prayed for mercy, but I did not know to whom my prayer was directed.            “What would you do with the Earth, were I to turn it over to you?” the voice from within the tower asked, at almost a whisper.            Cronus laughed.            “We would shape it as we please and reserve no place for your baseless, weak, feeble creations to come,” he said. “We could craft a world in our image, according to our vision, and its splendor would endure for all eternity.”            “Such is not my will . . .” the Father said sadly, my ears straining to hear his last, quiet words.            “Such is the will of the gods,” Cronus said, and all the army of the Titans shouted out their agreement. My voice alone did not join in the chorus.            Just then, the great fires that surrounded us roared into new life, growing taller and burning hotter than ever before. The blades of grass, which for so long had clung to life by the Father’s power, vanished in a blaze of ash and heat, extinguished by the flames of our zeal. He protected them no more. He was defeated.            Or so I feared.            Suddenly the light from within the tower flashed with an intensity I never imagined, and I was forced to divert my eyes for fear of being blinded.            “My will cannot be turned by anyone’s power,” the Father’s voice roared, far louder and far angrier than I had ever heard. “You claim to be gods! You claim to be immortal! Then see, see what your immortality has given you!”            Suddenly a great tear appeared in the sky above us, a great streak of black stretching across the blood-red sky. A rushing wind howled in our ears and pulled us upward, threatening to take us off our feet. The Titans were the first to lose their grip on the soil, pulled by an unseen force into the tear above. Their forms disappeared in the cloud of black, their screaming voices heard no more. Ahead of me, I saw Zeus clinging to what little earth he could get his hands on, a look of terror and guilt upon his face.            “Mercy!” I found myself screaming above the winds. “Have mercy on your misguided children!”            For a moment, I believed that even the Father’s mercy had run out, that we would be sent into oblivion with our forebears. But then the wind settled and the great tear above us disappeared. The sky was dark, and the light from the tower, once so bright, was now little more than a faint glimmer. Finding my feet, I walked alongside my Olympian brothers and sisters toward the broken door, peering inside with trepidation. The broken form of an old man lay kneeling in the center of a great hall, breathing harshly.            “They are dead?” Zeus asked, looking up at the clear sky outside, his voice shaking and quiet.            “No,” the Father said, straining to stand to his feet. “Only banished. If you wish to redeem yourselves for the damages you have caused, you must make ready for war again. My plans cannot be halted, but your rebellion and theirs will bring more pain to the world before the end.”            At these words, not one of us failed to cast our eyes to the ground.            “Come,” the Father said. “All is not yet lost. There is much work to be done.” —The testimony of Artemis, goddess of the wild, on the last day of the First War of Heaven.