| Hundreds of eyes open and wings unfurl, a body of white wax and gold ribbon expanding and awaking, nested in the grasp of the Glorious Machination. A dozen limbs stretch out, grasping onto the levers and handles and knobs around them, pulling, twisting, activating bursts of steam and light. The Machination erupts into movement, spilling open like a mechanical egg cracking to release its young. The Archangel drifts out of the divine capsule and begins to flutter through a void of brightness, spiraling. Her Holy body flickers, feeling strings pulling her in different directions. The trickles of prayers tickle her skin as they drift up from far down below. Her wings begin to flap, harder and harder, creating clouds of wind as her body rends itself into a dozen forms. | | | | | | :---: | :---: | :---: | :---: | :---: | | | | The first dives down, warping through space and time, until it finds itself in the Virtuous Steppes, specifically the Steppe of Temperance at the Verdant Gardens. She flies past massive trees of gleaming green leaves and bulbous fruit, and settles in the center of an amphitheater where dozens of smaller angelic forms await. They sing in harmony of her arrival, and she coalesces her form, taking one that is more suitable for lesser angels to gaze upon. She smiles, a human kind of smile. | | | | | Another form flickers through reality, appearing in the clouds above the Mortal Plane, specifically, a town in rural China. She watches as a cherub weaves in and out of houses, leaving behind trails of glittering haze. A dozen different ideas appear in her mind. Food, starvation, love. The Archangel speaks in a dozen whispers from her morphing body, and the cherub glows brighter. | | Another form compresses itself, shrinking down, and sharply diving out of heaven and towards a space touched by hell. On the outer edge of a great desert, her form shrinks into that of an owl, as a dozen angels lie bloodied and beaten, spilling their blood at the feet of a demon, hulking and proud. With a swift movement, she flies over their forms, and each disappears before they can be feasted upon by the fiend. | | | One of her forms splits off from the rest, flying upward, back towards another opening in the Glorious Machinations. Its form becomes more translucent and unreal, taking on the abstract nature angels do when they ascend farther up through Heaven. | | | | One of her forms slowly makes its way throughout the void between the Machinations and the Steppes, muttering incantations to itself. Words of unity, or harmony, of temperance, and strength. Prayers for the above, prayers for the below. Streams of information continue to whisper towards her, surrounding her as abstract emotions and thoughts taking physical form as golden glyphs in the air. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | It moves higher and higher, away from the easy knobs and levers of her cradle below, and into the grinding gears and cogs of divine machinery. The Archangel does not feel pain, does not feel terror at this point. This slice sinks into unknowable movements, gathering and transmuting divine energy, channeling the force of something far greater than her. Her form becomes brighter and brighter, burns hotter and hotter, swells with a blaze too powerful to even comprehend, and she- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The form flickers to a completely different terrain. An urban center, deep underground. Heavenly light pierces through the cracks of the ceiling, and she follows it down into the subway system. There, she touches a divine glyph graffitied onto a train car. From it, she feels a small thrum of hope, sends a wave of her own power down in this dark space. | | Her form fractures once more, one moving up with the souls of the angels, the second immediately turning to face the demon with a blast of holy light. Like a massive snake, it stretches and pounces towards her, attempting to swallow her essence whole. But her skin burns brighter and brighter, until the beast begins to crackle and retreat towards its den \- The City of Sin in the distance, festering with hellpower. | | | | | The Archangel smiles upon them all. In that regal tone of hers, she speaks with a dozen voices morphing into one: motherly, firm yet gentle, ready to teach. “Hail and well met, Acolytes of the Verdant Gardens. Glory to the Beauty of Heaven and the Lord High Above. Be Not Afraid.” In unison, all angelic acolytes present echo her and say, “Be Not Afraid”. | | The glyphs bind her. She binds them. The glyphs are her. She is them. She is both the water in the glass and the glass itself. The glyphs are both the water in the glass and the condensation on its exterior. Human and angelic prayers reach her, and she sends them back in return. Plucks on strings for distant instruments. | | | | She spends the next few hours explaining the lore and abilities of different archangels throughout history, specifically focusing on ones correlated with the Virtue of Temperance. The angels and risen souls listen attentively. Blisadra, of the Enlightened Manna. Plymo, of the Golden Harvest. And others still. | | Symphonies are played across the globe by her hands. Songs of rest, songs of hope, songs of temperance. | | | She flickers into a temple in a city of a steel skyline. A choir sings “Joy to the World”. Snow falls outside. She casts holy light in the stained glass depiction of an angel above a manger. Castor and Pollux smile from the pews. | | | | | | | | She feels the pulse of vast powers and dense contract magic coalescing like a physical ward around the city, and she blinks away before she is detected. | | | | | | | | | | | | | The songs echo off into various places in reality, when she notices a note off-key. With a quick flick, she sends a signal to another form of an impurity in the Great Chain she notices. | | | She reappears in another temple, this time on the edge of the Mortal plane and the banks of Hell. It is slipping down, and there are wards in place to keep her from interfering much. There are always restrictions. She can feel her tether to heaven draining quickly, so she does what she can. Study the damage that the grasping demonic hands have incurred, and spread a bit of magic to curtail the dragging of this place into Hell for another day before she flies back upwards, exhausted and drained, in need of heaven’s glorious light to sew back the holes in her body. She moves towards the light. Prays for growth. That she is made in the perfect image of what she must become. | | A chain. | | | | | Once the lectures have finished, she beckons a single angel to follow her. The little bird. As Aurelian’s mentor, she must guide the fletching out of the nest. Today, they begin by fluttering to earth. She shows her a glimpse of the impurities of a city. Famine and gluttony working hand in hand. Aurelian is hopeful, he reminds The Archangel of herself so long ago. | A chain tugs and she soars through the air towards a countryside covered in invisible iron, dividing it into various segments, a massive glyph the size of a small town. Divine-steel is linked in long metal chains around this place, shielding it from influence. She inspects every inch of one chain that runs from mountain to river, hundreds of eyes taking in each link. | She cannot be distracted. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | She returns her focus to the grand symphony of prayers, the spiraling of glyphs, the movement of data and energy and intention. She is but a node in a grand network of wires, or a synapse in the mind of the universe itself. Buzzing, the ethereal ones and zeroes that are a mystery to all, including her. But she knows. | | When she exits from the upper limits of the Glorious Machinations, she feels… hollow. Truly a silly thought. She reprimands the small part of herself that indulged in the vice of doubt. | | After the missions are completed, there is a moment where the two of them sit at a table in a cafe, in a market. Jophiel shows Aurelian a thing called coffee. And perhaps her one act of gluttony is to add too much sugar. Aurelian must understand sweetness first, before all that falls into place.“It is better as sweet as can be, my child.” | She finds only three impurities of note in this segment of the great chain, and she remembers to send for repairs soon. Prays for strength. That this world is forged into the perfect image of what it must become. | | | | | | | She knows that this role she plays is but one necessary role to guide the universe towards its eventual horizon points. And yes, she believes in this just cause without any doubt. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The forms return to the Glorious Machinations above and coalesce upon one another, combining into one. Information flows down streams, collecting in the pools of her divine mind, each droplet communicating with the one beside it, each prayer weaving the strings of connections into the tapestry that is her body. For but a moment, Archangel Jophiel will rest, recharge her energy, prepare for the next moment she is split apart once more and whisked to fulfil her duties to heaven. Hundreds of eyes close shut, and hundreds of wings curl back on themselves onto a tight embrace. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |