Prologue

Soul Guardian

It had been decided that the apocalypse would begin on Christmas day. There had been some haggling over the specific time, but in the end they had decided it had to come late enough that everyone would get to open their presents, but before they realized that the batteries were missing.

There was, of course, one little detail that had to be ironed out but that was really more of a formality. How exactly were they going to bring about the end of the world and kick off Armageddon? So two old foes met in the black void between worlds to discuss the possibilities.

“Fire?” Lucy prompted, looking radiant with her red skin and black silk robe. “Or ice, we can do ice if you would like. I’m not picky.” She didn’t care how the world ended so long as it got her son out of the house, so to speak. At first it had been nice having Josh around but that had gotten old rather quickly. Nobody could sulk like the antichrist.

“How about a flood? There is a precedent.” Lucy mused, looking at the black talons on the ends of her fingertips. “Of course, boats. Boats can be a problem.”

The Metatron sighed. He was a biblically accurate angel and still raw about it. Having one pair of eyes was bad enough during allergy season, twenty pairs was pure torture. He crossed his middle pair of wings and gave a sulk that would have made the antichrist proud. “I hate boats. If it weren’t for boats I could have wrapped this whole thing up millennia ago. Don’t even talk to me about boats.”

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After the great flood failed to destroy mankind The Metatron had been filled with an irrational hatred for all things buoyant. To that day even seeing so much as a bobber had left him seeing red (and also usually a little bit of white). “Let’s go for something we know will work.”

Lucy made another suggestion and waited to see how her fellow conspirator would react. Of course, she had her own reasons for picking this particular course of action and by the time Heaven figured out what she was up to it would be too late to stop her. The devil was in the details, after all.

Upon hearing her suggestion a shiver of disgust went through The Metatron’s many wings like he had just seen a particularly well designed life vest. “That’s terrible. Horrific. I mean… could we even pull it off?” He mused, mulling over the plan in his head. “A complete unraveling of the firmament… breaking the fundamental rules of the universe… it would take a lot of power to do something like that. How would we even begin?”

Lucy smiled, he had taken the bait. Now all she had to do was reel him in. “I could motivate certain parties, put things in motion. But I’ll need some divine intervention to speed things along. Which is only fair.” She gave The Metatron a conspiratorial wink.

“Fine.” The Metatron grumbled. “But if this all goes south I’m blaming you.” He winked back at her with about half a dozen eyes.

“Why not?” Lucy said with a shrug, spreading her black bat wings for dramatic effect. “Everybody else does.”