They were some of Castiel’s earliest memories (anything earlier than the Big Bang was a little hazy). For billions of years the celestial Host revelled within God’s creation, singing the harmonies of the universe. Things had been simpler, then, as the first planets were beginning to form from newly forged elements fresh from the hearts of the stars, massive discs of dust and ice slowly rotating around newborn stars until they began to accrete. The angels were more innocent, beings of pure wonder and curiosity, playing and sculpting the laws that humans would one day name physics under their Father’s guidance.
Things did not remain peaceful for long. Angels were not the only beings to call God their Father, and Life itself was tenacious. Irrepressible. Creatures – monsters composed of pure thought and malice and energy – began to creep into the spaces between the stars, the dark expanses of the silent abyss. They had no names. No real intelligence. The Host could feel their presence, eyes in the blackness staring out at the light.
Everyone knew the tale of the angel Astarael, trapped alone in the void. The angel’s desolate song, full of loneliness and pain, resonated across the Host. They listened as the dark ones closed in, until the last of Astarael’s light was snuffed out. Before Astarael, no angel had ever experienced death. No angel had ever lost another. The idea that they could simply cease to be – it was terrifying. Worse, though, was the grief of Yrael, Astarael’s closest companion and lover. Eventually driven mad with sorrow, the angel flew out into the abyss, convinced that Astarael must somehow still live, merely waiting for salvation. Six other angels accompanied Yrael. Ranna. Mosrael. Belgaer. Dyrim. Kibeth. Saraneth. One by one their songs went silent, smothered by the dark, until only little Ranna remained. Ranna, who eventually wandered back into the light again, but was never the same. Sweet Ranna, drifting in a dream-world deep within the Garden, made of fond memories.
Moving together in flights across the void, many casualties were avoided, but it did nothing to stem the anger at the deaths. The terror of the dark. Even if the majority of the angels travelling between the stars survived, many were driven mad by the crossing, refusing steadfastly to ever leave the light again.
The Archangels, four primordial forces of creation, called the Host to arms. Never before had an angel been in combat, but listening to the wails of slowly dying angels was an agony none were eager to repeat.
So it was that Heaven went to war against the silence and the dark.
The Celestial Host’s first encounter with Death
An excerpt from If we can’t find where we belong by Cenedra Riva
