Chapter Text
The angel Hemah had never thought of himself as special – as someone who might draw attention to himself, someone who stood out in even one small detail from the Heavenly Host. He was one of many labouring under the supervision of Archangel Sariel, her of the Cherubim, and if he dared dream that one day might smile upon him as one who excelled in anything more than his brethren, he never vocalized it.
His time, however, had come as that tablet had appeared in Sariel’s office out of nowhere.
Their Archangel had brought the tablet along for anyone to see and for them to confer over as she herself couldn’t glean anything from it, and they had dug into the problem with verve and dedication. It was made of a material that resembled stone, but was much too smooth and pliable to actually be stone, though also elastic enough to never break or fissure. Also, it weighed next to nothing, sitting on one palm without as much as demanding any strain of its rather short and slight owner to support it. The material felt wet, too, although there were no fluids discernible on it, and it smelt mushy as well as salty, dusty and, interestingly, minty. The bottom of the tablet was simple and rectangular; the top, however, had an intricate, curvy and curly design. The two most fascinating things about the tablet, however, were its colour and its inscription.
The colour was, in fact, a multitude of colours between yellow, green, blue, violet, black and some that the assembly of angels bent over it had no words for; the tablet oscillated between all of these colours, depending on time and the angle from which it was looked at. Some of the angels were utterly fascinated by that and couldn’t stop moving around Sariel who held it up to take in any possible hue and combination of colours that was there to be seen – Hemah himself, however, was automatically taken with the inscription.
Intricate, yellowish runes shimmered on the tablet – they didn’t appear to be cut into the material. Rather it seemed that they were hovering ever so slightly above the surface, as if they were so concrete and palpable that they could be picked off it like berries. The runes were bizarre and swirly and outlandish, representing nothing that the angels had ever seen or foreseen or understood, there were no spaces or other marks to indicate words or sentences, no paragraph breaks, just one single uninterrupted block of text. Even looking at them for a prolonged amount of time gave the angels headaches, sometimes even toothaches, but Hemah, glancing over Sariel’s shoulder, couldn’t for the life of him look away. Some of the angels even disputed they were words on there, they claimed it were just images of… something that was living where this tablet had come from, a kind of picture-dictionary or bestiary, but Hemah knew that they were wrong, because…
Well, because he could read the inscription.
Not immediately and consciously, but… in front of his eyes and behind his forehead, the images started to align, to make themselves clear and understandable; they wormed their paths into Hemah’s mind and memories and found where his language competence sat, grabbed their Enochian counterparts like dancing partners. (Not that Hemah had ever danced, or planned on dancing.) Those that had no exact counterpart tore up Enochian concepts and built it, much like their builders forged stars and planets and nebulae from motes of dust they found drifting in space, forcing them to make a whole, trimming them, expanding them, bending and twisting them until they finally conformed. As if they had a consciousness of their own, the runes reached out to Hemah, entranced him, lured him, understand us, decipher us, drink us in, make us your second nature…
Hemah noticed that his field of vision blurred for some time, dulling his senses, but he didn’t pay any mind. He needed all thought capacity to follow what was going on within his brain – the paradigm shifts, the realignments, the new definitions settling in. It was a feeling as of walls, of boundaries finally being kicked down – Hemah could breathe freely now, move and think in cool clarity.
The only thing he did not quite get was who this ‘King in Yellow’ was that the runes mentioned, and hailed, and why that phrase kept resounding in his head.
As he finally managed to surface again, focus on the faces of his angelic brethren standing around him, he noticed that they stared at him with expressions ranging from mild bewilderment and shocked disbelief over keen interest to a touch of fear. Sariel, looking up to him with a softly tilted head and an understated smile on her narrow lips, made an inquisitive, interested, but also kindly demanding impression on him. “What was that now, Hemah?” she asked almost gently, lifting the tablet ever so slightly closer to him.
“What was what?” he replied, feeling sluggish like a sleepwalker just roused from his nightly amblings.
“It sounded as if you were reading this out to us.” The Archangel wiggled the tablet around in her tiny hand. “With much… gravitas, too.” Was she mocking him? “Care to tell us how you’re able to read this, though not even Raphael who is Archangel of wisdom and science had any idea about what this script even is?”
“Dunno.” Even pronouncing this one word was hard work. Hemah shrugged, looking apologetically at Sariel, whose smile hadn’t let up. “I just… I.” Hemah gulped. Sariel’s glance was downright familial – encouraging, but still, her undelring suddenly wondered whether he could trust it, or her. “I can just… it’s as if this thing explains itself to me. I just know what all of it means, I just do. This word here… look.” He pointed at one of the symbols, now certain that each symbol, each rune, was a separate word, and this little one here at the beginning that looked a bit like a lightning bolt curving in on itself… “This is a greeting. It is… it is a bit like a letter, yes? Like a kind of… of an invitation, maybe, what you do when you get someone new living next to you. Look, they even have one thing, one rune I mean, that quite clearly means us, us angels…” He indicated a rune that indeed looked a little odd among the others: a stylized wing, a little too jagged and angular, but still recognizable as what it was meant to show.
It meant all of them, Hemah knew – but somehow he was also utterly aware that it was for him most of all, him, him, only him…
“What do they want from us?” Cambiel, appearing utterly mystified, pressed Hemah further.
“Who are they, even?” Terathel appeared disquieted.
“How come that you can…” Paimonah, disgruntled since Hemah occupied her field of expertise in trying to communicate with other species, asked, but Sariel beat her to it, lifting a calming hand.
“I believe our course of actions is clear,” the Archangel said almost sweetly, holding the tablet out to Hemah who took it with a dumbfounded expression on his face, “you, Hemah, will draw back with this and study it until you know each and any in and out of this message. Report back to me once you do… and if it is really and truly an invitation…” the small Archangel turned as if to walk away, leaving her division behind without any regard for their confusion and feelings of being at a loss, “… why won’t we take those beings up on it. After all, positive relations are the cornerstone of a healthy and profitable existence in this cosmos.”
A quote as if ripped out of a pep talk from Gabriel, or from any instruction manual any angel had ever penned.
Hemah wasn’t sure, as the tablet fit itself into his grip as if it had never been, and never aspired to be anywhere else, whether she was laughing at him or with him as Sariel went away with bouncy and lively gait. But one thing he was convinced of: he wouldn’t let her down.
And he hadn’t.
He hadn’t told her the whole truth, however. After he had deciphered and sketched down the Enochian for this one message (an invitation indeed, an account of how the beings having sent this tablet had noticed a new galaxy forming, under new rule by a being they couldn’t quite assess, and wished to change that in order to see where everyone stood with one another), the tablet had… changed. It had displayed a second message, a message consisting only of the dread phrase from before, that ‘Hail, King in Yellow’ repeated ad nauseam. Hemah felt dizzy even thinking back to it; he didn’t see odds or ends of it, so he had deliberated to leave it out of his report.
Gabriel had been present as he had delivered that report that Sariel had commissioned, and Hemah couldn’t but notice the proud shimmer in her eyes as her Cherub-twin-brother stood behind her, with crossed legs and a grave expression, and hummed and grumbled in appreciation at both their work.
He reported to the Cherubim that the senders of the tablet called themselves the Outer or Elder Gods (he wasn’t quite certain which) and that it was less of an invitation, overall, and more of a demand that the inhabitants of the new galaxy that this younger God had made come over, introduce themselves, and negotiate about how to handle this situation furthermore. Gabriel had called the notion that they disputed the Almighty’s being the only God ‘preposterous,’ had bristled and puffed up like an irritated budgie, advocating for them staying right where they were while sending an infuriated letter back to where that tablet had come from, but Sariel had sooner or later swayed him into accepting that diplomacy was, with these creatures none of them knew anything about, certainly the better course of action.
With a satisfied glimmer in her eye, the Archangel had turned to Hemah to task him with outfitting a diplomatic party to lead into the lands of these otherworldly beings. He would be in the lead, guiding the party as he saw fit, and it would be expected of him to excel – he would be rewarded greatly if he returned with a peace treaty, or something that might lead up to it.
So this was what Hemah had done; he had anticipated that it would be a hard thing to find diplomats level-headed and warriors brave enough to accompany him to uncharted territory, that it would be difficult teaching them enough of the Outer Gods’ language to make them able to properly negotiate, and that he would be glad and content as soon as it was achieved. What he hadn’t anticipated, however, was the tremendous amount of unadulterated pride that setting out with a diplomatic party of four and five soldiers to guard them would fill him with.
So he was special, after all - singular among the numbers of the heavenly host.
The ten angels travelled far, far out of the bounds of the universe assigned to them; some complained they felt the Almighty’s protection waver, but most of them wouldn’t hear of it. Hemah didn’t pay much mind one way or the other; his whole mind was set on reaching that faraway space in which the Outer Gods dwelt, and on doing what his duty demanded of him. The tablet that Hemah carried in his bag as a token of his truthfulness, of his really being sent by those addressed by these creatures before, grew heavier, more meaningful, but also colder and clammier with each step.
Hemah walked with purpose, vigour and determination. The tablet had specified a galaxy far out in uncharted territory as their home where they would wait and claimed they would recognize it, as it would give off the same eerie colour variations the tablet emitted, just to a bigger degree.
At long last, the diplomats sometimes took to questioning Hemah and his leadership. After all, he couldn’t possibly know where he was going – they were so far out of any place any angel had ever visited! What if he lead them into nowhere? What if it all was a ruse? Without Valoel, angel of peace, being around, likely a fight would have broken out.
The soldiers, swords at their sides and either spears or bows on their backs, merely sneered and marched on. They were accustomed to not questioning their orders.