Fall of Lucifer Read Free

full two lengths ahead of Gabriel.
    ‘Strategy, Gabriel – Michael’s strategy!’ he murmured.
    Michael and Gabriel galloped through rows of grand white columns, past vast crystal orangeries, and drew to a halt in front of the eastern wing of the palace. Michael’s chambers lay beyond the grand halls. There he swam each dusk in the deep, balmy springs that flowed through the palace quarters.
    Michael dismounted swiftly and strode up the gilded steps. He hesitated outside the heavy golden doors engraved with the emblem of the Royal House and, smiling, saluted to Lucifer on the balcony.
    Lucifer lifted his hand in acknowledgment, his blue eyes lighting up with pleasure, then walked back into his palace chambers.
    The vaulted ceilings of his inner sanctum soared a hundred feet. They were fashioned with exquisitely painted frescos – hues of azure and indigo, heliotrope, damson, and amethyst merging into magenta and vermilion. Spectacular panoramas covered the ornate carved ceilings of the chambers. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, in its yet future day, would be but a faded replica of Lucifer’s majestic trompe l’oeils .
    The enormous rubied palace windows were flung open, and the sounds of the angelic orations from the Mount of Assembly echoed throughout the chamber.
    Beneath the immense walls in the very centre of the chamber stood a huge, golden aeolian harp. All across the chamber lay musical instruments of every kind: lyres, lutes, psalteries, dulcimers, pipe organs, a collection of pipes and tabrets, fifes, flageolets, pan pipes, serpents, cornets, gleaming golden shofars of every description, chimes, and treble bells.
    Lucifer leaned over and picked up his viol and bow, which stood upright in pride of place near the harp. He thrummed the viol’s strings as he walked back out onto the balcony. With his nimble, jewelled fingers he drew the bow across the viol’s bridge, his eyes closed in rapture as he played, supreme master of his instrument, in adoration of Yehovah.
    Suddenly, a dazzling, pulsating light fell across Lucifer, blinding him and completely covering the pearl balcony. He dropped to his knees, the viol discarded on the marble floor, and shielded his eyes from the blazing light with his forearm.
    Sheer ecstasy crossed his countenance. His brothers forgotten, slowly he dropped his arm from his face, his eyes gradually attuning to the blinding, iridescent radiance that cascaded down on Lucifer in blazing, shimmering light streams. He raised his countenance, shaking his head from side to side, bathing his features in the prisms of white fire, recklessly drinking in the intense brilliance.
    Turning his face to the panorama of light before him, he bowed his head, lifting his arms wide to heaven, the strong, masculine hands spread wide in reverence.
    ‘Our Father . . . ’
    The light intensified dramatically.
    ‘Creator . . . Preserver . . . ’
    The shimmering increased tenfold, radiating from deep inside the vast range of the Golden Mountains.
    Outside the palace, the outer brilliance of the radiance emanated from thousands of translucent, angelic forms and white eagles, which blanketed the vast golden mountain and the translucent Crystal Palace that rose thousands of leagues beyond the white, swirling mists.
    Surrounding the palace’s perimeter was an immense, towering jasper wall, over one hundred feet wide and four hundred feet high, studded with clusters of diamonds, emeralds, jacinth, amethyst, jade, and lapis lazuli, all exuding their own dazzling light. Beyond the northern wall, almost completely obscured by the mountain, stretched the infinite onyx plains of the Mount of the North, the mount of angelic assembly, where a hundred million of the angelic host gathered in legions serving under the three great angelic regents: the archangels. The chief princes. Yehovah’s three mighty warriors and commanders: Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer.
    Rising above the western wall was the splendid