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If Elohim wouldn’t look into it, then Pentious resolved to do it himself. Sitting in the middle of his bed with the Egg Bois surrounding him, he closed his eyes and tried to replicate that deep calm he felt when Raguel and Gabriel first helped him interpret his feelings.
First thing’s first: get comfortable. That was easy enough. Pentious took off his hat and placed it in front of him—it just felt right to have his own eye staring back at him, like something deeply connected to himself was keeping vigil. He untied the ascot from his neck and shook it out into its bigger blanket form. Wrapping it around himself, he coiled his tail loosely.
Next item: empty the mind. He took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. Allowing his eyes to grow heavy and his gaze to grow unfocused, he tried to remember the fountain’s water and Gabriel’s soothing voice. A buzzing melody hummed within his ears and provided that methodical rhythm that allowed him to slip deeper. He could feel the lenses slip over his own eyes, and the souls from the little eggs lit up like white little stars.
The world grew fuzzy around the edges. The eye on his hat stared right back at him, red and unblinking—something about that was wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be red, not right now.
His breathing, slow and even up until now, quickened ever so slightly. The world grew sharper as his eyes narrowed and he tried to force the eye to change. It wasn’t supposed to be red, it was supposed to—
Be calm. The amusement in Elohim’s voice juxtaposed the wash of calm that came over him. Pentious sighed and shook his wings out. Forcing it will not make the vision come faster.
“I’m sssure you would know,” Pentious hissed. “Okay. Let’s try again, shall we?”
Puffcorn smiled and gave a thumbs up. “You’ve got this, Penn!”
Pentious gave him a gentle pat on the head. Then, he sat up straight, took a deep breath in and out, and allowed his mind to empty. The buzzing hum started up again as the world grew fuzzy and unfocused. His next breath in filled his lungs and soul with songs both familiar and not. His next breath out released the ones he did not need at this moment—all those of the past and present.
He opened his eyes slightly. The eggs whispered among each other, and their focus seemed to be on the hat. The hat, whose eye was wide and seemed to hold the entire universe within it.
Vaguely, he noted that he shouldn't have been able to do this. At least, he wouldn't have been able to do this months ago. The power surging through him was almost akin to that great Rage when Adam first tried to kill him—just a lot more controlled and a lot warmer.
As soon as the thought came, however, it was washed away in a sea of visions. He tried to imagine the book, tried imagining turning the pages forward. They materialized very slowly, very faintly—but they came all the same. Shimmering outlines faded into sight, and Pentious breathed out as he started flipping through them.
Forward, this time, not backwards—into the future. Shimmering outlines of unclear events danced across faded, shimmering pages overlapping into one another in a confusing mix that was once so clear.
Pentious blinked hard. He could feel a headache coming on, could feel how his eyes crossed and his head struggled to make sense of what exactly he was looking at.
With one last blink and a pained hiss, he stopped. Piercing pain throbbed between his eyes, and he pressed a knuckle against the offending area to try and rub it out.
“Did you see anything?” one of the eggs asked—Vinny, maybe? He wouldn't have been surprised if it was Vinny.
“I didn't see anything useful,” Pentious huffed. “Maybe we should—”
No, do not try again. Like a balm, Elohim’s voice soothed the ache into almost nothing. Pentious breathed a sigh of relief when the pain went away. If you like, we can try again in a Dream, or you may seek out Gabriel later. But do not try again alone.
“Fine! If you could tell me where Gabriel is—”
“I think He means don’t try it again at all today,” Alessio prattled smartly. Since when did he appoint himself the group doctor? “That looked like it hurt, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to get too hurt because of that. Right?”
A warm breeze looped around Alessio. The approval was evident in the lightness of it and the soft chimes.
“Well, I can’t just leave it alone!” Pentious argued, and was well aware he was arguing against his former minion and God Themself. He’d long since stopped worrying about the latter, and he was very used to the former. “What do you suggest we do about this, then?”
Leave it to me, beloved, Elohim said. Another soft breeze flew around them, and the eggs visibly relaxed. Pentious wished he could relax as much as they could. Whatever must happen will happen, I can assure you.
Pentious sighed. “Very well. What do you propose we do today, then?”
There was a short moment of silence before the eggs realized that he was talking to them, asking them what they wanted to do. It must have been so strange to them, having their former boss ask them what they wanted to do today. If he concentrated hard enough, he could hear their individual soul songs—and they were so different from each other!—fluttering and trilling in confusion.
Puffcorn raised his hand. “Oh, oh!! I have a question!! What happened when we were watching movies that one time?”
Pentious flushed. He considered not answering that question—admitting that he got so high that he could now taste emotions and/or tones of voice wasn’t high on the list of things he was willing to admit—but . . .
He slowly smiled. An idea formed in his head, one that immediately made the Other perk up in either alarm or excitement.
My lamb—
“Well, I could show you—”
My lamb, no—
“—exactly who took me that day!”
No, absolutely not!
Despite the protests, the eggs gasped in anticipation. Even Alessio, who Pentious found was becoming the cautious one of the group, had that excited twinkle in his eye.
Henry fluttered up excitedly. “You don’t mean . . . !”
“That’sss right!” Pentious puffed out his chest, and his wings flared out with his hood. “I’m going to show you God’s Face!”
The eggs all cheered. Pentious laughed at the exasperated sigh blowing through his head, and he resolved to apologize later. This was a welcome distraction from everything, after all.
~.~.~
“Nope.” Gabriel shook his head grimly, but his mouth twitched upward in amusement. “It simply cannot be done.”
“But why?” Pentious whined. “If anyone can do it, you can!”
“Simply because it isn’t a good idea. If the Heavenly Father were to come down Himself, that’s akin to bringing the apocalypse.”
Pentious huffed and crossed his arms. “It can’t be that bad.”
“Oh? I specifically remember the first time you tasted too much of His power. You were nearly killed, and even I had a hard time getting through to Him.” Gabriel shrugged, still smirking and looking close to laughter. “Sorry, Penny, but I can't convince the Heavenly Father to come down Himself.”
“And what would happen, hm? What could be so bad that He cannot come down?”
“Well, He is a vacuum for all the souls, for one. He is their origin, and they ultimately want to return to Him given the chance. Surely you noticed?”
Pentious thought back to that day. He coughed into his hand and flushed slightly. Gabriel snorted at this and just shook his head.
“No, I understand. Secondly—” he ticked up another finger “—His Face and entire Presence would be incredibly overwhelming to even the other Archangels, Seraphim, and all the new Orders.”
Pentious raised a brow. “I mean . . . I get how He's kind of overwhelming, but . . . what?”
“Think of it like this. This plane is like a piece of paper to Him, and everyone is equally flat. The Heavenly Father is like water contained in His space. If he were to spill into this plane, there is nothing to truly hold Him, and so the world drowns—we are overwhelmed. However, you and I are like jars protruding slightly from the piece of paper, therefore we can contain some of Him. You and I are the only ones safely able to view His Face because we are His Hosts.”
Well . . . as confusing as that explanation was, it was a good point, Pentious begrudgingly admitted to himself. He desperately tried to come up with a new argument to try and get Gabriel to help, but he came up short. If the soft laugh was anything to go by, Gabriel knew it, too.
“Fine, I'll go ask Emily!” With that, Pentious stormed out of the Archangels’ shared space.
To his ire, Gabriel just laughed and shouted back, “She won't know anything, either!”
Pentious stuck his tongue out before storming out. Puffcorn and Frank copied him, and the others just bid Gabriel farewell. Gabriel himself hung back with an amused grin on his face, and it didn't fade when the grumpy presence filled out in his head.
You want to see them fail, the Heavenly Father harrumphed.
Gabriel just snickered. “I want to see what they do! Is that so wrong?”
A sigh. No, I suppose not. Sariel was a bad influence on you, though.
“I learned most things from You.”
Cheeky.
~.~.~
“Hmmmmmm.” Emily steepled her fingers. Staring out at her new hotel, she pondered over what Pentious asked of her. “That's . . . well, there isn't any real way to see God's Face, is there? I mean, I've never seen it, and Sera never mentioned seeing it, either.”
“But we should be able to do it, right?” Pentious asked.
Emily hummed some more. Glanced between the eggs’ pleading eyes, Pentious’s eager expression, and the exasperated sets of glittering eyes just off to the side. She should dignify the Heavenly Father with refusal, right? If His Face wasn't meant to be seen, as Pentious mentioned, then she should uphold that, right? She only just met Him, so was it really her place to say what was meant to be seen and not?
On the other hand . . . she'd seen what it looked like when the Heavenly Father really didn't want something to happen. He'd stopped the spear from killing Pentious, He'd healed Raguel’s and Phanuel’s soul sickness, and He'd forced His way into Hell. If He really didn't want this to be happening, there was no doubt in Emily's mind that He would have stopped them by now.
Still, just to be sure . . . “Are you sure this is okay with Him? I mean, this is His personal business.”
Pentious shrugged, and when he next blinked, his eyes glittered with flecks of gold. “I am curious how you would solve this,” God admitted. “Besides, Sir Pentious has finally let go of the idea of me coming down, so where is the harm?”
“Okay . . .” She brightened up. With a snap of her fingers, a shimmering piece of paper and a few crayons popped into her hands. “Then how about you draw it?”
Pentious squinted at her. He hummed and rubbed his chin. Then, a smile broke right through his thoughtfulness. “Brilliant idea, my dear!” he exclaimed. Emily squealed excitedly as he took the paper and crayons from her and immediately began scribbling down whatever he needed to draw, right on the floor. The eggs swarmed in around him, so she managed to squeeze in between Alessio and Henry to watch him.
With the ferver he was drawing, she expected something rushed and feverish. What she wasn’t expecting was . . . the scribbles. Incomprehensible. It was mostly black and some . . . cloud shapes? There was some gold in there—a lot of it, actually? The only things she could really make out were three sets of rings and a crown.
With a triumphant exclamation, Pentious finished off his final strokes and planted his hands on his hips. “There!” he laughed. “Feast your eyes on that!”
Emily tilted her head this way and that. Squinted her eyes, tried to make sense of the scribbles and doodles in front of her. “Um, is this His Face?”
“Yeah, it looks real scribbly,” Charles said. The others echoed their agreements.
Pentious opened his eyes and blinked a few times. Grabbing his paper, he tilted it this way and that. “W-well, I, um—” He scoffed and crumbled it up, throwing it somewhere behind him. “Look, my artistic abilities can’t alwaysss be perfect! I’ll just—find another way to show you! Yesss, that’s what I’ll do!” Standing straight up, exuding more confidence than ever before, he slithered right out of Emily’s room.
She watched him leave, sharing a glance with the other eggs. “Can you make sure he doesn’t lose it?” she whispered.
“Already on it,” Alessio whispered back.
~.~.~
Angel peeked in each room, trying to find whichever one he was assigned to. This palace was too damn big, bigger than the Hazbin Hotel, and getting lost seemed a hundred times easier here! How the hell was he supposed to know where the bedrooms were? How the hell did Pents find his way around!? God, if it was fucking God Himself who kept Pentious from getting lost, then Angel was gonna find a way to get him to help!
Maybe showing more cat videos? God seemed to like those, right? Ooh, or maybe he could show Him some dog videos! Or birds, or maybe some pictures of his little Fat Nuggets.
The piggy in question nestled comfortably in his arms, a housewarming present from Charlie before she left—well, she announced it as such, but she was quick to mention how bad she would feel to leave Nuggie an “orphan,” so he appreciated the gesture. Ooh, would God take petting Nuggie as a trade for beaming a map of the palace into his head??
An arm gripped his. With a strangled yelp, Angel slapped the offender away and shoved his hand into his pocket for his gun only to find it missing.
When he locked eyes with Lute, he wished he had it all the more. He really didn’t like that look on her face—the kind that said she would kill him if she wasn’t already on thin ice.
Nevertheless, Angel tried to calm his racing heart and glowered at her. “What the hell do you want?” he snapped.
“Shh!” she hissed, reaching out again to yank him beside the cracked open door. He narrowly avoided her touch but joined her all the same. “Look.” She pointed to the crack.
Rolling his eyes, he peeked in. If this was her idea of a joke . . .
On the other side of the door was a library. It was huge, bigger than anything Angel ever saw, and full of more books than he ever laid eyes on. The shelves were so high that he would need his newly-sprouted wings to reach the top—if they only weren't so weak right now.
On the far end, sitting by the open balcony with what had to be a ton of paper scraps of all different colors all around him, Pentious worked tirelessly on . . . something. Little paper stars, it looked like, but for what was anyone’s guess. He had a book propped open in front of him, and one of the little eggs seemed to be watching him closely, but the others were nowhere to be seen.
Aside from the sudden interest in origami, Angel couldn’t really see anything weird here, so he slowly dragged his eyes back to Lute and raised a brow. “Why the hell are ya spyin’ on my friend?”
“Wh—I’m not fucking spying!” she sputtered—and entirely too defensively, in Angel’s opinion. “I just—I saw him fly in here and—” she gestured in the library’s general direction “—saw that. He’s been at it for an hour.”
“You were watchin’ Pents for an hour?”
“Wh—I—don’t fucking—don’t make it weird!”
Pentious perked up. Lute slapped her hand over her mouth, and even Angel shrank back against the door to avoid being seen. In the brief moments he could actually see his face, Angel noted the fervent glint in his eye and a ton of determination. Whatever he was working on had to be important to him, which begged the question of what it was. He only ever got this way with machines back in the hotel. What could paper stars do to capture his attention so hard?
All too soon, he ducked his head down again and went back to work rearranging the stars. Lute breathed a sigh, and Angel relaxed.
“See?” she whispered. “Is that weird?”
“Nah,” Angel replied, though he would only admit to himself that it was only a little weird. “What’s weird is you actin’ like you care.”
“What, I can’t be curious?” She scoffed. “Well excuse me!”
“You’re excused, hon. Now, shoo.”
If looks could kill, Angel would be dead where he stood. Luckily, ex-exorcists didn't have that power, so all it really accomplished was making Lute look really pouty as she stormed away. Angel only let himself truly relax once she was completely gone, and only then did he let himself into the library.
Stepping in felt like a sin itself. All these pristine books, most of them probably about some religious texts or something—it was enough to make Angel feel small. It almost reminded him of Val’s vault of films he kept, full to the brim and absolutely off limits.
But the eggs were playing and flittering around near the ceiling, and some were reading childish books on top of them, and that took some of the grandeur away. The way their voices echoed joyfully brightened up the whole room. And when he approached Pentious, it felt just like those times he would make whacky, non-lethal inventions in his boredom. Just like those times, Pentious didn’t seem to notice him, so Angel took that opportunity to just watch him for a bit.
The paper stars seemed to come in mostly blacks, though there was a lot of gold, some white, and traces of blue, pink, and purple. Pentious shifted these colors around every so often, but they seemed to go in no specific shape. It was just a huge blob of black, almost like the night sky, and if he imagined hard enough, he could see the white representing clouds with blue, pink, and purple highlights. The gold seemed to represent stars, though the huge splashes of it seemed very out of place.
“Arts and crafts, huh?” Angel finally commented, earning a startled yelp and flinch from Pentious. He chuckled at the reaction and laughed harder at the glare. “What, they didn’t give you a workshop?”
“I have one,” Pentious grumbled. “But I’m trying to do something.”
“Ya look real into it. What is it, exactly?”
His face screwed up in frustration. Instead of answering, he poked Angel’s wings. “How are these feeling?”
Angel twitched away. He folded his wings tightly against his back. “They’re fine!” he exclaimed. “Just gotta—hey, hands off!” He slapped away Pentious’s hand, which was ready to deliver another poke, and received a curious look for his troubles. Instead of arguing, however, he went back to staring hard at his stars. “Now answer my question, asshole.”
“What do you see in this?”
Oh, boy, answering a question with a question. Angel sure as hell didn’t remember Pents doing this before. What was it about being possessed by God that changed his friend?
But the pure determination, the pure need in those eyes had Angel conceding. He found himself staring at the paper stars again—and he found that the pattern didn’t change from when he last saw it. With a shrug, he replied, “The night sky, I think? It’s kinda hard to make out since they’re all stars n shit, but I can see it bein’ the night sky.”
Pentious released a heavy huff. He plopped his chin on his hand and glared at the stars as if they personally offended him. “Goddammit.”
“Uh . . . not that I’m against swearin’ or nothin’, but ya sure you should be sayin’ that? I mean, you’re tied to God, ya know?”
But Pentious waved him off and shook his head. “He doesn’t mind. God is a word humans labeled Him as. So long as they do not use my true Name, it does not bother me.”
Angel blinked. “Did you two just—”
“Yes.” Pentious blinked and gave Angel a sardonic smile. “He does that a lot.”
Well. Whatever. Angel went back to staring at the stars. “Whatcha makin’?”
“God’s Face.”
“God’s—” Angel looked from Pents to the stars and back to Pentious. “He’s the fuckin’ sky!?”
“No! Yes? Sort of!” Pentious threw his hands in the air. “It’s clear that whatever He is can’t be drawn or origami’d into exissstence! Difficult little—”
“Wasn’t that the thing that almost killed us!?”
“Maybe?? I don’t know—I can’t remember shit about that day.”
“Dude, it was creepy as hell!”
“You take that back! His Face is very lovely!” Pentious harrumphed and crossed his arms, and Angel swore he could see steam rushing out of his ears. “Just look at it!”
Reluctantly, Angel took a closer look.
Hm.
Now that he really thought about it—and used a shit ton of imagination—he could . . . kind of see it? Maybe those huge splashes of gold were eyes, and . . . well there was no clear face . . .
“Maybe you could take a picture,” Angel muttered. “But it’ll probably—”
“OH, MY GOD!!” Pentious grasped Angel’s shoulders and shook him hard. He grinned from ear to ear, and his enthusiasm was so infection that Angel forgot about the no touching thing. “THAT’S BRILLIANT!! Yes, I shall capture His image in a camera! Thank you so much!!”
In a storm of golden feathers and extreme, Charlie-like excitement, Pentious was off. The eggs with their tiny little wings hurried after him, leaving Angel alone and bewildered in front of a bunch of origami stars.
“—break. It’ll probably break.” But the words drifted to the roof of the library, the ears they were meant for gone in a blink.
Oh, well. Whatever. With a sigh, Angel cradled Fat Nuggets closer (and it was a miracle that he didn’t wake up through all that) and continued his search for his assigned room. It had to be on the floor with the library, right?
Right.
~.~.~
Observing Hell was much more . . . interesting than Sera thought it would be. Certainly, it had been disturbing at first what with the casual murder and the casual cannibalism and the casual—
Ahem.
Nevertheless, amid all the casual horrors, she found herself fascinated at the little bits of humanity she saw compared to the abundance of it in Heaven. The place she’s come to know as Cannibal Town was full of it, with lively human souls living out an almost human life. If it weren’t for their cannibalistic tendencies, she would think this was a normal town in Heaven.
And the one leading this town? A woman named Rosie who claimed overlordship over it. With how she ran her town, Sera could admit that she respected her. How she came to be so powerful over the other sinners was a mystery, though maybe soul deals had something to do with it . . .
“SERA!!”
“GOOD LORD!!” Sera’s wings froze in shock, nearly sending her tumbling to a painful landing before she flapped them hard and regained her balance. Below her, Sir Pentious looked around the courtroom with almost frantic abandon, and the eyes beside him followed in begrudging amusement. “Sir Pentious!” she scolded. “You can’t just come barging in like that! What if I was in the middle of court!?”
Pentious’s head snapped up. He took a glance around the courtroom. “Yes, but no one’s here, and I have an urgent question!”
“What could be so urgent!?”
“Do you have—wait, is that Cannibal Town?”
Sera immediately turned the orb off. There was nothing to be ashamed of, but she still found herself flushed and embarrassed. “On topic, please!”
“I—fine, but we are talking about that later!”
“Very well. What did you need?”
“Do you have a camera?”
“A—a camera?”
“Yes, it’s very important.”
“I’m . . . I’m sure—”
“Oh, actually!” Pentious zipped up to the orb and hovered in front of it with a manic grin. “Maybe this will show Him!”
“Show—Pentious, wait—”
But the orb was already on, and he was already tuning it away from Hell and toward somewhere else. Somewhere in the air, a warm breeze brushed by and chiming bells echoed, so she wasn’t too worried. Mostly curious and a little on edge, especially with that smile still on his face. Whatever Pentious wanted to see, he must have been determined to see it.
The orb flickered and sputtered static a few times before eventually landing on just an image of the night sky on Earth. Sir Pentious released a disappointed hiss a the sight. “Damn it,” he whispered.
Sera slowly raised a brow. “What exactly were you trying to see?”
“God’s Face.”
“God’s Face—!?” She gripped him by the shoulders and looked him dead in the eye. “Please tell me I misheard you.”
“You—”
“Because if I didn’t, then you literally almost endangered me! God’s Face isn’t something just anyone can see, Pentious! It’s not like His Name—this is something physical and impossible!”
Pentious had the decency to look ashamed at that. He glanced away from her and released a breath. “Ssssorry,” he muttered. “I just—I promised the eggies I would show them!” He gestured off to the side, where six little eggs peeked into the courtroom. “And everything I tried today hasn’t worked. I tried drawing Him! I tried getting Him to come down again—”
“You did what?”
“—and I tried making his likeness with little paper stars! And now this is out of the question!”
Sera blew out a sigh. “Okay, how about you calm down here with me. You’ve worked yourself up with this whole thing, so some rest will do you good.” She didn’t wait for a response, opting instead to take him by the arm and settling him down in front of the orb.
She kept the starry sky on display and turned off the lights. Closing her eyes, modeling the silent calm for her charge, she took a deep breath in and released it slowly. After a few more repititions, Pentious started doing the same, eventually relaxing enough to lean fully against her. A few moments later, little bodies settled around her slowly, like water trickling into a stream. Sera opened one eye—her heart swelled with joy at the sight of two eggs curled up into each other on her lap. One sat in front of the both of them, as if keeping vigil.
Here, she realized, was a small touch of humanity in beings who once harbored no souls. Maybe . . . maybe she, too, would pay Hell a visit, just to see personally what she and Michael had once so eagerly tried to destroy.
~.~.~
The sun hung low in the sky by the time Pentious made it back to his room with a camera that would have had Vox fainting with its antiquated style. Sariel promised the photographs would develop quickly, though, so he was really putting a lot of faith in her. Gabriel followed suit, both curious to see what would happen and looking for a bit of entertainment.
“Wait out here,” Pentious told the eggs once they arrived at his room. “I don't know how this will affect you. We can't have you going insane now, can we?”
“Sure thing!” Vinny exclaimed. “Can’t wait to see it!”
Pentious gave the eggies a smile before entering his room with Gabriel in tow. As soon as the door closed, Gabriel let out an amused giggle.
“This won’t work, you know,” they chortled. “You already had a hard enough time today; do you really think a camera will fare any better?”
“Just you wait,” Pentious harrumphed. “Elohim, can you come down, please?”
He expected some resistance, but it must have been easier to agree since it was just him and Gabriel in the room. Just like before, a curtain seemed to part the very air before them. A nebulous mass of dark, starry sky seeped into the room before solidifying into something resembling the Creature Pentious came to recognize. Elohim, larger than life and warping the air around Him, stood in the middle of the room. Before long, He shrunk down so He was only a little taller than Gabriel.
“What do you have in mind this time, beloved?” Those eyes—first two, then four, then two, then one again—seemed to tilt curiously.
“This!” Pentious held up the camera. “They say even phantoms cannot escape a camera lens!”
An odd sound echoed through the air followed by soft chimes. “Well, then who am I to refuse?”
Grinning triumphantly, Pentious raised the camera and quickly snapped a photo. Out popped the photograph, which he snatched as soon as he was able.
It developed rather slowly, but quicker than the older cameras he'd worked with before. Excitement rushed through him as—
Ah.
Nothing but static. Broken up, incomprehensible static. Pentious blew out a rough breath and tossed it over his shoulder. “Fuck this. It’sss impossible.”
“Giving up, then?” Gabriel asked. Pentious expected him to look triumphant, but he kept that same polite passiveness.
Pentious flopped on his bed, wings and hood splayed out. “Yes.” Dark, billowing clouds surrounded him, and several golden eyes popped open in front of and around him. Elohim gently stroked his face and hood.
“Is there nothing more you can do?” He asked. “I can already see several ideas brewing in your head; do not deny it.”
Pentious didn’t respond for a moment because honestly, He was right. Kind of. Yes, he had more ideas, but they were nebulous and just as unlikely to work. He could build some kind of machine, for example, one that emulated Elohim’s general shape. But the problem with that was that a machine couldn’t possibly convey the movement of the hair and how it seemed to shift colors even when there was no light for them to shift with. It couldn’t replicate the stars winking in and out of existence on His Face, couldn’t possibly show the entire universe in His cape.
But . . .
“Hmm . . .” He tilted his head this way and that. Through the nebulous cloud, he could make out the vague shape of the mask, the two eyes he was sure were open and not just illusions. Maybe . . .
Shooting up, Pentious slammed the door open, heedless of whether or not Elohim was safely back in the Higher Plane.
“I’ll be right back, do what you want, eggies!!” he hollered over his shoulder. He didn’t bother seeing if they did just that—he had something important to build.
~.~.~
According to the clock, it was well past time to sleep. Pentious didn’t dare, though, not when his mind raced with thoughts and ideas and pieces he needed to put together. The scrap and metal he’d managed to gather on his first few days in Heaven came in real handy in this very moment, and it helped that Elohim had no qualms about manifesting what he needed—He didn’t do it much, mostly because Pentious didn’t ask him to do it much, but he was grateful nonetheless.
The frame in front of him was almost perfect. Gears perfectly in place spun slowly, interlocked in just the right places and spaced out just right. He’d set it aside as he worked on the main piece.
How I adore watching you create, Elohim murmured. It reminds me of a mortal man who once walked the Earth.
Pentious hummed in acknowledgement. “He worked with metal?” he asked absently.
No. He was a woodworker, a carpenter.
“What was his name?”
Silence. Pentious’s hands paused for a moment, but a warm set rested over his own and urged him to keep working. Yeshua was his name. He was quite a strange man, quick to ire one moment and quick to forgive the next. He had such a strong sense of what he believed was right and wrong, and he sometimes acted quite impulsively. But always, always he harbored love in his heart.
Like this, pressed against him, it almost felt like the times Elohim possessed his body. The only difference now was that He seemed to be more along for the ride, going along with Pentious’s actions without adding any of His own. A flood of bittersweet nostalgia flooded through him. “Oh? I can’t imagine many people liked him.”
They found him odd, Elohim agreed, but he found favor with several towns and cities, especially with those of lower stations. They claimed he was touched by God.
“Was he?”
In a certain sense, you all are.
Pentious paused. Bittersweet nostalgia continued to ebb and flow through him—through them both—and deep down, he knew . . .
He didn’t press it. This sensation was proof enough. Some called him king. Some claimed he performed miracles, and he would neither confirm nor deny. If you believed, you believed, and if you did not, then that was that. But his closest friends . . . they would claim to the ends of the Earth every wonderfully unnatural thing he did.
Rose the dead.
Communed with the Holy Spirit.
Healed a man’s ear.
Healed the sick, mute, and blind.
Too many other unaffiliated confirmed these stories to not give them a little credit.
Pausing the gears’ turning, Pentious carefully maneuvered the pieces of painted metal to the framework. Using the rushed blueprints as reference, he very deliberately laid them in a specific pattern. Hopefully, if all went well, this machine would capture Elohim’s likeness well enough. Not perfectly—nothing could ever capture Him perfectly—but well enough.
“Did he do all that?”
Do you believe he could?
The answer came without thought. “Yes.”
Then he did.
He did not weld the pieces together. That would erase the entire purpose of the gears and other internal mechanisms. “And then?”
He lived nomadically until his death. It was quite the brutal death, too.
That was the end of that, it seemed. Pentious didn’t ask about the death of this carpenter, and Elohim didn’t elaborate further. They worked quietly together until the night turned to day, until the morning turned to afternoon.
At some point, he vaguely noted, Angel came in to check on him with Emily. They left him some kind of juice, but since he wasn’t hungry, he left it alone. The eggs came in and offered to help, but Pentious told them to spend the day as they wished, and he didn’t catch sight of them after that. Only Alessio came in every once in a while, and it was just to force him to drink the juice. Sera came in once, but she didn’t try to convince him to leave or eat. Instead, she watched for a moment, gave him a gentle pat, and left.
Even the Archangels—the ones not busy in the living plane—visited once in a while. Uriel came by, gave him an approving nod, wrote something down, and left. Phanuel kept him silent company the longest and only left when Raguel came in for a quick visit. Gabriel seemed impressed and eager to see the finished product. Michael watched from the doorway. His main concern seemed to be how long Pentious was staying in the workshop, though there was nothing he could say to convince him to leave.
By far, Emily and Angel were the most frequent visitors, sometimes accompanied by Molly. They beat Phanuel with how long they stayed, often taking their meals and talking around him as if he could respond with more than a hum of acknowledgement, agreement, or denial. Far too invested, he was far too invested in this project to spare more than a modicum of attention. He hoped they didn’t take it personally.
Three days and three nights. It took three days and three nights, but at last, it was done. Pentious set the last piece in place, welded the final line, and put the finishing touches. With a long, slow breath, he slowly stepped away from the mechanical painting.
And promptly fell flat on his face. On the other end of the workshop, Angel shot up in alarm. “Pents!?” He rushed over, hoping to all hell that Pentious hadn’t worked himself into a second death, but slowed when he heard the loud snoring echoing through the huge space.
A small smile worked it way onto his face. With an amused snort, Angel threw his sleeping friend over his shoulder and carried him back to his room. Before he left, however, he took a look at whatever had Pentious in such a deep stupor.
It looked a lot like what the paper stars were trying to depict: a night sky with stars sprinkled here and there, clouds lined with impossible highlights, and pools of gold. As the gears turned, however, the picture moved, forming a somewhat humanoid face. The clouds formed something more akin to hair, and the pools of gold looked more like eyes. Another shift, this time showing mountains topped with shimmering snow.
Huh. Angel’s smile quirked up into something a little more genuine. God’s Face, huh? It sure was weird, but he could kinda see where Pents got the idea that it was pretty.