I have been bothered recently by the curious, unfolding day of the scroll. I let the day take me and slept through the night, and awoke inside the coffin the next day and the next. Getting my spirit ready, I leapt out into the third day, my mind very anxious to have answers. I travelled above the clouds and heading west and north toward Chicago, where I felt I would find my cabal ready and anxious about my being missing. Things were never less true. Only Indigo Dark Burn, wandering spirit,was there to meet me. Of the others in our order I knew not. Indigo was a second spirit in the middle rite, a fully fallen devil of the stars. I did not like him and he knew this, yet here he was, the only one present. I acknowledged him.

“What are you about today?” I asked.

“Here and there I wander. Here and there I learn.” he said in his obnoxious poetic ramble.

I hated this foul spirit.

“Where are the others?” I asked him. “Selth? Is he not with you?” I asked of his counterpart, for the two were always together these days.

“Gone he is. Back to fire, banished down. Down, ever down he floats into dark.” The devil looked sad. This was news indeed. Selth did not serve the Darker Lords in obedience, he was like Indigo, a wandering devil, but fully fallen – reticent, yet submissive.

“Who cast him down?” I asked.

“The Legion who tramples Leviathan. They come and cast. I escaped because of sympathy, or pity, or fear of my many pleadings.” he said, truthfully.

He was never this truthful. Something changed him.

“Were you shown a scroll?” I asked, looking at him squarely.

He acted like he had been hit and recoiled away from me, screaming a long whine.

I rushed to him and grabbed him by the throat. His small neck fit easily into my hand. I could crush it if I wanted, but it would not hurt him I knew.

“Tell me of the scroll!” I commanded.

“You are not my lord!” he whined. “I need not tell you of these things, for I float long and…”

“Quiet!” I commanded. He shut up.

I let him go. His leathery wings groomed his neck where my hands had been. Silver wisps of smoke trailed and fell away from his neck as he brushed himself from his faux bruisings.

“Go, I must.” he said softly and angrily, like a scolded child. He spun twice like a top and shot out over the clouds, leaving no wake behind in the natural world.

He was powerless. He did not even make wind to affect the water in the air. What a hated fool. I had wasted my time in coming.

I looked down below me, for I dare not look up. From this far up, you could make out the feet of those unfallen. They were always above. So was He, and I did not wish to look at Him.

Spread out before me, a disc with upturned edges, the earth shown blue and green. I needed to get back. It was already growing late. Time worked differently here. Sometimes hours were minutes but today the minutes seemed to have been hours. There were ways to control this, but I had not learned them yet.