The Metatronic Chronicles: A Minor Inconvenience
Chapter 19

Precisely thirty seconds after leaving for their ancestral home, the two young angels were back in Michael’s room. Daniel was still gasping and doubled over in ecstatic agony after spending time with the angel Arriana. She had been amazingly accommodating and both brothers had learned a lot from her. But a look at the clock brought them both back to reality when they realized how little time had passed. “Oh my god,” Michael said. “The angel is amazing! He brought us back to the nearly the same point in time!”

“Are you sure it’s the same day?” Daniel asked, rubbing his very sore, well-used private parts. Arriana had used, abused, and ridden him like a stud bull.

“Absolutely!” Michael glanced out into the hallway and down stairs. Alice was still seated in her chair, Mary close by and James was still pounding away on some mysterious project in the den. Relieved, he checked his dresser mirror to see if anything about him had changed again. “Uh…Daniel?” he said as he looked.

“What?” Daniel looked into the mirror too and saw what his brother was seeing on himself. “Oh. Well then…I guess we’re home free. Arriana must have undone what the milk did. We look the same as we did before.”

“I’m glad I don’t look twelve years old any more,” Michael confirmed, rubbing his darkened stubbly chin. “And my beard is scratchy. I have to shave.”

“I thought we wouldn’t have to shave any more,” Daniel answered, checking his own beard growth. “This is at least two days’ worth of whiskers here!”

“That’s the angel in you. The kid still has…well I guess it’s more than peach fuzz. But we must have been gone a while for there to be this much!”

“Don’t you know how long?” Daniel asked, suddenly nervous.

“I thought it was about an hour, but in that place, time has no meaning—we could have been there for weeks or even years!” Michael was growing nervous too. He looked down at himself and took inventory—everything was there and looked as it had before he left. “But I guess all we suffered is some whisker growth. I guess it’s all right.” He gave his brother a disbelieving look, and then they nodded at each other. “Let’s check with Derasthe tonight.”

An hour later they had arrived in southern California for their nightly training regime and were standing in Derasthe’s kitchen being scrutinized. The older angel was looking them over closely, even scanning them magically to replace any physical changes that may have taken place while the two younger angels were in the formless place that was their ancestral home. Michael and Daniel both glanced at each other nervously as they waited, uncertain of just what would happen should some physical change have taken place. No one at home had noticed anything as they bid their farewells but James, covered with sawdust and wearing a carpenter’s apron, looked anything but trusting as he waved. Somehow, he knew something.

“Ah,” Derasthe finally said as he finished his scan. “I think I have figured this thing out.”

“What’s to figure out?” Michael asked, his voice trembling slightly.

’You dipped your pen into Arriana’s inkwell, didn’t you?”

Both brothers hated Derasthe’s bad metaphors. “If you mean did we screw her, the answer is yes.”

“She’s a charming young angel…seems young, anyway,” Derasthe nodded. “I’ve had my moments with her as well.”

“Are you saying she did something to us?” Daniel asked.

“No she didn’t do anything to you. The void is what happened to you. You lost track of time didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah.” Michael exchanged glances with Daniel. “So what? We got back within seconds of leaving.”

“Yes, that takes care of things on the mortal end, of course. But losing track of time while in the void can sometimes leave an effect that can be surprising. You boys said you drank Alice’s mother’s milk and grew younger, is that correct?”

“Yes,” they chorused.

“Drinking her milk did you no harm and probably did you some good, but growing younger is a side effect that you may want to keep in mind for next time. Anyway, the reason you feel a little off and your mortal bodies grew beards so thickly is that you were in there for four earth years.”

“Four years!” both brothers echoed in shock.

“Yes, Arriana didn’t undo the effect of the mother’s milk. You did by staying in there for about four years.” Derasthe didn’t seem too alarmed by the thought. “How did it feel to be screwing for four years straight without even a piss break? Had you gone in there without the milk, you would have come out as twenty two year old high school students.”

“Oh shit…you mean we can’t go back to Void without aging our mortal bodies?” Michael still wasn’t believing his ears.

“Of course you can but you need to learn how to manage your time there. Of course, spending it with Arriana certainly made that difficult. Was she the only angel you screwed?”

Daniel gave him a confused look then glanced back at Michael. “Well…until you asked just now, I thought she was. But now I seem to remember…more.”

“You probably had many different partners while you were in there.” Derasthe smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it, boys. You did no real harm to yourselves or anyone here. No harm no foul, as they say. In fact, if you want Arriana to come here on occasion for you, I can arrange it.”

“Jeeez,” Michael was still absorbing the thought of having multiple sex partners while in the void. “I thought I was crazy. I was having images of literally dozens of angels around me. Please tell me they were all female!”

“I’m sure they were,” Derasthe answered obliquely, obviously just paying the young angels lip service. In reality, he had no clue.

“Michael, next time your angel comes forward,” Daniel growled. “I’m going to give him some pain!”

“Hey, it happened to me too!” Michael shot back, trying to ignore Derasthe as the older angel placed a gentle hand on his forehead. “What are you doing, Derasthe?”

“I’m checking to see if any further blending has taken place,” Derasthe answered. “You’ve had four years—that should have been enough.”

“What do you mean?” Michael asked quickly.

“I mean that there may not be any more ‘Mike’ and ‘Michael’. It may be only Michael.” Derasthe withdrew his hand. “Hmmm…”

Michael tried to reach back into himself to replace the angel, something he routinely did when he wanted to retreat from whatever was happening, but found nothing there but his own thoughts. “Oh no…”

“Mike.” Dan had tried the same thing. “I’m alone. The angel is gone.”

“The angel is not gone,” Derasthe corrected him. “He is you. You have both successfully completed the blending. Now there is no more separation. It is just you and whatever comes around, you have to face now. No more putting Michael forward to take your punishments, Mike…or should I say, Michael?”

Michael looked down at himself to see the scarred, hardened body of the angel. “I am Michael,” he answered, slowly looking up. “This is damned weird.”

Daniel had a new glint in his eye as he looked at Derasthe. “It’s strange. The anger I felt in him before is gone. Daniel’s rage has been…I don’t know…assuaged somehow.”

“You both needed each other. The balance has returned to you.” Derasthe touched Daniel’s forehead also. “Only one occupant now in there, right?”

“Right,” Daniel nodded suddenly feeling very tired. It had been a most interesting first day back at school. He hoped the rest of the semester would not be as eventful.

“You should replace that your magic will come more easily to you now although practice is still required. And your other angelic abilities will come to the fore.”

“Other abilities?” Daniel echoed suspiciously. “Like what? X-ray vision?”

“You have a distinct way with words, Daniel.” Derasthe truly didn’t mean that. “There are certain abilities that as pure mortals, were not available to you. Now they are, whether you are in your mortal bodies or not. And by the way, the term ‘mortal bodies’ is a misnomer. Your mortal bodies are now immortal, just like your angelic ones.”

“We can’t die?” Michael was growing alarmed. “Do we at least grow old?”

“You can appear to if you like but you won’t actually be growing older. That doesn’t mean your human bodies will stop maturing for several years yet. You probably won’t stop until you are around thirty five years old or so.” Derasthe paused, obviously holding something back.

“What else?” Michael grew suspicious.

“I suppose you might already realize this,” Derasthe finally said. “But there is a caveat to all this immortality business.”

“A caveat? A warning? What?” Daniel hated caveats.

“This dying business. It is true that you cannot die, but you can be killed.”

Michael was joining his brother in hating caveats too. He also hated having to drag things out of Derasthe. “Please elaborate,” he growled.

“When you first died at the hands of Blankenship, do you remember falling back to earth in a ball of flames?”

“Hard to forget that,” Michael nodded, frustrated with their mentor.

“The fireball wasn’t all just atmosphere burning up around you. You were being consumed by what we call the phoenix flame.”

“Phoenix? You mean we rise from the dead in flames?” Daniel was growing alarmed now. Every time he spoke to Derasthe, more and more of his religious beliefs were challenged.

“When you awoke on that black cloud, you were already dead. Somehow you brought the husks of your mortal bodies with you, which was why you were so disfigured. The black cloud only existed in your minds, as did the healing you thought you witnessed. When you fell back to earth, the flames overtook you before the atmosphere did and burned away everything mortal about you. In short, you “died” again but after you entered the water, the flames didn’t extinguish until you reincarnated.”

“So what does that mean? Who can kill an angel?” Michael asked.

“Granted, not many. And it takes a great deal of force—a nuclear explosion would feel like a nice warm sunny day to you. But another angel is a different matter. An angel of sufficient power, such as Gabriel or even you, my prince, could do it.”

“I remember now,” Michael nodded, his ears stinging after hearing himself addressed as ‘my prince’.

Derasthe tried to smile. “However, that occasion is very rare---Metatron loves his angels, even the most rebellious of them. Asmodeus says that the worst punishment he’s ever seen him dole out is a term or two shoveling shit in hell. Kind of like doing time in a prison here, only with perks.”

“Perks?” Michael echoed. “What are perks?”

“Advantages—privileges if you will. An angel on assignment in hell gets to torture lost souls. Creativity is encouraged.”

“I’d like that!” Michael nodded, grinning.

“You would,” Daniel glanced at a nearby clock. “It’s getting late. We have to get home soon. School tomorrow you know. I want to get in some practice before we leave.”

“And so school begins here,” Derasthe nodded in agreement, drawing his sword from nowhere as they headed for the door.