Everybody's wrong, you know. About Gabriel's madness.
Oh, she's quite mad. That's obvious. But why she is mad...that's where
everybody's got the wrong idea. Or, rather, ideas.
Word-friction? Pleeease. Gabriel's dealt with the bozo for millenia.
And one would think that, if that were it, Belial would be as crackers as
she is (okay, admittedly, it would be hard to tell, but still...)
Actually, if you were to go and look at Gabriel's instructions to her, um,
his, Servitors before she, um he (look, I'm just going to call her 'she'
from now on. It's just easier. Deal with it.) went bonkers, you might
pick out a pattern. A pattern which suggests that maybe the so-called
'warning signs' of Gabriel's mental breakdown were a ruse on her part, a
ruse to make her appear weak. A ruse meant to draw out Belial for some
heavy-duty, old-school smiting. Given that, I think that we can safely
rule out Word-friction.
What about her connection to God? Again, she had been dealing with that
for ages. And I, for one, don't believe God would punish her with madness
in the course of being His Divine Speakerphone. And don't give me that
hooey about the pressure of everything building up over time until it was
too much for her. She's Fire -- the light of the stars and core of the
planet. She knows how to handle pressure.
The Trial? Well, that did put her in a bit of snit. It -was- rather
insulting. But it wasn't the cause; more like the...spark.
I can see the pain in your eyes. Look, I'll let you in on what really
went down, seeing as you want to help your Mistress so much. But I really
doubt there's anything you can do about it; there isn't anything
anybody can do about it, except wait, hope and pray. Swear to keep what
I tell you to yourself. That's a good little Malakite.
Like I said, Gabriel was not too happy about being hauled before the
Council by Dominic. But, she is an Archangel. One of the good guys.
She knew that Dominic was really only doing his job (even if he was being
a jerk about it and even if she did say a lot of hot-headed things she
probably shouldn't have). But she just wasn't able to defend her actions
very well (being a Divine Speakerphone doesn't mean you get to know why or
what you are saying). But she did want to reassure everybody that she was
okay. And, if they were worried about her the way she was, then she would
change what she was and make the issue moot. Wind isn't the only dynamic
Word, after all.
Impulsive? Well, yeah. Impulsiveness and Fire are no strangers.
So she went to her Volcano, got it and everything else in order, and
decided to make her change on the spot. (Did I mention this was an
impulsive decision?). I wish she had told somebody, anybody, what she
was going to do. You can be blessed sure that Soldekai would have, at the
very least, made sure another Archangel was there to supervise things.
But she told no one.
The change itself was supposed to be quick and fairly straightforward. I
mean, she had seen others do it before. Heck, she almost did it herself,
back in the day. So she saw no reason why she couldn't do it now.
The change was primarily an emotional one, an transformation fueled by
Divine Fury, something Fire had in spades. Her idea was to center herself
on her divine connection, summon all the Divine Anger she could muster
(which was, of course, a lot. I imagine she only had to imagine the
bozo's face to get the ball rolling), focus her Will, and speak the words.
As far as she knew, that was all that she needed.
Honestly, anyone would think the power of Fire, a connection to God and
the Will of one of the most powerful and ancient beings in all Creation
should be enough to do almost anything.
Well, to her credit, she almost pulled it off. She got a quarter of the
way though the process before something went wrong. Maybe some element
was missing; maybe she started with the wrong premise, or maybe, the
wrong promise. Maybe Word-friction did play a part after all. Maybe
God just simply didn't want it to happen again. Regardless, something
happened, and Gabriel's mind took the brunt of the awesome forces she had
summoned and tried to channel.
Soldekai found her then, and immediately called for the others and I. The
Council knows, of course. We saw her just after it happened, and it was
pretty simple to piece together what she had tried to do. She herself
doesn't remember, though; the process destroyed that memory, leaving her
even more confused. She doesn't remember even if you explain it to her.
Believe me, we've tried.
We saw her, raving, in her naked celestial form, the one we Archangels
rarely show. We saw her -- burning rings of flame brighter than the sun.
But we also saw the new ring -- one that was added and surrounded her
constantly, like a dark corona. A ring made of words. Words that, if you
looked close enough, said 'I shall not suffer the cruel to go without
proper punishment' over and over in a long, dark chain.
It was hard to see my choirmate (or should I say our choirmate?) in that
state. We tried to help her, of course. But we couldn't reverse what she
did or cause the process to finish. So we had to let her go (who could
hold her?), and to hope. We decided not to reveal what we knew; Hell
might find some way of using it against her, and we didn't want others up
here attempting to duplicate the experiment. We guarded the knowledge for
her sake. And now we wait, hoping that time will help her stabilize and
recover. We hope that, someday, she will work through the damage and
heal. And we (or, rather, most of us) allow this New Crusade to happen,
since it allows her Servitors to channel their pain, and because getting
rid of Belial and his crew, while it may not help, certainly wouldn't
hurt.
And I, for my part, do what I can to keep the bozo off her back. A good
breeze can change the course of even Infernal flame, after all.
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