right to coerce anyone into participating. Exacerbating matters is Abdiel, who craves Satan's rank. Abdiel begins playing Satan against Yaweh, telling each of them that the other will no longer discuss matters. Step by step, the factions escalate. Abdiel attempts to wound Beelzebub and accidentally kills the innocent Ariel. When Satan and Beelzebub attempt to avenge this, Raphael and Michael misinterpret this as proof their opponents have abandoned all decency. Yaweh, attempting to rally his side, convinces his supporters that he is not only the eldest of the Firstborn, he is God. This announcement stuns not only his opponents, but even Michael, his closest supporter. Using the energy of his newfound worshippers, he creates a new angel, Yeshuah, who he proclaims his son and heir. As the war continues, Zaphkiel intercepts Satan and brings him directly to Yaweh, where the two discover that Abdiel has played them both for fools. However, Satan will not acknowledge Yaweh's dishonest claim to Godhood, and neither will Yaweh abandon it, so the conflict continues. Abdiel, now on the run from both sides, begins digging a hole in the wall of Heaven, but Mephistopheles finds and strangles him before he can finish the work. Satan's hosts gain the ascendancy in the battle. Seeing that defeat is inevitable, Yaweh decides to destroy Heaven by expanding the hole that Abdiel had been deepening. Yet when the wall of Heaven is breached, flooding Heaven with cacoastrum, Yaweh finds that he cannot allow himself to be destroyed by the cacoastrum; it is not in his nature. Yeshuah, seeing an opportunity to triumph over Satan's forces, sacrifices his life by leaping into the breach and directing the rupture towards the hosts of Satan, devastating them. Meanwhile, as the rebels fight for Heaven, Satan is captured but with the help of Beelzebub and Mephistopheles leaves Heaven; his followers join him in the abyss and create a third stronghold: Hell. Footnotes 1984 American novels 1984 fantasy novels American fantasy novels Fiction about the Devil Novels by Steven Brust Lilith