by M. D. Grimm
On Wings of Thunder
On Wings Saga 1
M.D. Grimm
On Wings of Thunder
On Wings Saga 1
By M.D. Grimm
Cover Art by sin
Copyright 2021 M.D. Grimm
Smashwords Edition
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Epilogue
About This Book
About M.D. Grimm
Other Titles by M.D. Grimm
Connect with M.D. Grimm
Prologue
The storm had arrived. And so had their fates.
Mykial stared at his four companions and knew none of them would survive this fight. He also couldn’t deny that they had brought this doom down upon themselves and their people. What had begun as an act of purification would end in a mass slaughter of angels if they didn’t do something to stop the black colossus heading their way.
“He’s coming,” Uryal said, her gleaming violet eyes dark with terror.
“Let him.” Lucifr might have sneered, but even his pride could not hide his own fear. His jaw was set in stubbornness, but his black wings fluttered with anxiety.
“We cannot kill him, Mykial,” Rafyel said, gray eyes wide, locked on the black storm clouds and blinding lightning that sped toward them. A beast on the hunt. The air began to burn, and a feeling of suffocation washed over them as the tempest grew ever closer.
“No, we cannot kill him,” Mykial said. “But we can trap him.”
Gabryl, who had been silent for some time, eyed Mykial. “That is your solution? A cage? How can you cage a force of destruction?”
“We had better find out,” Mykial snapped. “Or all the realms will be nothing but ash.”
Gabryl had voiced a different opinion of what was to be done concerning the purification…. It was unpopular, even treasonous. Angels and demons united? Preposterous, pure insanity! Mykial, chosen as commander, was ashamed of his brother, who had been chosen as a knowledge keeper. But still Gabryl was there beside the four of them, ready to give his life to protect their world. Mykial couldn’t ask for more, not now.
Gabryl and Mykial couldn’t be more different as brothers, from looks to temperament. Gabryl had large golden wings and hair the deepest black with blue highlights. But Mykial had golden hair and wings of purest white. Gabryl’s piercing green eyes met Mykial’s stony amber ones, and despite the anger between them, they would stand together.
Uryal, Rafyel, and Lucifr, as different in coloring as the two brothers were from each other, were nonetheless great friends and had been since childhood. Rafyel and Uryal were even paired, a chef and a guardian of the gates. But now they were all the Upper Realm had for defense against the storm, the rest of the garrisons fighting demons at every gate of the city. The clashes of armies could barely be heard over the howling of the winds and the roaring of the thunder.
Messengers had come swiftly from all cities beyond the capital city of Emphoria, to beg for aid, to demand information. It wasn’t just here that the demons were breaking through, it was the entire Upper Realm. Never before had such an assault been perpetrated by their dark cousins. In better times, they wouldn’t have done so at all. It was the beast that drove them. The beast the angels had provoked by enacting their laws.
Mykial called to his friends, the five most powerful angels of their age, and they grouped together to create a spell. The black descended, blocking out the light of the stars and moon. It was desolate, thick as smoke, and all-encompassing. Soon it was only the five of them and their light that shone against the storm.
They turned their backs to each other and held hands as the darkness blanketed the capital city of the Upper Realm. The black was weighted and in the distance he heard spires fall, the crashing a constant stab to his heart. His mate was out there. His children. He’d never see them again.
Mykial’s heart thudded in his chest, and he didn’t bother to curse himself a fool. He’d had his own misgivings about the purification. His own heart hurt with the loss even as it burned with betrayal. While he couldn’t agree with Gabryl’s suggestion—Mykial would never condone something so treasonous—yet still, doubt was inside him. Now they would all reap the punishment for their own arrogance. He couldn’t help but wonder if Gabryl’s plan could have saved them.
Fool! You would rather die than unite with demons!
But as Mykial stared into the darkness, he wondered if that was still true.
As it was only the five of them, there was no one to record what they did this day. No one to record that it was impossible to kill such a creature as the one descending upon them like death made flesh and bone. Perhaps it was better that way. Let the rest of the angels think that they had defeated the great dragon.
Asagoroth.
Out of the darkness, two eyes appeared, devoid of pupils. They were a blue that blazed as hot and as bright as a star. Mykial couldn’t look directly into them and had to turn his gaze away. The heat of the storm, of the dragon, flashed, and Mykial feared he would melt. Red flames appeared in thin lines inside the darkness, and Mykial knew Asagoroth had surrounded them with his monstrous body.
“You took what was mine,” Asagoroth said, his guttural voice booming all around them. It rattled Mykial’s bones, and he gritted his teeth against the pain. “Now I shall take what is yours. And consume it.”
“Now!” Mykial shouted.
Together the five angels chanted their spell. They fused their life energy together as one, becoming more powerful than any of them could be alone. A nimbus of yellow light grew around them, blowing back the darkness… before enfolding it like a cocoon.
Asagoroth roared, and Mykial felt blood leak from his ears, his eyes. The sting was agonizing, but he struggled on, never once stopping or faltering. They couldn’t stop. All would be lost if they did. He doubted even the Lower Realm, Asagoroth’s own birthplace, would be spared his wrath.
The spell slowly encased the great dragon. Each of the five knew they were giving up their current lives and the possibility for another future life, and each did it without hesitation or regret. Their lives were not their own. They were chosen. They lived for the Upper Realm and for their people.
But even as the spell encased Asagoroth and his powers, all five angels heard the dragon chant. He was creating his own spell, using his power and linking it with theirs. There was nothing they could do about it. If they stopped, the spell would fail and they would die in disgrace. Holding hands, their voices joined as one and the light around them shone like a beacon inside the black.
The dragon’s
voice, in stark contrast, was a terrifying dark light that came from the very bowels of the universe. It rose from the Lower Realm, a place of heat and darkness and foul things. His voice joined with theirs, different words almost making a mockery of their own. His bright eyes stared at the angels, triumphant and bloodthirsty. This would be a draw for both sides; neither would win this day, but neither would lose. There would be a standstill in the war that would be completed in another age.
The yellow light fully encased the black dragon and his darkness, shrinking to an impossible size, and as the angels chanted their last words, so did Asagoroth. The stars shone again, the distant moon casting its soft pale light once more on the Upper Realm.
A small portion of spire that had survived Asagoroth’s initial onslaught soon received the small, yellow ball. It bounced into a crack and slid inside. The angels’ spell compelled the light to rebuild the structure, imprisoning Asagoroth deeper into the foundation. Coalescing out of sparkling, yellow fog, a flat top replaced the traditional spire, creating a platform.
Even as the dragon settled into his prison, each of the five angels, one by one, fell from the sky. Their wings became gray and their bodies turned ghostly before dissolving; soon nothing was left of them, not even mist.
Mykial had been wrong when he thought no one would witness their sacrifice.
A young, dumbstruck scribe poked his head out of hiding, his eyes as large as the moon, his mouth dropped open. He knew the spell the angels had cast. He also knew the one Asagoroth had chanted, for he was fluent in the demonic dialects. He thought he knew what the future would bring, and he was scared to write what he knew. But what disaster would befall his people, the realms, if he didn’t? He’d been chosen as a scribe, and that was his job: to record history.
So he did. He stood on the newly formed platform first, however, squinting and searching for any evidence of the ball. He saw a long crack that nearly bisected the platform. He knelt and bent over, pressing his face to the crack. He saw something that made him recoil and break out in a cold sweat. He struggled to his feet and moved away, certain that while the great dragon was hidden and buried for now, he would come back just as powerful.
It was that day, as the demons quickly retreated, fleeing the sight of their defeated commander, that the scribe started his masterwork. Even when the other angels returned to the city to rebuild what was destroyed, he continued to write and draw. The story of the elders—for that was what the five angels were soon called—consumed the rest of his life. He painstakingly wrote and drew the events that led up to the final battle as well as his own predictions of what would happen afterward. But there was one thing he left out: what Gabryl had said before the purification took place. The union of angels and demons. The scribe couldn’t write that. He knew he couldn’t. But the writer in him, the truth teller in him, couldn’t avoid it all together. He wrote a smaller volume, one he hoped would be lost to time, lost and forgotten. But he wrote what Gabryl had said, what he had claimed would be the permanent solution to the war between angels and demons. After the scribe finished that volume, he tucked it away.
He slaved over the greater tome, over the details, his own feelings, writing it all in Ancient Enochian. The great dragon would fly again. One day his darkness would consume everything.
But the scribe hoped the future would not be so bleak. He hoped the one who would awaken the great dragon and set him free would know how to divert his wrath. The scribe hoped one angel would be enough to stop a war that would destroy the three realms and burn the entire universe to ash.
Chapter One
A millennium later
There was a circle of six classmates surrounding him, and he was being shoved back and forth like a game ball. That was expected. He was dizzy, sore, and they only laughed at his confusion and handled him more roughly. That was normal. Then the captain of the bully squad shoved him particularly hard, and no one caught him. Two stood aside, and he stumbled between them, falling hard among the vibrant red roses and shiny yellow daffodils. But even as he hit the ground, he felt it give way underneath him. A crack, a snap, and then he was falling, and stale, musty air enveloped him. He smashed onto the stony bottom of whatever he’d fallen into with a gasp of pain, the breath knocked out of him.
That wasn’t expected.
Gasping for air, Trystan stared wide-eyed at the opening he’d fallen through. It was the only light available, and it showed him that he’d plunged into a narrow hole, like a well, with sheer stone walls. Dust and dirt fluttered down, and he coughed, rolling over onto his side. He winced and thanked his lucky stars he’d shimmered his wings intangible as soon as he’d landed in the gardens, before the mob. They could have been damaged by the fall. He hoped this hole wasn’t too narrow to fly out. There should be at least enough room for a good leap.
“Why don’t you stay down there, Unchosen?” Makhail said, the asshole captain of the bully squad. “Seems the perfect place for you.”
Laughter and jeers followed his apparently witty statement, and Trystan listened to it fade as the bullies walked away, leaving him. That was fine by him. He wanted to be left alone.
Trystan quickly determined there wasn’t any serious damage to his body—though his robe was a different story—and sat up. But even as he slid his hand along the stone floor, he felt something sharp cut his palm. Cringing, Trystan flinched and looked at his hand. Pink blood welled along the deep, diagonal slice across his palm, the sting annoying.
“Great. Perfect.” He sighed. “I hate my life.”
Trystan was an unchosen. In a world where one’s life, profession, and destiny were determined at birth by the seer, the unchosen were a disgrace. For him it was worse than for others. His parents were accomplished and formidable commanders of the Upper Realm’s armies. They reported directly to the angels’ ultimate ruler: the high chancellor. Commander Gabreld and Commander Lavella had been paired at a young age and produced five children. Of those five children, Trystan was the youngest, and one of the only ten unchosen born in his generation.
He didn’t see his parents often. In fact, he’d only seen them a handful of times since he had left home at five years of age and been put with others like him. His parents were never mean or cruel to him, not like the bullies who knocked him down into this hole. No, his parents had fed him, cared for him, and perhaps in their own way, loved him. But they never went out of their way to see him, nor did they often send messages or letters. He knew they communicated frequently with his sister Annalise, a knowledge keeper. His other brothers and sister were in different cities spread across the Upper Realm, and he never saw them or heard from them.
He was a dirty secret no one wanted to bring attention to.
Trystan stared at the blood on his hand and fought back the tears of frustration and resignation. He would never be anything or anyone. He would never be wanted.
Shaking his head, he sat back on his heels and watched the blood slide off his hand and splatter on the stone. But even as he watched, his blood started to… move?
Eyes widening, Trystan leaned forward, certain he was imagining things. The light from the opening suddenly shone brighter as the sun moved into position directly above. He wasn’t imagining things. His blood was moving! That was also when he noticed the stone floor wasn’t smooth like the walls: there was a carving sliced deeply into it. He couldn’t determine what the etching was, the light wasn’t that good, but it didn’t seem random. There was definitely some purpose to it. His blood was drawn to those grooves. It filled a small portion of the indentation and then simply settled there. Curiosity burning, Trystan held his hand over the carving and let more of his blood drip down. Once again, as if drawn by some unseen force, his blood rolled to the grooves and began filling them out, defining them.
A small part of the carving was soon highlighted with his blood, and Trystan could make out an artistic rendering of a thick neck with scales and horns.
Was this a rendition of a demon?
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“But why?” he whispered. “Why would we have a carving of a demon at the bottom of an old well in the Center Garden?”
The sound of a bell ringing nearby jolted Trystan back to the present. He cursed as he pushed to his feet. If he was late for class again, he would be punished. Thankfully the school was barely a five-minute flight away. He shimmered his wings into visibility and spread them, white-gold and gossamer feathers rustling faintly in the narrow well. He looked up at the opening and bent his knees, tucking his arms close to his sides. Wings tense, focused, Trystan leapt up and managed to fly right out of the opening. He spun around, his white robe, now dirty and ripped, jerking around his legs, and landed next to the hole, folding his wings behind him. Without considering what he was doing, Trystan hurriedly covered the hole—as quickly as he could with one hand—with vegetation and branches.
“I’ll come back,” he said softly. Then he frowned, shook his head. By the Light, why was he talking like that carving could hear him? Just one more reason why he was an unchosen.
Trystan scowled and launched into the air, tucking his wounded hand close to his side. He had to treat it, change robes, and get to class before the second bell rang, or else.
A beast moved in the dark. Partially awakened from his stupor, he listened and he felt. He’d known the passage of time, been aware of it, but he had been unable to feel anything but deepest rage, the burning desire for revenge. Smoldering in the dark, he was an ember ready to become full fire, waiting for the time of his release, waiting for when the spell that caged him was broken. Now he sensed someone he’d never forgotten, heard a whisper of their voice, felt the slight brush of their touch.
The beast knew he didn’t have long to wait.