“Ayangelo, Angel Prince,” I force the words from my lips, “I have searched your soul and found you lacking.”
He grimaces at my words, the pain in his eyes almost convincing me to look away, although I know I cannot.
You have to finish, I tell myself, thankful at least that this is merely a mediation and not a judgement that will claim someone’s head.
“The Tengu will not turn an entire race out to slaughter to satisfy the personal grievances of one Angel.”
Aya clenches his teeth at my ruling. Turning to Natius, I close my eyes again. Unlike his brother, Natius’ soul is dark but sincere—a man who knows and accepts both who he is and the situation he has found himself in. Fear, self-doubt, and intimidation from the monumental task of leading a horde of Demons after being raised by Angels is evident in every fiber of his being. His grief at the relationships lost, the Angel deaths in this very battle to make way for his people to enter the Between, weighs heavily upon his young shoulders.
“Natius,” I whisper, opening my eyes to meet his uncertain gaze.
He knows I like Aya, I realize now. He must be afraid if even Aya is not worthy, he won’t stand a chance.
“I have searched your soul, and found you worthy of your request.”
An outcry and surge of magic toward me from the Angels is blocked only by the scarlet smoke heralding Dorathea’s convenient arrival. The Tengu army takes on the Angels, parrying the magical attacks with spears and swords that reflect spells. The Demons, sensing their opportunity to take out more Angels, throw themselves into the fray. Natius and Aya are quickly swallowed in the crowd and disappear from view.
Is she helping me on purpose?
The panic on the Oracle’s face displaces that idea, though. Grabbing my hand, she traces a rune of some kind into it with a piece of red chalk.
“You must return to the castle,” Dorathea says, “immediately.”
“I can’t just leave!”
“You have no choice! Lucef is here!”
My blood turns to ice, my heart freeing in my chest. My mouth moves as though to repeat the forbidden name of the Devil, but no sound comes out. The creator of all Lower Worlders, the Demons included, is in my castle? A holy place?
“You have no time to fly,” Dorathea says. “Dorathea will go before you. Wait five seconds, and then repeat the word Dorathea is about to say. Your soul will transmute into my body, and your body will follow it, as you are still in the Between.”
“That… sounds… painful?” I mutter, having never heard of such a thing.
“It will be,” Dorathea says. Stepping back, she says, “Ilvariante.”
“Wait! What will happen to you?!”
But she is already gone. A Tengu falls dead at my side, an Angel arrow piercing his side and Demon arrows piercing his back.
“Mirada!” I shout, hoping she can hear me among the fray. “Break off! Retreat!”
The Tengu pull back, halting their battle. Holding my hands in front of me as though about to pray, I take a single deep breath.
“Ilvariante.”
Pain erupts within me, and the world fades away.
Chapter Seven
The sound of dying screams and metal clashing against metal and skin is the first sense to return to me aside from my pain. Thick, foul, choking smoke hits me, along with a wall of heat; burning flesh and the gut-churning stench of death turn my stomach.
Am I still on the battlefield?
Faint at first, light edges into my vision. Blurring in and out of focus, I can scarcely make out the Tengu castle burning high into the sky even as winged beings douse it with bucket after bucket of water. Slowly my vision clears, my body grows heavier, and the noise rises around me like a roar. My ears pop as my body catches up to me, a wave of dizziness driving me to one knee while I reacclimate to being back in my body. Looking down, I see the red mark in my hand now only an unreadable smear of chalk.
I should have studied it closer! What if I need to trade places with Dorathea again? I curse at myself.
Around me, creatures I have never seen swarm up the walls and into the Tengu main compound. More smoke than creature, these beings ruffle in the wind. They stand as tall as many Human men, with a human physique, but their faces are bestial of all different kinds, some mixed together like lions with snakes for tails or horses with lions’ heads. All are black with flames in place of eyes and gaping, flaming holes where mouths would be.
A score of large lizard-like men charge past me bearing swords, axes, and pitchforks against my people. No one on either side pays any attention to me, as though I’m not even here.
The fire burning the castle is, by some miracle, lessening. Jumping to my feet and drawing my sword, I slash my way through the dark beings and try to find a way inside. To my surprise, the main keep is the only building burning.
Drawing closer, I see that it is not the main keep that is burning at all. Instead, a barrier of flames blocks any from entering or leaving the main keep. However, only creatures touching it appear to be burned.
“Let me through!” I shout to the bucket brigade between me and the castle.
The Tengu civilians, shaken and pale and many with tear-streaked faces, part for me. A shocked silence falls over the crowd of bucket-bearing Tengu when the flames part slightly for me as well. An ominous, wavering aura floats around the building, making every goosebump on my body rise and the hair on my arms stand on end.
“Rei-hime, Riara-hime is in there!” someone calls, their voice thick from either the smoke or from sobbing.
Nodding, I force myself through the flames. They close behind me, only a feather’s length behind my wings. I try to steady my shaking hands, to focus on facing Lucef, but more of what I assume are his Devils creep up on either side of me, creating a single path I can take.
These creatures are even fouler than their fighting counterparts outside. These resemble serpents, spiders, and slinking creatures summoned from nightmares. These have wide, white or black bulbous eyes instead of red flames that pierce through me. Wheezing soft hisses and grumbles float on the wind from them to me. The most disturbing thing about them, though, is the lack of auras to surround them.
Stepping up into the main keep, one look at the charred, smudged bamboo flooring is all it takes to convince me to keep my shoes on.
Whatever holiness our keep held before is tainted, at the least, if not gone altogether.
The keep is strangely silent as I pad quietly on the balls of my leather-clad feet across floors meant to betray those who would be stealthy. I have to focus on each specific square of the tatami’s bamboo flooring to keep from stepping on the uneven portion in each square that would give away my location.
I don’t know why I’m bothering, I think miserably, shooting glares at the Devils creeping along behind and beside me through the halls while the floors creak and groan beneath them.
I climb a set of stairs and stop short at the top. The bodies of dead Tengu soldiers block me from easily passing. I have to flap my wings to help me over them. Beyond them, the hallway is smeared with blood and corpses liter the floor—servants and soldiers alike lie unmoving all the way to the wide-open paper-screen doors of the interior receiving room where my father held court.
With it being daylight, the paper walls should be illuminated, along with the interior of the keep. Instead, it is as black as a moonless, starless night. Candles burn ahead of me in the receiving room, and I move toward it with more ease than I expect to be able to. Scanning every body I pass, I am relieved to see that none of them are Riara or my mother.
I’m only a few steps from the receiving room when the two mute servant women step out the doors. Dressed in white bridal kimono, both women have donned perfectly applied traditional wedding makeup and are without even a spot of the blood that sullies everything else around us. One of them stands to either side of the door, smiling at me with eyes that are anything but kind. With a bow, they both motion for me to enter.<
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Stepping inside, I am stopped in my tracks by the emotionless void that engulfs me. Riara sits upon the onyx throne dressed in her own white wedding kimono. There is no color, only white, within her eyes, and yet she smiles at me as though catching my gaze. Her black wings have transformed into thinner, wispier feathers of every color of the rainbow. My throat feels tight.
Harpy wings.
“Riara…” The whisper escapes me.
It takes all my willpower to not run to her, to stand in my place with my sword drawn, when I see her raise her petite unblemished hands and motion toward me as though begging me to take her away from all of this. I look around for Mother, but she is nowhere to be seen.
“Welcome home, Hand of Justice,” a voice so cold it literally sends shivers from head to toe through my body, greets me as if all around me at once.
“Lucef?” I ask, not sure I want the answer.
No. The Devil himself cannot be in my home.
“Your gods have abandoned you to your fate, it seems.” The voice draws back to one point, behind the onyx throne, giving me a place to focus.
The mute servants close the door behind me with a thud of finality that makes me wonder if I’ll ever leave through them.
“Why have you come? Surely you have more than enough space in your own world, Lucef.”
The servants climb the stairs, then sit on the steps to either side of my sister. A tall, thin form shrouded in darkness comes out into the candlelight at last. Reddish-brown curly hair and vibrant brown eyes stare back at me from a surprisingly young, bearded face.
He almost looks… Human?
“I am a busy man, Rei-hime, would-be Ascended of the Tengu throne. So, I will get straight to the point. You, speaking on behalf of your people, granted the spawn of my estranged and now deceased brother Draco, sanctuary within your lands not even an hour ago, if I am not mistaken?”
The mute servants glare daggers through me, their hands clenched. Even Riara’s lips are turned down and pursed, her fingers clasped together as though praying, in her lap.
“The Between is not under the ordinance of the Lower World,” I remind him, frustrated that he believes he has a right to question me.
Shifting on my feet, I wrap my fingers around a shuriken and turn slightly to steady my stance for a throw.
“I do not care that you are the Devil himself. You trespass here—your slaughter of my people is unforgiveable.”
The shuriken flies from my hand so fast that I don’t even see it leave my fingers. Even so, a pale hand snatches it from the air. With a thin smile, one of the servants bows and holds the blade out to Lucef. When her eyes cut to me again, her expression changes to one of loathing. The pieces come together for me one by one.
“You,” I say, motioning to her, “you killed my father. After all he did for you…”
Pain shoots through me as my own shuriken lodges itself firmly above my ribs. The protective plates hidden in my robes protect me from major injury, but the impact drives me to the floor and knocks the air from my lungs.
“We all know what a pedestal you set your father on.” Lucef wipes his hands as though dusting off something disgusting, wrinkling his nose at the same time. “But having a fellow Tengu’s tongue cut out because she heard too much, and then making her bury her own murdered mother in secret to prevent rumors of having a bastard heir, is not a completely noble and righteous thing to do, would you not agree?”
Lies. All lies! I was there when Father saved them both from grounding. Father would never have been unfaithful to Mother… would he lie? Would the man I respected so much truly cut out childrens’ tongues at birth just to cover his own sin?
Sickening doubts worm into my heart, and I notice that the Devil is watching me with utmost interest. Lucef is an Originator; one of the three creators of the worlds. The gods created the Heavens, Lucef created the Lower World, and together they created the Human World. The Between, though, has always been a mere stop between all three plains of existence.
He is as old as time itself. Nothing I say can surprise him.
“I ask you again, why have you laid siege to our home?”
Taking the hand of the servant who caught the shuriken, Lucef kisses her fingers. Her face melts into a sweet smile. My head spins at the sight.
“To put it simply, I’m here to collect what I am owed. You offered refuge to not one, but two of my blood-kin when I deemed their extinction necessary. For that, I am owed two Royal lives in return.”
Before I even have time to begin processing his words, his talon-like nails slit the throat of the servant whose hand he just kissed. The other servant and Riara stare straight ahead as though in a trance. The dying woman’s life flows out in a red wave down the front of her white kimono, her smile never leaving her lips.
“She just saved you!” I shout, advancing on him.
Lucef raises his hand and shoots a pointed grin at Riara, halting me in my tracks.
“An Originator’s decree, my decree, is unbreakable,” Lucef says simply, motioning for the other servant to join him by standing on his other side. “And I decreed the deaths of two half-breed Royals who escaped my grasp under the sworn protection of a Tengu Royal… an oath the Tengu backs with their own lives, do they not?”
Another swipe sends blood flowing down the front of the second servant’s neck, her body taking only seconds to crumple to the floor beside the other. Pulling a silken silver handkerchief from his waistcoat pocket, Lucef patiently wipes the blood from every single bloodied fingernail. When he turns to face Riara, my body moves on reflex. Arms outstretched, my sword forgotten, I stand between the Devil and my sister.
“You wanted two Royal lives,” I say, barely able to keep a plea from my lips, “and if what you said to me was true, you have now claimed them. Release my sister!”
Lucef’s mouth curls in a genuinely sympathetic smile, but he shakes his head.
“I am owed a third Royal,” he says simply. “But this one shall be mine to possess; it is not in repayment for a soul. No—this one is penance… penance for a bride, a Hybrid, that Draco stole from me. This penance you can serve yourself as my bride, or you can surrender one of my nephews in exchange for their father’s life, should you want your sister freed.”
My hardened shell cracks, crumbling around me, at the soulless eyes of my sister. Smoke radiates from her spine, crawling up and around her wings in hues of purple and dark green. The smoke caresses her wings, lending a strangely fluorescent rainbow hue to them. A hue that tugs at my memory and turns my stomach.
“Tick-tock, Princess,” Lucef taunts, crossing his arms. “My Harpy’s essence shuts more of your sister’s soul out with each passing second.”
Tossing my remaining weapons aside, I fall to my knees at Riara’s feet even as my sister’s once obsidian wings turn to vibrant reds, blues, greens, and yellows.
There’s no time to get Aya or Natius; even if I were willing to go back on my word.
“Take me instead!” I shout, hanging my head.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I brace myself for death, or worse. Eerie silence smothers me, dragging on and on.
I can’t even hear them breathing…
I’m about to peek up at Lucef, when a shrill, feminine, ear-splintering laugh drives pain through my brain. Cradling my aching head, my mouth open in a silent scream, I peer up to find Lucef has vanished. Riara’s eyes are wild, frenzied, and multi-colored along with her rainbow wings.
“Fool.” The voice that leaves my sister’s lips is masculine and feminine, grating and shrill, a Demon’s howl mixed with a songbird’s lilt. “Why would I want a weakling like you?!”
Interlude: Dorathea
Exhaustion wracked Dorathea’s body. Every bone ached as wrinkles momentarily rippled over her quickly aging skin, only to tighten and pull back into the smooth youthful sheen of a strong body granted by the gods in exchange for her service. Trading places with the Tengu Princess left Dorathea far more spent th
an she would have been had she translocated with another Oracle, as Rei had no magic of her own to pull from.
Sitting on the outskirts of a smoldering battlefield, Dorathea took in the remnants of an unavoidable battle between the fallen Angels and risen Demons. Glazed-over pale blue and grey eyes of Angel warriors reflected the sky—eyes that would never close again. Alongside them, heaps of Demons of every shape and size, ranging in appearance from imps to monstrosities nightmares are made of, lay still and silent. Only Demons remained on the field, the brief battle having been decided before Dorathea could even fully regain her wits.
Ironic, she thought bitterly as the smell of burning flesh and feathers, filth and blood, accosted her sensitive nose. Draco left Lucef’s kingdom behind to be with Seracuse, and Seracuse left the Heavens for Draco, only to have their sons murder each other.
Scavenger Demons, the weaker units of the Demon King Natius’ new army, found the few remaining heavenly survivors and ended them. Dorathea shuddered all over and looked away from the desolate field. Her heart threatened to fail at the sickening crack of wings snapping from spines and the brief, broken cries of their owners. They couldn’t scream long, though, before their heads were ripped from their necks with the same brute force the Scavengers used to first take the Angels’ wings.
Natius, now unhindered by the small party of Angels who attempted to block him, urged his exhausted and wounded horde further into the Between. He was unsure where they would end up but needed to escape the Gate before more beings appeared to claim their space in the Between.
Circling the boundaries of the battle, Dorathea found Ayangelo—alive but unconscious—pinned to a nearby tree with a spear through each wing. Tears trickled from the Oracle’s face as she braced herself for her next duty for the gods—freeing and securing the sole remaining Angel. She had seen Ayangelo’s future—knew his failure—from the moment she accepted this assignment. The eradication of an entire once-heavenly race was too much for her to bear.
Down Falls The Queen: A Splitting Worlds Novella (The Splitting Worlds Series) Page 5