by Wall, Nathan
“You are no traitor,” Uriel said as the aurascales slid away from his face. His lips quivered with heartbreak. “You didn’t write the code.”
“How else could I keep them from blaming you as well, other than to fall onto the blade myself?” Gabriel replied, touching his forehead to Uriel’s. His breathing stagnated. “Michael must be warned. Raphael will mislead the others in order to make him the culprit.”
“How do you know he’s not to blame?” Uriel clung tightly to Gabriel’s hands, as if trying to pull him from death’s clutches.
“Faith,” Gabriel hacked, tapping his chest. “Souls are far too powerful to be contained by just any angel. Only one strong enough has use for them. Raphael will accuse Michael next until total command is his.”
Uriel scooped up Gabriel and lumbered forward with fiery determination in his eyes. “I will not give up so easily.” He looked at Gabriel, who slowly drifted unconscious. “The aurascales will heal you.”
“Mine… are gone.” He dozed off, yet still drew faint breath.
Uriel powered into Gabriel’s personal quarters. The lights activated, responding to Gabriel’s presence. Uriel marched for the halo in his friend’s armory and laid Gabriel down in the middle of the catwalk.
Uriel soared to the far end of the room, where Gabriel’s starstone used to rest. “I too removed myself from the Deliverance to bond with my star.” He looked back at Gabriel and nodded reverently. “I now I give it to you.”
Uriel swiped his hand across the control panel and the large slate-gray rings rotated around Gabriel. Uriel ran up the steps of the platform and stood on the opposite end. Static light crackled and tore into him. His skin split apart along his face, legs, abdomen and back, light erupting from his eyes. The aurascales flew off his body and flowed onto Gabriel. The armor pierced into his wounds and sealed them shut. Uriel fell face-first onto the platform while Gabriel slowly pushed himself to his knees. After a few laborious minutes, he crawled over to his friend’s side.
“Your sacrifice was not necessary.” Gabriel hugged his brother and squeezed tightly.
He turned his head when the walls in his chamber shifted. Someone was here. Gabriel stood to face his prosecutors, and sure enough, Raphael, along with several other angels, walked up the platform of Gabriel’s armory and observation deck. Through the glass dome, the rainbow falls erupted with unusual activity. There was no place among them for shadows to hide.
“You stand before us in your friend’s armor?” Raphael questioned, his aurascales beaming. A short sword and shield materialized in his grasp. The other angels followed suit. “This is not too unlike the scene that unfolded when you led the charge against Azrael. He stood before you and the others in his full armor, and you questioned his motives.”
“That was different...”
“How?” Raphael jumped and landed in front of Gabriel with a thud. A few of the other angels soared across the dome and landed on the other end of the catwalk. Gabriel was surrounded. “Oh yes, it was very different. Azrael rebelled out of love for humanity. His tender-heartedness saw him expelled. That grated at you, didn’t it? He was able to inspire a second war all because he was kind and loved. But you, the great messenger of God, the Herald of the all knowing, you were knocked down a peg. You’ve always looked down on the humans, and so you impregnated the code with a disease.”
“I did, and I’ve used the trust of Uriel against him and stolen his aurascales,” Gabriel said, stepping away from Uriel and toward Raphael. “And I will now use the power of the Light of Souls to destroy you.
Raphael’s tongue was stilled. His eyes twitched as he searched for words. Confused, he said, “You will have to destroy us from exile.” He nodded at the other angels, giving a silent command.
“I am one of the original Archangels.” Gabriel’s flaming sword exploded with power. “Do not push this any further. You will not like where it leads.”
Those Raphael commanded engaged. Gabriel deflected a strike to his right. Raphael’s wings sparkled, expanding as he lunged forward. He kicked Gabriel in the chest, knocking him off kilter. A lucky slash caught Gabriel across the tiger helmet and a beam of light protruded through the gash.
A spear thrust into Gabriel’s shoulder. Another’s mallet went across his shin. They all attacked at once, bringing him to the floor. The eye slits in his faceguard burned crimson and the aurascales vibrated so quickly that they began to sing. He jumped up, slinging the cherubs off.
Gabriel took Raphael by the throat, jabbing his stomach repeatedly. He threw the traitor toward the bottom of the observation dome, but Raphael simply flapped his wings and hovered back toward the catwalk. Gabriel stumbled about woozily.
“Do you feel the poison running through you?” Raphael swooped through the air, knocking Gabriel off the platform like a wrecking ball and onto the glass landing twenty feet below.
Raphael followed, landing on the splintered glass. The massive celestial waterfall of light was in full view. The edge of eternity stood in darkness at the end of the rainbow falls. Only the most prestigious were afforded quarters endowed with the awe-inspiring view. It was also forbidden for any to journey through. The exit on the other side was a great unknown. One might find themselves slipping through the fabric of history.
“You know not what you do.” Gabriel tried to sit up, lethargically raising a hand.
“But I do.” Raphael knelt to bludgeon with an open palm. “They’ve all seen the code for themselves. While they’re focused on the Light of Souls, I have the real prize.” He held up the necklace he tore from Gabriel’s neck. A broken piece of the Forge was attached to it. “There can be no third rebellion when the first is yet to be decided.”
“No,” Gabriel protested. His aurascales retreated from his face and skin to hide inside the body. Blood seeped from his mouth and nose. “You can’t set him free.”
“You will die, traitor!” Raphael shouted. He slammed Gabriel’s head into the tempered glass. He whispered, “Imagine the power he’ll contain when he absorbs all the souls I’ve been siphoning for eons.”
Gabriel’s aurascales suddenly surged into action. They sealed his wounds and spread across him to form a protective egg shaped cocoon. A pulse of energy knocked Raphael away and destroyed the glass floor. The traitor regained his balance, hovered midair, and watched helplessly as Gabriel’s cocoon vanished through the rainbow falls.
He soared back into Gabriel’s armory, landing on the catwalk. The others gathered around. Uriel awoke from his separation with his aurascales. Raphael’s frustrated and disappointed scowl seemed to bring light to Uriel’s hopeful face.
“Where’s Gabriel?” Uriel asked, pushing the others away for space to breathe. Raphael knelt beside him, looking down his nose at Heaven’s new highest ranking messenger. “Tell me,” Uriel pleaded.
“He fell into the darkness, imprisoned like Azrael.” Raphael stood, turned his back to the others, and marched off with determination. “We’ve much to do. We need to ensure the betrayal ended with Gabriel.” He stopped and looked at the others. “After all, what would a messenger, someone incapable of harnessing the power of souls, want with the Light?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Horus IV
The land around him was desolate. It had been laid to waste by a riptide of solar magnitude and sucked back into the epicenter. He knew as much from his lessons with Sobek. The sand dancing in the wind like cautious paint strokes of rusted brown, in an impact zone a few miles in radius, was a telltale sign that a starstone had imploded. It must have been a weaker starstone, likely from a muse.
He’d studied guardians losing their lives on the battlefield, desolating mountains, shifting rivers and creating lakes when their starstones were destroyed. There was a famous battle in a place that was once called Babylon, which he’d rigorously investigated for a report at age twelve. A human army led by Alexander the Great had procured a starstone from an angel in the Western Corner, thought to be Poseidon, b
ut its power eventually turned against its wielders and wiped out both armies.
The most recent—and most famous—instance of a starstone releasing its ominous power was when Zeus fought Michael. The two raged in a battle that spanned a solar system. When Michael finally defeated Zeus, the latter’s starstone imploded and decimated an entire planet, turning it into an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Horus sought the being known as Death. He’d spent several Earth months seeking him and had finally made it to the place rumored to be Death’s home, but it was destroyed. There had been a battle of some kind, and an angel or a being in possession of a muse’s starstone had lost the fight. The resulting blast had wiped out a town in central Texas. After months of extensive research, Horus finally met a dead end. Maybe this Death perished in the starstone’s implosion.
He sifted through the fine dirt and scooped up a handful, opening his fingers and watching it blow away. His hawk-mask formed. The armor alerted him to the presence of human authorities. He heard the sound of aircrafts approaching, though they were still specks along the horizon.
Horus returned to his shuttle. It was a smaller aircraft, built before the Pride Rebellion. It could carry only three passengers. The front windshield slid back into the frame, allowing him to hop into the pilot’s seat. The glass covering swooshed shut and the systems slowly powered up.
“Hurry along now,” he said, trying to shift energy from the life-support, which he would only need for space travel, into the propulsion system. “You’ve got a few more flights left in you.” He tenderly rubbed the control panel.
In front of him were hundreds of rusted knobs, switches, and levers. The modern comfort of a hard-light control panel was nowhere to be seen. It was an ancient shuttlecraft known as a ‘Spear’, dubbed so due to its elongated design with a pointed bow and rounded stern. It was an echo of technology long abandoned by the angels from when they held fortresses on the planet. Luckily for Horus, he was able to find one via old maps his father had once had.
Osiris had marked every location where the Southern Corner took up residence. All Horus had to do was dig through a few ancient cities and uncover the Spear. That was important for him to do, as it allowed quick travel across the globe without using the power of his parents’ melded starstones.
The levitators kicked on. They sucked air from the top of the shuttle through twenty slits on both the port and starboard, and forced it underneath the craft through six turbines to give him lift. He pulled back on the rear propulsion and a stream of blue and purple fire shot him forward.
The wasteland below quickly turned into rolling hills of grasslands. The shuttle’s cloaking device activated before he could be spotted by human eyes. Soon there were thousands of homes filling the landscape, and cars piled on the highways and in parking lots. He plotted a course for his base of operations: Kom Ombo, where his mother and Uncle Sobek used to interact with the humans they guarded, back before the banishment of Azrael brought a change to the angelic order.
It wouldn’t be accurate to say frustration was slowly setting in. Horus was long past that point. Desperation would’ve been a more fitting description for what he felt every waking hour. The only solace he found was in time-dilation—the fact that while several arduous months had passed for him, likely only a few days had elapsed for his mother, cousin, and uncle. Still, whatever use their captors had for them would eventually come to an end. He only hoped his timeline would advance quickly enough for him to garner support before his family became nothing more than history in theirs.
His belly rumbled, not immune to the effects of operating in a different flow of time for prolonged periods. At first, his internal clock worked at the pace of his old realm. Several weeks went by and he ate only a handful of times. By the time two months rolled around, he’d completely adjusted. His normal twice-a-day feeding schedule was replaced by the traditional human cycle of three times a day.
While at Kom Ombo, he discovered stashes of gold and precious jewels. He exchanged those on the black market for human currency, which happened to be Euros, and from there converted the cash into anything that might be useful, including US Dollars and British Sterling.
He rummaged around under his seat and pulled out a bag of peanuts. It was empty, so he discarded it into the growing trash pile in the seats behind him. They were filled with chip bags, burrito wrappers—one of his new favorite meals, despite the odd color it left his feces—along with soda and water bottles.
“I must stop. Is there a taco place nearby?” he wondered aloud. His computer hacked nearby wifi signals. “A hundred results in the next twelve miles,” he said with glee. “I like this place.”
The Spear dove behind some trees, far from prying eyes. The front hatch opened, sliding back and locking into place, and he exited. His aurascales vanished, leaving behind his frayed beige cloak with bamboo toggles and dark pants. The Spear faded, blending in with its surroundings until it was invisible. He pulled the hood over his head as he approached the fast-food restaurant.
“Yes, I believe supreme nachos and five burritos are in order.” The smell made his stomach kick with excitement. While in line, he noticed several customers had their faces buried in their mobile devices while a radio played in the kitchen. The workers seemed more interested in what the voices on the radio had to say than making food.
His ears caught the sound coming from a tablet of a customer sitting near the door. The woman was watching video about a freight ship that had run ashore in Wales the day before, and how local authorities suspected the event had something to do with the alien invasion in Moscow and insurgency in London. Horus peered over her shoulder just as the video turned to an interview.
“It was the alien from those Twitter videos in Moscow. The same ghoulish face and blue eyes… Everything,” the ship worker said, visibly shaken.
Horus jetted for his shuttle craft, sprinting through traffic. A few kids were playing in the park when the shuttle de-cloaked. They dropped their bat and gloves and looked on in awe. Horus’ aurascales sizzled to the surface of his skin and his faceguard took shape. The kids scattered, screaming.
In his mind, he could think of only the half-breeds he’d recently spoken with about the Ourea and their battle that split England in two. He tried to recall their names. “Harold,” he mumbled to himself, sure that was the pudgy man’s name. He set a course for England once again.
***
Rain fell on the concrete jungle like chum into the raging sea. The clouds blotted out the full-moon, which only acted to attract ravenous nighttime beasts of the underworld. There were no friends for him among those gathered, and everyone around him knew it.
Horus was a marked man. Those gifted with the sight to see faces beyond the flesh knew there was something off about him. Nothing close to human, half-breed, or changeling, but not quite angel either. The demons were what he really had to watch out for. In small bursts, groups of two to five, they were manageable and mostly kept to themselves when dealing with beings of a higher power. When their numbers swelled like locusts in the eighth plague, they acted like hyenas. They fought in groups—cackles—and once the first punch was thrown they’d call for reinforcements.
When the numbers were in their favor, demons could take out someone much stronger than themselves. Of course, tonight, Horus was the alpha lion. Though they took a passive interest in hunting and fights in the jungle, alpha lions weren’t ones to back down when the pride was at stake. They could take their fair share of licks in a skirmish, but they always thinned out the clan enough that the few remaining hyenas thought better and fled.
Horus had last visited England two months ago, working his way west from Afghanistan, trying to better understand the events that had forever changed the realm. At that time, he met a half-blood by the name of Harold. The descendants ran with a group that often met at a place called the Progeny Lounge. Though Harold had a reputation as a strong and steady force in the underground community,
Horus found him to be little more than a drunk unwilling to cooperate. Harold admitted he’d fallen out with his master for a reason he wasn’t willing to disclose. Travel to her realm wouldn’t be permissible for him anymore, nor did he care to draw a map and leave a key. Tonight needed to be different.
“You don’t belong here, abomination,” a demon snickered as Horus passed by. He lowered his brow-line and glanced at the group of seven playing pool. His eyes didn’t linger for long, as he did not wish to draw attention. “Yeah, keep moving you freak,” he heard them laugh, but let it go.
Things had become deplorable since the last time he’d visited the establishment, which had been nothing more than a small pub in the English countryside. Now it was more like a gateway to a different dimension. The patrons on this night were more like those found in big cities like London or Prague. Previously, there was an even split of human, demon, and other paranormal guests. This time, it was mostly demons and changelings. There were plenty of Satyrs, Centaurs, Goblins and more as well. What attracted them here?
“You look lost, choir boy.” A slender, sultry vixen moseyed over. Her shoulder length, multi-colored hair was purposefully cut into uneven spikes at the ends and covered half her face. Tight leather pants accentuated her figure. She was a demon. “I must say, I haven’t come across the likes of you before.”
Horus didn’t want to acknowledge her in case he drew the ire of other demons in the pub, nor did he wish to blatantly ignore her lest he offend her. It was a tricky line to tread.
“C’mon sugar, I don’t bite… too hard.” She slid into the booth and leaned over him. She was powerful enough to have angelic sight and see what he wasn’t, though she was too young to know what he was. That was a dangerous combination for the both of them. “The name is Tunrida.”
“I didn’t ask,” he replied. “Not to be rude, but I didn’t invite you to sit with me either.”