Winters of Alnora_Birth of the Dark Angel

by Kevin J. Kessler

  Come to me, Alnora of the Night. Come and we shall create beautiful music together.

  Whether this was indeed the work of some mythical dark force or just her own inner musings giving form to her wants and desires, Alnora could not be certain. But one thing was for sure. The time to strike had arrived. These thoughts of betrayal never once activated the searing pain of the collar she continued to wear every single day for the last seventeen years. By planning her master’s demise, she was in accordance with his will, and thus the collar never registered her plotting as a punishable offense.

  She wondered, had she began planning this assassination before she was skilled enough to succeed, would the collar have stopped her? Was the lack of pain actually a blessing from the choker that had latched onto her for over half of her life? Alnora wanted so desperately to believe so. Her time was coming. The darkness and even this meddlesome trinket that had kept her in line all these years were allowing her to step forward and claim this promised mantle.

  Her master had to know that her triumphal moment was soon to arrive. She was stronger than him now by her estimation. He had to know it as well. She was mistress of the dark arts, and The Dark Angel was simply old and in the way. How should she do it though? Lay down a formal challenge? Name a time and place for them to meet and duel? The supposed honor of such an action disgusted her. It seemed like something a member of the order would do. Alnora’s take on the darkness opposed such an action on principle.

  The dark, by its nature, was deception. She knew that subterfuge, secrecy, and surprise were her greatest weapons in the oncoming campaign against the Lux. So too would these tenets assist her in claiming dominance over the darkness and the title she so richly deserved.

  Alnora moved to a bookcase located behind The Dark Angel’s desk where he still sat hunched over his reading like a possessed man. Alnora’s lips began to move as she gathered the dark unto herself, funneling it through her talismans, which hummed accordingly. This was the moment she had waited so long for. The day when she would finally claim her birth right. The day she became The Dark Angel.

  The palm of her right hand grew warm in response to the gathering energy. Hissing the end of the incantation so low that it would have been impossible for even her master to hear, Alnora turned and threw a destructive ball of crackling purple energy at The Dark Angel’s tall-backed chair. Alnora watched in ravenous glee as the elegantly mighty hex hurtled toward her target. Then, her eyes doubled in size as the spell burst through the ebony seat and phased through her master’s body before smashing into the desk. The giant wooden structure exploded in a shower of splinters and torn pages, which fluttered about in the wake of Alnora’s devastation.

  “Impressive,” a voice said from behind. Alnora spun to see her master standing before the bookcase. “But not good enough.” The Dark Angel raised a massive palm and, with naught but a gesture, summoned a concussive burst of translucent energy that smacked Alnora along the chest. She had not the time to even cry out in shock as the wind was crushed from her lungs. The spell shot her across the room, smashing into the wooden, shuttered window she had been standing at not four minutes ago. The window gave way instantly, and Alnora found herself in the open air of winter, plummeting to the ground from the top of the palace’s highest tower.

  How had her master sensed that attack coming? How did he still have the strength to strike at her with such ferocity? A shuddering realization came over Alnora’s mind. Was his weakness a ploy? Was he suckering her in? Trying to goad her into making her move? Had she walked right into his trap?

  Alnora righted herself in mid-air with an incantation that began to slow her descent. She landed gingerly upon the snow-covered ground of the castle courtyard. Her master was already there waiting for her.

  “You have finally decided to kill me,” he said. “I have been pushing this upon you for many months now, apprentice. It has taken you a…distressing amount of time to take action.”

  Alnora snarled in anger. So, it was a ruse after all. Her grand visions of destiny calling to her had been nothing more than her master deceiving her into attack. “Why goad me into attacking then? Have you decided I’m unworthy?”

  “Quite the contrary. I believe you have finally reached the apex of mortal power as a sorceress. You will not become stronger without the essence of The Dark Angel. It is time for you to either take the power from me or die.”

  Fear pulled at Alnora’s mind, and for a moment, she considered trying to run. Was she strong enough for this? The unearned arrogance she had felt over the last several months had been nothing more than a ploy. Her master stood before her now, fully empowered, the ultimate force of dark might.

  You can do this, she thought. You’ve come so far, done so much. You’re going to become The Dark Angel today!

  Alnora began to whisper an incantation and flung her arms forward, sending a head-sized ball of purple energy soaring through the air toward her waiting master. The Dark Angel merely scoffed at the incoming spell and held up one hand. He caught the blast as though it were a child’s toy and threw it to the ground where it exploded in a fiery conflagration that kicked up smoke and concealed him from sight. Alnora pushed her arms to the side with another incantation, sweeping the smoke away to discover that her master had vanished once more. Sensing a swirling dark mass at her side, Alnora turned, firing off another destructive bolt of purple energy.

  The spell struck nothing. A simple decoy. Searing heat that tore through her robes from behind alerted her to her master’s true location. Jolting arcs of purple lightning engulfed the young apprentice. She writhed on the ground, turning to see her master standing tall, the dark storm emanating from his fingertips. The pain was extraordinary and far exceeded anything Alnora had ever experienced. She rolled around as though trying to douse the ceaseless hammering beneath her.

  Alnora could feel her insides cooking and knew that she had to find some way out of the damaging path of this powerful spell. She screamed an incantation to the sky, the time for subtlety long since passed. The power of black magic fortified her body and allowed Alnora to temporarily withstand the horrid pain. Working her way back to her feet within the caging electric inferno, Alnora began to cast another spell, one that would further fortify her hands and arms, allowing her to repel her master’s might.

  Alnora pushed on the spell, drawing the bolts into her glowing palms. To her shock, she managed to take a step toward her adversary, pushing the spell back at him. The Dark Angel planted his feet in response and ramped up the intensity of his storm. Another shouted incantation from Alnora gave her a boost of added strength, and she continued to march toward him. Her talismans were scalding against her flesh, having never drawn on this much energy before. Alnora screamed as she continued to push toward The Dark Angel, now only three steps away from him. Two of the rings on her left hand exploded from the strain as the lightning spell combusted between them, tossing Alnora back through the snow. Her master, however, remained standing.

  With two talismans destroyed, Alnora began to panic. She had barely been able to hold her master’s power back as it was; now two of her focusing crystals had been obliterated and with them, a percentage of her power. It would not do to try and match her master magically. She had to use what would become the core tenets of her new order: deception and surprise.

  Alnora rolled to her feet in the frigid snow, an incantation dancing along her lips as she fired her own caging storm of lightning at the standing sorcerer. The Dark Angel vanished once more, reappearing behind her…exactly as Alnora had predicted. The instant his boots touched the ground, twin vines burst out through the snow, wrapping themselves around his ankles, calves, and knees. The vines yanked back, and she heard her master grunt in shock as he pitched forward, smacking his face into the icy ground.

  Alnora turned, triumph alight in her eyes as a barking incantation and a wave of her right arm caused the vines to fling her master back, up into the air, smashing through the top of th
e stone archway that led into the dark palace. With a grunt of exertion, Alnora sent a rippling, translucent wave of energy out from her body, washing over the ancient entrance. The stones were pulverized by the force of her spell, and the archway exploded, cascading down in an avalanche of death to bury The Dark Angel beneath tons of rubble.

  There was a moment of stillness, but Alnora would not allow herself to become complacent. A crumbling archway was not enough to kill The Dark Angel. Sure enough, within seconds, purple jolts of magic began to course around the stones with increasing intensity. The rubble exploded skyward as The Dark Angel roared to his feet. But Alnora was ready for this. She crouched in wait, two fingers pointed at the ready. A hissing incantation led to a jagged shard of solid purple energy flying from her fingers like an arrow. The sharpened barb of Alnora’s hopes and dreams soared through the air and shredded through her master’s stomach, bursting out the other side in a spraying shower of crimson blood before it dissipated into an amethyst mist.

  Alnora’s mouth hung open in astonished glee. She had done it! She had actually done it! Her master stumbled back, face drooped in shock and awe. Then he grimaced in pain and looked down at the gaping wound in annoyance. Alnora gasped as a black, goopy substance spread along the circular gash, pulling the sides of The Dark Angel’s grievous injury back together and then solidifying and warping into solid flesh once more. Her master stood tall and impossibly strong, and Alnora suddenly realized the true scope of the dark powers she was so very close to. Immortality was more than just freedom from aging. He was truly immortal.

  But then how could she kill him? How do you strike down a god? Alnora looked down at her shaking hands. The two destroyed talismans upon her fingers were sparking as they continued trying to focus her power. She was losing energy fast. She could not hold out much longer. She had to find The Dark Angel’s weakness, now.

  Shouting another incantation, Alnora threw her hands forward, summoning hundreds of tiny, purple barbs that flew through the air at her healing master. To her shock, The Dark Angel looked alarmed for a moment and brought his arms up, folding them before the center of his chest in the shape of an X. The minuscule points tore through the Angel’s body, exploding out through his back. Alnora noticed though that a small area over his crossed wrists were repelling her miniature projectiles. They bounced harmlessly away as that same viscous, black substance returned and began knitting together his wounds once more.

  The Dark Angel’s tunic was shredded by her assault, and it fell away, leaving the massive man bare chested in the winter chill. It was then that Alnora realized just what he had been protecting—the jewel in his breastbone, his embedded talisman that sat in the center of a large tattoo of black wings and focused the dark energy of the entire world. That was his weak point. She knew it now. Unfortunately, her master had also realized his secret was out.

  He shot a massive arm forward, fingers curled as though he were grabbing something. Alnora instantly felt a crushing pressure squeeze around her body, completely immobilizing her as it wrenched the young sorceress into the air. The Dark Angel gestured, and Alnora was violently slammed down through the snow into the frozen, unforgiving ground. The wind flew from her lungs, and Alnora felt several vertebrae snap on contact. Her master raised his hand once more, and again she was lifted. With a sweeping motion, he sent his apprentice careening toward the ground face-first. Alnora’s left arm and nearly half of her ribs were utterly destroyed.

  Coughing a large amount of blood into the pure white snow, Alnora whimpered quietly as The Dark Angel’s spell tore her violently up once more. He battered her into walls, into archways, and into the ground over and over again at various angles until nearly every bone in her body had been crushed to powder. Alnora lay on her back, a gruesome pool of red expanding out into the ice and snow that surrounded her. She could not move, could scarcely breathe without bringing blood up from her punctured lungs. This was the ultimate defeat. A staggering loss of her own creation.

  “You disappoint me, apprentice,” The Dark Angel sneered down at her. “I thought you to be my heir. I spent years instructing you in the dark arts, and this is all you are? I was a fool to believe I could harness your fury. You have become complacent in your power since the slaying of that fool knight. You believed him more than a simple man, and so his defeat and desecration made you feel invincible. You challenged me today under that false pretense. The Dark Angel cannot be such a fool. I will not make that mistake with my next apprentice.”

  Alnora wanted so badly to answer him, to spit in his face and call him a liar. But he was right. She had let her foolish arrogance blind her to the truth of his might. She had approached this battle fully convinced that she would win, that the dark had weakened in him, that it was on her side. But she saw it now. He was the dark. And he was generous in the gifts he had granted her over the years. Gifts she had squandered in complacency.

  Her master spread his arms, and the tattoo of wings upon his chest actually rippled in response as he slowly ascended into the air. Hovering above her, The Dark Angel held up one arm in which a spear of purple energy formed—the weapon that would claim her life. Her master reared back, preparing to hurl his triumphal strike and snuff out the life of his apprentice once and for all. It was in that moment that Alnora noticed his positioning. With one arm back, his chest was completely exposed.

  The Dark Angel had accused her of arrogance and complacency, but was he too guilty of such a crime? He was so convinced that she was helpless, utterly devoid of a chance, and so even with his centuries of cunning and experience, The Dark Angel had made a fatal flaw. He had underestimated a dangerous opponent. Alnora began to whisper a short incantation. The power running through her talismans gave her enough energy to throw her arm up one more time, and from it shot a purple barb of energy no longer than her index finger.

  As her master brought the arm down, releasing the spear on a collision course with Alnora’s heart, her last tiny act of defiance struck him directly in the black and purple jewel that sat in the center of his sternum. The Dark Angel gasped in pain, and his entire body shuddered as the talisman split in half. The spear was mere inches from Alnora’s heart, and just as it was about to pierce her breast, The Dark Angel’s final spell dissipated into a cloud of purple smoke.

  Alnora marveled at the spectacle of her master falling from the air, crashing down beside her on both knees. He gasped for breath, his wide eyes nearly bursting from his skull. She lay there on her back, breathless in anticipation as the man who sheltered and trained her for almost two decades rocked back and forth above her shattered body.

  The tattoo of black feathered wings upon his chest began to flow once more, but this time it was shrinking, receding back into the talisman, which pulsated uncontrollably with purple magic. Their eyes locked together. She watched in fascination as the yellow color drained from his stare, leaving his eyes brown like that of a normal human.

  “You have…done…well…Alnora,” her master said, using her name for the first time since he had taken her in. As she fished for something, anything, to say amidst her labored breath, she felt a jarring sensation around her neck as the collar broke free and evaporated into the air. The sudden freedom from the choking instrument of servitude was shocking to Alnora, and she stretched her newly unrestricted neck, though even subtle movements wracked her with pain. She coughed up a fresh birth of blood.

  The Dark Angel pitched onto his side as the last of his tattoo vanished into the glowing orb. She could see the life leaving his brown eyes and turned her head slowly to stare into them one last time. “The power…is yours…now. You…are The Dark Angel, Alnora. You…are…damned.”

  What?

  No sooner had that questioning thought crossed Alnora’s mind than did the jewel upon the former Dark Angel’s chest explode violently. From it, there came an enormous outpouring of dark, shadowy tendrils, which erupted into the sky, each the thickness of a tree, and bunched together like a whirling storm o
f horrors. The morbid eruption spread over the courtyard, blanketing the entire area in darkness. Purple energy crackled over the dancing tentacles as they reached toward the heavens as though they sought to drag the light of the stars themselves down into the abyss.

  Alnora watched this tornado of evil with breathless wonder. All of this was inside of her master. All of this fury and power would soon reside within her. The energy was more than just magic. It felt alive. And suddenly, it seemed to remember that Alnora was there. The tentacles all subtly shifted in her direction, and for a brief instant, Alnora could swear she saw a purple eye glaring at her through the miasma.

  “Alnoraaaaaaa,” a voice growled through the din. Instantly, the energy shifted dramatically, flowing to her, forming a cone of darkness around her prone body. A figure stepped through the storm. It was her master, his eyes once more yellow with dark power. Alnora gasped, believing this to be yet another of his cruel tests.

  “Congratulations,” her master’s familiar baritone said. “You have become the vessel.”

  “V…vessel?” she managed to choke out through the blood welling up within her. Her master stepped back through the wall of black, and another figure reappeared to take his place. This man was thin and black skinned. A raised hood concealed his hair and eyes.

  “You step into the line of our order, child,” he said. “You await the power as we all had before you. Before we knew the truth.” The black man stepped out of the tornado, and in his place, there came a woman, blond and beautiful, lips painted as black as the robe that hung from her frail body.

  “The power cannot be controlled,” she hissed, her voice like that of a snake. “We become The Dark Angel, but in doing so, we stop being fully ourselves.”

  “What…?” Alnora croaked, anxiety now shaking her limbs. The energy spread out, widening around the courtyard and depositing hundreds, perhaps thousands of cloaked and shadowed figures in her midst. Among them, at her feet stood her master, the black man, and the blond woman. The gathered Dark Angels spoke in unison.