Iofiel felt a spike through her wrists as he departed, a wave of cold, brisk magic.
But no, wait, that wasn’t him: Iofiel stood up, ready to return to the University, and as she did so she spotted Archangel Zadkiel outside the window, looking approximately human. With him were two poorly skin-dressed higher angels— Powers, bogged down to human-shape, she’d guess.
He caught sight of her, and the trio entered the bookshop. “Iofiel!” He said, quickly walking up to her until he was inches away. Like the other Archangels, he was nearly seven foot tall, the Powers behind him even taller. Their heads nearly brushed the ceiling. “You feel it.”
Lupe was behind the shop counter, her mouth starting to open. There was nothing obviously inhuman about anyone in the room, but there was everything odd about Zadkiel and his guards. With a broad gesture, like he was silencing an orchestra, Zadkiel pulled the air around them, and Iofiel felt a crackle inside her ears.
“I feel you,” Iofiel stammered in reply. “What’s going on?”
He stared. Iofiel realized she was still clutching the napkin with Morningstar’s sigil, and hoped no side of the marker-print was showing. “He was here, he was here,” Zadkiel muttered. He shot her another glare, and with a jerky movement he released the spell he’d been holding. He was already turning to leave by the time Lupe seemed to snap to her sense.
“Hey, uh, who was that?” Lupe was watching the door, transfixed.
“How much do you remember?” Iofiel asked. She had no idea what she needed to do next, but it was clearly time to get moving.
“He knew who you were,” Lupe said. Iofiel really couldn’t be sure exactly what she’d seen, if her memory had been altered in any way. “Eve, what have you gotten yourself into?”
“Lupe, I need to go,” Iofiel shook her head. Then she leaned over the counter and gave her a tight hug. “My name is Iofiel. And I need to get moving.”
“...Iofiel?”
“Yes. Be kind to everyone you meet, and hope for the best,” Iofiel said. She paused. “I’ll try to be back soon. I love you.”
“You...?”
Iofiel didn’t catch the tail end of that. The door closed with the sound of bells, and Iofiel took to the sky from a nearby alley.
When Iofiel returned to her dorm, she immediately copied Morningstar’s sigil onto the back of her Archangel Michael poster, and then burned the smudged napkin. Then she said a quick, desperate prayer for Lupe, something she didn’t even think about. It’d just felt like instinct to hope she’d be safe. Maalik wasn’t back for another hour, but he seemed to notice something was wrong almost immediately.
They went to the kitchens, where Iofiel watched Maalik mix ingredients in a large, white plastic bowl, kicking her feet as she sat on the counter. It was a low, loud, and dim part of the building. No one was lurking here, and Iofiel still wasn’t sure who, angel, demon, or human, actually prepared meals for the students.
“I want to talk to you about it, I really do,” she said.
“I know you can’t.” Maalik’s eyes were narrowed in concentration as he whipped the batter. He tasted it with a finger. “These are going to be some damn fine cookies. Try some?”
It was indeed deliciously sweet, almost better than the end result, even if she was still a little bitter they weren’t making pancakes. Though she wouldn’t have minded learning herself, Iofiel was thankful for the grey noise of the kitchen space, the rumble of the dishwasher and the long silence as Maalik began to set up baking sheet. The beautiful sound of tearing wax paper.
She kicked her legs, one, two, one, two. The oven door slammed shut, and Maalik hopped onto the countertop beside her, his left wing extending to circle her.
“This is unsanitary, you know,” he said.
“I’m very clean,” Iofiel leaned against him without thinking, listening to his blood flow, and his heart beat-beat-beat. “The Powers That Shine could have picked a much better angel for this job. I’m in over my head. I’m way over.”
“Everything’s always right, Blue. Except not always morally. But even evil is... Correct?” Maalik sighed. “I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t think you do either.” He held her head, slightly, and stroked her hair. The dishwasher thumped on. The oven radiated heat.
It was night, and they were alone.
“Why do you have a crush on me?” Iofiel asked.
Maalik’s hand immediately retreated. “I can’t help it. Can barely define what a crush is, even. It’s just, uh— You’re nice. You like me. A lot of angels here don’t like me, a lot of demons don’t too. I like rules, boundaries, and even when I break them to drink or curse... they still don’t like me.”
“I don’t think they know you,” Iofiel said drowsily.
“No, but are angels ever supposed to know each other? In battle, you love everyone the same. Guardians love only The Light and their charges and every human on Earth. Messengers do not gossip among their fellows. We’re not supposed to... rank each other.”
“I like you more than I like Shamsiel. Or Damien, or even Santiago...”
Maalik gave a hiccup-like laugh. “You know, when I was a first-year, I thought... I-I snuck out once, to the city. Someone had told me of a house party, and though it stunk of demons, I didn’t think at the time that an angel would lie to me like that— you know. I thought it was a cover, not a demon thing. There was alcohol, and rule breakers, and every act of insidious fun. And I realized properly there that I had something different about me. I flirted with a girl there, with dark grey hair, and shiny eyes...”
Iofiel burst into laughter. “Santiago? Is that why she hates your guts? Seriously?”
“She thought I was a human, and was teasing me, but I... She was the first person I ever had feelings for. I barely spoke to her at the party, but I thought we’d hit it off, and I thought about her a lot for a while... A month later I saw her again, and it was all the same.”
“You love-struck fool.”
“Crush-lust, more. So, one day, I see her at the library— here. And I know she’s not a human, or a rarely seen angel, because she has it all out: horns, tail, bright red skin. The most demonic of demons. But I still thought we had... something. So I went to talk to her. And, uh, she hasn’t let me off from that.”
“She acts like she hates you.”
“She’s a bit of a dick, if you hadn’t noticed. I’m a fool for thinking that she ever liked me, but I did like her. A lot. And it was...”
“Awkward?”
“Beyond.”
Iofiel laughed. “At least you know I’m an angel.”
“Evidently the world’s most special angel. I don’t have very good taste.”
“Excuse you.”
Maalik laughed, a little, mostly to himself: it was half a giggle and a very whole smile.
“I’ve never seen you laugh before,” Iofiel said softly. “Not really. I don’t— I don’t know what a crush is, what romance is supposed to be like. But the world’s ending, and I think I do like you too.” She reached up, pulled Maalik in close, and gently kissed him.
He was dumbfounded, slack jawed and tense. “Iofi—”
She kissed him again. “We’re all going to die, idiot.”
The machines went hum-rumble-shift, and Maalik’s heart was a single ‘beatbeatbeat’ as he held her close, and they kissed again: because they could, and because no one was going to stop them.
22: Firenight
“ARE YOU awake?”
Iofiel found that she was, sharply. Maalik was sitting upright in his bed, and staring at her with wide, wild eyes. She shivered and shook unexpectedly, and then felt it: a wave of energy washed across her body like a million pins and needles. She was sweating in seconds.
Something was deadly wrong.
"How could I not be?"
They were oddly in sync with each other, standing up without a word, and heading to the window. It was tall, with six glass panes, overlooking the city lights on clear days. Iofiel had no
idea what time it was, but the sky was lit up in a reverse sunset; blazing red orange like an aurora over the dark nighttime of the Earth. Something white was emanating like shards of silver, and another wash fell through Iofiel’s body.
They shivered in sync, too.
“I—” Iofiel looked to Maalik, feeling like she of the two was supposed to have answers.
“We’re not going to sleep tonight,” Maalik said. He cracked open the window, and then opened it wide. Cold October air swept into the room, but the needles of energy and soft pain were keeping Iofiel warm. No, wait— it wasn’t that. There was something else in the air, something that reminded her of home, something that reminded her that she was not meant to feel cold in the first place.
They both wore long nightclothes, and Iofiel’s pants and long dress billowed in the breeze as she fly out with Maalik. Neither had any idea what they were doing, but again were compelled, oddly moving in complete harmony. Another thing that was Heaven-like, then.
Other angels dotted the air like bats, some hidden with spells, but many as bare as Maalik and Iofiel. No one spoke, and the night was still and soft. The wind sung through the dead branches of the woodlands, and near the edge of the city, they hit a wall.
It was probably not real, not even magically so, but Iofiel was overwhelmed with a very real feeling of ‘Don’t’. She hovered in the air with the aid of her wings, and one by one every other angel— so many, it seemed, more by the minute— was out there too.
The sunset flipped and flashed. Another way of energy pulsated through Iofiel’s body, but this time it properly hurt. She flinched, her wings twitching, and fell for tens of feet before she caught herself. There was a wild heat in the air, and a very bright, bright red from the city below.
It’d been struck. Black clouds of ash and dust floated in the hot air, and parts of the forest were lit like day. Other parts were simply on fire.
Everything was gone, or crumbled, or a deep, dark black- embers danced like the remains of fireworks, and even the ever-impending blue of nighttime had been pushed, slightly, aside.
Whatever had barred them from the city had gone with the buildings. Glass shards glittered as Iofiel slunk towards the ground, on habit slowly forming an illusion over herself. Not everything was gone, but yes everything was dirt covered, dusty— ash clung to the skin of the dead, to the trees and the bikes. The lake was black and green and filled with debris— part of a park bench floated on its surface.
The angels were lit by firelight, mostly incorporeal, but did that matter anymore? Some were half solid, forms and feathers flickering in the smoke, hearts too heavy to hide.
Iofiel was among the watchers at the edge of the city, a pale ghost. Maalik was gone in an instant, an imprint of greenish grace inside the dark and among the dead.
Souls and smog meshed into one. Every vein in her body was imaginary, and it pulsed with magic.
"This is the end," an angel cried. And yes, yes it was.
Thousands dead, without question— among the smoke and the air, their souls flickered and faded. In disasters like this there were always late-leavers, those who clung with a trembling tenaciousness. Those who knew they’d been wronged.
There was a herald in the sky, another weak beat of energy, so soft compared to what she’d just felt— someone to collect the dead. Perhaps the city’s principality, perhaps Azrael themself.
Like pillars, souls stuck, faded, not human anymore. Maybe she was seeing things, maybe she was hearing them too.
Iofiel felt like she was being stabbed a thousand times over. This was magic, but it was something else too. It was apocalyptic, but it was also—
The rubble was black and white and mostly dirty, and a human among it was on the brink of death, cursing whoever had dropped this bomb, his cells stinging with carcinogens. An angel came to him, and Iofiel realized there was no healing to be done tonight.
She watched him die, his soul adrift and then, gently, held.
Her eyes couldn't sting from the smoke because, for right now, she didn't have them. But then she blinked, feeling this man's presence on Earth. She blinked, remembering these streets, the litter, the pedestrians, the cars, the ducks, the books, the stores, the bread, the people, these humans, the—
Overwhelmed, Iofiel fell to the Earth, crying. Solid, she choked on smoke. Corporeal, she felt the heat rip against her skin. Sharp stones tore at her legs and clothes and cut holes in her soft pajama pants. She was body, and nothing was meant to live in a place like this.
She felt someone pull her up, drag her away from the Earth and back to where she belonged. She wept until she was shaken by whoever had grabbed her, until she remembered her job was not to weep.
She spread her wings again, and watched. The psychopomps carried who they could, but ghostly imprints of souls still haunted her vision. Those who were still alive were weak, sucking in lungfuls of poisonous air. Iofiel could see it about them, their coming deaths; no one was meant to survive this, and no one would.
In a small suburban stone house on the outskirts of the city center, the roof had collapsed, the parents had been killed, but a young child who slept on the first floor was alive, still. The Earth shook again, and the child lost her footing. The street was desolate, mostly dead— her lawn was on fire, and white ash had begun to rain down through the holes in the roof. Her baby sister was alive still too, but caught somewhere nasty upstairs, her cries echoing from in the rubble.
She wandered into the street in her night clothes, coughing, her eyes stinging and filled with tears for other reasons, too. How old was she? Even as the world began to watch, the helicopters and the news teams and the army and the public— even as help came, she would never find what she needed, never live again as she was supposed to.
Another shockwave, another rumble. The ground cracked nearby her, and she fell onto the ground. She skinned her knee, and it bled a bright red— the only strong color in this grey and black cityscape. The wound was already infected.
The kitchen was gone, otherwise she’d go there to get a bandage. The upstairs were gone— she didn’t know yet, not really, that this meant her parents were dead. But she knew what gone was. She’d seen enough movies to know what sometimes happened to people, and knew that it sometimes happened to children too.
The wind was cold and her bones were already growing brittle. Dust swirled about her, attacking her skin and her eyes and her lungs. She began to cough, and didn’t stop, crumbling towards the ground with weaker and weaker breaths.
Everything rumbled again.
PART IV
HUMANS
23: A Sky Full Of Teeth
THERE HAD NEVER been something like that. Humanity didn’t know what to do. The whole city was gone, barely thirty survivors out of thousands, the surrounding area utterly pulverized. The University had had to put up a ridiculously elaborate illusion to hide itself, an entire wash of desolation. They were just another reported loss, though of course an easily forgotten one: while present in human records to a degree, it was, ah, odd how rarely they were checked upon.
Iofiel didn’t sleep for another week. Lessons were cancelled for a few days, and Iofiel barely left her room. She wasn’t alone in this. Maalik did his best to keep working, to study in some way, and keep himself grounded, but sometimes...
She’d been flying to the roof now, fairly often, keeping vigil as she watched the ruined city. Other angels did this too. Small spells without worry, wings wide open because they knew they were hidden; watching did nothing, but if anything was to prepare them for life past University, it was this.
Angels did not wield power, but bowed before it, and kept their eyes open.
They sat on the rooftop of their tower-like dorm, only half bound to Earth to ward off cold and hunger, but on some days the demons were out too. Closer to the ground, but almost copying their vigil. Iofiel tried not to pay attention, but who else but her would?
Demons too, she understood, didn’t want humanity
to suffer. They used them, resented them, but like angels they kept to the shadows for a reason. If they wanted, either type could rule the poor creatures. Magic was unfairly unlimited. If angels wanted to appear one day, deliver their truths, humanity would likely bow before them. But the grand experiment of it all was that angels didn’t need to do this for humanity to choose virtue.
It was the same for demons. They could kill them all, force souls and force violence. But they preferred to watch it play out.
Neither side was rooting for disaster.
It wasn’t known what had happened to the city. A freak meteor, most likely, which had shattered on impact. Small earthquakes had been triggered by this, and the resulting dust and debris had poisoned the air and water in the surrounding areas. Fall leaves and poor city management had allowed for fast burning fires, and the unexpected nature of the event had meant there had been no planning in play.
Some thought it might’ve been a missile, or a bombing, and the government had been hiding it. After all, how could such a massive meteor have entered the atmosphere undetected? And how unbelievable was it that so few had lived? The survivors were all hospitalized, many of them in critical care. An entire community had been erased off the map.
The air stung with decay. The land wouldn’t be livable for a while.
It was part of the apocalypse, the University felt sure. No one said it, but Iofiel could see it on everyone’s faces. The first sign. An attack disturbingly close to a home, a precise message that everything was about to crumble. The major cities would be next, it was said. More attacks like this were bound to follow.
Iofiel, however, didn’t quite agree.
There was a difference between apocalypse and end of the world, a difference between Light and theophany. When the apocalypse was being called on, not endured, what did a city-burning mean? Either it had begun for real, or it had been made to happen. Either The Sun’s will was coming true, or Her Son was still seeking it.
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