Unseen wasps buzzed in my ears, and I jumped away from Sean, glaring around me in search of my mortal enemies.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You see something?”

“No,” I replied through grit teeth. “That’s th-the problem.”

The buzzing heightened, sharp and angry, as though a whole nest of them had lodged in my hair.  This was a terrifying albeit likely possibility.  I shook my head in a panic, as nothing inspired a more primal fear in me than wasps.  As the noise swelled to drown out Sean’s confused questions, I felt venomous stings in my neck and down my spine, and I imagined the poison streaming into my blood like drugs from a syringe.  Brought to my knees on the street, I began to shake and cry, so overcome that for the second time that night I was trapped in a world of my own making.  But I knew this not to be a memory; these events were happening to me right now and I would have given anything to make them stop.

Fear is an exhausting emotion, and after only a few minutes of this torture my body was tense like a wrung towel, dripping with perspiration and aching to be unwound.  My only comfort was the hope that I would soon faint, and proceed either to die or be all right.  At that time, I did not care which.

I could see them now, crawling under my dress, across my collarbone, their shining black wings and furred red bodies adorning my ankles and wrists like hideous jewelry.  Bile rose in my throat, but I could not move even to clutch my stomach.  I tasted vomit, chicken-flavored.

A voice called to me from a hundred miles away, whispering at first, and then it escalated to a scream.  It sounded a bit like, ‘Sorry,’ and then a strong hand slapped me and the illusion broke.

I gasped. “Ow.”

“I had to do it, Claris,” Cadmiel said apologetically.  “You were about to froth at the mouth.”

I swallowed hard, and thought things were going to be a bit worse than just froth.

He, Tialiel, Anael and Sean stood around me in a circle on the sidewalk.  Thrashing behind Sean was Donovan, blindfolded with his arms and legs bound.  I guess I should have known.

“I hate wasps,” I coughed weakly.

Cadmiel gestured to a tree nearby.  “He was in the branches.”

“Like a vicious, evil-minded owl,” Sean said.  He flexed and unflexed his fingers in agitation. “You’re so lucky Claris made me leave the sword at home.”

Donovan spat.  “I’d sooner worry about the poison in a kitten’s claws than any weapons of yours.”

“Can we kill him with fire?” Sean asked. “Now?”

“That’s not how we do things,” Cadmiel said.

Anael peered at Donovan’s partially healed wings, craning his neck to see the bits of traumatized flesh beneath the bandages.  “Looks like Leliel’s been working with him, indeed.”

“Isn’t it amazing?” Tialiel said.  “Healing wing injuries … I wish I could do anything even approaching that.”

“Yes,” Cadmiel said dryly, “I’ll bet it’s an enormously entertaining experience.”

Tialiel frowned. “That’s not what I meant …”

“What happened?” I asked.

“You weren’t back in time,” Cadmiel replied.  “So we came to get you.”

“We found Orifiel hopping around like a frog stuffed full of caffeine,” Anael said. “And you were convulsing.”

“The whole night’s kinda been like that,” I said.  I rubbed my ears, still anxious that an army of fiendish insects lurked nearby. “You restrained Donovan pretty easily.”

“Easy is not the term I’d choose,” Cadmiel said, and it was then that I noticed several tears in his long coat.  The skirt of Tialiel’s dress was shredded, and three lines of blood cut across Anael’s thigh.  Only Sean was unscathed, though he stood closest to Donovan.

“Oh,” I said.

Our prisoner growled and struggled against his bonds.  Spittle flecked the corners of his mouth, and he snarled in anger and pain—the points of his claw were slicing into his right palm, staining his bindings crimson.

“He’s suffering,” I said.

“Good,” Sean said.

“No—look,” I said, and pointed.  Donovan didn’t seem to notice or care that his pain was self-inflicted, as he continued to scream and kick, red faced like a very angry lobster.

“I would help him out,” Anael said, “but that would mean going near him.”

I could not but concede this point.

“What are we going to do with him?” Tialiel asked.  “He still needs a lot of treatment ...”

“I’m sure Leliel will come looking for him.  Sooner or later,” Cadmiel said.  “We can hold onto him until then.”

“Good idea,” Tialiel said.

“Get your autograph book ready.” Cadmiel summoned a cigarette and took a long drag.

Tialiel hesitated, lingering at the start of an argument, but ultimately decided against it. “Let’s just get him off the street.”

“I volunteer Orifiel for that job,” Anael said.

“Fiiiinee.”  Sean grabbed Donovan by the back of his blindfold and we all began to walk.

I had thought that it was Donovan’s restraints which were muting his powers, but I realized then that they were merely decorative.  Sean was, I supposed, even now emanating an anti-shenanigans field which prevented the use of any angelic abilities.

Donovan was dimly aware of this, as he thrashed with particular violence in an effort to escape Sean’s grasp.

“Where’s Metatron?” I asked.

“Disappeared again,” Cadmiel said.

“Ah.”

“Something not right about that boy,” Sean said.

Cadmiel nodded. “For once, I’d agree.”

“Let me go,” Donovan interrupted, his gravelly voice low and thick with impotent threat.

“Mmm, how about not,” Sean said.

He dragged Donovan up the steps of my porch, through the front door, and into my kitchen.  There he set Donovan, who continued vainly struggling, onto one of the kitchen chairs.  Cadmiel produced a length of rope taken from the garage and retied Donovan so that he was bound to the chair.

“Now we just have to wait for Leliel to come collect her boyfriend,” Cadmiel sighed.

“Do you really think they’re going out?” Tialiel said, which earned him a baleful stare from Cadmiel.

“Why do you care?”

“Well I dunno, just wondering … why are you so hostile lately?”

“I’m not hostile,” Cadmiel said.  “I’m frustrated.  There’s a difference.”

“What’s the matter, then?”

“The matter?  You’re asking me the matter?” Cadmiel slapped his hands down on the table. “Well, let’s explore that.  You and I were sent here on a mission without any details, and into a situation which has so far failed to make any kind of logical sense at any point in its duration.  On top of all that—” Cadmiel lost steam as he finished, moving from indignant rage to resigned disbelief, “… you seem to have a schoolboy crush on one of our opponents.”

“Calm down,” Tialiel said. “First of all, it’s not a schoolboy crush.  She’s just a figure that I respect.  I know it wasn’t something you kept up with, but I liked reading about medicinal tactics.  Second of all, there’s nothing we can do about what’s going on except try to work through it … and you’re not the only one feeling some strain.”

“I know,” Cadmiel said. “Sorry.”

He took a seat at the table. “Things just aren’t going the way I’d expected them to.  It’s new.”

Someone knocked angrily on the front door, and rang the bell approximately seven hundred times.

“Let us hope that is our expected visitor,” Anael said. “Ireul is coating all the wood with saliva.”

I rose to answer it, as it was my house, but when I entered the foyer I found Damien already there.  In one hand he held a jug of my parents’ port, and in the other, shadow energy gathered.

“An enemy approaches,” Damien slurred.

“Hi, Leliel,” I said, and smacked Damien’s shadow hand. “Relax.”

“He’s here, isn’t he,” Leliel said.  Her hair was mussed, and her wrists were bruised.

“Yeah,” I said. “In the kitchen.”

Leliel stepped past me and Damien, calling out, “Ireul!  Donovan!”

“Right on time,” Cadmiel said.

“Please, you have to let me take him back,” Leliel said. “He’s not well.”

“I don’t think anything you can do is really going to fix that,” Sean muttered.

Cadmiel arched an eyebrow at this, because obviously Sean was not one to talk.

“Take him,” Anael said.  “Before he ruins the furniture.”

“Leave me alone, Lily,” Donovan growled. “I’m busy.”

“You need to rest,” Leliel said. “Whether you like it or not.”

She pressed her thumb against Donovan’s forehead and frowned in concentration.  He became limp and placid, slumping in his chair.

“Thank God,” Leliel said.  Sweat glistened on her pale skin as she gathered Donovan into her arms. “I apologize for any inconvenience he may have caused you.”

“If by inconvenience you mean bone-shattering terror, then thanks,” I mumbled.

Leliel cast a sympathetic glance my way and turned to go, but as her heel twisted on the tile, the ground shifted.  A portal cut across the breadth of the floor like a gaping wound, and we had little time to escape it.

“Very bad timing,” Cadmiel noted.
 
 
 

We landed all together, in a distasteful tangle of limbs, on a field of grass.

“Ooh, no,” Leliel moaned, as she dragged herself and an unconscious Donovan from the confusion of arms and legs.  I wriggled out from beneath Sean’s elbow and Cadmiel’s left knee, righting myself so that I could see the new landscape.

“Hm,” said Damien calmly.  He took a final swig of his port. “I wonder if I am hallucinating again.”

“No,” Anael said irritably, and shoved Damien off of his chest, “you are not.”

I could see no buildings, roads, or much of anything anywhere around me except for tall grass, shuddering in the wind.

“We might be on Septerra again,” Tialiel said. “But really I can’t tell.”

“Yes, given that grass is a distinguishing feature of almost every habitable planet ever,” Cadmiel sighed. “Let’s mosey, see if we can bump into something.”

Leliel, panicked and sweating, did not seem excited about the prospect of lugging Donovan through the unknown with us.  I did not blame her.  She swallowed, and I thought I could hear her pride slipping down her throat.

“Could I get a little help?” she mumbled, so that Cadmiel replied, “Mm?  What’s that?”

“Help,” she said again. “I need help with him.”

“Cut open his throat, it’d be a favor to everyone,” Sean suggested.  Leliel glowered.

“It’ll be a bad scene for more than just Leliel when he wakes up,” Anael pointed out.

“Not if we leave them here,” Sean said.

“We’re not doing that,” Cadmiel said. “Orifiel, assist her.”

“No—” Anael said, as he took part of Donovan’s body onto his shoulders. “I’ll do it.”

“But Orifiel’s powers—” Cadmiel began.

“—might interrupt the effect of Leliel’s powers, also,” Anael said.

“Oh.  Right.  Carry on, then.”

With that settled, we traversed the field uncertainly, on the look out for some sign of intelligent (or even simply breathing) presence.

“Ahh,” Damien said. “It’s Septerra.”  He waved at the sky, which was full with Septerra’s moons.  “Though I’d be hard pressed to say our exact location.”

“Thanks for being absolutely no help, wino,” Sean said.  I threw him a silencing look, and he shrugged.

We wandered aimlessly, without any clue as to where civilization might be.  It was some time before even trees came into our view.  Strain overwhelmed Leliel, even with Anael’s help.

“We need to stop soon,” I said.

“No, I’m fine,” Leliel said, though her voice belied her exhaustion.  I knew that Leliel was a celestial being, but even they had to have limits.

Fortunately, our search for life eventually proved fruitful, as we came upon a small village just before nightfall.  The houses were primitive huts, fashioned of tightly bound sticks and thatched straw roofs.  People with skins dark from sunlight milled about, stoking fires over which animals roasted, talking in a language I could not understand.  Paint marked their cheeks, chests, and forearms in brilliant patterns which shimmered on their bodies as they bent by the burning wood.

“Looks like a scene from a history book,” Damien commented.  He squinted at the villagers and touched the black swatches which colored his own pale forehead.

“Friends of yours?” Anael asked.

“Ancestors, maybe,” Tialiel said.  “I think … we’re in the past of this world.”

Anael bit her lip. “If we’ve begun to transcend time as well as space, then that means the anomaly is worsening.”

With a frustrated grunt, Cadmiel pressed on toward the village, despite Tialiel’s protest. “Maybe we shouldn’t interact with them.”

“Leliel needs rest,” Cadmiel said. “What do you recommend?”

“We could make camp here,” Tialiel suggested.

“With what supplies, exactly?”

“Look, I don’t know—I just—I’ve heard it’s good to be delicate with matters involving the timeline,” Tialiel said sheepishly.

On Leliel’s back, Donovan stirred.  Leliel twisted her neck and tried to raise a finger to his lips, but her knees buckled.  Donovan’s body hung precariously on Anael’s shoulders while Leliel fought to stand.  As his head rose, Leliel lunged and clapped both hands over Donovan’s mouth and eyes.  The glow which had begun to pulse from beneath his blindfold receded.  Following this exertion, Leliel collapsed.

“Fuck it,” Cadmiel said.  He hefted Leliel into his arms and stalked onward.

We trailed after him as he approached the little settlement and called out to them.  Warily, they gathered around us, their whisperings guttural and confused.  They seemed particularly bewildered by Damien.  They clustered near him like tourists watching a tiger in a zoo: interested, afraid.

“Hmm,” Damien said. “I believe these are Elementalists.  We must be back in that time …”

“What do you mean?” Cadmiel had set Leliel by one of the fires without asking permission.

One among the crowd shouted, but a flex of Cadmiel’s wings silenced him.

Carefully, Damien muttered something in the Elementalists’ tongue.  The crowd gasped.

“They’re surprised because he’s a product of mixed cultures,” I said, recalling my Septerra history.  “Wood elf father, human mother—his mother studied history, and knew a lot about this time.”

Alarmed, Damien nodded at me. “She taught me a little of the original Elementalist language.  But I barely know enough to converse.”

“Can you say something about letting us stay here?” Cadmiel said crossly.

Damien spoke again, which caused an aggravated reaction in the villagers.  Spears were raised.

“What the hell?!” Cadmiel hissed.

“I just asked about an inn …” Damien said morosely. “Alas, our doom is imminent.”

“We’re in the time of one of the Great Conflicts between the Spiritualist and Elementalist religions,” I explained. “Mixed breeds aren’t really heard of right now … especially considering they didn’t have the same language yet.”

“Well, when reason fails, fear will have to do,” Cadmiel said grimly.  He and the other angels spread their wings and Cadmiel drew his jewel encrusted sword.

The villagers quieted and backed down, anxiety evident in their expressions.  Cadmiel went to sit by Leliel without a word, and that fire was left alone for the remainder of the night, save for occasional offerings of food and water.

“Can I ask why we’re accommodating these two so much?” Sean said.

“We’re not barbarians,” Cadmiel said.  “As it stands, the status of these angels is something like outlaw.  They’re not fallen, so they’re not to be killed, but neither are they entirely within society.”

“How do you fall?” Sean said.

“Following Lucifer, of course.”

“Soo then, if you kill fallen angels, why didn’t we try to kill Lucifer when we met him?”

Cadmiel took a moment before responding, and as he did, he stared at Sean as though he were perhaps looking at the stupidest person ever to fill his lungs with air.

“Consider this,” Cadmiel said. “A handful of angels against the one who defied God and now rules an entire kingdom of his own, who commands armies which clash with ours constantly.  Try to think through the conclusion of that encounter.”

“Two men enter, one man leaves,” Anael said helpfully.

“Could have at least tried,” Sean muttered.

“It’s hardly worth trying in cases where failure is not only assured, but inevitable,” Cadmiel said.

I disliked disagreeing with Sean vocally, but I didn’t relish the idea of an epic battle in any capacity, given that I in particular was not designed for such activities.

I examined one of the bowls left for us, and from it plucked a fruit which resembled a cluster of grapes.  The berries were black and dimpled with minute depressions, like tiny golfballs.  With reserved optimism, I ate the foremost berry, allowing it to rest on my tastebuds as I considered its tangy, bittersweet flavor.

A blush spread across my cheeks when I noticed Sean watching me do this.  I swallowed the berry too quickly, and it burst, so that the juice blossomed over my throat.  I briefly choked.

“You all right?” he murmured.

“Fi-fine,” I coughed.

“Quit leering, we’re outside,” Cadmiel said.  He tore a handful of fruits from the clump I held and stuffed them in his mouth.

Sean looked away and drank deeply from a skin of water.

Near him, Leliel slept on a bed of woven grass, with Donovan next to her.  The latter’s breath was quick and broken.  Even though he wanted to kill us, I couldn’t stave off a measure of pity as Donovan wheezed on the ground.  It was the right thing, to help them.

I felt strangely calm as I finished off the berries.  I had grown somewhat accustomed to these upheavals—as much as such as thing was possible, anyway.  I had little doubt that I would eventually return home, some way or another.

I did not sleep much.  The grass tickled and itched against my back, and my eyes teared up from the fire, but if I inched away I suffered an unbearable chill.  Thus I passed the night by watching the clouds crawl languidly over the moons, until all seven retreated to allow the sun’s entrance.  When morning had come, we tried to figure out what to do next.

Damien approached one of the villagers again and asked a question, very slowly and warily.  The woman answered, though with evident distrust and revulsion.

Melancholy, Damien knelt beside me and spoke to the embers.  “I asked her where the nearest city was, and she said it was a three days walk to Calfuray, but that Aglaia was just about a passus to the east.”

“Let’s go there, then,” Cadmiel said. “I’d like our patients to have soft beds.”

“I don’t understand you,” Leliel said groggily. “You weren’t giving me the time of day not two weeks ago.”

“Perhaps I’ve thought the matter through since then,” Cadmiel said.

Leliel righted herself on the grass mat, but chose not to respond.  Instead she touched Donovan’s cheek tenderly, her lips drawn and troubled.  She murmured, “I really just wanted to take him home.”

“So you could get on with nullifying existence, yeah?” Sean growled.

Leliel shrugged.

“One problem at a time,” Cadmiel said. “Let’s be off.”

He puffed on a cigarette thoughtfully as we walked.  After fifteen minutes he said, “It might be time for more drastic measures whenever we get back.”

“What do you mean by that?” Leliel said.

“Well my dear,” Cadmiel said, “Do you intend to volunteer any information about your nefarious plot?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll have to find out what’s happening another way.”

“You can’t stop it,” Leliel said. “It’s too far in motion.”

“We’ll see, I suppose.”

“You’ll thank us when it’s done,” Leliel insisted. “Things will be better.”

“You’ll have to forgive me if I fail to see that logic,” Cadmiel said.

“Only from ashes can a phoenix rise,” Leliel murmured.

“Whatever, lady,” Sean said.

For the first time, I caught a glint of something in Leliel’s eyes—it was not quite malice, but it was not quite benevolent either.  Disquieted, I turned away from her.

When we arrived at the Spiritualist town the reception was quite different, in that no one commented upon us at all.  People strode by on their business, talking animatedly and ignoring us utterly.  Their language was lighter than the Elementalists, with softer consonants and longer vowels.  Their intermingled conversations reminded me of chattering birds.

Aglaia was twice the size of the Elementalist settlement, with houses constructed of brick walls and shingled roofs.  At the center of everything was an enormous cathedral.  The cathedral was a sprawling amalgamation of Gothic and Classical architecture, with tall stained glass windows and flying buttresses on either side.

“What’s that garish thing,” Sean said, frowning at the church as though it had been designed specifically to offend his sensibilities.

“The Western Church of the Celestial,” Damien answered.

“Otherwise known as not an inn,” Cadmiel said.  He squinted at various posts outside the buildings, until we came to one with a mug carved into it.  “You got any gold?”

Damien produced a handful of gold pieces from his pockets, which Cadmiel took into his fist and multiplied.

We marched into the inn and Cadmiel spread the coins on the front counter.  The man there glanced at the money, then at us, and without any exchange he brought us to a set of rooms.

“Anyone who says music is the universal language is just naïve,” Cadmiel muttered.  He pointed to Leliel. “You—into bed.”

Leliel didn’t argue, although she helped Donovan into one of the beds before climbing into her own.

“You’ll be in the adjoining room,” Cadmiel said to me. “Don’t want to risk Ireul waking up in the middle of the night and gutting you again.”

“That would kinda su-suck,” I agreed.

The sheets were clean and warm, and as I wriggled beneath them I was suddenly exhausted.  I closed my eyes with my glasses still on my face, and as my mind oozed toward dreaming I felt someone take the glasses away.  Sean’s voice mumbled, “Goodnight, Claris,” and then I was somewhere else.

A day had passed, and Claris slept.  Attempts to rouse her had been met with no reaction, as though she were a pillow or a patterned sheet, inanimate and unable to be woken.  Sean affixed himself to her bedside and worriedly twined strands of her hair around his fingers as he waited for a good omen.

“What’s the matter with her?” he demanded of his ever omniscient companions.

“I’m not sure,” Anael admitted. “Near as I can tell it’s something like a coma.”

Sean’s suspicion turned immediately to Donovan. “That bastard is doing something to her.  Why don’t you just let me cut out his fucking heart?”

“Well, first of all, that wouldn’t kill him,” Anael said mildly.  “And second of all, he’s in the next room.”

Undeterred, Sean kicked open the door to Donovan and Leliel’s room and marched over to where Donovan lay, wan but clear-eyed, on his bed.  Hoisting the man by his collar, Sean growled, “What are you doing?”

Donovan coughed. “I believe I’m lying here peaceably.”

“Claris is in some kinda coma over there.”

“Is that so.  Best wishes for her speedy recovery,” Donovan said with a yawn.

Sean dropped Donovan so that his head slammed against the bed’s right poster, which had been lovingly hand carved into a sharp pyramid. Anger electrified Donovan’s sleepy expression.  He clenched his teeth and sat up.

“I’m not doing a fucking thing.  I can hardly move, thanks to your heroic efforts to cut off my wings.  Up until recently, I couldn’t even think straight.”

“Pity I didn’t finish the job,” Sean said.

Donovan spat on Sean’s chest. “Fortune favors who it will.”

Sean wiped off the saliva and jabbed his thumb into Donovan’s throat. “Just stop whatever voodoo bullshit you’ve got going on over here.”

“Do you even understand one thing about anything?  I wouldn’t be able to talk to you right now if I were exercising any power,” Donovan said.

“Whatever.  All I know is, she’s not waking up and you were the one who tried to kill her.”

“She broke a promise.”

“She made that promise under duress,” Sean said dismissively.

Donovan shrugged. “It’s not that I blamed her for her mistake.  I asked only that she paid for it.” He rolled over onto his side and faced the wall. “As I so often pay for mine.  Leave me alone.”

“Fine,” Sean backed up towards the hallway.  He gestured from his eyes to Donovan and added, “but I’m _watching you_.”

On the other bed, Leliel rejoiced silently.  At last, her treatments had begun to take effect.
 
 
 
 

Cadmiel and Tialiel had gone out to the streets to learn what they could of this world.  They had wanted Damien’s assistance, but he was also relegated to his bed, full of complaints about the misalignment of his humors.  When Anael checked on him, she observed a gray sheen that had been absent before, and concluded that Damien was not exaggerating.

“I can’t understand why the language is unclear to us,” Cadmiel said. “I’ve never had that problem before.”

“Is an internal translator among your litany of awesome powers?” Sean said, having decided to accompany the other angels post Donovan intimidation.  He was hungry after that work, and sought a place which offered meat.

“Why yes, yes it is,” Cadmiel answered. “A power you share.”

“We are beings of thought and essence,” Anael said. “Very little is mysterious to us.”

“Besides what these fucking people are saying, right?” Sean said, as he locked glares with a mutton vendor. “I require sustenance.  Sus-ten-ance.”

Cadmiel plinked a few coins on the stall’s counter, and Sean grabbed a leg of meat without waiting for the merchant to inspect his pay.  Sean chewed noisily as they navigated the chattering masses, searching in vain for clues to answer a question they couldn’t even formulate.

“This is useless,” Cadmiel said. “We might as well sit and wait for something to happen.”

“Given that Claris is comatose, I’d say something already has happened,” Anael said.

“Oh, she isn’t in a coma,” Cadmiel said. “She’s just tired.”

But by the next morning, he admitted, “All right.  Maybe a little more than tired.”

“What can we do?” Tialiel said. “We have no way of seeing into her mind.”

“Not exactly,” Anael said.  He brought Donovan, limping, before Claris’s motionless form.

“What do you people want,” Donovan growled.

“Yes,” Cadmiel said warily. “What do we want?”

“Ireul’s powers deal with the mind.  If anyone can help us, it’s him.”

“Fuck you.  I’m resting,” Donovan said.

“Please, Obi-wan,” Tialiel said. “You’re our only hope.”

“What’s in it for me, Princess?”

“We could have left you,” Cadmiel reminded him.  “We didn’t have to take you and Leliel along in the first place.”

Donovan hesitated.

Sean was tying locks of Claris’s hair into knots, his lips drawn tight.

“Fine,” Donovan said.  “Fine.”

“Don’t fuck around,” Sean whispered. “Or not even Leliel will be able to put you back together.”

Donovan’s hands stiffened as he set them on Claris’s forehead, but he breathed deeply.  His amber eyes glazed.

Claris twitched on the bed soundlessly.

Donovan bit his lip and stumbled away. “Damn it.”

“What is it?” Sean said urgently.

“I don’t fucking know,” Donovan said.  “That was like sticking my head in a basket of rabid cats.  After taking a hit of motherfucking acid.”

“Sounds like your kind of party,” Sean said.

“Har.” Donovan crossed his legs one over the other on the floor and massaged his temples. “I don’t know what’s happening in there, but whatever it is, it doesn’t want me spying.”

“Fucking useless,” Sean muttered.

“And what does that make you?” Donovan snapped. “I made an effort, although I’m already forgetting why.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Anael said sweetly.

“Not really,” he said. “I didn’t catch anything ‘evil,’ if that’s what you’re after.  She’s not being possessed by a malignant spirit.  Well, besides Orifiel it seems.”

Sean made a gesture that was not family friendly.

Donovan chuckled. “I’m going back to bed.  Let me know if she wakes up.  We have to talk.”

Gnashing his teeth and making fists, Sean shouted an obscene retort that was lost in Anael’s palm.  Aspersions on Donovan’s manhood and the loose nature of his mother were lost against Anael’s curved white nails.

“Kindness is wasted on a snake,” Sean grumbled.  “They’re only ever thinking about ways to bite you.”

“Perhaps,” Anael said. “But their poisons can prove useful.”

“Obviously not,” Sean said. “That effort registered new heights on the fail-o-meter.”

“If anyone could identify what’s happening inside someone’s mind, it’s Ireul.  More importantly, as a connoisseur of such things, he’d know if it meant harm,” Anael explained. “We have determined that it does not.”

“I never trust the proclamations of infidels,” Sean said.  He would not be moved from Claris’s side until she woke.
 
 
 

Meanwhile, Cadmiel settled downstairs in a corner of the inn’s tavern, smoking placidly.  He detected anxiety in the gibberish of the other patrons, and as his gaze traveled from table to table he observed numerous frantic waving of hands and shaking of heads.  One man was sprawled between rows of empty mugs, crying into a table already soaked with beer.  Concerned, Cadmiel walked outside.  It was early evening and he could pick up little in the way of conversation.  Most of Aglaia's  inhabitants were in their houses for the night, but those that weren’t seemed agitated.  A woman hustled past Cadmiel as though she were being chased.  She careened erratically across the cobblestones, and when she reached a house she trembled before the door.

At length she disappeared into her home, and the door’s slam rang harshly in Cadmiel’s ears.

He chewed on his cigarette and ambled in the opposite direction.

People trickled past him, each in varying states of panic, but he had yet to locate the source of their terror.  When he grabbed a young man by the shoulders and said, in a slow and controlled voice, “What is going on?” the boy twisted away roughly.  He ran with such haste that he grazed the corner of a brick building and cut the top of his arm.  The boy paid no mind to his wound.  He continued to run.

Cadmiel wondered if it was possible for him to pass five minutes without some new frustration popping it up.

Three minutes later, when he reached the edge of town, he understood that it was not possible.

A darkness, thick as a rock, was advancing on Aglaia.  It moved along like night, almost imperceptible.  Everything it touched was obliterated.

“Shit,” Cadmiel said.  He flew towards the darkness and hovered just above it.  After a final puff on his cigarette, he spat it into the encroaching shadows, and then jerked away as it was swallowed, just as if he had thrown it into a hole.  Quickly, without any care that he would be seen, he flew back to the inn.

“Do you remember when Claris’s earth was ‘bleeding’?” he said to the other angels.

“That was really icky,” Tialiel said with a grimace.

“Something like it is happening here.  Only, worse.”

“Oh really?” Anael said, in time with Tialiel wondering what could be worse than all that slick sludge of blood.  Cadmiel described the animated darkness and its adverse affect on the environment.

“It’s chomping the scenery like a bad actor,” Cadmiel sighed.

“Should we run?” Tialiel said.

“Don’t know what good that would do,” Cadmiel replied. “Although I have noticed a few people trying it.”

“Well that explains Damien’s condition, at least,” Anael said. “If this world is completely engulfed, he’ll cease to exist.”

“And so will those other two,” Tialiel said. “Wherever they are.”

With his focus on Claris, Sean said, “I wouldn’t mind so much about Necavi, but Alistair was all right.  Kind of a tool.  But all right.”

“I honestly have no ideas for this,” Cadmiel said. “Maybe it will just recede before anything irreversible happens, or, or, I don’t know.  God, I’m getting a drink.”

Sean looked up briefly and said, “I think if that vein on his neck bulges out any more it’s just gonna spray everywhere.”

Wringing his hands, Tialiel followed Cadmiel out.  His friend was back in the corner, draining a mug in desperate exasperation.

“You don’t even like beer,” Tialiel said gently.

“I know,” Cadmiel said. “But it’s all I’ve got.”

Tialiel sat down. “You know, you don’t always have to think of everything.”

“No one else seems keen on the job,” Cadmiel pointed out. “Except Anael I guess, but that’s only when the plan is gonna be upsetting somebody.”

“I know things look a bit … bleak,” Tialiel said. “But we’ll be okay, won’t we?”

“Why are you asking me?” Cadmiel finished the drink and curled his lips in disgust. “I haven’t the faintest, Tia.”

“We will be okay,” Tialiel said, with as much courageous force as he could muster.  He attempted a galvanizing smile.

“Did you foresee it?” Cadmiel said, but the joke in his tone was lost to his exhaustion.

“I haven’t foreseen much of anything lately, actually.” Tialiel folded his hands on the tabletop, to prevent excess wringing.  He looked down at them, and drummed his red nails on the rotted grains of wood. “Seems I really don’t do much of anything.”

“Tialiel,” Cadmiel said, and he set his own hands over his friends, pressing down firmly so that they were still, “If you weren’t here, I would have cut off Orifiel’s wings a long time ago.”

Tialiel laughed, but Cadmiel said, “Oh, you think it’s funny.  But I’m not even joking.  There is not one iota of mirth in my sentiment.”

“Ha ha ha, oh—”

“Frankly, you’re just offending me now,” Cadmiel squeezed his friend’s hand.

“I’m sorry, Cadmiel,” Tialiel said. “I came down here to cheer you up and it went the other way around.”

“I suppose it all worked out,” Cadmiel said.  “I’m momentarily distracted from both our impending doom and the awful aftertaste in my mouth.”

“I really think it will, though,” Tialiel said. “Be okay, I mean.”

Cadmiel puffed on a fresh cigarette and said slyly, “Well then, I hope your words prove prophetic.”
 

With no viable options for escape, they decided first to wait a little longer for Claris and then to run like hell.  An inelegant plan, but with no information about what approached they had little choice.

It was the lack of knowledge Cadmiel hated most.  He had grown accustomed to knowing.  In his youngest years, he could recall leading the way through uncharted districts of Heaven with other angels of the first generation.  The concept of lost was foreign to him.  Cadmiel always knew, instinctively, where to go and how to find home again.  This sense of certainty extended far past the cardinal directions.  When meeting someone for the first time, Cadmiel could accurately gauge any number of things about that person—facts which might be hidden from even that individual.

The day he met Tialiel, in the barracks of the freshly formed angelic army, he was aware of two things, neither of which his friend had yet discovered for himself.

Tialiel was a superior combatant to Cadmiel in every respect.  Cadmiel entered battles with complete awareness of their outcomes, but only Tialiel understood the best way to achieve that outcome.

Tialiel would never admit this even if he could be convinced it was true.  Cadmiel never expected it of him, but he did hope that one day Tialiel would accept the other truth Cadmiel had immediately understood.

“Everything okay?” Tialiel said, as he washed his face over a bowl of water.  The lip gloss and rouge melted into his handtowel as he patted his cheeks dry.  Cadmiel had yet to find anyone, angel or human or somewhere in between, with features so gentle.

“Fine,” Cadmiel murmured.  He looked from Tialiel to Claris.

Her eyes fluttered.
 
 
 

It was a void, dark and swirling with soundless wind.  Butterflies hovered in clouds over expanses of poppies.  Next to me, Metatron reclined in the flowers, exhaling and inhaling audibly.

“Metatron?” I said, and sat beside him.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m trying to dream.”

“I think that’s what this is,” I said.

“I was hoping you could help me,” he went on.

It was then that I realized that he was not speaking in my mind but to my ears, and when I met his eyes they were not hollow sockets.  His voice was low and tranquil, with a smooth, inquisitive quality, and his eyes were gray and morose, painfully aware, unnerving, still.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Tell me how.”

“I … I don’t really know,” I admitted. “It’s just something we do.”

Disappointment soaked his features like hard rain flattening a sunflower, made more palpable by the sag of his stormy irises.

Quickly, I said, “Well, I mean, this is dreaming.  What we’re doing now.”

“Am I dreaming you?” he said hopefully. “Or are you dreaming me?”

“I dunno.  Maybe both.”

Metatron contemplated these possibilities, his eyes shut.  When he opened them again, we were in a new place.

The void had melted into a vibrant lagoon.  We were on a patch of land, surrounded by water so blue and sparkling it hurt to look into it.  The earth beneath my feet was spongy and hidden by grass that felt like silk and glittered like emeralds.  Tall ferns and thick trunked trees loomed over us, flowering with blooms so big I could easily rest my chin on them.  A lush canopy obscured the sky, and in the patches that broke through there were no clouds.  Yet, it was raining, though no moisture dampened my hair, and no drops of water slid down my knees.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Somewhere in the garden,” Metatron replied.

I dipped my hand into the lagoon, and it was like pliable glass—dry and transparent.

“I see this a lot when I sleep,” Metatron explained.  “I thought I would show it to you.”

“It’s very beautiful.”

“Yes.  I should like to find here and live.” His tone saddened. “But I suspect that it does not exist.”

“But then,” I said, “You are dreaming, obviously.”

“I won’t remember it, though,” his voice continued to fall as he spoke, like a rock in a landslide. “It will be taken from me.”

“By what?”

He was frightened now. “I don’t know.”

Metatron trembled violently, and I reached to soothe him as Leliel had Donovan, petting the thin length of his ponytail.  I eased his head into my lap and cooled his forehead with my palm.  He relaxed, and whispered, “Thank you.”

I woke up.
 
 
 

Sean and the others stood over me, all tense and worried.

“Good morning,” I yawned. “Everyone sleep well?”

“Apparently you did,” Cadmiel said sourly. “You’ve been at it for three days.”

“Oh … really?” I sat up, dumbfounded. “I … I was dreaming.”

“Of who?” Sean snapped. “I’ll kill him.  Unless it was me.”

"I-it was Metatron, actually."

Sean’s fists clenched. “That bastard.”

I rolled my eyes at him and described the dream: the void, the garden, Metatron’s voice, eyes, and enigmatic words.

“Interesting,” Cadmiel said.  “Visiting you in a dream … how very Delphic of him.”

I yawned again. “So what did I miss?”

“This place is boring as hell,” Sean said.  “Everybody here sounds like a god damn parrot.”

“Ireul is a bit better,” Anael said.

In my peripheral vision he stood with Leliel, but his amber eyes were focused on me.  Apparently Leliel’s therapy had begun to take effect, because his wings slowly stretched and contracted on his back, as though testing themselves.  His wrists and arms were still wrapped in bandages, but his hands were calm by his sides, without any twitching.  His eyes were clear.

He regarded me with an interest I did not like.  I was an escaped deer, and he was a fox, his hunger compounded by irritation.

I hid beneath my sheets, wanting to be asleep again.  He seemed not to have any remorse over our last encounter.  He seemed disappointed, like something had been denied him.  Such as my steaming heart slowly ceasing to beat in his palm, perhaps.

“And last but not least, the world is attempting to end itself on us.  Claris, you’ve got to get up,” Cadmiel said.  “We need to go.”

"What?" I said. "What do you mean?"

Cadmiel tore back the covers of my sanctuary.  Carefully, I peered around the room.  The corners were dark, as lightless as though they too were hiding under the sheets.  I looked them from to the door which led downstairs.  Something black and smoky filled the cracks in the planks.

“Are we under attack?" I whispered.

“Something like that.”

Sean picked me up and slung me over his shoulder.  With one arm he gripped me tightly about the waist and with the other he opened a window.  In the panicked streets, people were running and crying out, clawing and pushing at one another as they attempted to flee the darkness.  It surged around the town and swallowed whatever it touched—except for the church.  It alone was impervious to the miasma, even as everything around it succumbed—leaving it as a glistening, impassive island.

“What’s going on?” I whispered.

“Don’t know,” Cadmiel said.  “We can talk about it later.  Come on.”

I heard Leliel ask Donovan if he had the strength to fly, but didn’t hear his response as Sean jumped out the window and spread his wings.  He waited while the other angels flew up to him, and I saw that Tialiel was carrying Damien.  The man’s pallor was even more ghostly than usual, such that he was almost translucent.  His head lolled back against Tialiel’s arms, and he groaned.  “I feel as though my time on this earth has at last come to a whimpering halt.  Oh would that I could at least know the face of my enemy.”

Sean glared as Leliel and Donovan flew off in a different direction.  I guess he did have the strength to fly.

“Your enemy just went thataway,” Sean said. “And why we let them I’ll never know.”

“They’ll be back,” Cadmiel said.

By this time, the darkness had overtaken everything within my line of sight, except the church.  We landed on its polished marble steps, amidst a small cluster of horrified clergy and refugees.  A man clung to his crying wife, muttering incomprehensible phrases.  Others were stripped of speech.  With wide eyes they clasped their hands to their throats and mouths, disbelieving the black clouds that had consumed almost all that they knew.

Anael voiced the question on all of our minds. “I wonder why this structure is protected?”

He pushed past the throng of confused and frightened humanity gathered at the door and into the nave of the cathedral.  We followed his path down the thick, gold embroidered carpet which ran between the pews up to a cobalt altar.  A venerable priest presided over the altar, doing his best to radiate tranquility as the church filled.  He squinted at the congregation through a film of sweat.

Anael walked on as though the priest wasn’t even there.  Fortunately, he and the rest of the clergy were too preoccupied to notice as our group explored the inner chambers.  The décor simplified as we descended each new flight of stairs: the decadence reflected in the intricate tapestries and rugs of the main hall gave way to bare stone stairwells, adorned with nothing but poorly lit torches.  Anael did not bother with any doors until we reached the belly of the labyrinth.  The need for appearances had disintegrated in this quiet place, where even the air reeked of decay.  A pile of bones collected cobwebs at my feet, and half open sarcophagi lined the recesses of the walls.

“There’s something here,” Cadmiel said.

“Dead people,” Sean confirmed.  He played with the bones like a child among new toys.

“Stop that,” I said.

“Why?” he asked, as a femur crumbled to dust his hand. “It’s not like they care.”

“It’s disrespectful,” I insisted.

He shrugged.

“Over here,” Cadmiel said.  At the opposite end of the crypt was a drab wooden door, stained darkly red.  Cadmiel rattled the knob. “It’s locked.”

“Not a problem,” Sean replied, not one to miss an opportunity to knock something down. “Step away.”

“Wait,” Anael said.

Damien stirred in Tialiel’s arms, where he had rested ever since we left the inn.  Tialiel had not set him down even once.  Damien coughed miserably. “The scent of death rouses me, though my weakness remains like a thorny pinecone lodged in my gullet.  I feel the force of my life ebbing from my veins …”

“That’s nice,” Sean said, poised to overwhelm the door with a vicious sidekick to its center. “Why the fuck am I waiting?”

“I think they’re onto us,” Anael said. “Listen.”

My head ached from the odor of rotted things.  It smelled of old eggs and salt and dried up body fluids.  I had to focus on the door just to keep down the vomit.  But I did hear increasingly audible shouts.  A group of angry priests barreled into the crypt.  Maybe they had been less occupied than I realized.

“Hi,” Tialiel said.

“Terminus,” one of them replied forcefully. “Terminus piriante.”

“I think we’re not su-supposed to go in there,” I said helpfully.

“Too bad,” Sean said, as his foot slammed into the brittle wood.  Enraged, one of the priests raised a hand to cast, but the others restrained him.  Splinters crackled around us, and as they broke on the cement floor a searing light spilled into the crypt.  The priests wailed, and one lunged forward to claw at Sean’s throat.  Sean knocked him away in irritation and strode forward into the light.

A diaphanous crystal, about as tall as me, hung in the center of an expansive chamber.  It levitated there by its own power, flanked on either side by marble pillars.  Skeletons littered the room, all curiously ordered horizontally, like they had been lovingly arranged.

“A fragment of divinity,” Damien groaned.  “It was rumored that it demanded monthly offerings of blood in exchange for its protection.”

“That explains a lot,” Cadmiel said. “At least it appears to be working.”

The priests cowered at the entrance as we went inside.  Anael reached to touch the crystal and the image of his fingers warped, spreading out wafer thin and then fattening like marshmallows.

“That’s clever,” he mused.

“What’s your diagnosis?” Cadmiel said.

“Not sure,” Anael said. “It seems to be exerting a power similar to Orifiel’s—it’s interrupting the destructive energy outside and bending it around the cathedral.  Like a force field.”

“This is constantly in effect?” Cadmiel said.

“That’s what I don’t understand … if it were constantly expending this much power, it would … I don’t know … maybe it’s stronger than it looks,” Anael frowned at the crystal. His hand shuddered and contorted as he pressed it against the glowing glass surface. “Because it certainly appears fragile.”

“It looks like that thing,” Sean remarked. “That thing, that one time.”

“What?” Cadmiel said.

“You remember, Claris?  When we met Donovan and all those other freaks,” Sean said. “We had to destroy a machine like this.  See, it’s filled with blue liquid, just like that machine was.”

“Oooh really,” Anael said, as I nodded.

“I-it was the machine responsible for the problems in th-the, like, universal fabric,” I said, unsure of the technical term for “fucking everything up.”

“Interesting,” Anael said.  “If that’s the case then I wonder if this crystal is both causing what’s happening here as well as protecting the cathedral from it.”

“There are four of them,” Damien interjected, with effort. “One in the basement of each cathedral.  But … they’re all connected, I think.”

“Great,” Sean said. “Let’s break it.”

“I’d really like a sample of that fluid,” Anael murmured, as Sean prepared to ram his fist through the crystal.  His destructive impulses were being well sated today.

But before his knuckles connected to their target, an image appeared within the crystal’s liquid.  A hooded figured wavered in and out of focus.  I scratched my itching neck as I tried, in vain, to puzzle out who it might be.  Not Metatron.  One of the other angels?  I knew of nothing and no one else.

I thought the image was a personal hallucination, but everyone was staring at it expectantly, except for the priests.  They were huddled together on the crypt’s threshold, trembling violently, many of them shielding their heads with their arms.

If the image spoke then, I didn’t hear it, although Sean flinched like he was being beaten.  Scenes and pictures began to flow into my mind.  A little boy with dark hair, coloring pictures near a cozy hearth.  A girl with a braid.  Crayons melting by a pile of burning logs.  Drawings crisping to ash, and flames which caught on loveseats and drapes and consumed the whole room.  A girl with a braid.  Her pale skin blackened and crumbled to ash, her mouth frozen in gentle surprise.

The hooded figure said, “Once upon a time, when the world was so new that to walk its soil prompted steam to rise up to heaven, the oldest god married the oldest goddess.  The oldest god was unfathomably powerful and the oldest goddess was unfathomably wise.  However, from his brothers the oldest god learned of a prophecy concerning himself and his wife: a child that they bore would usurp his father’s place, he would kill his father and steal his power.”

The imagery intensified: the boy ran through his house as it collapsed around him.  Fragments of burnt drawings swirled around his feet like leaves in autumn.  The boy curled up in dirt, his face smeared with soot.  He convulsed, and he vomited.

“The god resolved to fight the prophecy, and so he ate each child the goddess bore.  Unhappy, the loving but misguided woman chose to act against her husband.  While he slept, she artfully opened his belly and rescued the last child, who had not been swallowed for long and thus yet lived.  She hid the child in a cave and let him age.”

A red crayon, melted into a waxy puddle.  The remains of a ribbon.  A smile, and a voice that never yelled.

“It wasn’t me,” Sean gasped. “It wasn’t me.”

He was crying.

The hooded figure continued. “The god became aware of his wife’s plot, and set out to correct her mistake.  He was pleased to find the child already hard at work at his own undoing.”

The boy sat alone in the middle of a decimated village, clutching his stomach.  He set his forehead to the gray earth and whispered, “I want to take a nap now.  Please bring me a glass of milk.”

Sean screamed.

The hooded figure’s low accusation purred in all of our ears. “Don’t you understand yet, Orifiel?  You’re the villain of this story.”

In a rage, Sean attacked the crystal, battering it with his fists until it cracked and then shattered.  Its light dimmed and went out, and its liquid poured onto the floor.  Sean dripped with it, and shards of the crystal stuck to his hair and skin.  He tore them off frantically, breathing so hard that I feared his heart might burst from the exertion.

I threw my arms around his waist, in pain because of his pain, and buried my face between his shoulderblades.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” he whimpered. “I didn’t do it.  I didn’t.”

“I believe you,” I said.  I did not know what I claimed to believe, but I knew that it was important that I did.  Eventually, his muscles slackened, and his body lost inertia, sinking into my arms like a ship just barraged by cannons.  I kissed his hair.

I had little time to comfort him further, because the priests were no longer afraid.  All of them were casting now, their faces pale with fury.

“Move!” Cadmiel shouted.

Sean stared dully at his hands.  He would not move, and I would not leave him.

“We have to get up,” I whispered urgently, but he slumped over, limp as a ragdoll.

“I’m tired,” he said.

I wasn’t strong enough to pull him out of the way.  Cadmiel dashed for us as the priests finished their casting.  They directed their staves at us, and my ears popped.  The air hissed and sizzled.

I clung to Sean and I waited.

The beginnings of 10 will be up soon.  I've really neglected this story in favor of Warcraft, and I don't even know who reads it anymore, but that's got to stop.  I want to finish this so I can rip it apart and rewrite it into something that's actually good.  But I want to get everything important down first.  Chapter 13 will be the end of it, but there's a lot to do between now and then.  Going forward, I will be more regular with updates, if only for the sake of trying to re-establish the discipline I had when I first started writing this story.  If you made it this far, please do let me know :(

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