Chapter 19: All the Colours of the World
It took Joan a few moments to readjust to purely mortal senses.
The feeling of earth and grass under her knees was the first thing to come to her, then the feeling of feathers and muscles under her fingers. Sight was next, first as coloured blurs that swiftly sharpened into recognizable forms.
The French saint’s eyes widened as she saw Adam, struggling up to one knee, his hand holding something that was burning brightly, unmindful of the flames licking around his fingers. As she watched, whatever the burning object had been, crumbled to ash which then disappeared.
“Adam, what-”
Before she even had time to finish her question her charge fell forward, slumping to the ground with his eyes shut. An exclamation of surprise escaped the saint’s lips as she darted forward, barely catching him before he hit the grass.
“Is he harmed?”
Honoured Hadriel was at her side, leaning over the unconscious form in Joan’s arms. The angel had stored her blades once more and was now waiting with tension in her stance as she looked at their charge.
Touching her fingers to his exposed shoulder Joan tried to sense his health. Her magic felt drained to near non-existence, and even her life force felt dulled from her earlier efforts, but a simple evaluation was still within her abilities.
“No, grâce à Dieu,” Joan’s eyes closed once more as she tried to understand what she was sensing. “He is unharmed, but there is movement amid his internal energies.”
“Oh? Does this mean that he has somehow managed to catalyse his mana into power?”
“I believe he has,” The resurrected soul confirmed. “You and I saw it earlier when it was running out of control. Adam has succeeded in gaining his power, but I am uncertain of what is now taking place. Removing that infestation has done . . . something.”
She concentrated further, trying to make sense of what she could feel. Adam’s internal system had not been damaged, but it had been disordered. She could sense where the flows were not as they should be, too fast in some spots, too slow in others. In some places knots of energy had formed, stopping the flows entirely.
Such a disordered internal system could have only resulted in death in a mortal, the life energies strangling themselves until they self-destructed. Adam’s new divinely empowered body could withstand it. She could see the flows beginning to correct themselves, his magic following suit. And as the blockages and snarls in the channels of empowered mana came free . . .
Joan let out a startled yelp as flames blossomed off to her left. Not exploded, not burst, it literally blossomed, a rose-like flower composed of flames appearing as a bud in mid-air, then opening up into a beautiful bloom that simply hung there as though upon an invisible vine. The first bloom was followed by another, then another, and another. Soon the area about her was dotted with nearly a dozen of them.
Joan tried to move back, to inch herself and Adam away from the small flowers of fire, only to be taken by surprise as another flared into being only a few inches from her neck. The heat from it had been sudden enough to startle her, enough to make her reflexively dart back.
Her grip on her charge shifted. It was only a small thing, something that under any other circumstances she would have been able to compensate for. But as her charge’s wings dragged across the earth the situation changed.
About them the grass went . . . crazy! Some of it withered into dust, some of it burst into multi-coloured flames that seemed to dance in defiance of the breeze that gusted about them, some grew prodigiously, reaching up into the sky further than mere grass should have been able to, while others seemed to petrify into beautiful gemstone versions of themselves. Joan endured it, letting the iridescent flames burn her as she tried to regain her grip on Adam. An act made difficult as a combination of sweat and blood from his earlier wounds left the arm she held slick.
As she struggled a burst of wind exploded out from Adam, a sphere-like gust strong enough to catch the saint off-balance and send her tumbling. In a feat of acrobatics that would make any gymnast gasp in envy, Joan righted herself and landed on her feet, but the blast had separated her from her charge.
Adam had slumped to the ground, but his wings had caught him, propping him up as the sharpened feathers dug into the grass. He hadn’t fallen all the way but instead seemed to be almost kneeling in prayer. The resurrected soul readied herself to dart in, to retrieve him, but a slim hand clamped down upon her wrist.
“Do not interfere.”
Hadriel’s calm voice cut through Joan’s rising panic, freezing her feet in place as she turned to look at the angel.
“What do you mean?”
The angel gestured to the slumped demigod. The burning flowers about him remained, and the grass continued its chaotic dance under and around him. In addition, firefly-like lights of various colours danced in the spaces between the flowers, their movements oddly synchronized in a manner that made one think of a school of fish. It was an oddly beautiful sight, but an unsettling one with her charge so close to dangers, no matter how lovely they looked.
“That is not an attack, it is merely random magical manifestations.”
“What?”
Joan’s eyes widened as she realized that the angel was correct. Even though Adam did not move the various magical phenomena about him did him no harm. The flowers of fire did not burn him, the grass that became crystal did not touch him, nor did the grass that burned or moved. Even the wind that whipped about him did not so much as disturb his hair. He was at the centre of it all, yet remained untouched.
“The parasite . . . I believe that it attacked him while he was completing the ignition of his magic.” Hadriel explained. “The process was interrupted, unable to reach its natural conclusion. Now that the hell-born energies are no longer interfering the ignition can complete. What we are seeing are minor manifestations of his power, mere twitches, as his natural affinities receive ignited mana for the first time, and spring to full activity.”
His natural affinities? Joan glanced at the heavenly soldier, then looked back at Adam. Fire? Was that his natural talent? Or the changing nature of the grass? The wind? And she was unsure as to what the nature of those swimming lights even was.
The French saint emerged from her churning thoughts as she became aware of another change. Where there had only been the sigh of the wind or the chirping of insects there was now something else. It was a strange sound, one that started quietly but was quickly growing in volume. It was not overpowering or dominating though. Instead, it was a constantly shifting note that rang through the air with a heart-aching clarity she had not thought to experience upon the mortal plane.
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More and more effects joined the dance about her charge. Shadows shifted on their own, hazes of colour shivered in the air, stones rose from the soil, then sank like whales on an ocean. Joan could only watch in awed fascination as the strange yet elegant interplay of energies and motions wove together into something beautiful.
Minutes passed, and bit by bit the dance about Adam slowed and shrank. One by one the flowers faded away, the shadows stilled, the grass returned to normal, until it was just her charge there, slumped and unmoving, though still breathing regularly. There was a sense of power, a sense that the energies inside him had not yet fully subsided, but the main display of magic seemed to be over.
As she drew closer Joan noticed a final surge of magical energy flow out of Adam. Unlike the previous bursts, this one was unaligned to any element and was composed of pure and raw mana. Also, rather than dissipate into the world about him it was instead . . . spinning? It rose from within him in a clockwise spiral as it went up. Its rotation was rapid and growing faster, but its speed of ascension was quite slow. Bit by bit it came up past his heart, then his throat, then his face, until it was leaving his body altogether and spinning above his head like a miniature cyclone.
“What is that?”
The question was spoken aloud without any expectation that an answer would be forthcoming. However, to her surprise, Hadriel spoke up.
“I am uncertain, but I think that Adam’s power is trying to form a halo.”
The answer was so shocking it made Joan’s mouth fall slightly open as she turned to look at the angel. Halos, such as the one that Hadriel herself possessed, weren’t simple decorations, rather they were badges of position, markers of rank and authority. They told those that knew how to look where their bearers stood in the Heavenly Host and what their virtues and accolades were. In some rare cases, halos also offered greater power to their wielders. Increasing the power of an angel was most simply done by strengthening or increasing the number of their wings, granting them personalized weapons of greater power that were bonded to them, or augmenting their halo.
For Adam to have a halo . . . well, she’d never heard of any Nephilim gaining one, at least not on their own. For her charge to be creating one immediately upon gaining his magic suggested that the angelic portion of his power was both strong and dominant. Could it be that there was more than one angel in his ancestry? Might it be that aside from Bath Kol he was also descended from something like an angel of the Void, or perhaps an angel of Craft? It would explain some of the oddities that were cropping up around her charge.
CHNNK!
The resurrected soul was brought out of her thoughts by the odd metallic sound. It sounded vaguely like the sound heated metal made as it cooled, but this was both louder and sharper.
CHNNK! CHNNK!
Again, it sounded, this time twice in rapid succession. Looking in the direction it was coming from Joan realized that it was from the nascent halo that had been spinning above Adam’s slumped head. There, obscured by the spinning streams of colourless magic, she could see . . . something. The magic kept her from making it out properly, but there was definitely something there now.
CHNNK! CHNNK! CHNNK! CHNNK!
More of the odd noise sounded out, this time in a rapid staccato, growing louder as they came.
CHNNK! CHNNKCHNNK! CHNNKCHNNKCHNNKCHNNKCHNNKCHNNK!
The sound was coming in a rapid flurry, a crazed mixture that vaguely resembled high-speed gunfire and the twang of a metal sheet rippling. It was even more disconcerting to see that even though the gunfire loud noises were going off right over his head Adam didn’t react in any way that she could see. Instead, he just remained in place, his eyes closed and his body slightly slumped.
CHNNKCHNNKCHNNK! CHNNKCHNNK! CHNNK!
The tempo of the metallic pops was slowing down now, no longer the storm it had been. At the same time, the spinning miniature storm of magic was losing velocity, dissipating as it did so and giving the two heavenly agents a clear look at the object that had been causing the sounds they’d heard.
Floating in the air over Adam’s head were dozens of pieces of metal. Some of them were just small, barely more than shards the size of her little finger, others were longer than her whole hand and vaguely resembled metal feathers, or maybe tiny, narrow wings, others were curved into oddly organic shapes. The collection of metallic shapes clustered together in a clump as though they’d all been drawn together by a powerful magnetic force, but that didn’t remain the case for long.
As she watched the segments floated apart, suspended by an unseen force. Swiftly they aligned themselves, forming into a pair of rings, one inside the other, floating about four or five inches over Adam’s head. The outer ring, which was more than a foot across was made out of segments leaning outwards, while the slightly smaller inner circle was more vertical, though still slightly leaning. Both rings were made up of individual pieces that just floated in place, all of them fitting together, but never touching. The only thing that seemed out of place was a blank spot that occupied the space above Adam’s forehead-
CHNNK!
There was a final metallic pop, and a metal ring came into existence in the empty spot, completing the strange metal halo that now hovered over her charge’s head.
It was oddly beautiful, despite its strangeness. The metal that made up each piece was dark, but not so much that colour could not be seen from it. As the light hit it in different ways it could be dark blue, then dark green, then a blend of the two, the effect making it clear that this was no mortal metal dug up from the earth. The individual parts were also eye-catching in their own way, each piece possessing a subtle perfection that went beyond simple artistry. It was as though they had not been forged or sculpted, but rather as if they had somehow grown into their current shape, and that shape was the one that they had been destined to hold since the moment the universe came into being. However, even this was eclipsed by the strange harmony of the form they created when they all floated into their final configuration. It was somehow greater than the sum of its parts, a thing of marvellous intricacy that was only made more perfect by the fact that none of the parts that made it up actually touched each other but were held together by an energy that existed between the pieces.
That very energy was . . . strange as well. There was a shimmer in the air, a suggestion that something was acting, but it was always seen off to the side, rather than where Joan was looking at the time. The effect was somewhat disconcerting, but still oddly beautiful.
“Is that . . . a Crown?”
The question was voiced by both agents of Heaven at more or less the same time, their queries breaking the quiet of the field as they stared out at their charge. They turned to stare at each other, an unspoken exchange passing between them, an acknowledgement of what they were seeing and a confirmation that what they each suspected was true.
Crowns were not to be taken lightly, not when they were normally only the providence of either the most powerful or the most favoured of angels. They were an advancement, or perhaps even an evolution, of the halo that the angel would have otherwise possessed. A halo might grant an aptitude for a certain kind of force or action, a specialization that angels developed throughout their lives. A Crown, on the other hand, either denoted or imparted supremacy in a certain skill or power. Whether or not it was the Crown that granted that power, or if it was instead a mark of the bearer’s own power was uncertain. Those that possessed them were the likes of Michael, Gabriel, Bath Kol, Metatron, and, when he had still been of the Hosts of Heaven, Lucifer. They had possessed the Crowns of Might, Truth, Song, Command, and Glory respectively.
For Adam to possess a Crown . . .
Was that an indication of how powerful he was? There had already been plenty of evidence to indicate that. His bloodline was clearly tied closely to the heavens and the angels that served there, given the wings he had gained, but a Crown? How?! Something like that should only be granted to the strongest and most trusted, not to a man only a handful of years out of boyhood! Not to one so freshly come into their power, it just made no sense!
Then another thought struck her, and the resurrected saint felt a small chill run down her back.
She knew that Adam was part of a Destiny, as in a part of the Almighty’s plan, so that would suggest that both his power and his having a Crown were anything but random chance. However, if that was the case then she had to wonder just what he was destined to fight that would require such power. Just the sheer scale of power displayed so far was on par with a true god, possibly even a strong one, but a Crown as well? She would never question the Lord in His choices, but it seemed almost . . . excessive to place so much power in a single young man.
Which begged the question, what was he being prepared to stand against?
With a small shake of her head, Joan dismissed the building spiral of dark possibilities that tugged at her mind. Yes, it was likely that there would be something in the future, something that would merit such a power as Adam seemed to be coming into.
“Whoa! That’s the stuff!”
Her attention was brought back to her charge as he suddenly spoke out. It wasn’t quite a shout, but it was considerably louder than his normal conversational volume. Adam was no longer slumped, instead his back had gone so straight she thought she might have heard some pops coming from it. His wings were no longer propping him up, instead, they were spread wide, stretched to their fullest. His eyes were suddenly wide and intense. He looked as though someone had brought him out of his earlier torpor by giving him an electric shock.