Seraph and Angel; wing and blade
Who shall be first to be unmade?
The great spear whirled, leaving a golden trail in the air behind it. Huge as the Seraph was, it danced on the air as though weightless. Darting and twirling around it like a deadly fly was a small black shape, with a dagger the colour of oily night, leaving a coiling dark mist in his wake that hung in the air like a smoky scarf.
Striking with quick movements, Mekka fought the Seraph. Every clash of their blades sent a quiver of sparkling power through the air and tore a few threads of reality, leaving frayed holes that could not be seen, except as odd blind spots in one's vision.
Every time Mekka encountered one of these holes he became disoriented, seeing his past actions repeated, or future actions, or events that had never happened – all in a split second – and it was difficult to discern what was actually going on. He tried to avoid the rifts as best he could, but the space around the Seraph was becoming cluttered with them. He was forced to try and anticipate his own movements and those of the Seraph, and hope he guessed correctly while he was momentarily 'blinded'.
He misjudged the timing on a lunge – his brain telling him he'd already done it – and felt the shaft of the great spear crash into him, and the next thing he knew he was amongst the market stalls again, gasping for breath, bits of broken timber collapsing around him.
He barely had time to gulp in a couple of lungfuls of air before the Seraph's weapon was sweeping around at him in a low arc, obliterating the market stalls as it went.
It wasn't waiting for him to recover, this time.
Mekka threw himself into the air just in time, rolling as he went, so that he saw the golden gleam of metal pass beneath him, saw a brief glimpse of his dark reflection as it scythed by.
Landing on the ground with one foot, he immediately pushed off again, wings spread wide, and spun to the side as the spear swung back around again.
Finding himself suddenly, miraculously, within the giant Angel's defences, he threw himself at its body, and managed to grab a hold of its robe before a huge hand clutched at him. Leaping upwards, avoiding its grip, he slashed out and caught it across the knuckles with his knife, then spun away.
He hit one of the rifts and suddenly found himself being squeezed to death by the hand, pain exploding through him… then blinked and saw that no such thing was happening, but the spear was rushing towards him, fast.
Leaping backwards on pure instinct, the spear passed his face by a feather's breadth.
Mekka whirled to the side, out of the shredded mess of reality and dropped to the ground, panting. He gritted his teeth. The Seraph didn't appear to be affected by the rifts, which gave it a huge advantage.
The trigonic dagger in his hand shifted form constantly; restless, eager as a living thing, leaking black, greasy mist that curled around his hand, around his body, and trailed after him. He breathed it in and it gave him energy: a dark, cold determination.
He refused to believe that this was a fight he could not win.
Though his body was bruised and beaten, both inside and out, he could barely feel the pain any longer. A strange numbness seemed to keep it at bay, while not hampering his movements, as though the dagger took the pain away, took the doubts away, took the fatigue away, and simply left him to fight.
And fight he would, until either the Seraph was dead, or he was.
Mekka dodged as the spear smashed into the ground, cracking the white stone, and threw himself back at the Seraph, slashing.
All his attacks were parried effortlessly.
Sparks flew. More rifts opened.
Mekka ignored them, pressing his attacks on the Seraph with increasing recklessness. He jumped through one reality after another, in a whirl of confusion. He failed the battle a hundred times, in a hundred different ways: crushed, slashed, beheaded, torn apart… and yet, amidst the chaos, he was aware that he was still alive.
Still fighting.
He mistimed attacks again and again, the spear smashing into him, leaving him sprawled on the ground amid the debris of the market stalls. The Seraph fended him off with maddening serenity, its gigantic face expressionless, as though it knew his every move.
Stumbling painfully to his feet once more, Mekka leapt over the swing of the spear and sought the rifts out deliberately.
Not all of them showed him failing...
He stopped twisting his mind in knots, trying to figure out which was the right reality, which one was true… because, he realised, they all were.
He had died horribly, an uncountable number of times, but he had won gloriously as well. Every reality was real; they were all the same thing, woven from the same fabric of existence. He searched for scenes in which he succeeded: where he was faster and smarter and more graceful than the Seraph. And he found that he began to deftly avoid the giant Angel's swings and lunges… the golden spear could no longer touch him, the hands could not reach him… he was swift, swifter than thought, than light…
They became locked in something resembling a beautiful, choreographed dance, each knowing the other's precise movements, not touching each other, neither attacking nor defending but just… moving in harmony...
Light from the sinking sun fell over them, as though it were the last battle in existence; the only battle that mattered.
Seraph fought Angel, but they could both have been Gods.
Mekka's desperation, his anger, his anguish, smoothed out and coalesced into one, single emotion: certainty. Darkness filled him, like a flood of shadow, like the force of ice, like the profound velvet blackness between the stars. It streamed off his knife and off his wings, and hair, and eyes.
And then, the black-winged Angel broke the dance.
Full of purpose, Mekka flew directly at the Seraph's mighty face.
The face moved away, just out of reach, its three glorious blue-golden eyes pinning him like a moth to the sky.
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Mekka went with it as the Seraph somersaulted backwards, as though in slow motion.
Then, with a hard beat of his wings, Mekka cancelled his momentum and launched into a backflip himself.
As the Seraph came around, as it straightened from its crouch, as its vast, white wings flared wide, Mekka was directly above its head.
The rotating halo spun, its hundred vivid blue eyes staring up at him in accusation...
Silently, Mekka folded his black wings and allowed himself to drop, dagger gripped in both hands, point downwards…
The knife sheared through the halo without resistance, the pieces falling away, eyes filling with white light as they died…
And the dagger continued downwards, plunging into the top of the Seraph's head.
The dagger seemed to lengthen as it sliced into the Seraph's skull, becoming a sword, a spear, a vicious, terrible black spike that raced all the way down through the great Angel's body.
Mekka clung to the handle of the knife, crouched over it as a tremor, a spasm of death quivered through the Seraph. No blood issued from the wound, but beneath his boots, the golden hair began to turn grey, spreading outwards from the dagger.
Slowly, as it died, the Seraph turned to stone, its movements becoming still, its gaze frozen, its feathers and robe and skin hardening. Then it cracked, a spidery network of lines snapping outwards from Mekka's hands.
Still he clutched the dagger, as though unable to let go, as though his victory were not assured, as the giant statue trembled beneath him… and then, all of a sudden, it shattered.
A few moments later, Mekka pushed himself up amid the rubble and a dizzying wave of nausea rushed over him. Suddenly, he felt weak, trembling and… empty. The blackness that had fed him, urged him on, lent him such powerful strength of will had fallen away, crumbled like the statue.
There was no sense of elation at the victory. No gratification. Not even relief.
Nothing but an overwhelming, sickening horror.
His stomach heaved and he retched. Droplets of black blood pattered onto the stone.
Mekka shook, looking down in confusion at the dagger, still gripped tightly in his hand. He couldn't seem to let go of it, as though it was a part of himself.
It was a part of himself… and he a part of it…
“N-no,” he stammered. “N-no! What… what have I done?!”
He had murdered people… guards, the Governor, Tek... and destroyed a Seraph! The whole of Arkana was in danger…
An almighty crack split the air high above his head, and for a second he thought he was back on the statue as it shattered… With a jerk, he looked up, but was forced to shield his face as a blinding flash of light pierced his good eye, flooding the plaza with stark light.
He was filled with sudden terror. The Seraph is alive!
But a moment later, the light faded, and when his vision cleared, Mekka lifted his head again tentatively to see something even more terrible... a hole in the sky, rapidly expanding, the edges molten gold...
And then the sound of screaming came to him, and flurried movement at the edges of his vision. Looking around, he saw Angels fleeing in every direction. He had not been aware that the rooftops and balconies surrounding the plaza were crowded with them; silent, stunned witnesses to the fight.
And then a bone-splitting roar echoed through the city – no sound a Seraph would ever make…
Mekka clutched his head with his free hand as panic rose within him, his thoughts running everywhere, trying to escape but trapped within his skull. His breath came in short, sharp gasps.
Stumbling to his feet, he came up against a boulder, spun away a few feet and fell again, banging his knees on the broken stone littered around him. His breath came fast, his skin prickled with sweat. Alternate claws of despair and horror gripped his mind. He could feel madness claiming him…
He tried to push himself up again, and his scrabbling hand pulled over a chunk of stone that rolled to face him.
On it, an eye was depicted: cracked down the middle.
He screamed.
Hawk and Ferrian hurried through narrow, curving, ivory-walled alleys, having finally made their way to the uppermost tier of Fleetfleer. Ferrian had been forced to lift Hawk from one platform to another in several places. At first, Ferrian worried that his magic wasn't capable of such a thing, but they didn't have much of a choice – there was only so much ivy that Hawk could climb – and in the end it hadn't been a problem.
Li fluttered along quietly in their wake.
The guards were nowhere to be seen. Hawk supposed that whatever was going on in the centre of the city was of somewhat more importance than chasing a lone Human.
Disturbing sounds came to them as they ran; the echoing ring of clashing metal, accompanied by crashing and strange crackling sounds. At one point, an enormous thunderclap and blinding flash of light from the sky proved Hawk's unspoken fear true: the Angels' Aegis had failed.
Now, as they raced along the edge of the central platform, a roar like the sound of an enraged mountain tearing something apart shook the buildings around them, alarmingly close.
They threw themselves against a wall.
Off to their left, a few buildings away, one of the tall towers moved. It toppled with a slow, proud grace, like an aristocratic tree being felled, until it crashed into another tower and both disintegrated into a cascade of pale, broken stone, spilling their contents and rubble into the lower tiers and ultimately, the forest below.
A Dragon appeared in the space the tower had previously occupied, crouched on the edge of the platform, lit from behind by the setting sun, its eyes volcanic in its shadowed head. It was emaciated; its skin hung off its bones in loose sheets, but here and there patches of golden scales still glittered in the light, remnants of former magnificence.
Opening its jaws, the Dragon sprayed fire in a wide arc, setting gardens, wooden shutters, crates and anything else flammable alight. Then it took flight, leaping off its perch and soaring away over the city, its long spiked tail swishing out behind it, weaving around the towers as it went.
When it was far enough away that they were no longer in immediate danger, Hawk slowly let his breath out. It's moving away from the centre, at least…
Watching bursts of flame illuminate distant sections of the city, he shook his head helplessly. “Why Arkana?” he muttered.
Ferrian looked at him. “Maybe the Dragons want to get revenge on the descendants of those who imprisoned them?” he said, shrugging. “Mekka mentioned that the Angels used to practise magic, thousands of years ago. But I suppose the Dragons don't know that there aren't any sorcerers left…”
“Well,” Hawk pointed out, “except you.”
“Yeah,” Ferrian replied dryly. “Except me.” A sudden nervous expression crossed his face as he glanced up at the white line of the Tower, rising above the city, impossibly high into the evening sky. “Do you think… that the Dragon will destroy Caer Sync?”
A wave of prickling horror passed through Hawk at Ferrian's words. “Crud,” he said, rubbing his head. “I don't wanna be around here when THAT thing comes down!” He got to his feet. “Let's keep moving!”
They made their way quickly through the upper city. They were in an area that Hawk recognised: he had spent the better part of a day running around and hiding in it, after all. Orange light spilled between the towers, distinguishable from the patches of flickering flame that licked the city only by its steady glow.
Their shadows darted after them like assassins.
A short time later, they came to a wide, open circular space surrounded by broad steps and government buildings.
Hawk stopped dead. Li landed beside him, eyes wide.
The sun was a burnished disc in a corner between the towers, like a coin dropped from the Goddess's palace. The large, oblong-shaped council chambers directly opposite them spread its shadow across half the plaza; the rest was striped with brooding orange rays and bright, hungry patches of flame.
Hawk stared at the scene of wreckage in disbelief. Earlier that day, the plaza had been filled with festivities, music and cheerful Angels.
Now it was ominously quiet and deserted; the market lay in burning ruins.
And the Seraph was gone.
In the centre, beside a sadly tinkling fountain topped with a golden, headless child, was a massive pile of grey stone rubble.
Hawk blinked and rubbed at his eyes. “Ugh,” he complained. “Something's wrong with my vision...”
“No,” Ferrian said quietly, stepping up beside him. “I see it too.” The boy waved a hand at the scene before them. “There are weird blind spots everywhere,” he said. “Like that hole I sliced in the Aegis.”
Hawk frowned. “What does that mean?”
Ferrian looked worried. He shook his head. “I don't know,” he replied. “Like… something ripped up reality here…”
Hawk looked around, his gaze travelling over the 'blind spots', feeling unsettled and slightly queasy as he remembered his last encounter with one. He didn't know what could rip up reality – other than Ferrian's Sword – and he didn't want to know. But if Mekka had anything to do with it, he was nowhere to be seen.
“Where'd the Seraph go?” he wondered.
“Uh...” Ferrian answered. “I think Li found it...”
Hawk turned to see the Angel girl walking along a large piece of curiously curved stone. Stepping closer, he saw that it was part of an enormous statue – the first two fingers of a giant hand.
“Mother Goddess,” he breathed, crouching and touching the stone in disbelief. “You don't think–”
“Hawk!” Ferrian gasped suddenly. “Look out!”