Seraphim soared through the night, the remaining links of chain lashing about in the wind, she looked back again and again, half expecting the unlooked for savior to be soaring behind her on angel wings of his own.

But she was alone. The moon was high in the sky and loomed like the menacing eye of the I Am. And as it loomed over her, Seraphim’s heart quivered and pounded in her breast, far ahead she could see the lights of a city, the nearest one her Thousand Eyes caught a vision of, and one she had every intention of avoiding. ‘But how long can I fly like this, holy water and blessed bread are giving me strength now, but it’s been so long, and I’m still so weak… if I could only remember the Face of I Am, I could pray…’

But her wishes had the same power they’d always held.

Nothing.

She recalled nothing.

Striking the Earth, blind and flailing, the peasants by the river whom she thought would help her.

Nothing but gray stone and silence, nothing at all, only the dark cloth of priest after priest for time after time asking questions she couldn’t answer. ‘What has the world become in the age since I’ve been locked away… weakened ever more as time passed by… fools, if the Great I Am cared for me, where was his presence when I was locked away?!’ She longed to know the face of her creator if only to curse it, but the same nothing continued to defy her in the starlight of the present day that defied her during the daylight on the morning she found herself on the soft ground beside the river of that primitive village.

So there was nothing for it. Seraphim winced and forced the eye on her palm to appear and blink open in the darkness, her wings beat and flapped and she stopped, hovering in the dark, holding her arm out, the chain fell and thudded in between her breasts before it was reduced to a gentle sway as she turned to seek direction. In her mind the images were a steady blur, rushing and racing like a crossbow bolt at close range. The eye fed her information, so much information, her head began to pound and she brought her other hand up to touch her temple. ‘It hurts… so long since I’ve used that, so long… I wonder how long it will take to process things like I- wait, was it always painful?’ Seraphim struggled to recall how long since she’d had any thoughts that weren’t confined and rendered sluggish by the cursed chains.

The fog on her was still lifting.

And it hurt her head to think too hard, she felt a throbbing ache between her eyes. ‘Hurts… I’ve got to…’ The thought stopped when she heard a distant, unfamiliar noise.

She felt a tingle over her body, her wings beat the air, and it was only that the chill in her bones was still present that made the buffeting winds tolerable. Seraphim already felt numb.

Then she found it. The eye in her palm blinked, ‘I found the way… I… I will have to hope for the best.’ She told herself, but the sound at her back was growing louder.

A dull roar rising in the distance like the beast of the deep, the great leviathan, but taken to the skies.

Seraphim looked behind her. ‘Are those… birds?’ She wondered, and knew immediately that they were not. ‘Metal birds driven by men?!’ She realized when she saw the masked figures within the glass.

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She stiffened as the tube shot past her eyes, then spun and flapped.

‘No! I won’t go back!’ Seraphim cried and began to flee, the tube that sailed past her body held the malice of a curse within. The remaining curse of her chains responded, and a brief jolt of pain shot through her flesh. Then the metal tube which sailed beyond her, burst into fire in the sky, lighting up the darkness around her and blasting her body with the heat and force of its eruption.

Seraphim’s heart quivered in her breast and she began to soar faster, faster, ever faster, her jaw clenched as she tried to keep herself going in the direction in which some hope of help lay. A steady tapping noise hit her ears, the two metal birds split up and were chasing after her, their angled wings were the source of the roar in the air, and the sound of that tapping, like the parade drum of soldiers on the march, presaged the flight of small metal fragments the size of the palm of her hand. Like tiny lances they flew past her, each one bearing the fragment of a larger curse. “No! No! No!” Seraphim howled her frustration as she felt the little lance pierce her calf through and through, the burning pain of malice brought a scream out of her throat, and the passing clouds broke apart.

“You won’t take me!” She screamed and spun in the air. The curses they used were ever painful, but with that pain came the power to tolerate it ever more. Pain brought anger to the angel’s quivering heart, and her anger caused her to turn on her tormentors.

“You want to fight an angel born to fly?! I’ll die before I come back with you!” She screamed and snapped her arms and legs out stiff, and howled her pain again as the thousand eyes opened and the pupils therein turned black as the night sky. “O might Satanael, render unto me the strength of the demons given to you by the Great I Am! Render unto me, and I will send you souls to test!”

Seraphim’s cry against the night burned like black flames around her, down her leg dripped the honey colored ichor, but the pain was deadened by the Thousand Eyes, and her wings folded close against her body as she matched the speed of the iron birds of prey. The little cursed lances began to rail toward her again, and more of the long exploding tubes that burst into flames in the night sky, the noise like battling thunderstorms as the chariots of the air roared around her. She gritted her teeth, her long hair dancing like ocean spray atop a tsunami at her back, strength filled her and every sense was heightened. The great iron birds banked about and spun away as she closed the gap, she could see the eyes behind the masks, the widening of shock as they realized she intended to fight back.

Seraphim spun in the air, rolling over past the place in the plane the driver sat, and jammed her hand down, her fingers caught the metal and with one fierce grunt, she pulled, ripping the metal wing free, and throwing it aside.

The front of the plane burst free, and the seat of the driver shot into the air, her eyes followed it, and the driver of the other iron bird which was already turning around, came at her again. “I will not be taken.” Seraphim vowed, the power of her voice rumbling the air, she shot up into the sky, chasing after the one who seemed to have jumped into the darkness.

But he was already coming down as she rose up, ‘Why is he tied to that sail?’ She wondered in a detached part of her mind as he began to drift toward the ground again.

Her hand slashed out, cutting the cables, and he screamed close enough for her to hear it, his slow descent became a fateful plummet. The other metal bird was coming for her, the little lances blasting all around her, ‘I don’t have long… I don’t have long, I won’t let them have me! I have to finish this! Only one more!’ She told herself as she wove around the blasting lances and malicious cursed tubes, gritting her teeth, she came straight ahead, toward the nose of the metal bird.

The fragment of a distant memory touched her mind, charging toward her foes during a war in heaven, the might of her brethren arrayed against her, as hers was against them in turn.

‘I didn’t fall then, I won’t fall now!’ She smacked her wings out in the fragment of a moment, pushing herself above the nose of the sky chariot and thrust her hand out with her fingers straight as a knife. The human within never got the chance to scream, her fingers and arm ripped through the glass, and the sticky wetness of his blood splashed over her, his head bounced around as the plane hit her, she tumbled and bounced along the body, the glass top flung free, the head of the driver and the metal bird falling to the world below in two different places.

Seraphim could feel her strength fading. ‘So weak…’ She moaned, ‘I have to hold on… just a little longer…’ She cried inside her head and soared in the direction she needed to go, toward the brother of the man called Michael, bearing his message and her plea she sailed on as far and as fast as she could, feeling her will fading with her consciousness as the long years of neglect and suffering took their toll.

The ichor of her wound continued to rain down like honey from the sky until, at last, she whispered, ‘Almost… there.’ The sun was rising ahead of her, the light of the beautiful dawn cresting between two mountain peaks and casting its rays down on the sleeping world. ‘How long, hours… just a little more… a little…

Bit…

More…’

And then Seraphim’s eyes closed, and she knew no more as the blackness took her and she tumbled from the sky.