////

It was a full moon, the [Termina] bright with the influence of the [All-Devouring-Eye]’s conflagration. We hid from its light in an underground parking lot we cleared out of scythes and other insects infected with strange red fungus, only a single reaper among them, thankfully. The river was at our backs and we had filled quite a few containers to throw as make-shift ordinance.

Juan was on constant lookout, his eyesight piercing through the cement to look up at the many-eyed moon. He avoided staring directly at the five eyes because he knew that the moon looked back, or more accurately, the Empyrean anomaly on the other side.

We might be legion, but a single one of us was just as vulnerable as a protozoa when put before an Outsider.

“Puta madre,” the lanky Aztecan-Vespucian swore. “Angels are pouring outta the eyes by the thousands.”

At that, we all stood up and prepared to meet our maker.

At least I didn’t have to worry about being skinned alive like the others—the Empyrean already took mine.

////

Juan saw every form of angel descend upon the desolate earth, moths to our flame. They were miserable things, their flesh and bare muscle pale and devoid of blood. Wings whose feathers were fingers and that made no sense aerodynamically, carried the anomalies like dandelions on the wind.

Orreries of cadaver arms spun around black eyes to form perverse ophanim; cherubim made of the conjoined bodies of men and women flew on wings of translucent sinew; seraphim swam through the air, pale leviathans with hollow eyes lining their serpentine corpus and dorsal fins of subliminal fire lining their backs; ishim were by far the most common moonscorched anomaly, just flayed people with wings.

We held our ground as the underground parking lot was shielded from the moonlight and had plenty of chokepoints to fall back on.

The first starving angels that fell upon us were the innumerable ishim, those that held the esoterica of [Eclipse-of-Moths].

Me and Raj become the bulwarks that protected our frailer compatriots, his [Sword-Logic] armor morphing to produce rusted lancets that burst out and impaled swarms of angels—a single crushed plastic water bottle was enough to burn through the lot as if it was battery acid on steroids rather than plain-and-mundane H2O.

Behind him, I culled any stragglers that ignored the grotesque dog-pile, muttering a smattering of verses I’d been taught in my childhood. Father had been a helluva preacher, all fire and brimstone. He broke his vow for my Mother.

I did not wonder whether they were still alive or not—I hadn’t heard their voices along the throng of the monolith. They were gone like the stars stolen from the vault of night.

The antiphon Exsultabunt Domino breathed subliminal tongues along my death-prayer sword, empowering me to fight the fire of the angels with their own flame.

Heads rolled, my skin inviolate against sickle-like claws and gnashing teeth. Their beating wings threw me down but did not harm me much beyond knocking out my breath from my lungs.

“[If you, Lord, mark iniquities; Lord, who can stand?]”

The death-prayer blazed, the Antediluvian sword naught but a wick enshrouded in a conflagratory radiance. I stood up and returned to my fervor, each dying angel feeding the paradox-artefact.

Behind me, to the right, was Johnny clad in lead armor and with the strength of ten men to boot. He cut swathes through the incoming ranks of Empyrean anomalies, leaving molten metal foot-prints in his wake.

To my left, Eli spoke out words that chilled me to my core.

“[Misere me, Deus//May no one ever eat of your fruit again.]”

The subliminal flames that cowled the anomalies like halos flickered out like candles in the wind. Here and there, the corpses of dead angels burst into ashes that seared the anomalies that still yet lived.

Bao and Aisha paired together for the crescendo, the latter forming plates of bone along her forearms and shins, spurs and blades erupting from her skeleton as she calcified an ossein matrix to reinforce her flesh. The little dumpling provided the raw fire-power while Aisha took to protecting her more vulnerable compatriot; both were our more mobile units as they moved in between our formation to shore up any deficits in the whole-sale slaughter.

By the time that the ophanim reached us, we had killed all but three ishim.

////

Entity: [Moonscorched//Omniglot]

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Sphera: [Golgotha], [Luna], [Empyrea]

Para-class: [Orange]

Esoterica: [Tapetum-Lucidum]

Hubris: [Hydrophobia]

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Esoterica: [Tapetum-Lucidum]

Ignosis: [The esoterica of {Tapetum-Lucidum} derives from the sphera of {Luna} and {Empyrea}; establishes a commissural tract in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of envy to the platonic ideals of combustion and annihilation.]

////

Hubris: [Hydrophobia]

Ignosis: [The hubris of {Hydrophobia} derives from the sphera of {Empyrea} and {Golgotha}; establishes an antipodal ligature in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of dissolution to the platonic ideal of water.]

////

Their central eyes were black as an offering of holocaust to God, gaping wounds in the fabric of reality from which beams of white-hot radiance shot out. We felt their stares like that of the moon, premonitions caressing the hairs at the napes of our necks all that saved our lives.

Eli lost a chunk of her forearm. Mike lost a good deal of hair but kept his brains by an eponymous hair-breadth. Juan lost nothing but a little pride as he gripped onto Mike like a newborn monkey on its mother. Raj lost sections of his [Sword-Logic] armor, quickly repairing the chinks by shifting around the Antedilluvian biomass. Johnny lost an arm, a cylinder of light piercing through an unclad section of his body and gouging out the flesh of his left shoulder; his bicep hung by a strip of skin and nothing more. Bao had escaped unscathed, being the furthest back and with a heightened premonition-sense; she had pushed Aisha down to the pavement, saving her just as she saved herself.

After the near-fatal barrage I threw myself into the line of fire, trusting in my esoterica of [Stygia] as I ran towards beings once described in holy texts and that could end lives by mere sight.

Gazes of searing light touched my skin and came to know oblivion—my esoterica was a portal into [Lethea], into the hungry maw of the [Anathema] itself; nonexistence given shape, I wore like a cloak.

The first ophanim that I reached, I cut in half. The lower section continued afloat as the top-half slid and then fell, the orrery of cadaverous limbs going limp when the eye-wound inflicted upon existence closed up.

Just a nick on the eye meant lights out for an ophanim.

The orrery anomalies quickly targeted me as a priority, their beams exchanging sharp light for diffuse yet resounding force—they had finer control over their esoterica than I thought possible. I was pushed back by each undodged shot, my bones creaking before the strain of blunt trauma.

I found out then, for the second time in a single day, that I wasn’t as invulnerable as I thought I was—my outsides may be inviolate, but my insides were very much mortal flesh and blood. And paradoxical as it was, force still transferred through into my viscera, if heavily mitigated by my esoterica.

A beam of diffracted light punched through my left shoulder, dislocating the arm from its socket. I began to listen more closely to the premonition that anteceded the blasts lest I die a mangled mess of broken bones.

I danced, letting my body follow the rhythm of the ophanim’s [Tapetum-Lucidum], leading their sight away from my friends. The orrery angels became easy pickings as the twins and Bao felled them in quick succession, Raj and Aisha holding the line against any straggling ishim. We were losing our stockpile of dihydrogen-monoxide grenades fast.

Then, when I had blinded the last ophanim, came the cherubim.

////

Entity: [Moonscorched//Omniglot]

Sphera: [Antediluvia], [Luna], [Empyrea]

Para-class: [Orange-Yellow]

Esoterica: [Throne-Bearer]

Hubris: [Volatility]

////

Esoterica: [Throne-Bearer]

Ignosis: [The esoterica of {Throne-Bearer} derives from the sphera of {Empyrea} and {Antediluvia}; establishes a commissural tract in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of body to the platonic ideals of combustion and assimilation.]

////

Hubris: [Volatility]

Ignosis: [The hubris of {Volatility} derives from the sphera of {Luna} and {Golgotha}; establishes an antipodal ligature in the implanted entity matrix between the ontological concept of dissolution to the platonic ideal of liquid.]

////

Seeing their para-class, we all simultaneously clenched our moonscorched asses.

The cherubim were profane creations that melded together multiple ishim into a single amalgamate body, miniature orreries lined with eyes encircling their four-fold heads. A cherub couldn’t be caught flat-footed with their near-omniscience. Most of the biomass had gone to create extra wings, making them even more difficult to dispatch as they gave up their superfluous limbs in an exchange of blows.

Their claws and flame could not overwhelm neither me nor Raj as we stood shoulder to shoulder if a meter apart. Fungal sword-steel blossomed from his dwindling reserve of armor as my feverish fire grew proportionately to how many Empyreans fell—they were humans, once and so fell under the purview of [Death-Prayer].

As water became rarified, its caustic property swelled; each ensuing order of angel was even weaker than the last to the blood of [Golgotha].

Crippled angels came together to form more cherubim, hiding away their heads in a mass of translucent and desiccated Empyrean flesh. For these abominations, we had to use the last of our water to expose their weak-points. We did not risk Aisha using her biomass as that would weaken her real quick and cripple an otherwise hyper-mobile unit.

I clipped off the last wing of a cherub when my [Death-Prayer] snuffed out like a candle in the wind—I somehow knew why as I had already turned to look back.

An ophanim I thought dead had shot Eli right through the head. Her corpse fell with a circular hole exposing brain matter.

Even lobotomized she spoke until her dying breath, the esoterica carved into her soul not to be denied.

“[May the Holy Cross be my light//May the Dragon never be my guide//Begone Satan//Never tempt me with your vanities//What you offer me is evil//drink the poison yourself.]”

The last angels in the underground parking lot burned in their own hellfire, pale-translucent flesh turned black and still as statues erected in the faith of self-immolation.

Eli’s last words were punctuated with a death rattle as the flames went still, be it those of the anomalies or that of our paradox-artefacts.

////