Apocalypse Rising (23 page)

I slice the air before me with the scythe, opening a rift in the fabric of the universe. “Come, let us end this,” I say as I send tendrils of the power into Robert, piercing his flesh with the barbed points of my will until he is caught like a fish by a man-o-war. I leap through the rift and Robert has no choice but to follow.

We emerge on the far side of the portal five-hundred feet above the church. By instinct our wings emerge and we face each other in flight. I attack him with a new sense of purpose. I am free, no longer constrained by the tyranny of gravity. I have returned to the form given me by my creator. My scythe flashes in the midday’s light and my enemy cowers beneath my blows. He blocks my strikes, but grows weaker while I grow stronger. “Do you feel it traitor? Here, beneath the light of the sun, your heresy is exposed and your strength wanes.” A gap opens in his defense and I strike, removing his sword hand at the forearm.

“Bastard!” he yells as we watch his sword and hand fall to the world below. He turns to flee but it is too late. I sheer one of the wings from his body and watch as he spirals downward. Robert crashes in a heap of armor, flesh and feathers on the steps before the door of the church.

I land beside him and use my foot to roll him onto his back. “Now is the time, Robert. Repent. Denounce your fellow traitors and all will be forgiven.”

He looks up and spits a thick stream of blood at me, but it falls far short. “I won’t beg forgiveness from a Father who has abandoned us. He has failed in his grand design, and as much as you may with otherwise, the time of the Angels is over and man will descend ever further toward the pit until they are little more than Lucifer’s puppets.”

“You are wrong, Robert.” I say. “They are being given a choice, and they will choose well. The Lord will return to them when they need him most.”

“Fool.” Robert coughs and chokes on his own blood. “For God to return they must be destroyed. Your precious humans are all that stand between the darkness becoming all powerful and the return of the Father unless we take control.”

I consider what he says and I know his words to be true. “You may be right, Robert, but I have faith in Him and I’ll do what I must.” I swing my scythe and say a prayer as the traitors head rolls down the stairs.

I pull my wings back into my body and the abuse my body has suffered in the last hour takes its toll. I fall to my knees beside the fallen Angel on the doorsteps and gasp as the use of so much power wracks my body. The wounds bleed anew and my scythe evaporates before my eyes. My will is spent and my body broken, but there are others who rely on me, so I pull myself up and stumble back inside the church.

By the time I return to the basement I have shrunk back to my human height. The transformation was temporary, a side effect of my awakening. I can return to it, but the effect is draining and can only be maintained for short periods. I will have to learn how to operate on half my power if I want to survive and see the Throne restored.

I find Lilly kneeling at the edge of the circle leaning over Accantha’s broken form. “She’s dying, Justin,” she says as tears fall down her sightless eyes. Accantha's blood pools about her body and breaks the outer ring of the mystic circle, robbing it of its power.

I crouch down beside the elf and use a little of the Power to slow time around her. “There is little I can do to help her. My abilities are better suited for easing one’s passage than preventing it,” I say. “I need to take her back to her people.”

“Who…what is she?” Lilly asks.

“She is a friend and an elf,” I say. The look of confusion on Lilly’s face reminds me that the existence of elves is not common knowledge amongst mortal men. “There is a lot you will learn now that you have become my oracle.” I take the elf-forged mail from my body and place it on Lilly. As promised, the armor changes its size until it fits her perfectly. “This will protect you from injury, but there are worse things than a knife in dark. I need to take you somewhere safe. There are people who would use you to get to me.” I consider my options and make a decision. “You will come with me and stay with the elves until I can figure out how to restore your sight.”

“I’m going to live with elves?” she asks. “You know I’m really not the woodsy, outdoors type.”

“That’s okay,” I say with a smile, “these elves are not particularly woodsy either.” I gather up Accantha in my arms and tell Lilly to hold onto my waist. I swing my scythe, open a portal and we step through the rift.

We emerge from the portal in the tunnel where the battle with the goblins had taken place. There is no evidence of the battle and the tunnel has returned to its original size. I bend over and walk through the tunnel with Lilly close beside me. I caution her to be careful where she steps, and warn her that the elves will be curious about her, but they will not harm her.

When we emerge from the tunnels, a familiar male elf greets us. “Scipio, you look different,” I say. Gone is the stink that I remember from our introduction, along with the shabby clothing and the unkempt appearance.

“Yeah,” he says, “I cleaned up a little, and I am not the only one.” I start to step out of the tunnel, but he raises a hand and I stop. “Who’s the girl?” he asks as he nods his head in Lilly’s direction.

“She’s a friend in need of help,” I say.

“She’s not another Angel, is she?” he asks.

“No, but she is one of the Blessed.”

“I am?” she asks looking up at me. I nod my head and she looks back at the elf guardian. "I am."

“Good enough for me,” he says as he motions for us to follow him with a wave of his hand. “It seems our fight with the wizard has reminded us that we are better than we had let ourselves be.” Everywhere I look, I see elves at work, cleaning and repairing the walkways and the entrances to their homes. “What happened to Accantha?”

“She was injured defending me,” I say.

“Come on then,” he says as he leads us toward a wide mouthed cave near the bottom of the village. We enter the well-maintained cavern and find a long row of beds. Some of them are filled with elves who suffered injury at the hands of the goblins, but most are empty.

I lay Accantha on one of the beds and a short, elderly female elf runs up and looks her over. “How long has she been like this?” he asks.

“Not long,” I say, “but she would have bled to death if I hadn’t placed her in stasis.”

“Yes, I can see that,” she says. “Leave me be and I’ll see what I can do to save her.”

“Come on, I’ll take you to Gloriana,” Scipio says.

“Will she be okay?” Lilly asks.

“Yeah, Hortensia is the best healer in the village.” Scipio leads them up through the ramps and pipes until we are standing in front of Gloriana’s door. “She’ll live and Hortensia will figure out some way to keep her independent even without her hands.” He turns and knocks on the door. “Well I’ll leave you too it. I need to get back to my post.” The elf leaps off of the platform in front of Gloriana’s door and lands on a pipe far below.

I shake my head and smile. “What a difference a half day can make,” I say under my breath. It warms my heart to see the elves turning away from their path of self-loathing. More than ever, I am determined to see them restored to a place of honor in the hierarchy of the cosmos.

The door opens and Gloriana asks us to come in. “I assume that this is Lilly,” she says. “I did not expect to find her so touched by the light.” She leads us to the sitting room with the hearth.

“I did not expect it either,” I say, “but I think she was affected by my awakening.” I guide Lilly to a chair near the fire. “She has become an oracle.”

“And what do you think of that, my dear?” Gloriana asks Lilly.

Lilly squirms in her chair for a moment, then turns to face Gloriana. “I’m not sure to be honest. I don’t like losing my sight, but there are things I see that I know are real, and I suspect it would have driven me mad a day ago.”

“What do you see?” I ask.

“Glimpses of the future, of events large and small,” she says. “I can walk without tripping because I can see where things will be when I step, so it is like walking through a dream.”

“Have you spoken prophecy yet?” Gloriana leans forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees.

“Yes,” Lilly says, “I’ve seen Justin bringing forth the Apocalypse in hopes of freeing God.”

Gloriana leans back. “And what do you think about that, Justin.”

I rub my chin for a minute and say, “If you told me a week ago that I was the Angel of Death and that I would bring about the Apocalypse, I would have laughed in your face, but now…” I let the words hang in the air and my friends are gracious enough to wait. “Now, I plan ushering in the Apocalypse so that I can save the world."

Neville slammed his fist down his desk and yelled, “What do you mean, he’s dead? Robert is the Commander of the Host’s First Legion, he cannot be dead.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but the sensors lost his signal so we sent a team to his last known location,” the messenger said. “We found his body on the stairs of a church outside of downtown. One of his wings was missing and his head had been removed. Whatever killed him was extremely sharp. It cleaved clean through the bone.”

The words sent a chill through Neville’s bones. Only one weapon could do that, and that meant they had failed. “What else was there?” he asked.

The messenger cleared his throat. “There was a demon in the basement, decapitated, and a number of humans dead and wounded. We have taken the living ones into holding, and we will question them once they are stable.”

“Good, keep me informed.” Neville turned his back on the lesser Angel, signaling the end of the conversation. He was unsure who the men were, perhaps they worked for the demon, but it really did not matter. If his old mentor had killed Robert there was little doubt that he knew their plans.

Neville bit his lip and turned back to his desk once he heard the doors to his office close. He hit the intercom button on his phone and said, “Call Peter. Tell him the end of the world is coming.”

With his mate in difficult labor with their first child, the town below the palace in flames, and the palace itself under siege at that very moment by an army of total evil bent on destroying his child, Yalarryn, Ruler of La'mythia, High King of Ihmayra, had definitely had better days.

King Yalarryn knew only one thing for absolute certain on this darksome day,

HE HATED PROPHECIES!

Especially when HE was the target of one!

He had been warned, not once, but twice, that this day might come. That fact brought him little comfort, though, as he stood gazing down at the seething mass of clawed, fanged, armed to the teeth death currently doing their best to gain entry to the palace.

He not only new who and what those attackers were, he knew their purpose for being there.

They sought to destroy his child,as a result of an ancient, even by his kind's memory, Ihmayran prophecy, which foretold the birth of a child to royalty who would be their utter and complete destruction.

When he had been given the warnings, he had taken them very seriously. He had immediately begun to make plans. He had also given specific instructions as to what would need to be done, should the warnings prove valid.

Totally unbeknownst to King Yalarryn, when those instructions were instituted, they would not only reach across time to affect and change his entire world, they would, in the end, breach the veil between realities to affect and forever change the lives of a mortal mother and daughter.

A mortal mother and daughter who's story begins with the birth of the CHILD OF SUN AND MOON.