In the End (5 page)

“
Shut. Up.” The angel panted, falling back to catch his breath.

“
Hey, I'm just making conversation. You tell me when you get tired and we'll stop.” With the next desperate stab, Lucien batted the angel's wrist away, sending the small knife spinning into the foliage somewhere, lost again. The two of them stared after it, the angel still panting slightly. “Well then. Want one of mine?”

The angel staggered back, leaning on his good shoulder against a tree and panting. His face was ashen and his wound was oozing more openly now.

Lucien eyed it and held out one of the two angelslayers, hilt first. “Come on. I'm getting less and less interested in killing you with every stab and punch you throw at me. You're very interesting, but it's just unfair for you to be unarmed.”

The angel glared.

“
You really don't like talking much, do you?”

“
At least I'm not obsessed with the sound of my own voice.”

Lucien ignored him. Rude when stressed – not an uncommon reaction. “Here, take it.” He tossed the knife underhand near the angel's feet. He'd almost caught his breath again and now looked suspiciously at Lucien. “It's not poisoned,” Lucien said. The angel scowled at the blade. “Well, okay, yeah, it's cursed. Angelslayer, after all... Just don't stab yourself anywhere vital. You'll be fine.”

“
Excuse me? You want me to fight with – with – What makes it an angelslayer?”

Lucien opened his mouth, then closed it again. “You know, I've never found out. Some kind of magic.” Lucien regarded the knife with interest. “We heal rather well, don't we? Knives like this are just better at killing our kind. It's complicated. I don't know anything about enchantments. But it'll work on me just as well as you, so now we're more even.”

The angel touched his fingertips to the red leather-wrapped hilt, jerking them back and touching it again as if he was judging whether the handle of a pan was too hot to touch. When it seemed to cause him no harm, he picked it up. “It's heavy.”

“
Never really noticed.” He was unprepared when the angel flew at him – metaphorically, of course – and barely managed to get out of the way. The blade nicked his cheek and he grabbed the angel's arm before he could draw back out of Lucien's personal space. He grinned. “I like you, little angel. You're not as boring as the rest of them.”  The angel struggled away, distracting Lucien from a niggling urgent thought that had surfaced in his mind. “Come on, try again.” This time when his opponent attacked, Lucien caught the blade the angel wielded with his own and twisted it away. He picked it up off the ground and was holding it out again before the angel could collect himself. “Want to do that over?”

The angel growled in frustration and snatched the knife away. Lucien blocked his next blows in quick succession – one two three – before he scratched on the last and nicked the angel's wrist.

The angel gasped, dropped the knife, clutching his wrist to his breastplate with the thin, pale fingers of his other hand – not a soldier's hands, Lucien noticed.

He winced in sympathy. “Sorry, didn't mean to. Wait, hold on, let me look at it.” The angel had suddenly gone limp, possibly with shock at Lucien's apology. His knees had buckled, so Lucien knelt too. He congratulated himself and wiped the blood off the angel's wrist with his own sleeve. It wasn't a bad cut at all. He'd seen paper cuts worse than this. “Are you ready to stop yet?”

He looked at the angel again, expecting to see – well, honestly, he was expecting the angel to fall over fawning at how cool and generous and merciful Lucien was. Not that he actually
wanted
that to happen. (Except, okay, he secretly did.)  He was surprised to see that the angel's attention wasn't on him whatsoever – he was looking away to the battle with an expression of panic and mounting horror. Lucien snapped his gaze to the field, where the two armies had stopped fighting, finished gathering up the injured, and were pouring back from whence they came. And that was why the angel had gone limp.

The pair scrambled their feet in unison and raced to the edge of the forest, making it into the open just as the last of the demons leaped into the pit and a single, lone, final angel, carrying a gilded banner pole with the scraps of flag just clinging to it, flew through the gate to Ríel.

Beside Lucien, the angel cried out, a terrified, heart-wrenching sound, and launched himself into the air. A moment later, he fell with a shriek of pain from a few feet above ground. His wing had given out.

Lucien, silent and horrified, looked on. This wasn't, couldn't be real. This was a dream, surely. He felt as detached from what was happening as if it was a scene in a movie he was witnessing after entering the wrong theater at the cinema.

The angel was crumpled at his feet, crying and screaming at the celestial portal to wait, don't leave him, please please no...

But the vortex closed, slowly and inexorably in on itself as it vanished; and as Above, so Below: The pit shut with an earthy snap.

Lucien was sure they were about to die. That was it. The end of everything. The war happened, Lucien missed entirely who had won (if anyone; perhaps no one), and now they were going to wink out of existence. They were going to just stop
being
. He was thousands of years old, and he'd spent most of those thousands of years locked in the dark, surviving day after sunless day, living for moments in the free air of the land between the Two Realms. And this was it. Facing death wasn't as horrible as it had been in the past. The difference, he supposed, was now that he didn't have a choice.

Nothing happened. The waiting was awful, and the angel was still in a heap on the ground, shaking violently and still sobbing intermittently. Lucien didn't move to help him. He closed his eyes and waited for the world to stop.

The angel fell silent after a few minutes and got to his feet. Lucien opened his eyes. The grass blew in the wind. The sky was cloudy. It was going to rain later in the evening.

Seventy percent chance,
Lucien's brain supplied. If he was lucky, the world might last long enough for the rain to come.

As one, they walked silently out into the middle of the field.  The grass that covered where the pit had been was as fresh as if it had never been touched. Lucien stood in the middle of it, and looked down in silence at the simple blades of green that covered it. The angel, standing quite near, stared up at the sky with an expression that Lucien understood completely.

“
Why?” the angel asked, but the word, whispered to the heavens, was stolen by the wind.

***

The angel didn't cry after that. He didn't mourn, he didn't sob, he certainly didn't fall to his knees and weep any further. He stood.

And something slowly presented itself to Lucien – perhaps the world wouldn't cease after all. And then Lucien thought. He thought fast and hard about what this meant, why he'd been left. If the world didn't cease at all, this meant... This meant he could stay here, in the Center Realm.
Forever.

He didn't dare hope for it.

The angel began puttering, which caught Lucien's attention – he had begun to drag the dead angels into a heap, pausing to pull a painted feather from a wing of each dead angel. Lucien sat in the middle of the green circle of grass and watched. Was he going to try to find enough stones to build a cairn, or would he opt for burning the bodies instead? Lucien thought that a bonfire was a better idea – it would remove the more incriminating evidence of the battle. After all, if the humans discovered such things, he'd have to be careful indeed.

But the field seemed vast from here. The grass was a foot high, waving like a sea around him where he sat, and there were so, so many bodies – as many angels as demons and Fallen. Lucien wondered why the angel – the one that was actually alive -- wasn't simply setting the entire field afire. It would be much more efficient, and would get rid of both the divine and infernal corpses at once, as well as the gore that wasn't as easily moved. The rain later on might even put out the fire before any extensive damage was done. In any case, it was an irritating question, and it rattled about in his skull like marbles in a tin box, so he climbed to his feet, brushed off his hands and shoved them in his pockets, and began picking his way around the bodies towards the angel.

The angel was struggling – he was breathing heavily, his eyes dull and his cheeks flushed with exertion. His hands up to his wrists were even more filthy than they had been before, and a scarlet smear bisected his forehead where he'd wiped the sweat and the damp, russet strands from his brow. And yet he was still working, wings tucked away into non-existence like Lucien kept his own. He dragged a large infantry angel towards the heap. The dead angel's arms were thick, sinewy with muscle, and he would have been taller than the little redhead if standing, and twice as thick. Lucien swept down and seized the corpse's ankles, and within a moment, the body was flung onto the heap with the rest.

The angel glared at him. “Leave me alone.”

“
I just wanted to know what you're doing.”

“
Only what should be done.” His glower faltered – his eyes dropped to the ground and he nodded once. “Honoring the dead. They should lay in dignity.”

Lucien didn't think a heap was very dignified, but he didn't say anything about that. “Right, that's a good idea,” he said. “But why don't we just honor them by setting the whole thing ablaze?”

“
The Beloved shall not burn with their enemies,” the angel spat.

“
Ah,” said Lucien. “Well, can I help you with this, then?”

The angel turned away and began tugging a feather loose from the slain infantryman. “There's no point,” he muttered. “It won't matter soon anyway.” He rose, stuck the feather into a pocket, and wandered away, brushing a lock of hair away and once again smudging his cheek with red.  “It won't matter!” he screamed at the heavens.

Lucien backed away. The other end of the field would be a good place for Rielat's corpses. He'd have a tidy pile, and he wouldn't be too close to that angel – just in case he snapped and attacked him again. Then
he'd
set his on fire, since the angel was so picky.

Half an hour later, Lucien gave up: Piling bodies was simply boring. Even studying the interesting ways they'd died had lost its charm after the first ten minutes. It was just stab wounds and endless, endless fatal slashes as far as the eye could see. The celestial army was so dull with their methods; the angel definitely had the better job – at least Lucien had seen some gouges and things on the bodies of the celestial army.

There wasn't anyone to talk to. Lucien was getting absolutely sick of the smell, and he couldn't stand the wet, slick feeling of blood on his hands.

“
I'd rather risk attack from him than stick around here in the stink,” he said to the corpse of a spider-frog as he dragged it gingerly by one slimy, clammy leg to his heap. In addition, the overcast sky was weighing heavy, pressing down on the back of his neck like the air was being sucked out of the world. It wasn't anything, he told himself. It wasn't ending. It was just the hard work and the cloying scent of death and a penetrating damp in the air.

He'd had enough of it, and besides, the chance of rain had risen to ninety percent. He crossed the field. “Are you done yet?” he asked the angel, who was sitting on the ground, hunched over and panting.

He looked up, eyes sparking. “I can't just leave them here.” He was apparently too tired to even snarl.

“
Why not?” Lucien asked dully. “They left you.” The angel scrambled to his feet and marched away across the field. “Where are you going?”

“
You're right! You're right, okay?” the angel spat. “I'll leave them! They left me; why don't you do the same?”

Lucien stuck his hands into his pockets and stared after the angel as he strode towards the trees. He sighed, nudged a corpse with his toe. “You know,” he called. “Town is the other way.” He followed the angel.

CHAPTER
THREE

“
Hey!” Lucien called. “You! Angel!” He stepped over a clump of roots that the angel, moments before, had nearly tripped over in his haste. “I'm glad we're heading in the right direction now and everything, but really, what's your problem? I fixed your hand.”

“
Leave me alone!” the angel shouted, stomping through the undergrowth.

“
What's wrong with you?” Lucien asked as he caught up to his companion.

“
They left me!” The angel shoved Lucien's hand off his shoulder, turned, and spat at him. “So should you!”

“
Look, two heads are better than one,” Lucien said, finally becoming impatient. “We might be able to find a way to get you back home, even with that gimpy wing that you've got now.”

“
Oh God!” The angel cried out, stopping short. “My wing! What if it's damaged permanently? What if I can't fly –”

“
Will you please shut up? I can fix your wing.”

“
You're not going to touch my wings! Demon!” he snarled.

Lucien sighed to himself, rolling his eyes and following the angel as he scrambled over a fallen tree. “Look, I'm not exactly bouncing up and down for joy that I have to cooperate with some prejudiced twit to get what I want.”

“
Which is what, exactly? Going back to the Forsaken Lands, like I want back to Ríel? Typical.”

“
I'm glad to be out of that place!” Lucien retorted. “I didn't want to go back anyway; and now, I'm going to stay here for eternity, and as nice as that sounds, who knows what I'll do now – I'll probably have to get a job so I can eat, because magical money won't just appear out of nowhere anymore, or it won't until I figure out how it's done, and that part is going to be
boring.
For
eternity
. What if I have to work in fast food, did you ever think of that? I
will
die.”

“
So go do that and leave me alone!”

“
Me,” Lucien continued. “Can you imagine it? Me. Being nice to some rude, snot-nosed kid and taking food orders – food orders! – and asking if he wants
frrr
... No, I can't say it. And I'll probably have to wear a hairnet. A hairnet!”

“
Go
away
!”

“
And leave you with your sweet sorrow, I suppose? Not a chance.”

The sky, which had been gathering darker and darker clouds, very suddenly decided to let the downpour begin. Despite the partial screen of the vibrantly green leaves overhead, the two were drenched in moments, even when the angel tucked his good wing over his head as shelter.

“
Well then. The Two Realms have forsaken us, we're exhausted and hungry, but at least it's raining and we're wet. Best day ever.” Lucien caught a few raindrops in the palm of his hand, looking up through the foliage and gazing fondly at the clouds. “But you're injured. And you don't look like you like the wet.”

“
Cold.
”

“
Alright, come on, then.”  He beckoned the angel along and led him in a slightly different direction than they'd been heading. “Good thing we're near the mountains, hmm? Nice cave to find somewhere. Oh, don't shiver like that, it's not that cold.”

Eventually they found a small outcropping of rock that afforded them some protection from the driving rain. The angel had managed to collect some fairly dry twigs and leaves that had blown under the overhang before the rain hit. After a few minutes of swearing and coaxing from the angel, accompanied by running commentary and clearly unwelcome advice from Lucien, they managed to start a small fire. They sat on opposite sides of it, trying not to let the one catch the other staring.

“
So... If we're gonna be walking about for a while,” he began, “Well. Anyway, I'm Lucien.” The angel turned slightly away. “So are you going to tell me yours? I mean, if I need you, I can't be saying 'Hey angelly thing, pass the salt,' or 'Hey, you. Yeah, you with the wings,' or 'So, angelface, think it's going to keep raining?'”

The angel, still shivering, muttered something.

“
What was that?”

“
Lalael,” the angel snapped.

“
Hmm. Lalael,” the Lucien murmured. “Of the Choir?” he asked, grinning.

“
What?”

“
Sounds like the name one of the Choir would have.” Lucien shrugged.

“
I... started out there.” Something in Lalael's voice spoke of a long-festering hurt. Lucien let the subject drop.

“
Shall I fix your wing?”

Lalael drew away apprehensively.

“
I won't hurt you more than I have to.”

The tense distrust still did not leave the angel's eyes. “How do I know?” Lalael asked quietly.

Lucien sighed. “You'll just have to trust me, won't you.”

“
Trusting a demon. What would the higher-ups think.” His voice was tense again.

Lucien got them away from the subject of anything related to Ríel. “So... wings? I saw them earlier, and the one looked pretty bad. Don't you think I should look at it? I know I'd...” Lucien paused. “Well, I think if I lost my wings, I'd probably die for not flying.”

Lalael look startled. “You still have your wings?”

“
Of course.” Lucien chuckled.

“
Oh.” The angel blushed. “I – I thought –” he stammered.

“
You thought I was one that got... You know.”

“
Well, yes. Sorry.”

Lucien shrugged. “No need to apologize.” He smiled wryly. “I can tuck them away as easily as you can. It's rather easy to do here, you might have noticed, and more convenient to keep them that way around the humans.”

“
I'm sorry, really, I didn't mean to presume –”

“
Never mind it, really. Want me to fix your wings now?”

“
Get away from me!”

“
That'll be a no.” Lucien heaved a dramatic sigh. “If I show you mine, will you show me yours?”

Lalael hesitated, which Lucien took for a yes. He crossed his arms and pulled his shirt over his head, ruffling his dark curls, and shifted his shoulders as if rolling a crick out of his back. His wings appeared gradually, fuzzing into existence, fanning out from the soft, pale flesh of his shoulder blades as he stretched them out: Ashy gray, almost black at the wrist of the wing, fading to nearly white at the tips of his primary feathers. He contorted them so he could pick out a bit of tangled down from the underside of one. “There you go. They're not bat wings or anything. They're not even jet black.”

“
C-can I...?” Lalael asked tentatively. Lucien extended the other wing around the fire in a wordless motion of trust. The light caught and shone off the soft lining of the underwing with an eerie, pearly gleam. For an endless moment, the two did not move. The fire itself seemed to have frozen in time. Then Lalael ran his fingertips over the fore edge of Lucien's wing and the moment broke.

“
Going to let me fix you up now?” Lucien asked politely, tucking his wings back efficiently and vanishing them. Lalael hesitated again, clearly warring with himself, but after a moment, he nodded and quietly turned away from the fire as Lucien tugged his shirt back over his head.

“
It won't help,” he whispered, hands clenched in his lap. “It won't matter soon.”

“
Wings out, please,” Lucien said, settling on the ground behind him. Lalael manifested his wings – the tunic of the uniform had been sewn with two slits up either side of his spine; the angel's wings now emerged through these. “Why won't it matter? You've only been saying that all day.”

Lalael didn't answer for several moments. The fire crackled and danced light over the rock of the overhang. “The Most Honored Commander Michael had a plan. We all knew about it. Might have been the Zhani's idea in the first place.”

Zhani. Lucien puzzled over this during the lull in Lalael's narrative. It was one of the three aspects of the Sko Meala, the Trebled Power, but it had been so long since any of that had mattered that he'd quite forgotten which one.

But Lalael was continuing. “Commander Michael told us that the time had come, and all Creation was to be destroyed. Wiped off the celestial map.”

Lucien studied the joints of Lalael's injured wing more closely. “Did he?”

The angel wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. “He even told us how it was to be done.” A moment passed, tense with apprehension. Before Lucien could ask how, Lalael said, “It was to be some kind of an explosion, he said. The Battle was a diversion. We challenged the dishonored scum of the Forsaken Lands – we challenged Lucifer the Depraved himself. The Battle was a diversion, a sham. We slaughtered everyone who truly Believed. So we could... use it against your side. Their Belief.” The angel shuddered and hugged himself tighter. “During the battle itself, we used the fighting as a diversion so we could draw out all of it that we possibly could. From the entire world. All of it that was compatible with us. We've been cultivating it for... centuries, I guess. So we'd have enough ammunition to do what – what Michael said we were going to do.”

Lucien had forgotten that he was supposed to be examining Lalael's wings. He sat there behind the angel, still and quiet. He knew, suddenly. He knew what was going to happen. He knew what Lalael was going to say.

“
The plan was to drain the world of all traces of the Zhani, and feed it into Síela –” another aspect of the Sko Meala, “– until it overflowed and... and it would be the rawest, most deadly form of the Power ever, and we were going to pour it back through the gate and let it loose over the world. He said it would rain down on the earth like poison; it would burn the air; it would fill the entire dimension in an instant. It would dissolve everything like acid, or infect it like a disease. The Honored Commander said this Creation would burst under the force of it.”

Lucien reached out to touch Lalael's shoulder, then hesitated. A long moment passed. He shook his head. “Let's see what I can do with these wings.”

“
It won't matter,” Lalael whispered. “It won't matter. We're going to die soon.”

Lucien clenched his teeth.

***

Some time later, Lucien sat back with a satisfied sigh. “There, see, just this bone here dislocated and a little bit of a sprain.” Lucien said, smoothing the downy feathers at the base of one wing and straightening the scapulars. “Wasn't too terrible bad, was it? Just go easy on it for a while and you'll be alright.” Lalael pulled away and adjusted his tunic, tucking away his wings again efficiently. Lucien held up his hands and backed off. “Just asking. How did it happen, anyway?”

“
They stood on them,” Lalael said bluntly.

“
Who?”

“
Those demons. A bunch of them rushed me and wrestled me to the ground and stood on them.”

“
...Oh.”

             
“And I was struggling, so one of the frog things fetched a Fallen and the Fallen was about to slash open my throat, when someone else came and fought them off. Just like Arael would have.”

             
“Who's Arael?”

             
“She... one of my...” Lalael's shoulders slumped. “My friend. She was... She was just Arael. Always laughing, red hair, blue eyes. She was one of the choir. Some of them signed up for the infantry at the last minute. In all the rush, I don't know if she...” Lalael failed to notice Lucien's shiftiness. “She'll be wandering around the Gates or the Silver Court, wondering where I am.” Lalael's laugh was strange. “She'll forget about looking for me after a week or so. She's a bit absent minded. I mean –" here Lalael looked at Lucien eagerly, "– her memory's unparalleled, it's the little tasks she forgets about. And... she's busy. Popular, you know?"

             
"Well, there's no point in worrying about her," Lucien said. The skin up his spine prickled. "Until you get back to Ríel."

             
Lalael's face suddenly darkened, and a sullen silence settled over them.