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ℌ𝔢𝔞𝔳𝔢𝔫'𝔰 𝔩𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔦𝔰 𝔣𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔫𝔤
𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢 𝔰𝔱𝔞𝔯𝔱𝔰 𝔱𝔬 𝔟𝔲𝔯𝔫
ℑ𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔱𝔴𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔢𝔡 𝔡𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔢
𝔗𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢'𝔰 𝔫𝔬 𝔯𝔢𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔫
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;
And on the seventh day, they rested.
"Seven days, it took them. Seven days for everything to fall to pieces."
On the first day, what had began as a peaceful Monday morning had turned sour in hours. The summer sun had opened over the world as it had the days before, and as it was expected to on the days to come. The heat was under cut by a breeze that swirled its way through the world. A breeze that rose in the high places and rolled down the mountains, rode over the plains and sifted through the cities. A breeze that cooled the cheek and rustled the hair, sprayed the tide and rattled the windchimes. A breeze that carried with it, a whisper.
A whisper in the ear of every man, woman, and child. Hurt and scornful and wounded, its words repeated. The people stopped in the streets, eyes searching about for the source of the voice over their shoulder. They turned over in their beds, awoken from a night's sleep. They looked up from their desks, peering into their neighboring cubicles. No one was whispering. For the first time since Creation, for a single, blissful moment, the entire world was silent. For a single, blissful moment, the world was still.
It would make perfect sense, in the coming days, why the first targets had been the military installations of the world. Condensed rays of golden light had parted clouds and lit night skies like lanterns in fog. Clad in gold and silver armor, thousands of winged figures had tore from the skies at impossible velocities. Divine light shrouded the armor that clad their bodies as they dropped like meteors all around the world, the force of their impacts cratering the land and crushing the constructs of man. Military reserve bases were crushed, carriers at sea were rent in a half, aircraft in flight were snapped like twigs, and weapons arrays around the world were obliterated. Earth's early warning systems were built to stave off threats from land, sea, and sky, all at once, but there were no defenses against Heaven's judgment. In the span of hours, armed forces around the globe were reduced to fractions.
The world was plunged into chaos for the next three days. Angels traveled by battalion from city to town to village, rooting out humankind in their most intimate places. Most were killed on the spot, run through by a spear or sword, or pinned by arrows. The ones who were not were pressed into gold shackles and carted away in a caged carriage, their fate unknown to those they left behind.
For two days, the camps were constructed. A chapel of stone was built according to Heaven's plan by the hands of chained mortals, marking the center of the grounds. In a spiral around it, pillar-supported tents were erected, those closest to the chapel housing cages and pillories for the captured prey, while the outer tents served as housing and administration for the entrenched celestials. This way, the prisoner tents were surrounded on all sides by their captors, making escape a distant fantasy.
On the sixth day, the whisper returned. It spoke of sin, of treachery, of wasted resources and permeating greed. It spoke of God and His vision, the vision of a pure world of pure hearts and pure intentions, devoid of greed and hate and envy. It recited an impossible tale of absolution, a tale that said this was mankind's only hope for salvation. It spit about how they had wasted the chances given to them, wasted the life that their creator had bestowed upon them, filling it with baseless ambitions and cretinous desires instead of worship and devotion to the Almighty. And then it repeated, hour in and hour out, for the duration of the day. Some were driven to madness by the chant, mangling and killing themselves in their enclosures, while others had their minds converted, groveling at the feet of their captors and begging for forgiveness and freedom. Those who begged were taken from their cells, and whatever their fate, they did not return.
And on the seventh day, with mankind in chains, the civilizations of earth reduced to scrap and rubble around them, they rested.
"Report?"
The royal parlor was dim, this evening, the fire in its place on but one log and a bed of embers. All dark wood with gold inlay, what served as a study for the prince was actually a tea room for the castle—not that it had been used as such in years since the prince had moved his desk and chair into it, claiming it as his own personal atelier. Next to his writing desk sat a runic workbench made from cast black metal and black wood, the natural cracks in the wood filled with a pulsing red energy that veined through the work bench like a lazy river. A wing-backed chair upholstered in red leather was parked, for the moment, with its back facing the fireplace. The events of the surface were far too great to ignore, this last week, and in a strange turn of events, the room had been hosting audiences many times a day since the angels had come about.
It was in this chair that Eligos Rorotorinne al'Ameistra waited, a thick sheaf of papers in his hand that matched the one on the hand table next to him. The third such report their scouts had presented him with that day, it was filled with the names of cities and the viable food within them from all the realms and all the gates. The underworld was a loose representation of the mortal realm, the continents and geography approximated and the landscapes darker, more bleak. In most places where a major city of man lay, so too did a demonic citadel-city with a gate array reside within Hell, networked to the places that demons could sift through the aether and worm their way into the mortal realm to hunt. Dark corners in alleys, fireplaces, abandoned buildings—each gate led to an unattended, unassuming parallel within the human world where a hunter could enter, manifest fully without being accosted, and then escape back through after their hunt. Gates all over Hell had been especially active over the preceding days as scouts entered the mortal plane to assess the damages done by the invading winged pricks.
The messenger imp bowed for the third time since entering the room, pulling the tab on a metal scroll case to reveal the parchment inside. "Over eighty percent losses to humankind." Its raspy, rickety voice wavered with uncertainty and fear. "Many hunting grounds are empty already. The few that remain are scattered. Major city centers are replaced by these... camps? Large encampments with a holy place at their center. Most of what's left of usable food supply is chained up in them."
Eligos' lips pressed to a thin line, extending a hand towards the imp, who promptly stumbled all over itself to offer up the scroll case. Pulling it open himself, the line of his lips got thinner until he let the scroll zip shut with a metallic clack! as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The sound made the imp jump in a particularly annoying way, and when Eligos open one eye, his pupil had dilated to a narrow, vertical slit. Now properly falling all over itself, the imp scrabbled out the door, its feet slapping away down the hallway.
The prince sighed, moving to stand, when another sound met his ears, that of heeled shoes clicking across the stone floor of the castle from the hallway the imp had just disappeared down. Thankfully his eye-roll had finished by the time Chaudoin stepped through the door without announcing herself, arms folded under her breasts and a dangerous light in her eyes. "Do you know no delicacy?" she chided, turning flicking her head towards the doorway. "Can you have one conversation with a messenger without scaring them half to death?"
"They've nothing to be frightened of," Eligos grumbled back, plopping his head onto his hand and rooting his elbow on the armrest. "I've not once hurt any of your little—"
She cut him off with a raised finger. "Nor have you ever sent one from the room with less than the fear of death in its heart."
"This is what you're worried about, right now? Frightened messengers?"
"I'm worried," she spat, leaning forward sardonically, "that my vassals will prove useless to me if they spend their days scared shitless that their prince is going to disembowel them for bringing grim news. News that you need to know, at that!"
Eligos tossed the scroll case at her, more than to her, but she snatched it out of the air all the same. "The news is grim. Read."
Her tongued clicked as she pulled open the scroll, but as her eyes traveled line by line, her exasperated expression slowly dropped, replaced by consternation. When her eyes rose to meet Eligos', they wre tinged
with uncertainty that leaned dangerously close to fear. "These numbers won't last us the year," she almost-whispered, her voice far away in her thoughts. "If this is all that's left, we'll have no choice but to—"
"Go to war," he finished for her, which prompted the priestess to pull the scroll to her chest like it would somehow hug her and provide comfort. "This is not a conflict that we will solve quietly, or quickly. It's been millennia since we were at war with the angels, and we've always been the ones to keep the balance. They broke the rules." Chaudoin's hard swallow seemed to take with it the last of her trepidation, and she met Eligos' golden gaze with her own steeled yellow orbs. "That which has always been need not always be."
The adage was older than Chaudoin and almost as old as Eligos, and its weight hung about the priestess' shoulders like lead weights on ropes. Her nod was stiff, but solid. "That which has always been need not always be," she affirmed, and at Eligos' nod, she added, "I'll rally the generals." Turning on her heel, she clicked away at a trot, leaving Eligos to ponder his thoughts. He cast his eyes over to the corner of the room, where a crimson-steel spear sat propped into a corner. It had been some time. His position meant that most often, his hunts were carried about by those beneath him, vials of blood presented on silver trays with crystal flutes, and beating hearts in burlap-lined bread baskets deposited on his desk at his call for them. With a rumbling exhale, he flexed his shoulders; part of his glamer rippled and faded away, allowing his wings to unfurl from his back. He stretched them high up over his head, their tips nearly touching the ceiling with their taloned ends before he pulled them against his back.
He snatched up the scout report and slotted it through his belt. With an extended hand, he waved his fingers at the spear, prompting it to jump out of its corner and slap against his outstretched palm. With a flick of his fingers, he vanished it, allowing it to slip into its pocket space until the time for fighting came. And come it would.
On the first day, what had began as a peaceful Monday morning had turned sour in hours. The summer sun had opened over the world as it had the days before, and as it was expected to on the days to come. The heat was under cut by a breeze that swirled its way through the world. A breeze that rose in the high places and rolled down the mountains, rode over the plains and sifted through the cities. A breeze that cooled the cheek and rustled the hair, sprayed the tide and rattled the windchimes. A breeze that carried with it, a whisper.
I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.
A whisper in the ear of every man, woman, and child. Hurt and scornful and wounded, its words repeated. The people stopped in the streets, eyes searching about for the source of the voice over their shoulder. They turned over in their beds, awoken from a night's sleep. They looked up from their desks, peering into their neighboring cubicles. No one was whispering. For the first time since Creation, for a single, blissful moment, the entire world was silent. For a single, blissful moment, the world was still.
It would make perfect sense, in the coming days, why the first targets had been the military installations of the world. Condensed rays of golden light had parted clouds and lit night skies like lanterns in fog. Clad in gold and silver armor, thousands of winged figures had tore from the skies at impossible velocities. Divine light shrouded the armor that clad their bodies as they dropped like meteors all around the world, the force of their impacts cratering the land and crushing the constructs of man. Military reserve bases were crushed, carriers at sea were rent in a half, aircraft in flight were snapped like twigs, and weapons arrays around the world were obliterated. Earth's early warning systems were built to stave off threats from land, sea, and sky, all at once, but there were no defenses against Heaven's judgment. In the span of hours, armed forces around the globe were reduced to fractions.
The world was plunged into chaos for the next three days. Angels traveled by battalion from city to town to village, rooting out humankind in their most intimate places. Most were killed on the spot, run through by a spear or sword, or pinned by arrows. The ones who were not were pressed into gold shackles and carted away in a caged carriage, their fate unknown to those they left behind.
For two days, the camps were constructed. A chapel of stone was built according to Heaven's plan by the hands of chained mortals, marking the center of the grounds. In a spiral around it, pillar-supported tents were erected, those closest to the chapel housing cages and pillories for the captured prey, while the outer tents served as housing and administration for the entrenched celestials. This way, the prisoner tents were surrounded on all sides by their captors, making escape a distant fantasy.
On the sixth day, the whisper returned. It spoke of sin, of treachery, of wasted resources and permeating greed. It spoke of God and His vision, the vision of a pure world of pure hearts and pure intentions, devoid of greed and hate and envy. It recited an impossible tale of absolution, a tale that said this was mankind's only hope for salvation. It spit about how they had wasted the chances given to them, wasted the life that their creator had bestowed upon them, filling it with baseless ambitions and cretinous desires instead of worship and devotion to the Almighty. And then it repeated, hour in and hour out, for the duration of the day. Some were driven to madness by the chant, mangling and killing themselves in their enclosures, while others had their minds converted, groveling at the feet of their captors and begging for forgiveness and freedom. Those who begged were taken from their cells, and whatever their fate, they did not return.
And on the seventh day, with mankind in chains, the civilizations of earth reduced to scrap and rubble around them, they rested.
"Report?"
The royal parlor was dim, this evening, the fire in its place on but one log and a bed of embers. All dark wood with gold inlay, what served as a study for the prince was actually a tea room for the castle—not that it had been used as such in years since the prince had moved his desk and chair into it, claiming it as his own personal atelier. Next to his writing desk sat a runic workbench made from cast black metal and black wood, the natural cracks in the wood filled with a pulsing red energy that veined through the work bench like a lazy river. A wing-backed chair upholstered in red leather was parked, for the moment, with its back facing the fireplace. The events of the surface were far too great to ignore, this last week, and in a strange turn of events, the room had been hosting audiences many times a day since the angels had come about.
It was in this chair that Eligos Rorotorinne al'Ameistra waited, a thick sheaf of papers in his hand that matched the one on the hand table next to him. The third such report their scouts had presented him with that day, it was filled with the names of cities and the viable food within them from all the realms and all the gates. The underworld was a loose representation of the mortal realm, the continents and geography approximated and the landscapes darker, more bleak. In most places where a major city of man lay, so too did a demonic citadel-city with a gate array reside within Hell, networked to the places that demons could sift through the aether and worm their way into the mortal realm to hunt. Dark corners in alleys, fireplaces, abandoned buildings—each gate led to an unattended, unassuming parallel within the human world where a hunter could enter, manifest fully without being accosted, and then escape back through after their hunt. Gates all over Hell had been especially active over the preceding days as scouts entered the mortal plane to assess the damages done by the invading winged pricks.
The messenger imp bowed for the third time since entering the room, pulling the tab on a metal scroll case to reveal the parchment inside. "Over eighty percent losses to humankind." Its raspy, rickety voice wavered with uncertainty and fear. "Many hunting grounds are empty already. The few that remain are scattered. Major city centers are replaced by these... camps? Large encampments with a holy place at their center. Most of what's left of usable food supply is chained up in them."Eligos' lips pressed to a thin line, extending a hand towards the imp, who promptly stumbled all over itself to offer up the scroll case. Pulling it open himself, the line of his lips got thinner until he let the scroll zip shut with a metallic clack! as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The sound made the imp jump in a particularly annoying way, and when Eligos open one eye, his pupil had dilated to a narrow, vertical slit. Now properly falling all over itself, the imp scrabbled out the door, its feet slapping away down the hallway.
The prince sighed, moving to stand, when another sound met his ears, that of heeled shoes clicking across the stone floor of the castle from the hallway the imp had just disappeared down. Thankfully his eye-roll had finished by the time Chaudoin stepped through the door without announcing herself, arms folded under her breasts and a dangerous light in her eyes. "Do you know no delicacy?" she chided, turning flicking her head towards the doorway. "Can you have one conversation with a messenger without scaring them half to death?""They've nothing to be frightened of," Eligos grumbled back, plopping his head onto his hand and rooting his elbow on the armrest. "I've not once hurt any of your little—"
She cut him off with a raised finger. "Nor have you ever sent one from the room with less than the fear of death in its heart."
"This is what you're worried about, right now? Frightened messengers?"
"I'm worried," she spat, leaning forward sardonically, "that my vassals will prove useless to me if they spend their days scared shitless that their prince is going to disembowel them for bringing grim news. News that you need to know, at that!"
Eligos tossed the scroll case at her, more than to her, but she snatched it out of the air all the same. "The news is grim. Read."
Her tongued clicked as she pulled open the scroll, but as her eyes traveled line by line, her exasperated expression slowly dropped, replaced by consternation. When her eyes rose to meet Eligos', they wre tinged
with uncertainty that leaned dangerously close to fear. "These numbers won't last us the year," she almost-whispered, her voice far away in her thoughts. "If this is all that's left, we'll have no choice but to—"
"Go to war," he finished for her, which prompted the priestess to pull the scroll to her chest like it would somehow hug her and provide comfort. "This is not a conflict that we will solve quietly, or quickly. It's been millennia since we were at war with the angels, and we've always been the ones to keep the balance. They broke the rules." Chaudoin's hard swallow seemed to take with it the last of her trepidation, and she met Eligos' golden gaze with her own steeled yellow orbs. "That which has always been need not always be."
The adage was older than Chaudoin and almost as old as Eligos, and its weight hung about the priestess' shoulders like lead weights on ropes. Her nod was stiff, but solid. "That which has always been need not always be," she affirmed, and at Eligos' nod, she added, "I'll rally the generals." Turning on her heel, she clicked away at a trot, leaving Eligos to ponder his thoughts. He cast his eyes over to the corner of the room, where a crimson-steel spear sat propped into a corner. It had been some time. His position meant that most often, his hunts were carried about by those beneath him, vials of blood presented on silver trays with crystal flutes, and beating hearts in burlap-lined bread baskets deposited on his desk at his call for them. With a rumbling exhale, he flexed his shoulders; part of his glamer rippled and faded away, allowing his wings to unfurl from his back. He stretched them high up over his head, their tips nearly touching the ceiling with their taloned ends before he pulled them against his back.
He snatched up the scout report and slotted it through his belt. With an extended hand, he waved his fingers at the spear, prompting it to jump out of its corner and slap against his outstretched palm. With a flick of his fingers, he vanished it, allowing it to slip into its pocket space until the time for fighting came. And come it would.
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