Divide

***     AUTHOR DISCLAIMER    *** THIS WRITING WILL LIKELY BE CONFUSING TO YOU AS A READER BECAUSE IT SERVES SEVERAL FUNCTIONS.
AS AN AUTHOR I HAVE BEEN RETHINGING THE VERY DISJOINTED STORY THAT I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO TELL, AND WISH TO TAKE THINGS A DIFERENT WAY. THIS POST IS SORT OF A “REBOOT”. THE CHARACTHERS, IF YOU HAVE FOLLOWED AT ALL SO FAR, WILL STAY PRIMARILY THE SAME, AND EVEN THE STORY ARCH WONT CHANGE, BUT I JUST FEEL IT NEEDS TO BE TOLD DIFFERENTLY.
AT THE SAME TIME, ON A PERSONAL LEVEL, THERE HAS BEEN A LOT GOING ON INSIDE OF ME RECENTLY, MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY, THAT I JUST NEEDED TO GET OUT. THIS STORY SEGMENT IS NOT AS MUCH A CHANCE FOR ME TO VENT, AS IT IS AN EXPLINATION OF THINGS GOING ON. WHETHER YOU UNDERSTAND THESE THINGS AS THEY APPER IN THE WRITING BELOW OR NOT DOESN’T NESSESARILY MATTER, AND I HIOPE THAT THOSE ELEMENTS WILL NOT HURT THE EXPIRIENCE OF THE STORY.
BOTH AS AN AUTHOR AND AS AN INDIVIDUAL, THIS POST IS IN MANY WAYS AS MUCH FOR MYSELF AS FOR ANY READER, BUT THEN MOST OF MY WRITINGS ARE SUCH.
THANK YOU FOR READING. ***

Daylight shone through clouds of softly poring rain; the soft pellets of rain filled the air with a weak din as they were pulled by gravity to the ground. That sound made by the rain filled the silent void of echo that gripped the area, and all those watching were held captive by its pattering.  It was the sound of shock.
Dozens of young adults stood, huddled underneath the few trees in a vain attempt to stay dry, only a few stood openly in the rain, watching the now motionless scene unfold in front of them. No one spoke, though each of them wanted to; to ask questions and understand the events unfolding before them. In the nearly utter silence, the soft whisper of one girl was heard like a shout: “Nathan…”
The rectangular patches of grass on which the youths stood under the trees separated two sections of pavement, parking lots for the buildings of a small college campus. The rain soaked the grass and ground till it was muddy, and pooled on the asphalt. From the center of the pavement a clear red tint mixed with the dissipating water. The fluid poured freely and cleanly from the body lying prostrate and motionless.
Not far from the still form stood a man, still as everyone watching him, his arm unshakingly raised, brandishing a smoking weapon, its barrel pointed to where the corpse had been standing. Sky blue symbols hovered in the air around the gun, symbolizing some powerful magic imbued onto the weapon. The echo of its discharge still resonated, casing the shocked silence.
“Next time,” called a whispered, tainted voice, “Make sure your target can be killed before wasting so much power on your weapon.” The shock that caused the silence was overwhelmed by a renewed awe as the bleeding man on the ground lifted first his head, then his shoulders from the ground. He stood slowly, yet securely, looking off into distance.
The armed assailant growled, nearly screaming in anger, the symbols he held around his shotgun were renewed, turning red, fueled by his anger. “Just Die, you son of a-“
“No.” With a single word the formerly wounded man lifted his hand, energy in a very raw form discharging from his palm. The flare of power, moved faster than anyone could see, overtaking the gunman, obliterating his weapon and shattering his body like a plaster statue hut by an explosion shockwave.
Remaining motionless, standing, soaking in the increasing rain, the remaining man panted, his breath coming raggedly, as though it were not being caught as it should. From among the surrounding onlookers, a girl, the one who had whispered, stepped forward, tentatively, her chin length brown hair clinging to her face with its dampness. “Nathan.” She repeated louder, though still gently.
“NO!” Nathan roared, turning to glare at her. The brief moment of anger he showed, changed back into confused pain. “That weapon,” he mumbled in a distant voice, “It should have killed me. That is the closest to death I will ever come.” The more words he gave, the more distress it seemed to cause him.
“I was empty. I have been for so long; all these years with something wrong or missing inside me. This hole I didn’t think would be filled. But… it is now.” Nathan looked up into the eyes of those who had ventured out from under the trees into the rain, those who were most important, and who cared most. “It filled. But with…” The sentence dropped off and he held a clawing hand to his chest. “With this?” He shook his head, trying to drive away thoughts. His face twisted into an image of anguish “I see what I am. This is what is supposed to be inside me.”
Another one of the people closer to him took a step forward.
Nathan’s glare, if it could be called that through the beginning of painful looking tears, stopped that persons approach. “You. I know what you are supposed to be now. What part you play in the story. I see now. I see only more things inside myself that make me want to die, but I can’t seem to do that.” Collapsing to his knees drips of hysteric desperation gripping his voice. “No matter what I do, this is what I be come!” he cried in a tone that was no longer truly comprehensible.
As he crouched on the ground, back bowed, his form changed, beginning with lumps forming on either side of his spine, the skin splitting as black-feathered bones grew and stretched. As they grew, longer and longer, these appendages unfolded and expended into grey flecked black wings, each larger then his full arm span, toped with exposed bones, sharpened to blades. His exposed teeth lengthened and sharpened, as his hears extended to points that rose an inch out of his glowing black hair. Yet bore sharpened bones curved from his wrists, down his forearms a single noble swoop.
As the transformation completed, Nathan remained in his keens, shaking on the ground. “Give me reason to justify this,” he mumbled, “I have nowhere left to hide from myself. Let it end. Just let it end.” His words faded into a single desperate cry. Rising to his feet, he cried upwards at the sky, reaching for it, as his feet left the ground.
Without the slightest use of his wings, Nathan soared higher into the air that eventually petered out to the expansive nothingness of space. He didn’t think of those who he had left on the ground, or of what they might be thinking of him.  He had to be free of what filled him. When he had fallen, only moments before, felled by the augmented shotgun, his mind had at last latched onto whatever deep dark internalized part himself that had left him so alone and so empty for many years. Memories and emotions, thoughts, feelings, and thoughts flooded his soul. The fulfillment he had sought for from this sense of completion did not come. What filled him was a darkness and a pain that he wasn’t able to understand. I hurt in ever possible way that something could hurt. He had to get it out, to tear it away from his chest.
Se flew, unhindered by physical limitations on his speed. He could not aim for the sun of this solar system, who knows what he would do to it. So onward he threw himself, searching for any star or black hole that could consume him
As he plunged headlong into the boiling depth’s of an unseen, distant star, he felt again the sense of what should have been death, but wasn’t.
Surrounded, covered, overwhelmed by the burning substance of the core of a sun, Nathan looked at the form that met him there. Before him stood a being who seemed to be an exact copy of himself.
“Hello, Nathanael. I am Antien” It said. “Do you know what I am?”
“You are me?”
Its face was without emotion, as was its tone as it spoke. “We are the same person. Like a single coin, though with two sides, only more one than that. There is nothing distinct about us. We are not separate persons or personalities. In is world, the world of our origin; it is your side of the coin. In the world you are just rediscovering, it is my side of the coin. When you came so close to death, the barrier in our mind that separated what we are in this world from what we are in that world was broken. Part of what you are was made there, you have been unaware of it all this time because we wanted to forget, and is what you are when my side of the coin is up. Now those sides are merged.”
Nathan quaked, unsure of what this meant. “I remember black skies and thunder. Death. Lots of Death because of me. By me. It hurts. I’ve wanted to belong to someone and not cause them pain. I have changed what I am so many times to be accepted, to belong to someone, in this world. But as much as I want it there is another force inside of me, driving me. It the voice that is sometimes all I can hear, compelling me to be alone.”
“It was my voice that you heard.”
Nathan shook his head. “I don’t understand all this.”
“You don’t have to. You must only know that I am here to tell us what is now, and more importantly what we have to do next.”

Explanations 2

Part 2: Friends I have no words left. The phase made a dull, flat echo across a barren , dead field. . . . “You are a plague.” The rasping voice if an ill soldier, being carried away on a hovering stretcher. However weak and frail his voice may have been, his point was driven through by the anger seeded in the words. Antien hovered, his long black hair blowing over his face in its own breeze, a wind that slowly swirled the flared feathers at the tips of his wings. His arms folded over his bared chest, not yet riddled with scars. Below him, crystalline soldiers with masks cleared a battlefield of the debris of many bodies. His eyes were the only active part of his expression, dancing and burning as they did as he felt the Impirical forces gather around him. Otherwise his face was passive and apathetic, disconnected form the bloody scene below. From behind Antien, Kayne climbed slowly up a set of stairs he had formed from the dirt and rock with alchemy. Kayne could not fly around him, so he was forced to find more tangible ways to talk to him. Before he was able to form the rest of the soil into the last stair, beneath Kayne’s feet the entire unstable structure shattered back into miniscule clumps of dirt, before falling to the ground. For a second his adrenaline spiked, before he realized the sensation of falling had not yet happened. Looking upward, he at length noticed the field of energy holding him in the air, as he hovered precariously beneath Antien’s outstretched palm. “Your words are always welcomed, and noted, Kayne.” Antien began in a diplomatic, yet friendly voice. “Such efforts to get my attention aren’t necessary, old friend. Call for me, and for you I always hear and answer.” He looked down at Kayne, smiling the smile of an innocent young man. The two descended slowly, not directly below them to the body remains, but some distance away, landing beneath the limbs of some high trees. “You have made a blood mess of things, Kayne.” Antien shook his wings before collapsing them underneath his cloak, and twisting his neck to crack his back. “Before I was even here the Council considered you a problem. They branded you ‘Ra’ for whatever crimes they held against you. Personally I don’t care who you are or why my masters hate you so much, and for twenty years now I have made a point of not asking you. But without the progenitors, it seems we will never see the end of people bent on upsetting the peace. “You killed them and started all this needless warring. After so many battles, I have to fight becoming complacent. For that reason, I have to ask you, as I never have before. Why?” Kayne leaned gently against a tree, crossing his arms and closing his eyes. “You will have to be more specific, Kid. Why what exactly?” Antien looked at Kayne, the embers in his eyes fading back into a natural navy blue. He snorted. “Why what?” he repeated to himself. “Why… so many things. You hate the Council with more passion than many of the armies I have stood against. The Council seems to hate you with equal vehemence in return. Why? “In spite of you’re branding, your title of ‘Ra’ you are free to do act and do as you wish. I know you have taken part in some of the wars against the Council. No other Ra-criminal is given as much freedom as you. Why? “You clearly disagree with my loyalty to the Council, and my actions for them, yet you continue to follow me, and call me friend. Why?” Kayne remained stationary and silent for a long moment. Antien remained equally motionless, waiting patiently for Kayne to break his trademark silence. At last, Kayne drew a long breath. “You are my friend. I was the first to witness your power, and the first to survive you. I watched the Council train and build you into their Angel of Death, their new progenitor. The seek to draw all will from you, and all light. I have seen your slaughter, and your cruelty in war, but no matter how dark they make you, or you choose to become, I will always see that there is something, perhaps deep and unknown to me, inside of you that I am curious about.” Kayne opened his eyes, shifting his back against the trunk on which he leaned. “As inexplicable as your Impirical magic is, there are so many more things about you that aren’t what anyone expected. No one anticipated that you were an alchemist, or that you would grow wings. Then there is the Alchemic sickness you spread…” Antien sighed. The problem was familiar to him. The image of the dying soldier form only moments before printed itself on his mind. For some reason that no scientist or alchemist could yet explain, anything that maintained prolonged exposure to him would wither. As far as anyone could tell, something about his presence caused carbons to break down, and as life was built on carbon based molecules, the exposure could kill. “I’ve been working on an advancement to the Crystalline formula, based on the form that was used on me, that should protect carbon molecules.” Antien explained Kayne shook his head. “I doubt the Council would approve anything based off of your Crystalline Grade. You don’t remember, but when you work up, the power of you crystal form drove you to a feral state. You were impossible to control. Grade X Crystalline wont ever be used again. But we digress. “I follow you, though I disagree with the side you are on, because you have a destiny about you. You will be come something special. All of your inexplicable qualities make that parent to me. And also because one day you will become more than a Council Soldier. You will become the Angel they mean you to be, and when you do, they will chain you, and make you’re their dog, sending you against whatever foe they deem a threat to their absolute power. I want to be there when they try to control you.” A smug smile bent Kayne’s lips. Antien sighed, “Why do you hate them so much?” “Why do you love them so much?!” Kayne roared, “Give me the reason, the justification they gave you for their domination of peoples minds and freedom?” Antien bowed his head, ignoring the anger form his friend. “they desire freedom for themselves. Freedom to live in pain and die and choose how they will suffer. I would not deny them that freedom, but for the apathy it causes. Every time a people has been given a freedom for themselves, even a proper freedom for proper reasons, they obliterate it, or themselves. The become used to it, then refuse to defend it, and in the end regulate themselves back to whatever new governing power that will be free for them, until they want it back, some generations later. They fight wars to gain it only to give it up after they have it, and start more wars. The cycle is ageless, and erroneous. Freedom as you desire it is dangerous, and should be regulated by the wise, as everyone else seems content to throw it away. The council will protect people from themselves. From their won foolish will.” Kayne released his anger with a long, frustrated sigh. “You can say that as a man who still owns his ‘foolish will’. Yours, like mine, is not a mind they can subjugate, and for that, they will one day put you in chains, claiming your power is an uncontrolled liability to them, as I said.” The moments of silence that followed became hours. The old friends waited, letting the day fade to night around them, both having said all they needed to say. By unspoken consent, the two parted ways as friends, choosing two different paths.

Explinations

Part 1: Angels
The slight rustle of the wind blown tree outside her window was enough to roused Alyssa from her sleep. That, combined with the slight coolness of a gentle breeze brought in by the rush of air when her brother landed. To anyone else these would be meaningless gestures of common occurrences, but she knew the signs She padded silently from her room, making the short trip down the hall from her bedroom to his cluttered one. She gently leaned her head in through the always-open door, ready to ask him about his night, but he spoke before she could.
“You should be in bed, Aly.”
His words were emotionless, but she still felt the little rush of pride and excitement when he did. No matter how often she practiced making no sound, she was always pleased when her brother saw through her stealth. “I always wake up when you get home. You usually want to talk or at least be with someone. It’s never good to be alone after going through what you do with…” She intentionally trailed off, hoping he would fill in with what he had been doing over the evening hours, when the rest of the world believed him to be asleep.
He didn’t turn to face her as he washed his bare arms clean of dirt and dried blood, more than likely his own. “And it’s not good for you to be up late talk to me every time I get back from fighting.”
His words hit her like a twisting knife in her stomach. “Nate… Don’t you like talking to me?”
“Go to bed” His voice was now an angry whisper.
“You aren’t my brother tonight. You are Antien” She spat back, matching his anger. She ran to her room, throwing herself on her bed in tears. A few minutes later she heard the sounds of her brother leaving again.
. . .
The familiar cold wind swirled about him, as he once again hovered in the air, listening and feeling through the earth below for the presence of his mysterious woman. Mehaghen He hated to leave Alyssa that way, but She couldn’t understand what had happened with the vampires, and what had been happening each night since. From the moment he recalled Mehaghen’s name, small flashes of lost memories had been emerging. Memories he could never share with her.
A woman screaming, on her knees in front of him, cowering from him. A field of soldiers dressed and armed in a style that was distantly familiar, positioned beneath a red and black smudges sky. The feeling of infant bones snapping in his hands, and the silencing of its crying. A picture of Mehaghen holding him on his back, clearly offering herself to him in a way that now made him stomach wretch slightly. No sister could understand the feelings that had begun to build as the memories came back.
“I’m so sorry, Little one.” His sorrowful apology was whispered across the empty clouds below.
“Little one?” Meaghan’s voice sent a harsh thrill through his body. He hadn’t had the slightest inkling she had been near, which had not happened to him before. Ignoring his fairly obvious disconcertion, she continued.” You called that blond sister of yours ‘little one’. Did she survive the transference back here as well”
Wings flared, teeth bared, Antien turned to face her, a red intensity in his eyes. Any anger he had tried to display, only caused her to laugh playfully. “Don’t look at we with those eyes, my sweet, they don’t scare me. You don’t remember the enjoyment you have provided me with those eyes.”
“These eyes?”
Mehaghen bent her neck at an odd angle, giving an inhuman expression that still relayed a childish curiosity. “You haven’t noticed your eyes before? The way they burn and shimmer so gloriously at times?”
Antien gazed down through a break in the clouts, searching with his excellent vision for his reflection in the calm, Atlantic waters below. When he caught sight of himself, it seemed from a distance that his eyes were brown. He had heard it mentioned before by someone that his eyes sometimes appeared brown. However, as he studied his eyes more, even in the rippling reflection of the water, he could see that his eyes simmered, like a hot coal in a blazing fire, with dancing red sparks and veins of charred black..
“What are they?” Antien asked, forgetting for a moment his apprehension in the presence of Mehaghen’s overly seductive manner, still staring into the reflection of his own ember-eyes.
Mehaghen’s face softened into an almost meek smile. Her voice was quiet, having lost its smooth arrogance. “They are a sign of Impirical Magic. Only certain people in our world can use any kind of magic, and those who can are split into two categories; Natural Magic and Impirical.”
Antien let the information ruminate in his mind for a long moment. “Magic,” He mumbled to himself. “Is Alchemy Part of Magic?”
Mehaghen hovered around him in a circle again. “Alchemy is science applied in physical form by transferring energy. Exactly how it all works, I’m not sure, because I don’t use it. Like magic, only some people have the ability to form alchemic reactions. Your are the only person I have ever heard of, though, who can use both Alchemy and Empirical Magic.”
Still not looking away from the waters below, Antien continued pressing for information. Mehaghen knew the answers to the many questions he had. Even the haunting return of memories, he knew she could explain, if he ever formed the courage to ask her to. “How does magic work?” He berated himself for not asking more important questions, and wasting her seemingly temporary softness.
Throwing her head back, Mehaghen let out a chorus of laughter. “Magic,” She chuckled “Its called magic simply because no one can explain how it works.” She giggled a bit more. “I can tell you, though, that Impirical artists, like you, unfold the nature of physics. Impirical magic manifests itself as telekinesis, levitation, shockwaves, and energy blasts, where as my natural magic deals with the elements themselves, as well as animals. But exactly how it works…” She shrugged. “No one can even explain why some people are able to use it and others aren’t.”
Antien recalled the echoes of magic he had felt about the meteor he had caught several weeks ago, or the gathering of “mages” in Africa, wish seemed to be happening more and more frequently. “I’ve felt and seen uses of magic here, though not very sophisticated,”
“It does make sense considering…” Mehaghen cut him off, before getting lost in thought. After a second passed and she had yet to continue he pressed her to go on. “When you came to our world, the transference was hard. You didn’t exist in my universe, and so you had to be created. After you were there for a time, you made a habit of taking me back to your world for… entertainment. You showed me so many parts of your history: Those gun battles last century, the squinty eyed shogun swordsmen, ancient siege battles that you let me fight in because you knew the death would amuse me.” She paused again, smiling at what could only have been memories of the darkest parts of human history.
“I never understood how we were able to go back and fourth so easily, as I never existed in your world. When you went back the last time, so many years later, you were brought back to the exact moment you left, where your body and your sister’s body actually existed. That part I understand.
“People in your world, this world, couldn’t use magic or alchemy, you once told me. But it seems now that they are learning to. The only reason I can think of for the change is.. you. The fact that you are here and have all of your gifts and abilities and powers from our world, even if you cant remember or use them all yet, means that you are unlocking here, what was only possible there. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but perhaps form crossing back and fourth between worlds so much broke down whatever barrier makes the words different. That also explains why I was able to come here without the consequences you experienced your first time alone.”
Antien hung silently for a moment, processing. It made sense in a convoluted way. The fact that he had retained abilities that otherwise defied the laws of physics and chemistry somehow enabled other humans to begin to manifest such abilities of their own. He had destroyed whatever limitations this nature had placed on humans that had prevented such magic’s until now. “What of my abilities haven’t I used? What was I in your world that is so different from what I am now?”
“In OUR world,” she corrected. Before he could stop her, Mehaghen reached for him, placing the palms of her hands on his temples. The moment her skin made contact, All the light and sound from his surroundings was replaced with a vivid remembrance. For all the fragmented memories he had been able to recall, none were of his own face or form. But now as he saw himself at his greatest, a war machine, as Mehaghen had called him, he was terrified and impressed by what he saw.
In front of a starless, cloudless sky, silhouetted and illuminated by wreaths of colored flame which wove around him like a cats tale, some flames even daring to lick up the outside of his armored leg. The wind that made the flames dance pulled his long hair, swirling it around his face, black with countless pure white flecks where highlights should have been. His broad, scarred, stone like chest was bare, as were his arms, save for leather straps that wound around them from wrist to shoulder. He was much older and taller than he remembered, though still familiar with sharp horn-spikes from his wrists to his elbows, and shiny sharpened vampire teeth. His face was unmarked, with unmistakably burning eyes. The wings that unfolded nearly twelve feet in span were shaped as they were now, intricately woven and inlaid with feathers, covering the muscle, sinew, and bone beneath. As the wings lifted and arched overhead their color was revealed, not white and black, but a crimson brown, and covered with rust. They were made of raw, unrefined iron.
From somewhere back in reality he heard Mehaghen’s near vice whisper, “In this world, you would be called an Angel.” As her words were spoken, more than a million voices cried out in his mind at once. Voices of agony and pain. Voices of Death.

Sable

This story is a continuation of the one began in my last two Blogs. I would recommend reading them before reading this, so you aren’t lost. For general information, both part one and part two are of the same story, however part one chronicles events that happened when the main character was 14, and part two picks up four years later. For violence, it’s rated R. Please know that the violence is for a to help the reader understand the story better, and not merely to make a gory story. If this still bothers you, or if you would think badly of me for it, then please stop reading here.

Part 1: Awaken (Kayne)
I looked silently into a laboratory style room through the thin layer of glass, staring into the comatose face of the child who was bound to me. He lay prone on a cold metal table, the only position I had ever seen him. Around him technicians in white coats padded silently about, each doing his own part. Even as silent as they were, their excitement was not masked by the calm façade. I was the only other person allowed to observe, though I had been branded “Kayne-Ra”, traitor, and enemy, my life was connected to this child. Today was a special day. For us all.
Today we would see the awakening of the scientific research of millennia, and five years of application would finally come to fruition. Five years ago I had stood before the Council Progenitors and had my life bound to their new servant; an Human boy, pulled out of his own universe into ours in order to be fashioned into what they considered the ultimate form of life.
It is a basic scientific principle that matter cannot be created or destroyed. Indeed, in spite of all of the differences in nature and science from universe to universe, that principle is one constant. Being forced into another world, where ones atoms, cells and molecules did not exist is scientifically impossible, but through alchemy and magic the process was done, regardless of the consequence. The boy was pulled through, but in the transfer process, his body was nearly obliterated, and only pieces of his spinal cord and brain tissue were formed out of scrap molecules. Defying medical and scientific reasoning, the boy survived.
From the miniscule remains, the Council alchemists and geneticists had rebuilt his body, splicing in genes and chromosomes from the master races. Even with the alterations to his body, he still looked quite human, and very young. He couldn’t have been older than fourteen. I wondered as I watched him if after all the synthetics and enhancements they had put him through that this was in fact the face and body he had naturally, or transmogrification of his features.
A tremor quaked through me as the personnel in the chamber began to work faster, with more excited energy filling the room. Five years of waiting for this boy to wake up and I could feel his conscious only seconds away from emerging. Despise the intrusive connection I had to this child, I knew my anticipation matched those in the room around him, as well as that of the millions of soldiers he would one day lead.
To say that he had been rebuilt as a super soldier was a very harsh oversimplification of a much grander reality. Even to say he was indestructible didn’t begin to encompass all that he would be. I had witnessed his re-created skin, bone, and muscle tissue being infused with Cy1X formula, which is basically the purest form of a chemical compound which gives diamonds their hardness. The formula, called Crystalline, was commonly given to soldiers, but never in its purest from, because the results weren’t predicable. No one knew how powerful the process would make him.
I felt a twinge of guilt as I watched the sleeping boy. Though my life was bound to his, I knew the purpose for which he had been called and created: to become the Angel that would lead the Council armies against the planets and races witch, for the first time in countless ages, stood liberated from the rule of the Progenitors. With no voice in the Progenitors, the authority which bound all of the races together had fractured; though only for five years, the separate peoples tasted liberation form the domineering federation the Council wielded.
If this boy awoke, the last hope for freedom from the council would be lost in His shadow. Even if it were to cost my life, and my hope of restoring Atlantis, I couldn’t let him rise today. The strongest mages and meta-physicists were loyal to the council, and so I was forced to search the lowest ranks of magician to act as my terrorists. With a core of 10 magic users all channeling their knowledge together, and myself as their leader, we worked our best to curse the Cy1X and alchemic reactions that were being laid on the Sleeping Angel. But, for all our work, my partners were second-class, at best, and the results of our secret ministrations would not take affect until he awoke.
Now I watched and waited, my very life itself hanging on what happened next. Against my own wish I let my mind focus, and time began to slow. As if the waiting wasn’t tedious enough, not I had only prolonged my anxiety. A cooling relaxation washed over me as I looked over the room before me, again noticing the second bed. The unforced “accident”. On this second metal table, equally comatose, lay a girl, possibly three years younger than the boy. I had not been present when they found his body, but I was one of the few who knew what had really been discovered.
Though they shared no genetic similarities, other than being pure human, I could not help but feel that this girl and the boy were siblings, and that somehow, when he ad been called, she had followed. Her body had been found nearly completely intact, save for her eyes, which were damaged beyond use. The council had refused to repair her eyes, though the kept her as a bargaining chip, in case the Boy should ever become defiant.
A physical tremor shook me, almost stealing my balance form me. As I stumbled in place and caught myself, my heart clenched. My eyes became riveted to the boy, as the moment of his awakening arrived. I could feel a flood of emotion through our connection, none of it what I expected. Fear and hostility from his very core flooded me, as another shockwave exploded, this one not from me, but from within the chamber.
Time was still moving slow enough for me to see what was happening. For all of my alertness, and my attempts to be aware of my surroundings, the only thing I could see where his eyes. They weren’t human eyes. Red and black pupils surrounded by a blue haze. Only when my ears began to ache from his merciless, animalistic cry, was I able to notice anything else.
An Arc of crimson blood erupted from the nearest white-coated attendant to the boy’s bed. Even with time slowed his movements were fast. He threw the elf he had just impaled with the single blade growing from the center of his fist; a second scientist crumpled around the Boy’s knee.
Paralyzing fear struck me, no longer surrogated from him, but from my own body. I could feel the magic we had laid on him. It radiated around me like fire, scalding my skin, but leaving no traces of the physical damage. No, this was not what we had intended to do. Something had gone terribly wrong.
The glass separating my observation room from the bloodstained laboratory was shattered by a lone arm, separated form its host. No person in the room was left standing, save the boy, who now knelt, soaked in what seemed to be his own sweat. His long hair covered his downcast face. The spark of electricity ignited from his back, as an alchemic reaction began. A roar erupted from his throat as his head was thrown back, arms raised. As Antien’s cry filled the air, a set of black-and-brown-feathered wings stretched from his back.
Part 2: Alone (Antien)
The chilly, thin air of the upper atmosphere lapped around him gently, as he hovered, listening to the whispers that the wind gave him. He broadcasted his mind as far as he could reach; testing the outer limits of is senses. The world was quiet this night. In spite of being so filled with pain and confusion and lost minds and souls, there was a sense of peace over the lands below.
Somewhere in Asia, nearly a hundred people cried out and screamed chaotically amid a spray of gunfire. He was bothered by the noise, and the death that he smelled, but he was not a vigilante, and tonight his focus was elsewhere. A private turboprop airplane that accidentally ventured into restricted middle eastern airspace briefly caught his attention, drawing it down even further to a firefight in Kuwait. The sun was just beginning to be visible to the United States, as Air Force One departed LAX. Why was President Obama in LA, he wondered aimlessly.
Without warning something hurtled through the sky, giving Antien only a brief second to evade the flying object. It was too fast to be a plan and too small to be any sort of comet. He watched its path, raising his wings in defense as the object slowed, reversed direction, and launched itself at him again. As he was preparing to evade, a second and third object, each from a different direction, streaked towards him, cutting of the best evasion routes.
With a furious roar, Antien unleashed an explosive torrent of alchemic reactions, targeting the magnetic and gravitation fields far below. As the newer would be comets collided thunderously with his hyper gravity “shield”, their individual weight increased under new force of gravity, and they began to plummet towards the North African desert. The First object, dragging behind it a trail of middle atmospheric fire, hammered into him through the shield with more force than a freight train. As he grappled with the unidentified assailant, he could feel arms form it, grabbing onto him as they fell together. With a massive effort and push, his wings tore through his coat, throwing his attacker away and pulling out of his fall sharply.
Antien hovered in the air, panting for a moment, momentarily oblivious to the skies. “Don’t tell me I have worn you out, Lover” Came a honey think voice through the air. Before him in the air floated a woman unlike any he had remembered seeing in all his life. Her hair was black like oil, with a single line of blood red running done the middle, down to her shoulders. Her pale blue lips curled in a sickeningly sweet smile that bared four red-stained fangs ridged among her otherwise perfect teeth. She was barely dressed in a tight black leather top, with left her stomach and shoulders bare, held on with three buckles, connected at varying angles over her chest. Her skirt was open completely in front, only hanging behind her suspended feet as a sort of waist-line cape, leaving tattered black denim shorts underneath. She swayed slightly in the air, making shallow writhing motions like a snake.
The Dark creature before Antien slowly rubbed her foot against the other ankle as she circled him with a hungry look. “You keep looking at me like you don’t remember me, sweet.”
“I don’t,” Antien remained as still as possible, moving only to keep the woman in his peripherals as she wove closer to him in the air. He could not control a twitch and growl as she ran her hand over his outstretched wing. She bit her own lip and closed her eyes as the winds blew his scent to her.
Something about her got beneath Antien’s skin. Her movements and green eyes made him feel sick and disgusting, as well as dark and angry. But worse every time he caught her scent he felt… hungry. And some twisted part deep in his stomach liked all of those feelings, while every other part of him was revolted.
The subtle sweetness of her voice nearly surprised him. “Let’s see if I can remind you…” The sentence was left open as she flew in front of him very slowly, not only inches in front of his face. With a sudden change in her seductive smile, she ran her fingers over his stomach, then swept her nails hard, tearing his skin to the muscle. The moment his min registered the pain in connection with her face, a name exploded from some repressed memory. Mehaghen.
Reflexively, Antien lashed out with all of his strength, sending Mehaghen flying with a loud crack. She spun in the air only once before righting herself in the air, the smile still stretched across her face.
As if suddenly awake from something, Antien realized a very basic reality that had escaped him before. With himself being the one expectations, people couldn’t fly. And as far as he knew there was no one else like him. And he would fight to keep it that way.
Mehaghen laughed harshly, “Remember yet, my angel?” She blew him a kiss, before diving downwards. Antien let loose an fierce growl before chasing after her.
Down, down the mysterious girl led him. She leveled her nearly vertical drop only a few feet above the waters of the Atlantic. The sheer speed she cast herself forward parted the water beneath. Antien left the sound barrier far behind as he followed her, still unsure of his intentions when he caught her, but knowing it would end painfully for her. Gathering his mind, he pulled at the wind and waves behind him, pulling them with him until he was closely followed by a speeding tidal wave.
She was nearly one hundred yards still in lead of him, but at the speed the both cut through the air, Antien had no time to react as she stopped completely. The only sensation he was able to comprehend immediately was her bare heel shattering his jaw as he barreled into it with more force than a bullet. Less than a thousandth of a second later the wall of water he had created battered into him, dislocating his right wing and plunging him deep into the cold Atlantic.
Even through the water Mehaghen’s voice reached him as though she were speaking over the phone. “Don’t you recall our lovely pain, my Antien?” In the darkness of the water Antien felt two fists bash into his stomach over the gash, shattering two of his ribs, and forcing his most recent meal to be regurgitated. Before she could strike again, he forced himself the direction he felt was upwards. A second later he cast himself into the air again.
“This abuse is why we loved one another. It is what we are made for.” This time Mehaghen’s voice gave Antien a warning. She came at him from the water, nearly breaking light-speed, but with all her speed and strength, she had no fineness, and he was just as fast. Dodging her fist, he thrust his knee into her chest will all of his strength, stealing all of her momentum with the blow.
A torrent of blood erupted form Mehaghen’s mouth and nose as she landed with limply on the ocean surface. A few moments passed in silence. Antien Hovered, watching her. Slowly a sick smile bent her blood soaked lips and her eyes opened on him above. With a weak laugh she lifted herself from the water, somehow limping in the air. “We are war machines, Antien.” She said softly, spitting some more blood from her mouth. “We have been for hundreds and thousands of years. If you think you can live any different you are wrong. Whatever life you have made here, you are an Angel of Death, whether you remember it or not. You think you can keep this life? Your Family, Your Sisters, Your Friends? You will loose all of them. You will be alone. Just wait. They will all walk away from you.” She glared at him, before looking toward the clouds above then lifting away.
Antien watched as this strange woman became a blur and disappeared in the eastern sky, to tired to pursue anymore. Giving into fatigue, He let himself fall back into the water, sinking deeper as he rested. The water could not destroy him, only protect him while he recovered briefly. How would he explain this to Alyssa?