Challenge!

[tptb_in_ltsh]

I promised a surprise. Here it is. Or not, for some. It's a challenge, as the title says. We've also decided to make this regular.

The challenge will be monthly in future, if we manage to come up with enough topics.

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[cattygabriel]

A New Year

The end happens in winter. It is strangely fitting, after all; winter is death, but this time there are no hidden seeds of new life that will bloom in time.

Gabriel had once complained about Christmas; it was supposed to be a holy day, a celebration of the birth of the Saviour, and now it was a celebration of mass consumerism and greed and gluttony and it wasn’t even the right day. He’d said that the damage was irreparable, that it was Christ’s Mass in name only.

He had been wrong; humans weren’t entirely stupid. They’d recognised the signs and the catastrophes, the mass miracles and massacres. They’d recognised that they were caught in the middle of a war. Churches had never been fuller, and on Christmas Eve, Gabriel stood unseen in a church for a while and watched as everyone prayed for mercy, for forgiveness, for salvation.

He had always assumed that Heaven would win. He holds on to that belief now, as casualties mount on both sides. Faith was hard to come by these days, after all; you treasured what little you had.

With the freak snowstorms and floods and hurricanes battering most of the globe, and with the fallout from all the skirmishes, the human population has dramatically lessened. Many cities lie abandoned, the wind howling through bare boards and dark rooms and banging doors and windows against their frames angrily. Some buildings play host to pockets of human survivors, or groups of angels or demons; hellhounds savage anyone in the streets alone. The world turns into a strange blend of Limbo and Hell.

The pyramids crumble, the skyscrapers fall. In the few towns that are still mostly human, people pack themselves into places of worship and watch the war rage on around them, wondering if they will live to see the new year.

The troops are massing on the plain of Megiddo. The sky is dark; lightning flashes and thunder rumbles ominously, but there is no rain. Not yet. Electricity crackles in the air, stifling and heavy, leaving a sense of anticipation in its wake.

Despite the gloom, Gabriel can still make out the demons a few feet away. Lightning strikes again, glinting off armour and weapons and fangs. A strong wind begins to blow; like everything else on this plain it is unforgiving, chilly and scythes straight through to his bones.

Michael stands at his side, face tense, knuckles white with the grip on his sword. Gabriel reaches out, prying Michael’s fingers from his sword hilt so he can interlace his own with them, and that makes the Warrior give him a tiny smile. Gabriel smiles back.

“Happy New Year,” Gabriel whispers. And it will be, if they survive. It’s a huge ‘if’, the uncertainty hovering between them, but there’s no time for questions or promises now.

Gabriel brings the horn to his lips, and takes a deep breath.

*