Division [2/5]
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---
Flauros flinches; the wave of power is that strong. He gets up immediately, dashing out of the lobby and up the stairs and through the hallways to Kazbiel's door, aware that both of his Fallen felt that. Something big - something truly holy, in a way that makes his skin burn - occurred barely seconds ago, and he can only hope that it is unconnected to what Kazbiel and Suphlatus are scheming.
The door is open when he reaches it, and he stops, suddenly wary.
He studies the carpet, attempting to make himself aware as best he can, and there: they are here, and yet he should be cautious. He lets himself into the room, tasting copper in the air. Someone's bleeding.
He doesn't bother to hit the lights, and instead makes his way over to the bed set in the center of the room, heedless of the blood stains on the carpet. It's not the blood of his Fallen, and thus unimportant.
Kazbiel's sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in red to match her hair, and she grimaces when she see Flauros approach.
"You felt that," she says, and he nods, stopping several feet away from her. "It wasn't an attack." She's radiating worry, however, and that leads him to move slightly closer, tense and ready to defend her.
"What was it?" He asks quietly.
"We don't know," Suphlatus says from next to the window, and he looks over - he'd known she was here, but hadn't yet pinpointed her location. She puts two fingers between the blinds, peeking out over the city. "But whatever kind of angel pulled it off, they weren't a foot soldier. You felt it, and guess what: that didn't originate in this city."
He shivers, as that makes it worse.
"You should return to the front desk," Suphlatus adds. "There's no reason to change our schedule if it doesn't come and affect us."
"Kazbiel?" He asks, waiting for her direction. She is the one he is loyal to, and she is the one he is bound to. If her existence on this plane terminates, he will be sent shrieking back to Hell.
He'd protect her even if that weren't the case.
"Stay," she says. "Just for a few minutes. We still don't know exactly what that was, or what it was meant to do, so..."
"I understand." He returns to the door, closing it, and stands there, waiting.
Suphlatus sits next to Kazbiel on the bed, looking annoyed. Yet she's all business when she speaks. "We do know that your twin has a powerful angel following him. Could this have been - "
"Probably. We don't know. I don't know what he feels like, I don't even know if he's capable of that."
"I don't think it was a controlled burst," Suphlatus says, a finger on her lips. "Maybe our pursuers ran into trouble?"
"Possible, but unlikely." Kazbiel says. "Really unlikely."
Flauros listens in, thinking. Unlikely, yes, but... "Kazbiel."
"What is it?"
"Perhaps..." He gestures down. "Someone followed us?"
"Oh!" Kazbiel hops up, lighting up. There's the excited smile, the gleam in her eye - "I bet I can explain it, now! That sea monster, that Rahab - I told him that my name was Kazfiel. That thing wouldn't stop to listen to any explanations once he figured out where its target was. Remember?"
"You think the border guard escaped its chains." Suphlatus says, tone doubting.
"I think it would convince Heaven to let it help aid in the search for the angels who slipped past it. And then it wouldn't matter what Kazfiel said or did."
Kazbiel laughs, delighted by the idea. "For all we know, that blast was Kazfiel's supervisor getting wounded while protecting his charge. Wouldn't that be good?"
---
Elsewhere is wet, and cold. It's still snowing, and Leroy shivers as he looks around, trying to figure out what happened, where are they -
His Assistant is gone, but across from him are the two angels, and they both look supremely annoyed. He can't say why, nor can he explain why Haniel's twitching slightly.
"Banished," Haniel growls. "Kazfiel - "
"I'm working on it," Kazfiel says, crouching on the ground, two bare hands pressed against the snow. "This isn't Earth, or Heaven..."
"Hell?"
"No." Kazfiel shakes his head. "I don't know where we are."
Leroy's listening, he really is, but the sky - it's not the same sky. It's covered with rust-red clouds, and what he can see of it - it's dark, black. No stars, and he's not even sure if it's night because there is enough light for him to see.
"The human's been brought with us," Haniel comments, and he crosses over to Leroy. "Your Assistant brought us here. Did he tell you anything? Can you contact him?"
"You both know more than I do right now," Leroy says. "This isn't Earth...is it?"
"No, it is not." Haniel says. He looks annoyed, and yet...Leroy frowns. Is that fear? Can an angel feel fear?
"We might want to explore," Leroy finally says. "See if there's anyone around we can ask for directions."
Kazfiel stands up, wiping his hands off. "There isn't much land," he comments. "We're on a small island and I expect that if we walk in any direction for long we will find water. Also, it might be prudent to search from the sky."
"Should we leave the human?"
Kazfiel looks at Haniel, then at Leroy. Leroy stiffens, more than willing to argue if they decide to leave him behind.
"No," Kazfiel says after a pause. "It was his decision that led to our place here. I doubt that we should abandon him."
"Thank you," Leroy says. He's been distracted by the sky and the angels, but now the cold is beginning to sink into him regardless of his coat, and he looks around. Surely there must be somewhere warm to go to.
The landscape isn't hopeful. Snow blankets the clearing they're in, and trees - are they trees? They're shaped like evergreens, but... He walks towards the nearest ones, and there: they're stone. What kind of stone he doesn't know, as he's no geologist, but when he raps his knuckles against a branch and it's solid - snow shudders off of the tree but nothing else. The branches do not sway. He could probably guess that it's marble, but rocks were never an interest.
"Stone trees..." He mutters, and turns back to the angels. They're in a circular clearing, surrounded by stone trees and blanketed in snow. The sky is still black, and the clouds are rust-red. He can't see the sun, or any source of light, but there's a pale white light that's enough to see by, and they have shadows. It's all very strange.
Leroy pauses, then gives it a shot and digs into his pocket and pulls out his cellphone, and as he expected, there's no signal.
"Right, let's go," he says. "I'm freezing."
Kazfiel nods, and looks to Haniel. "Which direction?"
"To the waters."
"There might be a problem," Leroy says as the angels begin walking towards the edge of the trees. He jobs over to them. "Those trees are stone, and we - "
Haniel gestures, and the trees barring their way collapse into themselves with a loud crack!
"...Ah. Nevermind?"
"This way," Kazfiel says, and he looks back at Leroy, offering a smile. "We will return to the Earth. Our will is set."
---
The sea screams. Ragged, horrible grinding screeches that last for hours and Leroy spends most of their walk towards the sea with his hands over his ears. He can't fathom why it would make a sound like that, and he can't see it either, as the stone trees continue to block their passage over rocky ground and Haniel can only clear so much at a time, but Kazfiel assures him that it is the sea.
Neither of the angels seem to be bothered by it, unfortunately, and Leroy eventually has to trod on Kazfiel's foot to get his attention (can't use his hands right now, after all) and shouts: "Can't you help with the sound?"
Kazfiel blinks and nods, gesturing, and abruptly the sound of the ocean is a much quieter background noise, still there but tolerable.
"Is that acceptable?"
"Much, thanks," Leroy says, lowering his hands cautiously.
"We're close," Haniel says, stopping in his tracks before the next tree, and turning around. "I'll undo the destruction."
It's much, much faster than the reverse. Leroy looks behind him just in time to see the shattered pieces of the trees rise up from the grond and reform themselves. Snow falls up, settling itself once more on the unbroken branches, and okay. Leroy is completely ready to be home now. It's at once unnerving and awe-inspiring.
The treeline breaks (and is reformed once they are through) and they are deposited on a precipice overlooking the ocean. Except that it can barely be termed an ocean.
Rusted metal stretching off into the horizon, hulking structures that might once have been skyscrapers that rise from the mass of metal, rust-red water flowing through all of it, and the noise - he knows now why the ocean is screaming. The ocean is filled to the brim with metal of all shapes and sizes and the water tries to flow around it, tries to obey the pull of the tides, and it grinds against itself. As Leroy watches pieces fall off of the larger structures and clang against the metal below, and he can see that it goes for miles.
The clouds are the same color as the water, and they fill the sky now so he cannot see above those, and it's too much. Stone trees were localized, right there. Something he could understand in some abstract sense. Snow made sense, as it was snowing at home.
This...this is vast and unimaginable and his knees go weak. Kazfiel grips his elbow, and Leroy has no idea if the angel understands his fear, but he appreciates the comfort all the same.
---
The phone rings, and Flauros checks the caller ID before answering. It reads 'private number', and he wonders briefly what that means, but picks it up anyways. He's supposed to be a clerk here at the front desk, not a wary demon mystified by technology.
"How may I help you?" A greeting he has learned is appropriate for this role.
"I wish to make some corrections in the assumptions made by your angels, Flauros." The voice on the other end of the line has an unfamiliar accent and knows far too much. Flauros hangs up immediately, and dials the private line to Kazbiel's rooms.
"What is it?" Suphlatus' clipped tones. Flauros would be much happier if he could speak to Kazbiel directly, but it's no matter.
"I just received a phonecall from a person who knew my name and who knew what you two are." Flauros says, and he gives her the exact words the mysterious caller used.
"Talk to it next time," Suphlatus says. "Find out what it is and what it wants. Find out if it's going to interefere in our plans."
"Understood," he says. "Tell Kazbiel." He hangs up, not waiting for her answer.
It's barely a second before the phone rings again. The same private number. He answers it, guarded.
"Flauros, I am unwilling to divulge my identity but quite willing to divulge the information you seek. I have already interfered in your angels' plans, and will do so again. Let me explain. The two who were sent to find your angels asked me for information and I gave it to them. Circumstances changed, however, and I was forced to banish them to...here I must interrupt and warn you. Letting Kazbiel meet her twin will only result in undesirable change."
"Stop," Flauros says. "What are you?"
"Merely an Assistant, kind demon. Inform your masters that the angels Kazfiel and Haniel have been sent away and will not be returning for quite some time. I can only hope they will defy my knowledge and surprise me."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"I'm afraid a more explicit answer is beyond my capabilities at the moment. Let me instead offer this: the blast of power you felt was the movement of those two angels into another reality. Rahab has yet to free himself and begin his pursuit."
"How do you know - "
The phone hangs up with a decisive click.
Flauros stares at it for a long moment, then goes directly for Kazbiel's rooms, intending to tell her directly.
---
"What is this?" Leroy asks again. "Where are we?" He's panicking and he knows it. He tries to calm down, forces himself to take deep breaths, and he looks to Kazfiel for answers. This entire situation is beyond him, for all that he had studied the occult, for all of the conspiracy theories he had entertained at one point or another, for all his Assistant's oddities, he hadn't been prepared for this.
Then again, how could anyone be prepared for this? If Kazfiel lifted whatever he did to his hearing, he'd be deafened by the sound of the ocean and if Haniel hadn't destroyed the trees he would have been trapped in that clearing, for the trees had been too close together to walk through.
Leroy looks out at the ocean again, calmer. Nevermind that his questions haven't been answered, he's done with being panicked. "Kazfiel?"
"I can't answer those questions," Kazfiel says, hand still on his arm. "I myself don't know where we are."
"Your Assistant sent us here," Haniel says, coming to stand near them. "Can you explain why or how?"
"He doesn't." Kazfiel moves his hand to Leroy's shoulder. "He uses the oracle without understanding everything about him."
This was true, and for a moment Leroy felt embarrassed by that fact. He moves to defend himself.
"You've spoken to him. You know how good he is at side-stepping questions he doesn't want to answer."
"You are his master." Haniel inclines his head. "Are you not?"
"He's the type to obey the letter of the law but not the spirit." Leroy says. "I was working on him without stooping to interrogations, alright? So no, I don't know how he sent us here, wherever here is."
"This isn't Earth, or either of the two realms above and below," Haniel says. "That much is clear."
"You said that earlier." Leroy says.
Haniel nods. "It bears repeating. This is literally outside what I know."
Leroy looks out at the ocean again, then back at the ground, and it's not a reassuring sight. They're standing on what amounts to a straight drop down, and the treeline is too close to the edge for them to pick a way around the forest. "I don't see a way down. Can you destroy more trees?"
"I could," Haniel says. "But there is something we should explain, before you look to us for more miracles."
"What's that?"
"This is a place unconnected to Heaven. Our powers here are limited, and while I can retrieve most of what I spent by undoing my work, not all of it can be undone. We have no way to recharge, so to speak."
"You're running on batteries, then." Leroy looks out at the ocean again. "What do we do?"
"This," Kazfiel says, letting go of his shoulder and putting two fingers to his forehead. Leroy blinks, and lets out a soft sound at the sudden heat suffusing his being. It stays for a moment, and he warms up to comfortable levels and just when it is becoming too much it is gone, as are Kazfiel's fingers.
"A blessing," Kazfiel says by way of explanation. "Protection. Shielding as well."
"Aren't protection and shielding the same thing?" It's a semantic to fuss over to buy him time so he can mull over being blessed by an angel.
"Protection from dangerous elements, shielding from us, when we become real." Kazfiel says. "As we must do so now in order to travel."
And then: another element that Leroy wasn't prepared for, another strike in favor of this being a vivid dream instead of reality: wings. Bright arcs of light and fire that settles before his eyes into an image he can stand: yellow-gold feather-coated wings from Kazfiel's back, and the color of Kazfiel's eyes has changed, to match the color of his wings. He at once looks more solid, more vibrant, as if he was in a faded painting and has been inked in with fresh paints.
Haniel follows suit a moment later, with red wings that would be garishly colored if they didn't look so right.
It's so outlandish and yet - yet Leroy can't shake the feeling that the wings were there all along, and that they have simply unfolded them so that he can notice that they are there.
"Measures must be taken to ensure that you do not go mad," Kazfiel says to him, and even his voice is clearer, more real than before. "Humans are fragile."
It's true, Leroy realizes. Because he has taken several steps back without realizing and he is faintly warm, and he suspects - knows - that he would be worse off if Kazfiel had not blessed him. For behind him is a drop that goes down too far and he's having enough trouble processing what he's seeing already.
Kazfiel reaches out and grabs his arm, pulling him close and then he is in a hold, and then the ground is below them.
---
"I don't understand. Why would they be made like that? Why would Father make them to be so delicate?"
Raziel spreads his hands, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "God works in mysterious ways. I can't explain His creations, but I can tell you almost anything else about them. Though...that is a secret worth finding out someday." The last sentence is a mutter, one Kazfiel barely hears.
"They can't even see our wings. That's not..."
"Kazfiel." Raziel's tone is stern, suddenly serious.
Kazfiel looks up, going quiet. Did he go too far again?
"They are not copies of us. They are something entirely different, and we are to respect that. Do you understand?"
He did. Kazfiel looks down, and does his best to be properly chastened. "Yes, Raziel."
"Good. Now, continuing on...there are ways to shield humans from harm. Such as a blessing."
"Show me," Kazfiel says, and he covers his mouth. "Sorry."
"...You have the attitude of a human, Kazfiel," Raziel comments. "Though I suppose I'm to blame, for encouraging your curiosity."
"Humans are curious?"
"Of course. It's an important trait for them to have. Now. A blessing is best applied through contact. Touch." Raziel reaches out and touches his forehead. "Pay attention to how it feels, and notice what I do."
Kazfiel keeps his eyes open, and learns.
---
The island shows its shape to them, once they are high enough to gain perspective, and Leroy has to frown, because the shape cannot be right. It's a cresent, with a line (a bridge?) leading away from its center, and he thinks of the shape of a pendulum. It's too perfect to be natural, and he says so to Kazfiel.
"Indeed not," Haniel says. "There is no nature here. Those imitation trees should have shown you that."
"They were stone," Leroy mutters. "Weirdly shaped, but still stone."
"Precisely." Haniel says. "Their shape implies a sculptor, for no stone would form itself in such a precise pattern, let alone repeat that multiple times. Not with the usual forces that nature applies. Thus it is unnatural, as is the rest of this world."
"We can't know that for sure, until we've seen all of it. You said it yourself: the shape implies a sculptor. Where is that sculptor?"
"There won't be one."
"How can you know that?"
"Haniel," Kazfiel breaks in. "We cannot draw conclusions without more evidence. He may be right. There may be a sculptor here, an unseen hand."
"That is yet to be seen," Haniel says, and he folds his wings, dropping down. Leroy yelps as Kazfiel follows suit, and holds onto his angel tighter, honestly scared. The ground should never come up towards you that fast, even if abruptly they're done falling and Kazfiel is gliding over to Haniel's landing spot - the beach-esque area where the line extends from the island.
If there's sand he can't see it for the snow, and where the water meets the snow there is ice and metal and sprinkles of rust, and the ground is firm under his feet. Leroy stumbles and then rights himself once Kazfiel lets go, and he tells himself not to kiss the ground, even though he understands why that sentiment exists, now. He's never been afraid of heights, but that - that was nothing he was ready for.
The entire experience here has been a series of events and sights he wasn't ready for, actually. Leroy makes a mental note to try to be more resilient to surprises in the future.
"We're following that, then?" Leroy asks, pointing to the line - which is a bridge - of tiles. Clear glass tiles, rising from the beach and extending off into the horizon.
"There are few other places to go," Kazfiel says. "For your benefit we will walk."
That's not entirely a good thing, but Leroy doesn't protest. Not yet, in any case. It's good to be on the ground, and it's even better to be steady.
Haniel's already walking ahead, and Leroy expects to hear noises from shoes meet glass, but there's nothing.
The wind whips around them as Leroy gets onto the glass, stepping gingerly so he doesn't accidentally break it, and he shivers. It's cold again, and actually colder this time as there's nothing stopping the wind from cutting through his jacket and chilling him. Even the lingering heat from the blessing isn't enough, and he hugs himself as he walks.
Occasionally water splashes his ankles, lapping around the tiles, and he shivers again. This probably wasn't the best choice of route, and they've barely started on it.
"Why are you shaking?" Kazfiel asks from behind. "Are you injured?"
"I'm cold. Do you two even feel the cold?"
"I know that it is cold, and that the wind is blowing," Kazfiel says. "But it does not affect me the same way it appears to be affecting you."
"Yeah, obviously." Leroy shivers again. "If I come home with a cold I'm blaming you."
"And not your Assistant who sent you here?"
"You're trying to duck responsibility and I don't approve." Leroy gives him a faux-stern look, glad to have something to focus on that's not the wind or the cold or the water.
"This cold will not threaten your health." Kazfiel says, matter-of-fact.
"... Right, right of course." Leroy says, rubbing at his arms. He shakes his head and looks away from Kazfiel for a moment, marveling at the metal ocean. Now that the shock's worn off, it's a fascinating sight. He stops walking as he studies one structure, trying to identify what it was in a past life. A building definitely, but what kind? Yet another interest to take up at home, he thinks. Learn architecture so he can have a better chance at guessing what those relics were.
It's not long before Kazfiel nudges his shoulder and he shakes himself, returning to the journey. He walks along the tiles, refusing to let himself count them, and tries to go faster every time he feels too cold.
There's trouble in the form of Haniel walking at a steady but slow pace in front of him, and the path isn't wide enough for Leroy to skirt around him, so he slows and tries not to be too cold. For a while he amuses himself by studying Haniel's bright red wings, tries to identify all the feathers by their proper names (primaries secondaries coverts remiges etcetera) and for a while it's a good distraction.
More trouble comes when the tiles begin to lift up and away from the water - a long staircase is formed as each tile is suddenly an inch higher than the one before it, and Leroy stops for a moment to see if there's anything under the tiles that's holding them up.
There isn't. Fantastic. Leroy waves a hand under the edge of the tile and feels nothing, and he looks back towards the island - are all of the tiles berefit of support? It doesn't make sense.
Kazfiel's foot nudges his gently, reminding him to keep moving, and he straightens with a sheepish smile, hurrying to catch up with Haniel.
"How high does this go?" Leroy asks out of idle curiosity. "Any idea?"
"None," Haniel says quietly. "This is an unknown."
"I'd really like it if we could get some answers soon." Leroy says before looking down at the metal again. "You do know that we're floating up here, rig - is that a person?"
Down, down almost too far for him to be sure is a body, a pale-skinned human-shaped body, and he crouches to get a better look as Kazfiel jumps off the tiles, freefalling down to the body before flaring his wings to slow his fall.
Leroy watches as Kazfiel carefully gathers the body into his arms and flies back up, flight steady and even. Is the person hurt? Fragile?
Kazfiel lands on the tiles and Leroy frowns to see a hint of fear on his face. From what Leroy can tell the body - man - is alive and unconscious, and he averts his eyes from genitals, hoping they can conjure some blankets or clothes into being for the person.
"What's wrong?" He asks, stepping closer to get a better look at the man.
"It's an angel," Kazfiel whispers, barely loud enough for them to hear, and he clutches the body closer to his chest.
---
ring. ring. ring.
"Kazfiel has been sent to the future you will create unless events are altered effectively. Do you understand? I do not wish to explain this again when I know that you comprehend. This meeting that you wish to create and control is beyond your grasp, o Angel of Dust."
"Who are you? Why do you think you can meddle in our affairs?"
"Unwise questions. I am an oracle, and I am merely obeying orders. My master will not assist in causing death, and so he must experience what he is preventing. You may be required to follow suit if I cannot talk you out of your path."
"Threats, oracle? You can't hope to succeed in stopping me."
"Kazfiel is beyond your reach."
"Angels can travel in time."
"I would not be here threatening you if I were not confident in my position."
"I call your bluff."
"Understood. Expect your plans to go drastically wrong in new and creative ways shortly, Suphlatus."
click.
---
Leroy is almost shoved off of the tiles in Haniel's haste to get close enough to touch the angel. It's a quick and desperate dance and then Leroy is standing on the high ground, watching the two angels examine the third.
"We need to wake him up - "
"Haniel, he's familiar - "
"Question him. Can you feel his strength?"
"I'm looking. It's barely there; he's nearly human."
Haniel pauses, raises a hand. A robe appears on the man, belted at the waist. It's a thick white robe, one that Leroy is envious of already as it looks warm and soft and comfortable, which is a state Leroy very much wants to be in right now.
It also makes the angel look smaller, weaker. He's paler than the white robe and if he were human Leroy would ask about blood loss. Do angels bleed? If they do, does it matter? More stupid questions that he can't ask Kazfiel about right now. Not when Kazfiel is still looking scared, as if this is truly something terrible to behold.
"Haniel," Kazfiel says softly. "He's familiar."
"What do you mean?" Haniel asks, and Leroy stares. Was that a lie? It was a lie. He knows instantly that Haniel is hiding something, that there's something more going on.
Unfortunately, it seems to work on Kazfiel. He doesn't look the least bit suspicious.
"I feel like I know this angel...it's something I cannot explain, but I know him, Haniel."
"It isn't unusual for you to feel close to family," another lie so badly told Leroy would choke on it - "Kazfiel, we should return to the ground and lay him out. Let him heal."
"There is no spring of energy for him to draw upon to heal. It has to come from one of us. Can I?"
"No. I'll supply it. As much as I can spare, in any case. Give him to me."
"Do you know him, Haniel?" Kazfiel asks, after a pause. "Do you know his name?" He looks at Haniel, earnest and innocent and Leroy grits his teeth, ready to intervene if there is another lie.
There is.
"I don't know his name."
"Liar!" Leroy calls. "That's enough!"
Haniel whips around, movement fast, and walks up to him, covering his mouth with his palm, holding his cheeks. "I should strike you down for your arrogance, child of man." He says, voice low and dangerous. "To call a messenger of God a liar, one of the satanspawn."
Leroy glares back at him, completely aware that Haniel is angry so that he can cover the lie. He tries to pull back, careful not to pull too hard or too far - the edge is close - but no. Haniel's grip is strong.
"Don't, Haniel." Kazfiel says.
Haniel makes a disgusted sound and lets go. "Think before you speak again," he says, quietly - can Kazfiel hear this? - "And think before accusing me of lies again. We don't need you."
Leroy narrows his eyes and says nothing. He's thinking: fine. For now I won't say anything, because I don't know what's going on yet. But now you know that I'm aware that you're lying.
Haniel stares at him for a long moment, then turns back. "Give him to me."
Kazfiel looks at him, then back at the angel, and gently places him into Haniel's hold. "Don't spend too much. It would do no good to heal him and lose you at the same time."
"He might be able to explain this place," Haniel says. "We should also keep moving. I want to know what is at the other end of this bridge."
"Yes, Haniel." Kazfiel says, brushing at the angel's pale-blonde hair with his fingers. He looks at Leroy. "Start moving."
Leroy nods, still wary and intrigued, and slowly turns to resume the climb.
He will find out what has happened here, and what is being hidden from him. On top of solving the other mysteries at hand and returning home.
He blinks as another thought occurs to him, and chuckles: the cold is easier to bear with curiosity fuelling him.
---
A short eternity later (has it been hours? he can't tell and he can't trust the time on his cellphone) Leroy has to stop climbing, simply to give his legs a well-deserved break.
He abruptly stops in his tracks, turns around and has a seat on the steps, breathing out. It's gotten colder up here, too, as the temperature is dropping, and even worse it's snowing again.
"You're lucky you can fly," he tells Kazfiel and Haniel, watching them both come to a halt. "If these tiles get so slippery I fall off, you're going to catch me, right?"
"Of course," Kazfiel says, but Leroy notices how Haniel's eyes are steel. He can't trust his safety with him, then.
"Thanks, Kazfiel," he offers with a warm smile. "I appreciate that, I really do."
"Base survival instinct," Haniel says, and he spreads his wings. "Kazfiel, we should go on ahead."
"Abandoning me already?"
The look Haniel shoots him can only be described as venomous, and Leroy grins back at it, cheeky and just a bit annoyed. It's not that offensive to call an angel a liar, is it? Especially when he's catching the liar red-handed.
Kazfield puts a hand on Haniel's arm. "Brother," he says quietly, and even though Leroy leans in to hear the rest of it, it's too quiet and the wind chooses that moment to kick up. Coincidence, probably.
Whatever Kazfiel says, Haniel's shoulders untense slightly, and he nods, still looking unhappy but there: his wings are folding back into their usual position, and he isn't leaving Leroy behind.
"Thanks," Leroy tells Kazfiel.
"I would advise you not to antagonize Haniel and not to slow us down any more than you are required to. Get up."
Leroy sighs and gets up. Ah, well. The price of company, he supposes. "Still, thanks for that. I don't want to be up here alone." He brushes snow off of his hair, and glances back at Kazfiel, noting that snow is beginning to accumulate on his hair. It's a nice effect, he thinks, but a worrying one. The snow barely touched them back in London.
He reaches out and brushes it off, gentle, amused.
"Better now?"
"Move," Kazfiel says, but Leroy fancies he hears a note of friendliness in there.
---
The radio is playing 'Stairway to Heaven' as Kazbiel steps out of her shower, and she shakes her head, sending water droplets flying across the bathroom. She reaches to turn off the radio, then leaves it alone, putting a finger to her lips.
Could it be an omen? Too many of these Earthly devices are mysteries to her, and even with her crash-course in basic human technology she can't help but see omens and portents in these creations.
Music is, after all, a form of communication, and even in these distinctly non-angelic voices she can hear Heaven.
She stands still, staring at the radio until the song (the omen) ends, then turns it off.
---
Leroy would like to get off now, please. It feels like they've been climbing up these stairs for days now, and he actually feels queasy when he looks down below.
"Are those the clouds?" He asks, during one his pauses to look ahead and up at where they're going. "As in, we're climbing higher than the clouds?"
"If this bridge leads that far, yes." Haniel says. He still has the unconscious angel in his arms, and Leroy envies his strength and stamina. It's hard enough climbing stairs for hours, let alone with a weight in your hands.
"I'm going to need some water," Leroy mutters, unwilling to ask directly for it. He's been catching snowflakes as often as he can, but now that it's not snowing anymore he's getting thirstier and thirstier. His stomach has been growling, too, but he can and will wait on that as long as necessary.
Limited miracles, he remembers. It's both a thrill to realize that they can and will perform miracles for his benefit, and a chill to realize that they can only do so much before they run out. This world (wherever they are) doesn't have anything to offer either of them, as far as he can see, and he doesn't relish the idea of needing to survive the hard way here.
"Once we are above the cloud layer," Kazfiel touches his back gently, "We will address your needs and attempt to locate ourselves."
Leroy glances back at him. "Thanks." A pause, and he decides to say the rest of it. "You're a good guy, Kazfiel."
Kazfiel removes his hand, shaking his head slightly. "You would say different words if I didn't have a use for you. If I were behaving like Haniel."
"Yes, but you're not. You're acting like a person who genuinely cares if I die or not, and I appreciate that. So keep it up, alright?"
"... I cannot promise such a thing."
It's disquieting. Leroy shrugs it off. He resumes climbing, taking short measured steps up the slippery tiles.
"I still like you," he says after a minute of awkward silence.
Kazfiel doesn't answer, and Leroy doesn't know if he heard or not.
--
It's uncanny timing. Suphlatus steps out, Kazbiel's phone rings, and she has no choice but to take it herself. Uncannier still is the voice on the other end. Nevermind what it says: Kazbiel is abruptly seized by a ghostly feeling of recognition - she knows who this voice belongs to, she has listened to it many times before - and just as abruptly it passes and she is free to puzzle over the words themselves.
"Kazbiel, your twin has been sent to the future in other to avert the fate awaiting this world should you two meet in circumstances arranged by Suphlatus. Is that stated plainly enough for you to understand?"
"Yes," she whispers, clutching at the phone. She can hear plastic crack. "Who are you?"
"The oracle who arranged and is arranging the circumstances so that the most likely outcome is the preservation of status quo. You may call me the Assistant."
"Assistant," she says, and she loosens her grip on the phone. It would be a bad idea to break it here and now. "Tell me more."
"Language is more powerful than you or I can truly understand. Names are important. A fine example of such is a famous one, may I quote it to you? 'And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.' And as you are a being made of words and light and will, regardless of the Fallen's one choice to change that in ways that are not necessarily for the better, then you must feel the truth of what I am saying now. My point is," here he pauses for emphasis. "My point is, if words spoken by God are that powerful, and if they can be spoken by other beings - here I point you to the archangel Gabriel, messenger, best example of this - then I ask you. What kind of influence upon reality would the name of God have? The true name, the one that sits at the seat of His consciousness (if that is the true name that I am thinking of, never would I presume to know the mind of the Lord) and I must ask: what kind of influence would that name have upon reality when spoken by imperfect lips? By lips that had no intention of saying it, let alone lips influenced by the will of another darker force. If you can begin to answer that then you know what is within you and what you must do.
I ask you, Kazbiel. I implore you. I beg you. Do not go to your twin Kazfiel with Suphlatus at your elbow, and do not allow her to determine the terms of your meeting. And, most importantly of all, please watch what you say. Good day."
The line goes dead, and in an impulsive fit of rage she tears the phone out of the wall and destroys the plastic shell, baring the electronic innards of the device to air.
She feels lost, and it is a terrible thing, more awful than any time before now because the ever-present tug she feels within is absent, and because Hell is not harming her and because she is an angel and all angels need a purpose, a set of orders, a set of laws to follow with all their might. It is all the worse because she has abandoned Heaven for Lucifer and Hell and the only person she can turn to for direction is Suphlatus, who she cannot trust now. (If asked, she wouldn't be able to explain why she trusts the words of the stranger over the telephone more than the words of the Fallen she has followed to Earth; nor would she be able to verbalize the instinct within her that assures her that yes, yes the voice can be trusted, he would never lie to her.)
"Great warning," she whispers to broken plastic. "But you didn't tell me what to do."
---
Leroy skims fingers through the cloud (which isn't fun to touch at all, but he can pretend that it's soft and fluffy instead of cold and wet) and watches his shoes as he walks. It's worse than a heavy fog, and instead of following Haniel's wings he has decided to follow his feet, as he can see the edges of the tile just well enough to stay on the staircase-bridge. He doesn't want to risk falling now while the angels can't see him (can they? he hasn't asked) and he thinks of the metal ocean, all hard surfaces and sharp jagged edges. There's water, yes, but...he shudders to think of what the impact of a fall would be like, and continues to watch his toes.
Abruptly the cloud falls away.
Abruptly the staircase is no longer a staircase, but flat surface stretching off in all directions.
Abruptly he can look up and see the starless sky, black above him, and a passing thought occurs to him - the is sky writhing above him - but the immediacy of his surroundings grabs his attention before he can tease that thought apart and wonder at the mysteries still above him.
For for there are hollow glass shells of buildings, and if he looks closely at those he sees that there is no bottom to those shells and flecks and shards of metals still cling to some of the shells.
He has to stop. Has to. He knows where the metal in that ocean came from now, because the shells are exact and detailed and he can count windows - windows! - of skyscrapers that must surely be rusting away below the clouds.
Haniel has halted in his tracks, as has Kazfiel, and Leroy forgets them for another series of moments so he can be at once awed and fascinated by what he sees.
Another detail about the sky: it seems to be too close, as if he could climb one of those skyscrapers and simply touch it.
Another detail about the city: there are statues, and more than statues there are tiny glass shells that appear to have covered humanoid beings. He fancies that if he gets close enough that he could see enough detail to figure out a face, perhaps more. Even as that fascinates him it repulses him in the same moment, because detailed statues of people imply the presence of people imply that...he halts that thought.
The scale of it - he can look in all directions and see it go on and on - drives him to step back. Again. Into Kazfiel's chest, and he is steadied by firm hands on his shoulders.
He tries to think of something to say, to convey to Kazfiel exactly what he is feeling at his moment.
Nothing occurs, and he stays silent, simply staring at this new find.
---
Maybe she shouldn't have destroyed the telephone.
Suphlatus is giving it a long look, face unreadable when she meets Kazbiel's glance.
Kazbiel doesn't drop her gaze, far too aware that to show weakness is a sin in Hell and while this isn't Hell Suphlatus still hasn't dropped those rules, and Kazbiel doubts that she ever will.
"Problem?"
"Human attempting to sell me something called 'aluminum siding'," Kazbiel says, and she toes the electronics again. "Has something happened?"
"No," Suphlatus says. "Nothing important, anyways."
Kazbiel thinks that it's probably safe to assume that Suphlatus is lying. It's probably also safe to assume that Suphlatus know she's lying. And so on. Typical headgames between Fallen angels, and she has been letting herself go, following most of Suphlatus' commands while on Earth so far.
It's easy to remember how fragile Suphlatus had been both during and after their escape from Hell, but unwise to bring it up or use it now. Suphlatus has become less and less trustworthy, and Kazbiel thinks that the fact that she was almost trustworthy in the first place says more about Kazbiel's state of mind then than anything else.
"I'm going out." Kazbiel says, following another impulse. "I need to practice behaving human without actually killing them." Or using them for rituals to create a situation where two specific angels would need to be sent down, or using them for rituals to create even more powerful wards, or...too much death, Kazbiel thinks, and in the same moment she laughs at herself for being so delicate.
What is wrong with her? (Not the first time she's wondered that.)
Suphlatus is a wall of silence as Kazbiel exits, clothes appearing around her as she goes. She's unwilling to stay and dress the manual way, especially when it means staying around Suphlatus when she is so confused.
Perhaps she should speak with Flauros. For all that he is a demon, he is loyal to her in his way, and she trusts that. (If he ever betrays her she can turn his skull inside out and make him become loyal once more.)
---
Haniel wastes no time in laying out the unconscious angel on the ground, and Leroy watches him lay hands upon the prone form. It's a welcome distraction from the city around him, and it's something relatively simple to focus on so that he can get his thoughts in order.
It occurs to him as the angel seems to glow and become more vivid, that he desperately wants a cup of tea. Not for the water, but for the calm, soothing properties that go into making and sipping and nursing along a cup of tea.
The angel is still bleached out and white, a living imitation of a pale statue when Haniel is finished. What has changed is something not quite visual, but Leroy has the sense that once again someone is home in the body, and when he looks at the angel he has the sense that there is an outline around the angel and that it is more real than before. Simply put, the angel has presence, and Leroy realizes that Haniel and Kazfiel have that same presence, but as they had it all along he hadn't realized it was there in the first place.
Kazfiel grips his arm suddenly, and Leroy startles, looking at him as Kazfiel sags into him, suddenly and inexplicably too weak to stand without support.
"Haniel!" Leroy calls, alarmed, as he struggles to hold Kazfiel up - it's not just the wings, Kazfiel is entirely too heavy and does he carry bricks in his clothes? It's like holding a - ah, that's it - a statue, albeit a moving and thinking one.
"Haniel!" Leroy calls again, manuevering both he and Kazfiel into a controlled fall, because he cannot hold that much weight on such tired legs.
"HANIEL!" Leroy calls seconds after he lands, because there is the sound of glass cracking and oh, god. If the floor here is too fragile for this impact - and it is, he can feel it giving way - "HELP!"
And - and he is falling, with Kazfiel immobile over him.
Leroy briefly locks gazes with Kazfiel (they are moving in slow motion now, because they are only beginning to fall and out of the corner of his eye he sees Haniel rising to his feet) and he sees terror in Kazfiel's eyes, terror and confusion and helplessness and it's the worst time for it but he is suddenly deluged by feeling of protectiveness, he suddenly needs to help this angel, this person, nevermind that he should be looking to Kazfiel for help because the metal ocean is a long way down and it's going to hurt to hit it.
Then they are in the clouds and falling fast and he cannot see the glass city anymore.
---
"Flauros!" Kazbiel greets as she slides behind the desk, standing behind him. "Could you get away with closing for the day so we can go exploring?"
"Yes," Flauros says without hesitation, and he tilts his head back to look at her. "May I ask the reason for this urgency?"
"Nope, not yet." She makes sure Flauros' doing as she said before she makes a line for the doors, ready to go outside and see the sky. "For now just think that I've been up there too long."
"If it suits you," he says, and it's several minutes before he follows, collecting a thin jacket from the back of his chair and putting it on. At her questioning look he lifts his shoulders in a shrug. "Snow is apparently cold, and I don't want us to stand out any more than necessary."
"Should I get a jacket?"
"I would never dare to tell you what to do."
"Smart of you, demon," but yet she does want direction, just a little bit over something that has no consequences. "But really, should I?"
"... If I may, then yes. It would make you look more like a normal human."
Kazbiel stifles her urge to give a happy relieved sigh at the direction and summons a jacket, once again not bothering with going to find one in the first place. There aren't any humans around, and she wants to get out of here, away from this place Suphlatus designed as their base of operations.
Flauros opens the door for her, and ushers her outside.
---
"Kazfiel," Leroy whispers, telling himself not to panic too much. They have a long way to fall. "Kazfiel, speak to me."
"Leerooy - " Kazfiel stops as Leroy covers his mouth.
"Okay, okay, calm down. We're not falling, we're flying and we're going to be fine," the babble is more to Leroy's benefit than Kazfiel's, "I need to know how to fix you so you can fly. Can you tell me?"
Kazfiel just looks even more panicked, and Leroy closes his eyes, trying to think. They need to slow down, slow their falling so Haniel can find and catch them before they hit the ground. Did he bring a parachute? (Of coure not, but oh, if only.)
Then...could he do something with his jacket? He opens his eyes, and thank god they're still in the clouds. He looks at Kazfiel again, and pauses. "Wings!"
Kazfiel has closed his eyes, and Leroy doesn't bother trying to explain when he probably can't move (nevermind why, he has no idea why) and he reaches out, trying to grab one of Kazfiel's wings so he can pull it out to its full length. If he can do it right, that'll be like a parachute, and if he's even luckier angels will have some kind of automatic instinct and then Kazfiel will fly in a straight line without prompting. Maybe. If he's lucky.
He catches a handful of feathers - feels a hot breath of air against his neck from Kazfiel in his new position - and tugs, reaching with his other hand to grab and pull, trying to be gentle in his desperation.
"Yes!" He cries as the wings finally begin to extend and flare into the flight position on their own after enough tugging, and he can feel Kazfiel breathing against his neck in hot little puffs of air, and as they burst through the bottom of the clouds he can already tell that they are falling much more slowly than before.
"Thank god, thank god," he mutters, wrapping his arms around Kazfiel in an awkward hug/cling-for-life, and he keeps Kazfiel's head tucked against his shoulder, hoping that he's not somehow touching or violating the angel. It's the worst time to think about the etiquette for touching an angel's wings without permission, and he's going to apologize later for it if they get out of this alive. And they are going to survive (he tells himself this sternly) because he needs to get home and yell at his Assistant for getting them into this situation in the first place.
They're gliding now instead of falling, and while it isn't exactly controlled, he can see himself possibly surviving the landing instead of...he doesn't finish the thought. It's not going to happen.
His grip on Kazfiel tightens.
---
It's a crowded street. Too crowded, too busy, too much sound. Kazbiel covers her ears, flinches back from the realization that she is surrounded by humans.
Humans, monkeys, rats - cars race by as she is afflicted by memory, of an image of a ball of rats, tied together and squeaking and clawing at the walls, clawing at stone. Burnt fur, burnt flesh, squeaks falling away into the dark -
"Flauros," she whispers, terrified and afraid to admit to it. Willing to act on it. What good is hiding their presence here if the angel she came to meet is gone? What good is hiding, what good is following the orders of Suphlatus when she cannot trust her?
"Flauros," she repeats, and he is looking at her, clearly ready. "Guard me." She can read confusion in his eyes, but that matters not because here and now she will destroy all that annoys her.
Fire appears, rolling down the street like the rolling of a carpet and screams erupt in its wake. There are runners and there are those who turn to find out what and why and she does not give them time to live. She has made herself manifest, she is rising in the air, fires appearing around her and wreathing the area in flame.
Flauros' shape twists in her wake, his head collapsing in on itself as he reverts to his demonic form: a headless man with red fur and a leopard's face on his chest. Claws extend from his fingers and at her direction he beheads burning humans to silence their screams.
Her garments have burnt away, and she cares not if she is letting anything with the senses to know that there is an angel on Earth, full of power and glory and a terrible terrible wrath.
Flauros follows her down the street, and she thinks: create a better Hell, create a Hell on Earth that is full of pain and angels and all the mysteries she could ever want without that constant discomfort, without any of the shame and pain that comes from residing in Hell.
"Flauros, what do you think?" She asks, and she does not recognize her own voice. "Instead of waiting around and following the rules here, why don't we make this home? Why don't we make this a better Hell?"
A building catches on fire, and the street is nearly empty now, littered with corpses and several crashed cars. She doesn't let the fires die, watching Flauros, waiting for his answer.
"The angels..." Flauros starts, before he raises a hand. "I will protect you and follow you, my liege."
Kazbiel feels a maniac grin spread across her face, and she doesn't know who she is, or what has changed: she is enjoying this, she loves the new title, and the destruction...she wants more.
She looks around at the carnage, still grinning that maniac grin. A last piece of her whispers that she should keep a low profile, be safe, but - she casts that fear aside.
No: she burns it away. The world is hers, and she's going to take it.
---
Haniel still hasn't come. Leroy shifts to look down every so often, and while he's grateful that it's still a long way down, they are gliding forward, farther and farther away from the bridge, and quite frankly he's scared.
Kazfiel is still breathing against his neck, and occasionally it tickles but Leroy's honestly glad for it. He's not holding a corpse, even if Kazfiel is still immobile and too close to resembling a statue for comfort.
"Kazfiel," Leroy tries again. "Can you speak?"
He shifts to get a good look at Kazfiel's face as he asks the question, and Kazfiel's eyes open after a heart-stopping moment, and Leroy gives a relieved sigh when Kazfiel looks at him not with confusion or panic, but with calm. Whatever else Kazfiel is feeling Leroy doesn't know - he can't read eyes that well - but it's something.
He asks again: "Can you speak?"
Kazfiel turns his head, slowly, opening his mouth. The movements are slow, halting, like he's in slow motion.
Leroy lets him try this time.
"Leerooy," Kazfiel starts, and Leroy can see plain annoyance there. He closes his mouth again.
"No improvement, huh?"
Kazfiel flicks his eyes towards his side, towards his wings.
"Oh. Right. Sorry for touching them, I just...you know. If we land like this we have a slightly better chance of not hurting ourselves, and...you know." Leroy trails off again, looking up at the sky. "Shouldn't Haniel be here by now?"
"...ss." Kazfiel manages. "Un..less..."
"Unless what? You're not going to try to tell me that something else up there is more important than our safety, are you?"
Kazfiel's eyes are closed when he looks, and he nearly growls at the idea. Inhuman or not, angel or not, that's not how it works!
"If that's the case I'm going to pluck out his feathers. Got it?"
Kazfiel's silent, and Leroy takes a few breaths, calming down. Okay. Smart of Kazfiel. He's not going to hold anything against Kazfiel for anything, he decides, because it's decidedly not cool to be paralyzed.
"I'm sorry," he offers. "That was out of line." He doesn't let Kazfiel even try to respond, covering his mouth with his hand. "You rest up, and I'll keep an eye out for him. And let me know when you can move again, okay?"
Kazbiel's lips move, but Leroy doesn't even try to understand what he might be saying, instead focusing on the skies, looking for a pair of red wings.
---
Still - somehow! - alive. Air, and darkness, and he can feel his body whole around him, can feel his essence burning bright within, can feel and think and everything that he could not before.
Before. Had he been dead? Surely not. But he shies from the thought of anything before this moment, and life is a myriad of distractions.
Observe: he opens his eyes, and the sensory delights in that one action! Colors, shapes, landscapes and forms unrolling before his eyes, a great dark above and someone - he blinks, focuses - one of his brothers; an angel before him.
But who? And where is he? He knows already that this isn't Heaven, for he can't hear anything beyond the whistle of the wind, the rustle of fabric moving, the breath of the angel before him. There is no choir, no ever-present song, and as he looks (delights in the ability to move his eyes this way and that) he can see that the sky is a twisted dark color, absent of any stars and that simply should not be.
Where is he? He wonders, and that too is left by the wayside while he is consumed by the new wonders of opening his mouth, touching his teeth, feeling muscles and skin stretch and move and yes: he can speak. He can talk!
A moment, please, while he ponders his first words in too long a time. Surely they must be well-chosen, appropriate to his location and situation and station.
He is wary for understandable reasons: an angel's words define him just as he is defined in turn by God's words as language is far more important than he can truly grasp. He cannot truly appreciate the depth of this moment but he knows that he must define himself in clear terms.
The angel at his side, watching him, is a good brother. He does not interrupt, and so Kasbeel (his name, yes, he grabs ahold of that knowledge and tucks it into him safely) has enough time to think.
"I am Kasbeel," he says in a clear voice, claiming his identity. "Angel of the Lord, Chief of the Oath, and I still live."
And with that, he has his place in reality set, and he can trust in his actions to be right and in accordance to his purpose.
"Amen," the angel next to him murmurs, and Kasbeel looks at him with gratitude and curiosity.
He has two questions: "Where am I," he raises a hand, indicating the world around him, "Who are you?" He points to the angel, indicting the specific identity of the angel next to him, as he has already identified that he is with family.
He lays his hand back down, delighting momentarily in the soft quality of the fabric he is encased in. A delight to the senses, and he spends a long moment savoring it with all of his skin from his chest to his legs to his arms and his fingers, and he must be blessed to be here in these circumstances.
And to be alive, no less!
"I am Haniel," the angel before him identifies himself, although not as formally as Kasbeel was required to - was obliged to.
"Haniel," he says, and he moves to sit up, to properly see and make obeisances to this archangel. But Haniel touches his shoulder, and pushes him back down.
"Conserve your strength. We are far from Heaven and I cannot answer your question."
A brief chill, and Kasbeel's delight drains away. How can an archangel be lost? How can they be so far from Heaven that they cannot find their way home?
Haniel goes on: "Why are you here? What do you know?"
At these words Kasbeel reaches back into his mind, but shies away from memories, an automatic fear. He does not want to know what happened to him, and he can understand why, if it led to this.
"I know nothing," he says, and this is true. "I will not follow the trail of memories until I can dominate the fear that rises from their presence." He flicks his eyes towards Haniel, then away. "If the need is urgent I would not object to a closer look."
"... No, the need is not urgent. Not yet." Haniel rises from the ground, standing as his wings flare, spreading wide before resuming their normal position. "Can you fly?"
"Not yet. You would not let me up, and I would rest for longer." Kasbeel stays where he is and closes his eyes once more. It feels natural now, to defy an archangel, and he does not know why; nor does he want to.
The atmosphere is oppresive now, and Haniel's presence is stifling. Kasbeel shies from it and hides himself by denying it, focusing himself inwards rather than outwards.
For several long minutes he meditates, centering himself without digging into his painful memories or speculating on what surrounds him. That can wait.
He decides upon his priorities, to be set in stone until he alters them once more. First, to stay alive and to savor the simple act of being. Secondly, to hold to his oaths (whatever they are) and thirdly, to find Heaven. The rest of it is automatic, as he will always defer to the direct order of a superior angel and he will always attempt to learn more of his surroundings and he will always hold himself in readiness to praise and worship and serve God, for that is at the core of his being.
This does not take long at all but it takes long enough, and oddly enough, the delay works: when he opens his eyes once more Haniel is gone, and the oppresive atmosphere with him.
Odd. (A brief thought, and one worth going over later, he thinks. When he knows where he is and in general more about his place in the world.)
Kasbeel sits up there, marveling once more - he doubts he will ever stop - at the soft comfort of the robe, and then a new surprise: he is cold!
Not that temperature truly affects him, not that he can truly be harmed by the cold, but it is a curious sensation, well worth experiencing.
It is now that he stops to look around and more specifically to look up, to take in the appearance of the sky. It is as he saw earlier: black and starless, unpleasant to behold. As he watches, he can see movement, omninous twisting and arcs of dark deep blue twisting in unwelcome shapes. Green as well, and these are colors he sees only after a long time of simply looking.
Something is up there, he thinks. He is afraid to learn what.
---
[ Continue]
---
Flauros flinches; the wave of power is that strong. He gets up immediately, dashing out of the lobby and up the stairs and through the hallways to Kazbiel's door, aware that both of his Fallen felt that. Something big - something truly holy, in a way that makes his skin burn - occurred barely seconds ago, and he can only hope that it is unconnected to what Kazbiel and Suphlatus are scheming.
The door is open when he reaches it, and he stops, suddenly wary.
He studies the carpet, attempting to make himself aware as best he can, and there: they are here, and yet he should be cautious. He lets himself into the room, tasting copper in the air. Someone's bleeding.
He doesn't bother to hit the lights, and instead makes his way over to the bed set in the center of the room, heedless of the blood stains on the carpet. It's not the blood of his Fallen, and thus unimportant.
Kazbiel's sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in red to match her hair, and she grimaces when she see Flauros approach.
"You felt that," she says, and he nods, stopping several feet away from her. "It wasn't an attack." She's radiating worry, however, and that leads him to move slightly closer, tense and ready to defend her.
"What was it?" He asks quietly.
"We don't know," Suphlatus says from next to the window, and he looks over - he'd known she was here, but hadn't yet pinpointed her location. She puts two fingers between the blinds, peeking out over the city. "But whatever kind of angel pulled it off, they weren't a foot soldier. You felt it, and guess what: that didn't originate in this city."
He shivers, as that makes it worse.
"You should return to the front desk," Suphlatus adds. "There's no reason to change our schedule if it doesn't come and affect us."
"Kazbiel?" He asks, waiting for her direction. She is the one he is loyal to, and she is the one he is bound to. If her existence on this plane terminates, he will be sent shrieking back to Hell.
He'd protect her even if that weren't the case.
"Stay," she says. "Just for a few minutes. We still don't know exactly what that was, or what it was meant to do, so..."
"I understand." He returns to the door, closing it, and stands there, waiting.
Suphlatus sits next to Kazbiel on the bed, looking annoyed. Yet she's all business when she speaks. "We do know that your twin has a powerful angel following him. Could this have been - "
"Probably. We don't know. I don't know what he feels like, I don't even know if he's capable of that."
"I don't think it was a controlled burst," Suphlatus says, a finger on her lips. "Maybe our pursuers ran into trouble?"
"Possible, but unlikely." Kazbiel says. "Really unlikely."
Flauros listens in, thinking. Unlikely, yes, but... "Kazbiel."
"What is it?"
"Perhaps..." He gestures down. "Someone followed us?"
"Oh!" Kazbiel hops up, lighting up. There's the excited smile, the gleam in her eye - "I bet I can explain it, now! That sea monster, that Rahab - I told him that my name was Kazfiel. That thing wouldn't stop to listen to any explanations once he figured out where its target was. Remember?"
"You think the border guard escaped its chains." Suphlatus says, tone doubting.
"I think it would convince Heaven to let it help aid in the search for the angels who slipped past it. And then it wouldn't matter what Kazfiel said or did."
Kazbiel laughs, delighted by the idea. "For all we know, that blast was Kazfiel's supervisor getting wounded while protecting his charge. Wouldn't that be good?"
---
Elsewhere is wet, and cold. It's still snowing, and Leroy shivers as he looks around, trying to figure out what happened, where are they -
His Assistant is gone, but across from him are the two angels, and they both look supremely annoyed. He can't say why, nor can he explain why Haniel's twitching slightly.
"Banished," Haniel growls. "Kazfiel - "
"I'm working on it," Kazfiel says, crouching on the ground, two bare hands pressed against the snow. "This isn't Earth, or Heaven..."
"Hell?"
"No." Kazfiel shakes his head. "I don't know where we are."
Leroy's listening, he really is, but the sky - it's not the same sky. It's covered with rust-red clouds, and what he can see of it - it's dark, black. No stars, and he's not even sure if it's night because there is enough light for him to see.
"The human's been brought with us," Haniel comments, and he crosses over to Leroy. "Your Assistant brought us here. Did he tell you anything? Can you contact him?"
"You both know more than I do right now," Leroy says. "This isn't Earth...is it?"
"No, it is not." Haniel says. He looks annoyed, and yet...Leroy frowns. Is that fear? Can an angel feel fear?
"We might want to explore," Leroy finally says. "See if there's anyone around we can ask for directions."
Kazfiel stands up, wiping his hands off. "There isn't much land," he comments. "We're on a small island and I expect that if we walk in any direction for long we will find water. Also, it might be prudent to search from the sky."
"Should we leave the human?"
Kazfiel looks at Haniel, then at Leroy. Leroy stiffens, more than willing to argue if they decide to leave him behind.
"No," Kazfiel says after a pause. "It was his decision that led to our place here. I doubt that we should abandon him."
"Thank you," Leroy says. He's been distracted by the sky and the angels, but now the cold is beginning to sink into him regardless of his coat, and he looks around. Surely there must be somewhere warm to go to.
The landscape isn't hopeful. Snow blankets the clearing they're in, and trees - are they trees? They're shaped like evergreens, but... He walks towards the nearest ones, and there: they're stone. What kind of stone he doesn't know, as he's no geologist, but when he raps his knuckles against a branch and it's solid - snow shudders off of the tree but nothing else. The branches do not sway. He could probably guess that it's marble, but rocks were never an interest.
"Stone trees..." He mutters, and turns back to the angels. They're in a circular clearing, surrounded by stone trees and blanketed in snow. The sky is still black, and the clouds are rust-red. He can't see the sun, or any source of light, but there's a pale white light that's enough to see by, and they have shadows. It's all very strange.
Leroy pauses, then gives it a shot and digs into his pocket and pulls out his cellphone, and as he expected, there's no signal.
"Right, let's go," he says. "I'm freezing."
Kazfiel nods, and looks to Haniel. "Which direction?"
"To the waters."
"There might be a problem," Leroy says as the angels begin walking towards the edge of the trees. He jobs over to them. "Those trees are stone, and we - "
Haniel gestures, and the trees barring their way collapse into themselves with a loud crack!
"...Ah. Nevermind?"
"This way," Kazfiel says, and he looks back at Leroy, offering a smile. "We will return to the Earth. Our will is set."
---
The sea screams. Ragged, horrible grinding screeches that last for hours and Leroy spends most of their walk towards the sea with his hands over his ears. He can't fathom why it would make a sound like that, and he can't see it either, as the stone trees continue to block their passage over rocky ground and Haniel can only clear so much at a time, but Kazfiel assures him that it is the sea.
Neither of the angels seem to be bothered by it, unfortunately, and Leroy eventually has to trod on Kazfiel's foot to get his attention (can't use his hands right now, after all) and shouts: "Can't you help with the sound?"
Kazfiel blinks and nods, gesturing, and abruptly the sound of the ocean is a much quieter background noise, still there but tolerable.
"Is that acceptable?"
"Much, thanks," Leroy says, lowering his hands cautiously.
"We're close," Haniel says, stopping in his tracks before the next tree, and turning around. "I'll undo the destruction."
It's much, much faster than the reverse. Leroy looks behind him just in time to see the shattered pieces of the trees rise up from the grond and reform themselves. Snow falls up, settling itself once more on the unbroken branches, and okay. Leroy is completely ready to be home now. It's at once unnerving and awe-inspiring.
The treeline breaks (and is reformed once they are through) and they are deposited on a precipice overlooking the ocean. Except that it can barely be termed an ocean.
Rusted metal stretching off into the horizon, hulking structures that might once have been skyscrapers that rise from the mass of metal, rust-red water flowing through all of it, and the noise - he knows now why the ocean is screaming. The ocean is filled to the brim with metal of all shapes and sizes and the water tries to flow around it, tries to obey the pull of the tides, and it grinds against itself. As Leroy watches pieces fall off of the larger structures and clang against the metal below, and he can see that it goes for miles.
The clouds are the same color as the water, and they fill the sky now so he cannot see above those, and it's too much. Stone trees were localized, right there. Something he could understand in some abstract sense. Snow made sense, as it was snowing at home.
This...this is vast and unimaginable and his knees go weak. Kazfiel grips his elbow, and Leroy has no idea if the angel understands his fear, but he appreciates the comfort all the same.
---
The phone rings, and Flauros checks the caller ID before answering. It reads 'private number', and he wonders briefly what that means, but picks it up anyways. He's supposed to be a clerk here at the front desk, not a wary demon mystified by technology.
"How may I help you?" A greeting he has learned is appropriate for this role.
"I wish to make some corrections in the assumptions made by your angels, Flauros." The voice on the other end of the line has an unfamiliar accent and knows far too much. Flauros hangs up immediately, and dials the private line to Kazbiel's rooms.
"What is it?" Suphlatus' clipped tones. Flauros would be much happier if he could speak to Kazbiel directly, but it's no matter.
"I just received a phonecall from a person who knew my name and who knew what you two are." Flauros says, and he gives her the exact words the mysterious caller used.
"Talk to it next time," Suphlatus says. "Find out what it is and what it wants. Find out if it's going to interefere in our plans."
"Understood," he says. "Tell Kazbiel." He hangs up, not waiting for her answer.
It's barely a second before the phone rings again. The same private number. He answers it, guarded.
"Flauros, I am unwilling to divulge my identity but quite willing to divulge the information you seek. I have already interfered in your angels' plans, and will do so again. Let me explain. The two who were sent to find your angels asked me for information and I gave it to them. Circumstances changed, however, and I was forced to banish them to...here I must interrupt and warn you. Letting Kazbiel meet her twin will only result in undesirable change."
"Stop," Flauros says. "What are you?"
"Merely an Assistant, kind demon. Inform your masters that the angels Kazfiel and Haniel have been sent away and will not be returning for quite some time. I can only hope they will defy my knowledge and surprise me."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"I'm afraid a more explicit answer is beyond my capabilities at the moment. Let me instead offer this: the blast of power you felt was the movement of those two angels into another reality. Rahab has yet to free himself and begin his pursuit."
"How do you know - "
The phone hangs up with a decisive click.
Flauros stares at it for a long moment, then goes directly for Kazbiel's rooms, intending to tell her directly.
---
"What is this?" Leroy asks again. "Where are we?" He's panicking and he knows it. He tries to calm down, forces himself to take deep breaths, and he looks to Kazfiel for answers. This entire situation is beyond him, for all that he had studied the occult, for all of the conspiracy theories he had entertained at one point or another, for all his Assistant's oddities, he hadn't been prepared for this.
Then again, how could anyone be prepared for this? If Kazfiel lifted whatever he did to his hearing, he'd be deafened by the sound of the ocean and if Haniel hadn't destroyed the trees he would have been trapped in that clearing, for the trees had been too close together to walk through.
Leroy looks out at the ocean again, calmer. Nevermind that his questions haven't been answered, he's done with being panicked. "Kazfiel?"
"I can't answer those questions," Kazfiel says, hand still on his arm. "I myself don't know where we are."
"Your Assistant sent us here," Haniel says, coming to stand near them. "Can you explain why or how?"
"He doesn't." Kazfiel moves his hand to Leroy's shoulder. "He uses the oracle without understanding everything about him."
This was true, and for a moment Leroy felt embarrassed by that fact. He moves to defend himself.
"You've spoken to him. You know how good he is at side-stepping questions he doesn't want to answer."
"You are his master." Haniel inclines his head. "Are you not?"
"He's the type to obey the letter of the law but not the spirit." Leroy says. "I was working on him without stooping to interrogations, alright? So no, I don't know how he sent us here, wherever here is."
"This isn't Earth, or either of the two realms above and below," Haniel says. "That much is clear."
"You said that earlier." Leroy says.
Haniel nods. "It bears repeating. This is literally outside what I know."
Leroy looks out at the ocean again, then back at the ground, and it's not a reassuring sight. They're standing on what amounts to a straight drop down, and the treeline is too close to the edge for them to pick a way around the forest. "I don't see a way down. Can you destroy more trees?"
"I could," Haniel says. "But there is something we should explain, before you look to us for more miracles."
"What's that?"
"This is a place unconnected to Heaven. Our powers here are limited, and while I can retrieve most of what I spent by undoing my work, not all of it can be undone. We have no way to recharge, so to speak."
"You're running on batteries, then." Leroy looks out at the ocean again. "What do we do?"
"This," Kazfiel says, letting go of his shoulder and putting two fingers to his forehead. Leroy blinks, and lets out a soft sound at the sudden heat suffusing his being. It stays for a moment, and he warms up to comfortable levels and just when it is becoming too much it is gone, as are Kazfiel's fingers.
"A blessing," Kazfiel says by way of explanation. "Protection. Shielding as well."
"Aren't protection and shielding the same thing?" It's a semantic to fuss over to buy him time so he can mull over being blessed by an angel.
"Protection from dangerous elements, shielding from us, when we become real." Kazfiel says. "As we must do so now in order to travel."
And then: another element that Leroy wasn't prepared for, another strike in favor of this being a vivid dream instead of reality: wings. Bright arcs of light and fire that settles before his eyes into an image he can stand: yellow-gold feather-coated wings from Kazfiel's back, and the color of Kazfiel's eyes has changed, to match the color of his wings. He at once looks more solid, more vibrant, as if he was in a faded painting and has been inked in with fresh paints.
Haniel follows suit a moment later, with red wings that would be garishly colored if they didn't look so right.
It's so outlandish and yet - yet Leroy can't shake the feeling that the wings were there all along, and that they have simply unfolded them so that he can notice that they are there.
"Measures must be taken to ensure that you do not go mad," Kazfiel says to him, and even his voice is clearer, more real than before. "Humans are fragile."
It's true, Leroy realizes. Because he has taken several steps back without realizing and he is faintly warm, and he suspects - knows - that he would be worse off if Kazfiel had not blessed him. For behind him is a drop that goes down too far and he's having enough trouble processing what he's seeing already.
Kazfiel reaches out and grabs his arm, pulling him close and then he is in a hold, and then the ground is below them.
---
"I don't understand. Why would they be made like that? Why would Father make them to be so delicate?"
Raziel spreads his hands, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. "God works in mysterious ways. I can't explain His creations, but I can tell you almost anything else about them. Though...that is a secret worth finding out someday." The last sentence is a mutter, one Kazfiel barely hears.
"They can't even see our wings. That's not..."
"Kazfiel." Raziel's tone is stern, suddenly serious.
Kazfiel looks up, going quiet. Did he go too far again?
"They are not copies of us. They are something entirely different, and we are to respect that. Do you understand?"
He did. Kazfiel looks down, and does his best to be properly chastened. "Yes, Raziel."
"Good. Now, continuing on...there are ways to shield humans from harm. Such as a blessing."
"Show me," Kazfiel says, and he covers his mouth. "Sorry."
"...You have the attitude of a human, Kazfiel," Raziel comments. "Though I suppose I'm to blame, for encouraging your curiosity."
"Humans are curious?"
"Of course. It's an important trait for them to have. Now. A blessing is best applied through contact. Touch." Raziel reaches out and touches his forehead. "Pay attention to how it feels, and notice what I do."
Kazfiel keeps his eyes open, and learns.
---
The island shows its shape to them, once they are high enough to gain perspective, and Leroy has to frown, because the shape cannot be right. It's a cresent, with a line (a bridge?) leading away from its center, and he thinks of the shape of a pendulum. It's too perfect to be natural, and he says so to Kazfiel.
"Indeed not," Haniel says. "There is no nature here. Those imitation trees should have shown you that."
"They were stone," Leroy mutters. "Weirdly shaped, but still stone."
"Precisely." Haniel says. "Their shape implies a sculptor, for no stone would form itself in such a precise pattern, let alone repeat that multiple times. Not with the usual forces that nature applies. Thus it is unnatural, as is the rest of this world."
"We can't know that for sure, until we've seen all of it. You said it yourself: the shape implies a sculptor. Where is that sculptor?"
"There won't be one."
"How can you know that?"
"Haniel," Kazfiel breaks in. "We cannot draw conclusions without more evidence. He may be right. There may be a sculptor here, an unseen hand."
"That is yet to be seen," Haniel says, and he folds his wings, dropping down. Leroy yelps as Kazfiel follows suit, and holds onto his angel tighter, honestly scared. The ground should never come up towards you that fast, even if abruptly they're done falling and Kazfiel is gliding over to Haniel's landing spot - the beach-esque area where the line extends from the island.
If there's sand he can't see it for the snow, and where the water meets the snow there is ice and metal and sprinkles of rust, and the ground is firm under his feet. Leroy stumbles and then rights himself once Kazfiel lets go, and he tells himself not to kiss the ground, even though he understands why that sentiment exists, now. He's never been afraid of heights, but that - that was nothing he was ready for.
The entire experience here has been a series of events and sights he wasn't ready for, actually. Leroy makes a mental note to try to be more resilient to surprises in the future.
"We're following that, then?" Leroy asks, pointing to the line - which is a bridge - of tiles. Clear glass tiles, rising from the beach and extending off into the horizon.
"There are few other places to go," Kazfiel says. "For your benefit we will walk."
That's not entirely a good thing, but Leroy doesn't protest. Not yet, in any case. It's good to be on the ground, and it's even better to be steady.
Haniel's already walking ahead, and Leroy expects to hear noises from shoes meet glass, but there's nothing.
The wind whips around them as Leroy gets onto the glass, stepping gingerly so he doesn't accidentally break it, and he shivers. It's cold again, and actually colder this time as there's nothing stopping the wind from cutting through his jacket and chilling him. Even the lingering heat from the blessing isn't enough, and he hugs himself as he walks.
Occasionally water splashes his ankles, lapping around the tiles, and he shivers again. This probably wasn't the best choice of route, and they've barely started on it.
"Why are you shaking?" Kazfiel asks from behind. "Are you injured?"
"I'm cold. Do you two even feel the cold?"
"I know that it is cold, and that the wind is blowing," Kazfiel says. "But it does not affect me the same way it appears to be affecting you."
"Yeah, obviously." Leroy shivers again. "If I come home with a cold I'm blaming you."
"And not your Assistant who sent you here?"
"You're trying to duck responsibility and I don't approve." Leroy gives him a faux-stern look, glad to have something to focus on that's not the wind or the cold or the water.
"This cold will not threaten your health." Kazfiel says, matter-of-fact.
"... Right, right of course." Leroy says, rubbing at his arms. He shakes his head and looks away from Kazfiel for a moment, marveling at the metal ocean. Now that the shock's worn off, it's a fascinating sight. He stops walking as he studies one structure, trying to identify what it was in a past life. A building definitely, but what kind? Yet another interest to take up at home, he thinks. Learn architecture so he can have a better chance at guessing what those relics were.
It's not long before Kazfiel nudges his shoulder and he shakes himself, returning to the journey. He walks along the tiles, refusing to let himself count them, and tries to go faster every time he feels too cold.
There's trouble in the form of Haniel walking at a steady but slow pace in front of him, and the path isn't wide enough for Leroy to skirt around him, so he slows and tries not to be too cold. For a while he amuses himself by studying Haniel's bright red wings, tries to identify all the feathers by their proper names (primaries secondaries coverts remiges etcetera) and for a while it's a good distraction.
More trouble comes when the tiles begin to lift up and away from the water - a long staircase is formed as each tile is suddenly an inch higher than the one before it, and Leroy stops for a moment to see if there's anything under the tiles that's holding them up.
There isn't. Fantastic. Leroy waves a hand under the edge of the tile and feels nothing, and he looks back towards the island - are all of the tiles berefit of support? It doesn't make sense.
Kazfiel's foot nudges his gently, reminding him to keep moving, and he straightens with a sheepish smile, hurrying to catch up with Haniel.
"How high does this go?" Leroy asks out of idle curiosity. "Any idea?"
"None," Haniel says quietly. "This is an unknown."
"I'd really like it if we could get some answers soon." Leroy says before looking down at the metal again. "You do know that we're floating up here, rig - is that a person?"
Down, down almost too far for him to be sure is a body, a pale-skinned human-shaped body, and he crouches to get a better look as Kazfiel jumps off the tiles, freefalling down to the body before flaring his wings to slow his fall.
Leroy watches as Kazfiel carefully gathers the body into his arms and flies back up, flight steady and even. Is the person hurt? Fragile?
Kazfiel lands on the tiles and Leroy frowns to see a hint of fear on his face. From what Leroy can tell the body - man - is alive and unconscious, and he averts his eyes from genitals, hoping they can conjure some blankets or clothes into being for the person.
"What's wrong?" He asks, stepping closer to get a better look at the man.
"It's an angel," Kazfiel whispers, barely loud enough for them to hear, and he clutches the body closer to his chest.
---
ring. ring. ring.
"Kazfiel has been sent to the future you will create unless events are altered effectively. Do you understand? I do not wish to explain this again when I know that you comprehend. This meeting that you wish to create and control is beyond your grasp, o Angel of Dust."
"Who are you? Why do you think you can meddle in our affairs?"
"Unwise questions. I am an oracle, and I am merely obeying orders. My master will not assist in causing death, and so he must experience what he is preventing. You may be required to follow suit if I cannot talk you out of your path."
"Threats, oracle? You can't hope to succeed in stopping me."
"Kazfiel is beyond your reach."
"Angels can travel in time."
"I would not be here threatening you if I were not confident in my position."
"I call your bluff."
"Understood. Expect your plans to go drastically wrong in new and creative ways shortly, Suphlatus."
click.
---
Leroy is almost shoved off of the tiles in Haniel's haste to get close enough to touch the angel. It's a quick and desperate dance and then Leroy is standing on the high ground, watching the two angels examine the third.
"We need to wake him up - "
"Haniel, he's familiar - "
"Question him. Can you feel his strength?"
"I'm looking. It's barely there; he's nearly human."
Haniel pauses, raises a hand. A robe appears on the man, belted at the waist. It's a thick white robe, one that Leroy is envious of already as it looks warm and soft and comfortable, which is a state Leroy very much wants to be in right now.
It also makes the angel look smaller, weaker. He's paler than the white robe and if he were human Leroy would ask about blood loss. Do angels bleed? If they do, does it matter? More stupid questions that he can't ask Kazfiel about right now. Not when Kazfiel is still looking scared, as if this is truly something terrible to behold.
"Haniel," Kazfiel says softly. "He's familiar."
"What do you mean?" Haniel asks, and Leroy stares. Was that a lie? It was a lie. He knows instantly that Haniel is hiding something, that there's something more going on.
Unfortunately, it seems to work on Kazfiel. He doesn't look the least bit suspicious.
"I feel like I know this angel...it's something I cannot explain, but I know him, Haniel."
"It isn't unusual for you to feel close to family," another lie so badly told Leroy would choke on it - "Kazfiel, we should return to the ground and lay him out. Let him heal."
"There is no spring of energy for him to draw upon to heal. It has to come from one of us. Can I?"
"No. I'll supply it. As much as I can spare, in any case. Give him to me."
"Do you know him, Haniel?" Kazfiel asks, after a pause. "Do you know his name?" He looks at Haniel, earnest and innocent and Leroy grits his teeth, ready to intervene if there is another lie.
There is.
"I don't know his name."
"Liar!" Leroy calls. "That's enough!"
Haniel whips around, movement fast, and walks up to him, covering his mouth with his palm, holding his cheeks. "I should strike you down for your arrogance, child of man." He says, voice low and dangerous. "To call a messenger of God a liar, one of the satanspawn."
Leroy glares back at him, completely aware that Haniel is angry so that he can cover the lie. He tries to pull back, careful not to pull too hard or too far - the edge is close - but no. Haniel's grip is strong.
"Don't, Haniel." Kazfiel says.
Haniel makes a disgusted sound and lets go. "Think before you speak again," he says, quietly - can Kazfiel hear this? - "And think before accusing me of lies again. We don't need you."
Leroy narrows his eyes and says nothing. He's thinking: fine. For now I won't say anything, because I don't know what's going on yet. But now you know that I'm aware that you're lying.
Haniel stares at him for a long moment, then turns back. "Give him to me."
Kazfiel looks at him, then back at the angel, and gently places him into Haniel's hold. "Don't spend too much. It would do no good to heal him and lose you at the same time."
"He might be able to explain this place," Haniel says. "We should also keep moving. I want to know what is at the other end of this bridge."
"Yes, Haniel." Kazfiel says, brushing at the angel's pale-blonde hair with his fingers. He looks at Leroy. "Start moving."
Leroy nods, still wary and intrigued, and slowly turns to resume the climb.
He will find out what has happened here, and what is being hidden from him. On top of solving the other mysteries at hand and returning home.
He blinks as another thought occurs to him, and chuckles: the cold is easier to bear with curiosity fuelling him.
---
A short eternity later (has it been hours? he can't tell and he can't trust the time on his cellphone) Leroy has to stop climbing, simply to give his legs a well-deserved break.
He abruptly stops in his tracks, turns around and has a seat on the steps, breathing out. It's gotten colder up here, too, as the temperature is dropping, and even worse it's snowing again.
"You're lucky you can fly," he tells Kazfiel and Haniel, watching them both come to a halt. "If these tiles get so slippery I fall off, you're going to catch me, right?"
"Of course," Kazfiel says, but Leroy notices how Haniel's eyes are steel. He can't trust his safety with him, then.
"Thanks, Kazfiel," he offers with a warm smile. "I appreciate that, I really do."
"Base survival instinct," Haniel says, and he spreads his wings. "Kazfiel, we should go on ahead."
"Abandoning me already?"
The look Haniel shoots him can only be described as venomous, and Leroy grins back at it, cheeky and just a bit annoyed. It's not that offensive to call an angel a liar, is it? Especially when he's catching the liar red-handed.
Kazfield puts a hand on Haniel's arm. "Brother," he says quietly, and even though Leroy leans in to hear the rest of it, it's too quiet and the wind chooses that moment to kick up. Coincidence, probably.
Whatever Kazfiel says, Haniel's shoulders untense slightly, and he nods, still looking unhappy but there: his wings are folding back into their usual position, and he isn't leaving Leroy behind.
"Thanks," Leroy tells Kazfiel.
"I would advise you not to antagonize Haniel and not to slow us down any more than you are required to. Get up."
Leroy sighs and gets up. Ah, well. The price of company, he supposes. "Still, thanks for that. I don't want to be up here alone." He brushes snow off of his hair, and glances back at Kazfiel, noting that snow is beginning to accumulate on his hair. It's a nice effect, he thinks, but a worrying one. The snow barely touched them back in London.
He reaches out and brushes it off, gentle, amused.
"Better now?"
"Move," Kazfiel says, but Leroy fancies he hears a note of friendliness in there.
---
The radio is playing 'Stairway to Heaven' as Kazbiel steps out of her shower, and she shakes her head, sending water droplets flying across the bathroom. She reaches to turn off the radio, then leaves it alone, putting a finger to her lips.
Could it be an omen? Too many of these Earthly devices are mysteries to her, and even with her crash-course in basic human technology she can't help but see omens and portents in these creations.
Music is, after all, a form of communication, and even in these distinctly non-angelic voices she can hear Heaven.
She stands still, staring at the radio until the song (the omen) ends, then turns it off.
---
Leroy would like to get off now, please. It feels like they've been climbing up these stairs for days now, and he actually feels queasy when he looks down below.
"Are those the clouds?" He asks, during one his pauses to look ahead and up at where they're going. "As in, we're climbing higher than the clouds?"
"If this bridge leads that far, yes." Haniel says. He still has the unconscious angel in his arms, and Leroy envies his strength and stamina. It's hard enough climbing stairs for hours, let alone with a weight in your hands.
"I'm going to need some water," Leroy mutters, unwilling to ask directly for it. He's been catching snowflakes as often as he can, but now that it's not snowing anymore he's getting thirstier and thirstier. His stomach has been growling, too, but he can and will wait on that as long as necessary.
Limited miracles, he remembers. It's both a thrill to realize that they can and will perform miracles for his benefit, and a chill to realize that they can only do so much before they run out. This world (wherever they are) doesn't have anything to offer either of them, as far as he can see, and he doesn't relish the idea of needing to survive the hard way here.
"Once we are above the cloud layer," Kazfiel touches his back gently, "We will address your needs and attempt to locate ourselves."
Leroy glances back at him. "Thanks." A pause, and he decides to say the rest of it. "You're a good guy, Kazfiel."
Kazfiel removes his hand, shaking his head slightly. "You would say different words if I didn't have a use for you. If I were behaving like Haniel."
"Yes, but you're not. You're acting like a person who genuinely cares if I die or not, and I appreciate that. So keep it up, alright?"
"... I cannot promise such a thing."
It's disquieting. Leroy shrugs it off. He resumes climbing, taking short measured steps up the slippery tiles.
"I still like you," he says after a minute of awkward silence.
Kazfiel doesn't answer, and Leroy doesn't know if he heard or not.
--
It's uncanny timing. Suphlatus steps out, Kazbiel's phone rings, and she has no choice but to take it herself. Uncannier still is the voice on the other end. Nevermind what it says: Kazbiel is abruptly seized by a ghostly feeling of recognition - she knows who this voice belongs to, she has listened to it many times before - and just as abruptly it passes and she is free to puzzle over the words themselves.
"Kazbiel, your twin has been sent to the future in other to avert the fate awaiting this world should you two meet in circumstances arranged by Suphlatus. Is that stated plainly enough for you to understand?"
"Yes," she whispers, clutching at the phone. She can hear plastic crack. "Who are you?"
"The oracle who arranged and is arranging the circumstances so that the most likely outcome is the preservation of status quo. You may call me the Assistant."
"Assistant," she says, and she loosens her grip on the phone. It would be a bad idea to break it here and now. "Tell me more."
"Language is more powerful than you or I can truly understand. Names are important. A fine example of such is a famous one, may I quote it to you? 'And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.' And as you are a being made of words and light and will, regardless of the Fallen's one choice to change that in ways that are not necessarily for the better, then you must feel the truth of what I am saying now. My point is," here he pauses for emphasis. "My point is, if words spoken by God are that powerful, and if they can be spoken by other beings - here I point you to the archangel Gabriel, messenger, best example of this - then I ask you. What kind of influence upon reality would the name of God have? The true name, the one that sits at the seat of His consciousness (if that is the true name that I am thinking of, never would I presume to know the mind of the Lord) and I must ask: what kind of influence would that name have upon reality when spoken by imperfect lips? By lips that had no intention of saying it, let alone lips influenced by the will of another darker force. If you can begin to answer that then you know what is within you and what you must do.
I ask you, Kazbiel. I implore you. I beg you. Do not go to your twin Kazfiel with Suphlatus at your elbow, and do not allow her to determine the terms of your meeting. And, most importantly of all, please watch what you say. Good day."
The line goes dead, and in an impulsive fit of rage she tears the phone out of the wall and destroys the plastic shell, baring the electronic innards of the device to air.
She feels lost, and it is a terrible thing, more awful than any time before now because the ever-present tug she feels within is absent, and because Hell is not harming her and because she is an angel and all angels need a purpose, a set of orders, a set of laws to follow with all their might. It is all the worse because she has abandoned Heaven for Lucifer and Hell and the only person she can turn to for direction is Suphlatus, who she cannot trust now. (If asked, she wouldn't be able to explain why she trusts the words of the stranger over the telephone more than the words of the Fallen she has followed to Earth; nor would she be able to verbalize the instinct within her that assures her that yes, yes the voice can be trusted, he would never lie to her.)
"Great warning," she whispers to broken plastic. "But you didn't tell me what to do."
---
Leroy skims fingers through the cloud (which isn't fun to touch at all, but he can pretend that it's soft and fluffy instead of cold and wet) and watches his shoes as he walks. It's worse than a heavy fog, and instead of following Haniel's wings he has decided to follow his feet, as he can see the edges of the tile just well enough to stay on the staircase-bridge. He doesn't want to risk falling now while the angels can't see him (can they? he hasn't asked) and he thinks of the metal ocean, all hard surfaces and sharp jagged edges. There's water, yes, but...he shudders to think of what the impact of a fall would be like, and continues to watch his toes.
Abruptly the cloud falls away.
Abruptly the staircase is no longer a staircase, but flat surface stretching off in all directions.
Abruptly he can look up and see the starless sky, black above him, and a passing thought occurs to him - the is sky writhing above him - but the immediacy of his surroundings grabs his attention before he can tease that thought apart and wonder at the mysteries still above him.
For for there are hollow glass shells of buildings, and if he looks closely at those he sees that there is no bottom to those shells and flecks and shards of metals still cling to some of the shells.
He has to stop. Has to. He knows where the metal in that ocean came from now, because the shells are exact and detailed and he can count windows - windows! - of skyscrapers that must surely be rusting away below the clouds.
Haniel has halted in his tracks, as has Kazfiel, and Leroy forgets them for another series of moments so he can be at once awed and fascinated by what he sees.
Another detail about the sky: it seems to be too close, as if he could climb one of those skyscrapers and simply touch it.
Another detail about the city: there are statues, and more than statues there are tiny glass shells that appear to have covered humanoid beings. He fancies that if he gets close enough that he could see enough detail to figure out a face, perhaps more. Even as that fascinates him it repulses him in the same moment, because detailed statues of people imply the presence of people imply that...he halts that thought.
The scale of it - he can look in all directions and see it go on and on - drives him to step back. Again. Into Kazfiel's chest, and he is steadied by firm hands on his shoulders.
He tries to think of something to say, to convey to Kazfiel exactly what he is feeling at his moment.
Nothing occurs, and he stays silent, simply staring at this new find.
---
Maybe she shouldn't have destroyed the telephone.
Suphlatus is giving it a long look, face unreadable when she meets Kazbiel's glance.
Kazbiel doesn't drop her gaze, far too aware that to show weakness is a sin in Hell and while this isn't Hell Suphlatus still hasn't dropped those rules, and Kazbiel doubts that she ever will.
"Problem?"
"Human attempting to sell me something called 'aluminum siding'," Kazbiel says, and she toes the electronics again. "Has something happened?"
"No," Suphlatus says. "Nothing important, anyways."
Kazbiel thinks that it's probably safe to assume that Suphlatus is lying. It's probably also safe to assume that Suphlatus know she's lying. And so on. Typical headgames between Fallen angels, and she has been letting herself go, following most of Suphlatus' commands while on Earth so far.
It's easy to remember how fragile Suphlatus had been both during and after their escape from Hell, but unwise to bring it up or use it now. Suphlatus has become less and less trustworthy, and Kazbiel thinks that the fact that she was almost trustworthy in the first place says more about Kazbiel's state of mind then than anything else.
"I'm going out." Kazbiel says, following another impulse. "I need to practice behaving human without actually killing them." Or using them for rituals to create a situation where two specific angels would need to be sent down, or using them for rituals to create even more powerful wards, or...too much death, Kazbiel thinks, and in the same moment she laughs at herself for being so delicate.
What is wrong with her? (Not the first time she's wondered that.)
Suphlatus is a wall of silence as Kazbiel exits, clothes appearing around her as she goes. She's unwilling to stay and dress the manual way, especially when it means staying around Suphlatus when she is so confused.
Perhaps she should speak with Flauros. For all that he is a demon, he is loyal to her in his way, and she trusts that. (If he ever betrays her she can turn his skull inside out and make him become loyal once more.)
---
Haniel wastes no time in laying out the unconscious angel on the ground, and Leroy watches him lay hands upon the prone form. It's a welcome distraction from the city around him, and it's something relatively simple to focus on so that he can get his thoughts in order.
It occurs to him as the angel seems to glow and become more vivid, that he desperately wants a cup of tea. Not for the water, but for the calm, soothing properties that go into making and sipping and nursing along a cup of tea.
The angel is still bleached out and white, a living imitation of a pale statue when Haniel is finished. What has changed is something not quite visual, but Leroy has the sense that once again someone is home in the body, and when he looks at the angel he has the sense that there is an outline around the angel and that it is more real than before. Simply put, the angel has presence, and Leroy realizes that Haniel and Kazfiel have that same presence, but as they had it all along he hadn't realized it was there in the first place.
Kazfiel grips his arm suddenly, and Leroy startles, looking at him as Kazfiel sags into him, suddenly and inexplicably too weak to stand without support.
"Haniel!" Leroy calls, alarmed, as he struggles to hold Kazfiel up - it's not just the wings, Kazfiel is entirely too heavy and does he carry bricks in his clothes? It's like holding a - ah, that's it - a statue, albeit a moving and thinking one.
"Haniel!" Leroy calls again, manuevering both he and Kazfiel into a controlled fall, because he cannot hold that much weight on such tired legs.
"HANIEL!" Leroy calls seconds after he lands, because there is the sound of glass cracking and oh, god. If the floor here is too fragile for this impact - and it is, he can feel it giving way - "HELP!"
And - and he is falling, with Kazfiel immobile over him.
Leroy briefly locks gazes with Kazfiel (they are moving in slow motion now, because they are only beginning to fall and out of the corner of his eye he sees Haniel rising to his feet) and he sees terror in Kazfiel's eyes, terror and confusion and helplessness and it's the worst time for it but he is suddenly deluged by feeling of protectiveness, he suddenly needs to help this angel, this person, nevermind that he should be looking to Kazfiel for help because the metal ocean is a long way down and it's going to hurt to hit it.
Then they are in the clouds and falling fast and he cannot see the glass city anymore.
---
"Flauros!" Kazbiel greets as she slides behind the desk, standing behind him. "Could you get away with closing for the day so we can go exploring?"
"Yes," Flauros says without hesitation, and he tilts his head back to look at her. "May I ask the reason for this urgency?"
"Nope, not yet." She makes sure Flauros' doing as she said before she makes a line for the doors, ready to go outside and see the sky. "For now just think that I've been up there too long."
"If it suits you," he says, and it's several minutes before he follows, collecting a thin jacket from the back of his chair and putting it on. At her questioning look he lifts his shoulders in a shrug. "Snow is apparently cold, and I don't want us to stand out any more than necessary."
"Should I get a jacket?"
"I would never dare to tell you what to do."
"Smart of you, demon," but yet she does want direction, just a little bit over something that has no consequences. "But really, should I?"
"... If I may, then yes. It would make you look more like a normal human."
Kazbiel stifles her urge to give a happy relieved sigh at the direction and summons a jacket, once again not bothering with going to find one in the first place. There aren't any humans around, and she wants to get out of here, away from this place Suphlatus designed as their base of operations.
Flauros opens the door for her, and ushers her outside.
---
"Kazfiel," Leroy whispers, telling himself not to panic too much. They have a long way to fall. "Kazfiel, speak to me."
"Leerooy - " Kazfiel stops as Leroy covers his mouth.
"Okay, okay, calm down. We're not falling, we're flying and we're going to be fine," the babble is more to Leroy's benefit than Kazfiel's, "I need to know how to fix you so you can fly. Can you tell me?"
Kazfiel just looks even more panicked, and Leroy closes his eyes, trying to think. They need to slow down, slow their falling so Haniel can find and catch them before they hit the ground. Did he bring a parachute? (Of coure not, but oh, if only.)
Then...could he do something with his jacket? He opens his eyes, and thank god they're still in the clouds. He looks at Kazfiel again, and pauses. "Wings!"
Kazfiel has closed his eyes, and Leroy doesn't bother trying to explain when he probably can't move (nevermind why, he has no idea why) and he reaches out, trying to grab one of Kazfiel's wings so he can pull it out to its full length. If he can do it right, that'll be like a parachute, and if he's even luckier angels will have some kind of automatic instinct and then Kazfiel will fly in a straight line without prompting. Maybe. If he's lucky.
He catches a handful of feathers - feels a hot breath of air against his neck from Kazfiel in his new position - and tugs, reaching with his other hand to grab and pull, trying to be gentle in his desperation.
"Yes!" He cries as the wings finally begin to extend and flare into the flight position on their own after enough tugging, and he can feel Kazfiel breathing against his neck in hot little puffs of air, and as they burst through the bottom of the clouds he can already tell that they are falling much more slowly than before.
"Thank god, thank god," he mutters, wrapping his arms around Kazfiel in an awkward hug/cling-for-life, and he keeps Kazfiel's head tucked against his shoulder, hoping that he's not somehow touching or violating the angel. It's the worst time to think about the etiquette for touching an angel's wings without permission, and he's going to apologize later for it if they get out of this alive. And they are going to survive (he tells himself this sternly) because he needs to get home and yell at his Assistant for getting them into this situation in the first place.
They're gliding now instead of falling, and while it isn't exactly controlled, he can see himself possibly surviving the landing instead of...he doesn't finish the thought. It's not going to happen.
His grip on Kazfiel tightens.
---
It's a crowded street. Too crowded, too busy, too much sound. Kazbiel covers her ears, flinches back from the realization that she is surrounded by humans.
Humans, monkeys, rats - cars race by as she is afflicted by memory, of an image of a ball of rats, tied together and squeaking and clawing at the walls, clawing at stone. Burnt fur, burnt flesh, squeaks falling away into the dark -
"Flauros," she whispers, terrified and afraid to admit to it. Willing to act on it. What good is hiding their presence here if the angel she came to meet is gone? What good is hiding, what good is following the orders of Suphlatus when she cannot trust her?
"Flauros," she repeats, and he is looking at her, clearly ready. "Guard me." She can read confusion in his eyes, but that matters not because here and now she will destroy all that annoys her.
Fire appears, rolling down the street like the rolling of a carpet and screams erupt in its wake. There are runners and there are those who turn to find out what and why and she does not give them time to live. She has made herself manifest, she is rising in the air, fires appearing around her and wreathing the area in flame.
Flauros' shape twists in her wake, his head collapsing in on itself as he reverts to his demonic form: a headless man with red fur and a leopard's face on his chest. Claws extend from his fingers and at her direction he beheads burning humans to silence their screams.
Her garments have burnt away, and she cares not if she is letting anything with the senses to know that there is an angel on Earth, full of power and glory and a terrible terrible wrath.
Flauros follows her down the street, and she thinks: create a better Hell, create a Hell on Earth that is full of pain and angels and all the mysteries she could ever want without that constant discomfort, without any of the shame and pain that comes from residing in Hell.
"Flauros, what do you think?" She asks, and she does not recognize her own voice. "Instead of waiting around and following the rules here, why don't we make this home? Why don't we make this a better Hell?"
A building catches on fire, and the street is nearly empty now, littered with corpses and several crashed cars. She doesn't let the fires die, watching Flauros, waiting for his answer.
"The angels..." Flauros starts, before he raises a hand. "I will protect you and follow you, my liege."
Kazbiel feels a maniac grin spread across her face, and she doesn't know who she is, or what has changed: she is enjoying this, she loves the new title, and the destruction...she wants more.
She looks around at the carnage, still grinning that maniac grin. A last piece of her whispers that she should keep a low profile, be safe, but - she casts that fear aside.
No: she burns it away. The world is hers, and she's going to take it.
---
Haniel still hasn't come. Leroy shifts to look down every so often, and while he's grateful that it's still a long way down, they are gliding forward, farther and farther away from the bridge, and quite frankly he's scared.
Kazfiel is still breathing against his neck, and occasionally it tickles but Leroy's honestly glad for it. He's not holding a corpse, even if Kazfiel is still immobile and too close to resembling a statue for comfort.
"Kazfiel," Leroy tries again. "Can you speak?"
He shifts to get a good look at Kazfiel's face as he asks the question, and Kazfiel's eyes open after a heart-stopping moment, and Leroy gives a relieved sigh when Kazfiel looks at him not with confusion or panic, but with calm. Whatever else Kazfiel is feeling Leroy doesn't know - he can't read eyes that well - but it's something.
He asks again: "Can you speak?"
Kazfiel turns his head, slowly, opening his mouth. The movements are slow, halting, like he's in slow motion.
Leroy lets him try this time.
"Leerooy," Kazfiel starts, and Leroy can see plain annoyance there. He closes his mouth again.
"No improvement, huh?"
Kazfiel flicks his eyes towards his side, towards his wings.
"Oh. Right. Sorry for touching them, I just...you know. If we land like this we have a slightly better chance of not hurting ourselves, and...you know." Leroy trails off again, looking up at the sky. "Shouldn't Haniel be here by now?"
"...ss." Kazfiel manages. "Un..less..."
"Unless what? You're not going to try to tell me that something else up there is more important than our safety, are you?"
Kazfiel's eyes are closed when he looks, and he nearly growls at the idea. Inhuman or not, angel or not, that's not how it works!
"If that's the case I'm going to pluck out his feathers. Got it?"
Kazfiel's silent, and Leroy takes a few breaths, calming down. Okay. Smart of Kazfiel. He's not going to hold anything against Kazfiel for anything, he decides, because it's decidedly not cool to be paralyzed.
"I'm sorry," he offers. "That was out of line." He doesn't let Kazfiel even try to respond, covering his mouth with his hand. "You rest up, and I'll keep an eye out for him. And let me know when you can move again, okay?"
Kazbiel's lips move, but Leroy doesn't even try to understand what he might be saying, instead focusing on the skies, looking for a pair of red wings.
---
Still - somehow! - alive. Air, and darkness, and he can feel his body whole around him, can feel his essence burning bright within, can feel and think and everything that he could not before.
Before. Had he been dead? Surely not. But he shies from the thought of anything before this moment, and life is a myriad of distractions.
Observe: he opens his eyes, and the sensory delights in that one action! Colors, shapes, landscapes and forms unrolling before his eyes, a great dark above and someone - he blinks, focuses - one of his brothers; an angel before him.
But who? And where is he? He knows already that this isn't Heaven, for he can't hear anything beyond the whistle of the wind, the rustle of fabric moving, the breath of the angel before him. There is no choir, no ever-present song, and as he looks (delights in the ability to move his eyes this way and that) he can see that the sky is a twisted dark color, absent of any stars and that simply should not be.
Where is he? He wonders, and that too is left by the wayside while he is consumed by the new wonders of opening his mouth, touching his teeth, feeling muscles and skin stretch and move and yes: he can speak. He can talk!
A moment, please, while he ponders his first words in too long a time. Surely they must be well-chosen, appropriate to his location and situation and station.
He is wary for understandable reasons: an angel's words define him just as he is defined in turn by God's words as language is far more important than he can truly grasp. He cannot truly appreciate the depth of this moment but he knows that he must define himself in clear terms.
The angel at his side, watching him, is a good brother. He does not interrupt, and so Kasbeel (his name, yes, he grabs ahold of that knowledge and tucks it into him safely) has enough time to think.
"I am Kasbeel," he says in a clear voice, claiming his identity. "Angel of the Lord, Chief of the Oath, and I still live."
And with that, he has his place in reality set, and he can trust in his actions to be right and in accordance to his purpose.
"Amen," the angel next to him murmurs, and Kasbeel looks at him with gratitude and curiosity.
He has two questions: "Where am I," he raises a hand, indicating the world around him, "Who are you?" He points to the angel, indicting the specific identity of the angel next to him, as he has already identified that he is with family.
He lays his hand back down, delighting momentarily in the soft quality of the fabric he is encased in. A delight to the senses, and he spends a long moment savoring it with all of his skin from his chest to his legs to his arms and his fingers, and he must be blessed to be here in these circumstances.
And to be alive, no less!
"I am Haniel," the angel before him identifies himself, although not as formally as Kasbeel was required to - was obliged to.
"Haniel," he says, and he moves to sit up, to properly see and make obeisances to this archangel. But Haniel touches his shoulder, and pushes him back down.
"Conserve your strength. We are far from Heaven and I cannot answer your question."
A brief chill, and Kasbeel's delight drains away. How can an archangel be lost? How can they be so far from Heaven that they cannot find their way home?
Haniel goes on: "Why are you here? What do you know?"
At these words Kasbeel reaches back into his mind, but shies away from memories, an automatic fear. He does not want to know what happened to him, and he can understand why, if it led to this.
"I know nothing," he says, and this is true. "I will not follow the trail of memories until I can dominate the fear that rises from their presence." He flicks his eyes towards Haniel, then away. "If the need is urgent I would not object to a closer look."
"... No, the need is not urgent. Not yet." Haniel rises from the ground, standing as his wings flare, spreading wide before resuming their normal position. "Can you fly?"
"Not yet. You would not let me up, and I would rest for longer." Kasbeel stays where he is and closes his eyes once more. It feels natural now, to defy an archangel, and he does not know why; nor does he want to.
The atmosphere is oppresive now, and Haniel's presence is stifling. Kasbeel shies from it and hides himself by denying it, focusing himself inwards rather than outwards.
For several long minutes he meditates, centering himself without digging into his painful memories or speculating on what surrounds him. That can wait.
He decides upon his priorities, to be set in stone until he alters them once more. First, to stay alive and to savor the simple act of being. Secondly, to hold to his oaths (whatever they are) and thirdly, to find Heaven. The rest of it is automatic, as he will always defer to the direct order of a superior angel and he will always attempt to learn more of his surroundings and he will always hold himself in readiness to praise and worship and serve God, for that is at the core of his being.
This does not take long at all but it takes long enough, and oddly enough, the delay works: when he opens his eyes once more Haniel is gone, and the oppresive atmosphere with him.
Odd. (A brief thought, and one worth going over later, he thinks. When he knows where he is and in general more about his place in the world.)
Kasbeel sits up there, marveling once more - he doubts he will ever stop - at the soft comfort of the robe, and then a new surprise: he is cold!
Not that temperature truly affects him, not that he can truly be harmed by the cold, but it is a curious sensation, well worth experiencing.
It is now that he stops to look around and more specifically to look up, to take in the appearance of the sky. It is as he saw earlier: black and starless, unpleasant to behold. As he watches, he can see movement, omninous twisting and arcs of dark deep blue twisting in unwelcome shapes. Green as well, and these are colors he sees only after a long time of simply looking.
Something is up there, he thinks. He is afraid to learn what.
---
[ Continue]