The Realm of Niflheimr.
Many years prior…
It was in that moment between one storm and the next, that the Fury chose to scream.
The scream was one of rage. It reverberated, echoing about the ghosting wisps of mist that wove through the frozen wastes and infiltrated Her domain. The sound was pure enough to shake the scanty leaves of hemlock that littered the bone-strewn ashes, rattle her plate, Hunger, and roll her knife, Famine, to the floor.
Its dissonant timbre drew The Lady from her repose. She rose, intrigue igniting her dormant heart with a fervid beat to match the rhythm of the fury’s ring. The Lady took a crepitant breath, one she hadn’t bothered to take for quite some time.
Perhaps, her slumber in this sanctuary-prison would finally cease, if this could be the one.
The Lady flicked her wrist, coiling her fingers and casting an image upon the mist, little crystals of ice hovering in the air and collecting to form a screen. Her bones creaked with each movement, tendons snapping, and she rolled her shoulders.
Finally, a form took shape on her illusory projection: a female. A girl.
A grin split The Lady’s face and she purred. Oh, yes, this could very well be the one, her Key.
The illusion widened with another flick of The Lady’s wrist. The girl continued to take shape. She was shrieking again in that beautiful harmonic of frenzy as she ran.
The Lady shivered.
The girl was weaving between men, soldiers. She ducked, dove and writhed as they struggled to catch her. Her feet squelched through mud, and The Lady expanded the scene once more.
It was a farm. No, a village. Or, it was— there weren’t many villagers still living, their bodies like rejected autumn leaves shucked and discarded to the earth— now, it was just a vacant cluster of round and oblong mortal dwellings. Some roofs were shingled, others donned thick clusters of hay topping wooden beams that encircled stone or timber walls. It seemed these people were The Lady’s own, or, who her people had been, or would become— time was a slippery thing.
The Lady tsked. “Oops.”
The girl had fallen, sliding in a viscous pool of red. A soldier leapt across to pin her, holding the shrieking thing down. She slashed her dirty fingernails over his face and he yelled, clasping her wrist. She bit him.
The Lady chuckled.
The girl bucked and the soldier rolled as she scrambled to her feet, sprinting off again, her red hair trailing behind her.
How pretty.
The little, angry thing fell to her knees in front of a body without its head. It appeared female, and was quite small. She clutched up the body close, screaming and sobbing at once. Beside her, a woman drew up, gurgling, her hand reaching for the girl. The redheaded fury grasped the woman’s fingers before they could fall again and clasped them tight, shaking.
The woman exhaled her final words, “The Gods are always listening. Be careful what you wish for, my love…”
The girl threw back her head and screamed again, raw, primal, angry, seething. She set the smaller body down with care and crawled to the woman’s corpse, kissing its scarred and disfigured cheek, folding its hands over its breasts and closing its eyes. She stroked its face with trembling fingers, her tears streaming.
The Lady perked her brow, growing bored. Was that all?
The girl drew a dagger from the corpse’s belt, rising to her feet.
The Lady smiled. She dropped back into her polished throne, drumming her groaning fingers over the arm. Yes, this one. She would try with this one. She must keep this Fury for herself, so she could not allow the girl to fall.
She rose. Paced. The Lady would slip her cage, just long enough to take her, before the other two took notice. The others could not see. They would want her for themselves. She could not allow that.
The Lady had to have her.
~*~*~
The Realm of Mi∂gar∂r.
Five days prior, due east of Emberley
She was a creature of the night who couldn’t remember her name. But it would come back to her, that part of her always did.
She stepped over the body, leaving the despondent alley as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, repulsed, as always. She gazed up at the sky, at the clouds that, by covering the first of the day’s sunbeams, just permitted the stars to glitter in the west.
Captivating. She was always stunned by the sky. It tickled something in her, some memory. One day it would come to her.
She turned her back to the struggling rays, trying to find the faint outline of the moon. As dawn melted into morning, the moon struggled to be seen, simply drifting in that lonely void of nothingness behind the sunlight. The glistening stars were so far away from it, so out of reach, invisible in the growing light.
The moon was trapped in its eternal loneliness, an island hung suspended in that empty sea of darkness. When night fell again, the moon would remember the stars. And maybe the moon would be a little less alone.
The distraction of the moon was needed, but dangerous: she missed the creeping fingers of frost that wound along the ground, their tendrils searching— just as she searched for stars in a dark sky— for her.
She whirled around when she sensed the sudden cold in the air and took a hasty step back, snatching away her ankle before the frost could touch her. She nearly tripped in her haste, and she pressed her lips together to hold back her scream.
The Wraith was near, sending his sentries to find her.
She wanted to be found by memories, yes— just not by him.
The Wraith was getting better at finding her. She couldn’t stay in each town as long as she could before. She would need to run again— further, this time. She couldn’t let him catch up to her.
A whine of frustration built up in her throat but she swallowed it, turning on her heel and running.
She was a creature of the night, destined to drift, soullessly, aimlessly, under a vast sea of black, a mirror to the moon here on Earth, and destined to do no more than to run. Endlessly.
But she was tired of running.
~*~*~
Two days prior, due west of Emberley
It had to be all of them, or none of them.
“You’re going to get us all killed!” Azrael ignored the plea, dodging the hand reaching for his sleeve to tug him back. He bolted from the trench, lunging across the line of fire. He zigged and zagged across the gap, sliding in the dirt to barrel behind a second barricade.
“Az, please, we need to retreat!”
A field was a terrible place for a battle, but he hadn’t picked it. Hadn’t picked this particular fight, either, but here he was. One simply does not pass up the opportunity to capitalize on good intel.
But two of his group had been separated by the blasts of mortar. The mission would have to wait, and he would have to hope their second group would succeed where his was failing. He had to retrieve his men. They all had to get home. Or die. They couldn’t be taken.
Amid the whizzing bullets, poisoned arrows and flashing blades locked in combat, Azrael then only had eyes for the sunless sky. She should have been bright with dawning rays, blinding the enemy. Instead, she was hidden behind clouds, the heavens in turmoil, a warning, an omen.
A reminder.
His own metal shone as he drew twin blades and charged, slashing through an enemy soldier. His second blade arced its silver bite into another man, then swiftly through a third. There was no challenge, not for him, not against mortal men. The excitement rose with a thrumming pulse. As he ran across a second line of fire, for a moment, Azrael felt nothing but life as he became the harbinger of death. It was easy for Azrael to be brave, but this wasn’t bravery: it was invincibility.
But Azrael wasn’t fearless. He was terrified for his men. They would never comprehend his panic, his fervour to bring them all home. If he couldn’t, they would know his world, the one without the sun. Any man left behind now would be taken by the Priedae. Those filthy creatures may not be here now, but they would come. They always came, blackening the sky like a plague of locusts. Parasites.
Azrael made it to his stranded soldier, rolling behind a cruder blockade. The soldier yanked his stiffened leg out of the way of the man-missile at the last second and bellowed, “Watch it, you lunatic!”
Swears followed as Azrael came to a stop, grasping his comrade’s knee. “You fuss like a woman,” he grumbled, fingers rough and prodding.
“Sod off! You should be gone by now, back with-”
“-It’s just an arrowhead. To the knee,” Azrael smirked; “here-”
“-Don’t you DARE—!” Mikey screamed as Azrael ripped the arrow free, tearing a strip from his jacket to bandage the wound tightly, fingers quick and practiced.
As Mikey groaned, Azrael hauled him up, his voice softening, “Let’s get you outta here.”
“Bloody slave driver! Can’t you give me a minute?”
Azrael tuned him out, his attention on the flat, sodden turf between them and the others. The clouds cast undulating shadows across the meadow, the murk rippling and surging like a living sea, voracious for the spilling blood to soak its soil.
He watched for his window of opportunity, for that brief pause when the enemy would re-load. If he timed it right, he could get them both to safety in one shot. He had to. Mikey was his friend. It was all of them, or none of them.
Silence. The firing paused. He bolted.
He hauled Mikey as quickly as the man could hobble, all but carrying him. Mikey yelped when his ankle twisted but they couldn’t stop, they’d miss the window. A handful of soldiers screamed orders to cover them.
Suddenly Azrael dropped his friend, his arm limp. Then he heard the reverb of the shot. Then came the pain, jolting down his arm.
“Az!”
His ears rang, but they couldn’t stop.
“Leave me, just run!”
Azrael grasped for Mikey, but his arm didn’t respond. Another shot rang and he ducked. He grit his teeth so hard they gnashed.
Then he saw it: a charging mass of fur and teeth and claws. Some kind of creature roared so loud the gunshots had been whispers. He thought the ground trembled, then the beast launched.
The world slowed, his heart beating in his ears. Seconds were an eternity as Azrael snatched up Mikey with his other arm, hauling him up and running as fast as he could. But he wasn’t fast enough. With all his strength, he shoved Mikey as far as he could away.
Azrael went flying with the beast’s impact, hitting the ground and sliding several feet. His head bounced on the turf like a ball, the ringing in his ears drowning everything else away. Blinding pain seared across his mind and Azrael screamed.
His chest was heavy. He opened his eyes to stare up into a snarling maw, yellow teeth the length of his head greeting him as raptor-claws dug into his chest to keep him pinned. Azrael gagged at its freshly putrid sewer-breath.
For a heartbeat more Azrael could do nothing and comprehend less. Too late his disoriented brain commanded his hand to push up at the beast. It was already rearing back to strike, but somehow Azrael managed to keep it from his neck as he matched its roar with his own. The creature veered and stole a chunk of flesh from his wounded shoulder. Something animalistic flared in Azrael’s veins as he blocked the agony, adrenaline surging and he bucked the bear-sized, wolf-like beast and rolled it off, scrambling to his feet with his arm sagging limp and lifeless.
He took two, halting steps, then the sudden blood loss caught up to him faster than the wolf-bear could and he poured into the dirt, head-first, pinpricks crowding his vision out. He tried to push himself up, refusing to look at his shoulder, refusing to acknowledge the pain. He had to stay conscious. His body was giving up, but he couldn’t.
There was one more man to bring home: Luke.
Azrael wondered dimly if this time he had gone too far. Maybe this time I won’t make it. Bear-wolf 1, Az, 0. His allies were close, all he needed now was to take the coward’s crawl in the dirt to the barricade. His allies could take down the beast together, and he would make it home to fight again.
Any second now Wolf-bear’s teeth would be in his neck. Azrael lifted his head, the world tilting, but he spotted Mikey being dragged to safety, his men tucking him into the cradle of the trench.
Mikey was yelling. It took a moment to decipher. He was bellowing for the others to leave him and bring back Azrael.
What a stupid demand. Who did Azrael have to go back to? Mikey had Vi. Luke had his daughter. The others had family, children, wives. Azrael had… No one.
“Az? Az, quick, here!” Hands tugged at him. He couldn’t think clearly to identify whose. Darkness encroached his sight. Bear-wolf howled and he shivered, head down. Was it after Mikey? He had to get up.
“Hey, stay with me, I got you!”
Azrael felt himself pitch forward again into the dirt. He wasn’t in his body anymore. A revolver loaded with a click.
It was then that Azrael smelt the anchoring sweetness of the earth. It had rained recently and he had always loved that smell, a scent only found in this world. He buried his nose deeper, his breathing steady now as he felt tired, so tired. He smiled, remembering the children playing in the rain just the other day. Tiny Jophiel, plucking up worms, chasing after his friends as they ran from the icky bugs. Azrael closed his eyes so he could see them better. Raffie was making mud pies as his mother tried to rush him back inside to not catch cold. Then Lulubell was dumping a full pail of rainwater over her daddy’s head, so Luke pretended to melt.
Luke.
Azrael pushed himself up, his vision splitting and tilting into three Lukes faced off against— four?— Wolf-bears. The beast was huge, and angry, and Luke was limping.
Azrael tried to crawl to Luke. He had to do something, had to get up. As brave as Luke was, he wouldn’t make it, not against that, not alone. Luke would die.
But Azrael fell flat. Everything went dark. Luke wasn’t making it home.
The cost of his bravery would be paid by Luke’s baby girl.
~*~*~
Present Day
The Town of Emberley
The dusty air infiltrated his dreams. And, like many times before, they twisted.
Gone was the scent of the sweet earth. Gone were the children playing in the rain. Gone was all colour.
Only Prieda remained.
Only his black and white, sun-less world.
Azrael was not a warrior, he was a boy of sixteen. His bare feet pounded the grey, scorching sands, his wings beating futilely behind him. His lungs burned on the air as he held in the coughing fit sputtering through his throat.
He glanced once over his shoulder: a mistake.
They blackened the already dark, grey sky.
He couldn’t make out any of them individually with the thick gusts of dirt and ash in the air, but he knew his brother was among them.
Or, the thing in his body, was.
Azrael tripped and fell to his knees, the cough wracking him. Grey blood came up with the dust and his head spun. But he couldn’t go back. He was almost there.
He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled, shaking his head to right his tilting world. And he ran again, the black scourge in the sky closer and closer with every step he took.
But Azrael couldn’t help but to stop and stare in wonder when streaks of flaming violet lit the heavens, echoing off the twists of airborne grime. There shouldn’t have been any colour here. He shouldn’t have known of violet, but there it was. As he turned to marvel, the violets split into reds and ochres and flaming bursts, all across the sky.
The coloured lights led to the upper plate, that haunting, oblong disk floating in the ether where the sun should have been, but he didn’t know that, not yet. He hadn’t ever seen the sun at sixteen.
The pulsing beat of hundreds of wings jolted him from his awe and he snapped back to attention, turning on his blistered heels, and ran again.
He made it.
Azrael approached the edge of his world, twisters and cyclones spinning the dirty air in the horizon, choking the light away. He peered over the edge, as he had at sixteen, and regretted it all over again.
Looking made what he had to do so much worse.
Gap var Ginnunga yawned, but he didn’t know it as that, yet. It was simply The Edge.
The Edge was pitch black, but roaring so loud with rage his whole body froze up. The roaring sounded like waterfalls and thunder, but he didn’t know these things. They didn’t exist on Prieda.
Then he noticed the streaks of darkened colour, the shimmers like the rainbows on tarry oil. And now, Gap var Ginnunga looked beautiful as it glittered its black rainbow shimmer. He hadn’t known it, but this one terrifying event in his life was his beginning, not his end.
Azrael thought he was simply choosing to die, with the slightest hope that he might survive.
The ground shook with impact: Uriel had landed.
“Azrael-tyra, you will return with me, and we will end your discomfort.” Uriel’s voice boomed in the echoing void.
One by one the Priedae landed with him, shaking the ground again and again. Azrael stumbled and fell to his knees. His stomach sank. Despite the number of them, the Pure were silent. The Pure were always silent.
But now, he saw them, as he hadn’t the first time, or the thousands of times he had relived this moment in his dreams.
As they had always done, each stared through him with unblinking, unfeeling eyes. Before, they had all been dark, but now he saw them for how they were and his heart wept. Each one was so beautiful. Each set of eyes was different, exploding in the colours of precious gems. Eyes in ruby hues, sapphires, emeralds, amethysts and topaz gazes. Their wings unfurled gloriously and bright, in all colours, all shades and hues. Their hair streamed long— the Pure did not cut it— and it whipped back and forth in the winds.
But they all wore the colour of light, their linen robes stark and white. They all held the same stony stare. Once, they had been vibrant, alive. Now, they were all petrified copies, and they towered over him, ready to seize him, to take his life from him.
Then, he saw her.
His serenity. His Sophia.
Like it had each time he dreamed this nightmare, his heart twisted with the betrayal and his lips quivered. But he was a man, and he would not show his aching.
He stood taller, his eyes hard on her.
She looked so small, standing there with all the Pure, their wings stretching broad. Now he truly saw her. She too was beautiful, her hair a pale rose-pink, her skin perfect, her lips plush and begging for forbidden kisses. But her eyes, her eyes that he had loved in shades of grey, were pulsing with colour. Alexandrite, glittering in blues and pinks.
She was more beautiful than he remembered.
Azrael stretched his hand out to her, holding her stunning gaze firmly as he broke inside.
She didn’t move to him.
He waited.
Then, she shook her head.
Azrael let his hand drop with the rest of his heart, then he stepped backwards, into nothing but air, and fell.
The wind roaring in his ears drowned out her screams for him, but he closed his eyes, and simply let go.