Grace for the mortal

Duty for the eternal

Reverie is not reprieve

Alisandra Mishkan, aged eight, rode a country wagon. She raised her hands and regarded her small fingers with faint puzzlement.

I was to journey…there was a Gate…and a path…where is this?

“Is something wrong, buttercup?” her father asked. He raised his wing to shield her from a shower of rainbow pollen from giant flowers, heedless of the stains to his own pinions.

“This is…a dream…”

“A young lady does not mutter, sweet dumpling.”

“But why this dream? I have seen my mother.”

“A young lady does not scowl either, my shining morning star.”

“What more does this place hold?”

Her father glanced down, expression somber. “Is something wrong, sillyhead?”

Gabriel Mishkan, tall, soft spoken, and gentle, waited for her response with his wing over her head. Yet the feathers did not sing of the dawn.

“I am sorry,” she said slowly. “You are a reflection.”

“Why do you say that, Ali?” he asked, neither offended nor surprised. The Archangel was a hard man to surprise, even when a child bent her will to cunning ambush.

“I am not eight years old.”

“No. Far older and far younger.”

This she now understood.

“My father has departed for the deepest reaches and will not return for some years yet.” Though she missed him already.

“Time is a cheap currency for the ageless.”

This she now understood.

“This wagon ride cannot continue forever.”

The reflection of her father nodded. “Not forever. One last time.”

This…she now understood?

Behind her father, she caught glimpse of a butterfly – psychopomp and puppetmaster in equal measure.

Her memories swirled, slipping away as she grasped in the way of dreams, and she extracted impressions with difficulty. “I…I died…the Gate…it won’t…”

Her father urged the wagons onwards to the edge of the rainbow flower fields. There waited a fork in the road, carved into two opposing dirt paths.

“The way is yours,” Father said.

“I thought you knew the way?”

“Only my own, Ali. Only my own.”

She squirmed. “How can I say when I do not know where either leads?”

He offered no answer.

She had asked the wrong question. No, not even a question. Merely a whine.

Father, how should I be a noble Lady?

Father, how should I be an angel?

Was it so strange that her aspect remained occluded while she walked in his shadow?

Alisandra inhaled, pinning her slippery dream-thoughts in her sights. “Father, tell me where each fork leads.”

“To the left, the path continues to the estate. To the right, the path goes through the forest to the lake.”

The butterfly floated at the edge of perception, gleaming in the same color as Father’s eyes.

“What waits at the end of each path?”

“At the estate you will find the comforts of hearth and home; delicious food; the gentle reprieve of Reverie. As for the lake…” He smiled sadly. “That way lies agony.”

Alisandra plucked at her blue smock. She had always hated this fashion, even as a child. Cute for adults, stuffy for her. Clothing worn for doting mothers. “I will choose agony over rest. You know this.”

“Of course,” Father replied. “But do you understand why?”

The angel steered the wagon to the right. In a dream moment, the flowers fell behind into mist, and skeletal trees erupted to block the sky. The branches reached with sharp fingertips after her hair, gleaming with little black blossoms.

Father withdrew his wings this time.

“We must conquer our weakness, Father. You taught me that.”

The butterfly landed on his shoulder, and he asked, “Is that what you see?”

She scowled. What a loaded question.

He craned a finger, allowing the butterfly to alight on his fingernail. “And what is wrong with weakness?”

“What?” The question disrupted her careful nest of thoughts, and she tumbled a moment in dream.

Wagon rides were my favorite. The only time we could escape that weird Sebastian and ignore the herd of tutors, all ready to squeeze me into noble mold…

“Children are weak, Ali. Do they deserve love?”

“Yes, of course, but I do not see–”

The butterfly glittered brightly, and the dream bore down on her.

Reality in the mien. She felt her body, young and scrawny; she could hardly heft a bag of potatoes, and a jar of pickles would be insurmountable! She did not remember the roads to market nor where to find the money to buy food. She could not speak in her own name; even if she spoke wisdom, she would be dismissed as precocious. Adults defined her entire world. They organized her meals, provided the answers to her questing mind, dictated her play, and guarded her sleep.

Without that careful structure, without those strong hands beneath her, she would swiftly perish.

The young angel rejected the dream with her teeth clenched. She thrust her Will forward like a fencer, clinging to the truth of her nature, and stabbed the rubbery barrier of sleep until it popped.

“You will not repeat that!” she growled, remembering her own age and strength.

“What was wrong with being eight?” the shade asked. He seemed pale now, damaged by her attack. His wings wavered in her dreaming eyes, a mist of indistinct color, and his voice came through a tinny radio.

“There isn’t anything wrong with being a child!”

“Then why do you run from it so?”

“Enough with your object lessons! Father, you were the one who taught me to strive ever higher!”

“Was it Father who taught you to break a pickpocket’s hand for thirteen silver?”

Indignant and flushed, Alisandra slugged him.

Just like she punched Thea in the car months ago or the Archangel in his solar.

Except now, she shattered bone, tore tendons, and ruptured his arteries. Her father tumbled from the wagon and died before he hit the ground. There he lay, his neck grotesquely twisted and jaw turning purple.

“Father?” Alisandra squeaked. “Father?!”

She leaped through the grasping branches to the ground and shook his arm.

“Father, wake up! It was an accident!”

This is but a dream. A journey. The Archangel is not dead. Father cannot die!

“All men are weak before the might of God,” whispered the butterfly, “and even the greatest magi could not outlive His angels.”

Alisandra snarled. “What demon are you?! I will crush you beneath my heel!”

“Is that the purpose to your strength, then?”

The butterfly swirled just beyond reach, bespelling the trees to bend. Branches twisted together to form an arch, and that arch began to gleam like glass.

A mirror awaited Alisandra.

In her reflection, the young angel saw her future.

The Lady Mishkan reclined upon a golden throne, attended by her handsome servants.

Kings begged for her favor with gold, gems, and secrets.

Yet she only blessed the strong.

One man whispered a word out of place.

With a casual backhand, she broke his face.

The court ignored as he drowned in his own blood.

This was the word of Lady Mishkan: the weak deserved nothing.

Such was the order of things: from the high to the low.

“Can you feel Pride within you?” the butterfly whispered. “How your dominion begins from such innocuous desires?”

To become worthy of the Mishkan name.

“You grow stronger every day. A moment’s lapse is enough for you to end a mortal life.”

“I’ve leashed my anger this long!” she retorted.

Thea twitching broken in the door of the Mishkan car.

A pickpocket boy cradling fingers swollen and broken.

Esmie flinching from the harsh words of a jealous rival.

“Live as mortals might,” the butterfly recited in her father’s voice.

“Is it my station you demean? I can discard riches and titles!”

In Father’s voice, Father’s words: “The weak are not capable of great sin.”

Utter silence fell across the forest.

“Are you suggesting that Father wishes me to be weak?” Alisandra demanded coldly.

“I suggest that he, like all men, has been shaped by the tragedies of his life. That he seeks to forestall the sin he knows. The sin he fears might befall the daughter who steals what rests at his hip.”

Alisandra wished for the weight of a sword in her hand that she might give the butterfly a taste.

“With one breath he delights in how you grow. With the next he withholds the answers you need. He would be your father, but he must be your Archangel.”

“You are nothing but a silver-tongued demon!” she snapped.

“Turn back, Alisandra Mishkan. Return to Reverie and the slow healing of childhood. A better aspect awaits you there.”

“I will not,” she said.

Though the butterfly would not wish it, the trees melted from the path.

“And you can return to your icy hell,” the young angel offered in parting.

She marched the muddy road, slippers squelching. After a few moments, the forest surrendered, and lamp posts appeared at regular intervals along the path. Paved stones replaced the mud, and a neatly shorn hedge offered glimpses of the lake.

At the pier ahead, a white boat bobbed on the water.

Oliver waited besides the mooring, clutching an oar with a puppy’s hopeful air.

Alisandra paused.

I see you flittering in his shadow, demon.

“Are these my trials three?” she spat.

Instead of answering, the butterfly landed on Oliver’s oar.

A moment later, a shade of Alisandra herself breezed onto the pier. Fully grown and clad in emerald, the Lady Mishkan bowed to Oliver. He smiled sweetly in return.

He offered his hand, and she allowed him to escort her into the boat.

Then he put the oar to water and rowed. Paddling, he launched into song, a confident and firm tenor.

“I did not realize he could sing,” Alisandra muttered.

“You never stopped to ask,” the butterfly replied.

“He…wept for me,” she admitted, caught off guard.

Wept with more than a comrade’s grief.

“That seed might yet bloom.”

The shades of Oliver and Alisandra drifted into an evening mist, voices mingling together.

“You bring me shades of death and ghosts of love…”

“You were ever a willful child, head thick and ears closed.”

“…yet I remember this dream now.” Alisandra shook her head. “The path to the gazebo at lake’s center.”

“Is that your choice then?”

“Would you have me dawdle in my pinafore forever?” Scoffing, Alisandra marched onto the dock. “I will follow this road despite your tricks.”

“I would have you open your ears and hear the thousand other roads forsaken for this quest,” the butterfly replied, but the angel did not hear. “To choose a path I might follow…”

Alisandra Willed the lake to support her feet to pass. The waters trembled underneath her slippers, treacherous footing, but she managed with her arms wide for balance. No different than the beam in calisthenics, really.

The mist pressed close, and the dock vanished in moments. Sound faded to nothing, and the air grew chill.

Where the Mishkan gazebo required no more than a hundred paces from the dock and no greater hazard than ducks, this walk continued for hundreds of paces with neither ripple nor sound.

Alisandra hesitated. Glancing, she saw no butterfly to interfere.

“My third durance, then,” she remarked sourly, tugging at her dress.

In the mist, someone screamed.

“What trick now?” she muttered, bracing herself.

The next scream was clearly male, hoarse and high with exhaustion.

Despite herself, Alisandra shivered. She had never heard a man scream like that. Scream like a pig before the slaughter.

The mist slowly parted, revealing a vision of the alleyways in Lumia. Fires raged across the city, bathing the night in an orange-red glow, and plumes of smoke swirled on a heavy Spring wind. Neither the sun nor the moon shone through the roiling clouds.

“Reverie grants me visions of doom…Sebastian would laugh.”

The smell of roasted flesh and burned hair filled Alisandra’s nose, and her appetite for mockery faded. This is petty cruelty. What lesson waits in a vision of my home destroyed? This is precisely what I work to prevent!

A stranger in torn finery raced into the alleyway and collapsed against a wall. Shivering and sweating, the young noble whimpered deep in his throat, sketched the oblation of fire in the air, and prayed to Aure.

As though Aure would answer.

Alisandra scowled. Something about this youth was familiar…

He twisted, face caught in firelight.

Edmond Curia – wolf pup from a Harvest party. Soaked with blood, charred by fire, and doused in the swirling ash, he was hardly recognizable. He trembled against the wall like a deer, gathered his courage with a final prayer, and scrambled deeper into the alleyway. He stumbled over two charred bodies and the collapsed remains of an ice cream parlour, ignoring the shards of glass and metal that tore at his hands.

“This is cruel,” Alisandra objected, heart beating faster. Come, wolf pup. You will overcome this! You did not let your House dissolution break you, and you will not fall before this!

A deep, guttural roar tore through the heavens. What creature made such a sound she could not guess, but she could smell the glee in its voice.

Then the earth quaked, and the alley wobbled. Ponderously, the brick façade began to rattle loose.

“Mind yourself, pup!” Alisandra yelled, lunging forward. Her hands sailed through the bricks, only a ghostly witness.

The highest brick cracked Edmond Curia in the crown of his head. He stumbled half a step, raised a puzzled hand to the fresh rush of blood, and collapsed. There he lay, face down in ash and rubble, bleeding.

“Pup! You must stand!” Alisandra shouted. “You’ve the strength for it. Stand!”

The flow of blood from his skull began to weaken.

“Insect! Your point is made! Enough of this cruelty!”

“The Wyrm’s appetite is not so easily sated,” replied the butterfly somberly from the mists.

Even in a sunless sky, she easily distinguished the silhouette of a vile and twisting thing atop the buildings. He stretched skyward, roaring, and then unleased a cloud of hellfire that swept through the alleyway where Edmond Curia lay dying.

Around Alisandra, the bricks instantly baked to crumbled powder.

She stumbled backwards, landing waist-deep in the shallows at the edge of the lake. “A prophecy…”

The ice cream parlour collapsed into itself, smoldering.

“I can stop this!”

The bar next door exhaled a gout of flame, fueled by the stills in the basement.

There had been a dozen people huddled in the back, huddled and weeping.

They weep for Aure, but Aure will not come.

This is not his world any more.

“I will stop it!”

The butterfly sighed. “Will you stand against Time herself then?”

Mists revealed the newspapers still wrapped in twine, awaiting the afternoon edition that would never come.

Witchcraft in Mel

The Conclave sealed by rivers of flame

Betrayed by our Keeper!

“No…”

How could Lumia burn? How could disaster arrive so fast?!

“Father!” Alisandra cried. “Father! Hear my voice – Lumia needs your aid!”

Her voice echoed, a child’s raw plea.

“Sebastian! Hells damn you, Witness – put your spying mind to good use! Hear me!”

No sardonic reply from her tutor.

“Lynne!”

The mists lurched, drawing her across the city, and there she saw the battle unfolding.

The Wyrm poised like a cat atop the buildings, bouncing from roof to roof as spears shot through the air.

A glowing goddess floated above the harbor, orbited by an armory of icy lances. She lobbed them after the dragon in volleys a hundred at a time.

Yet the Wyrm dissolved into shadow, or twisted like a snake, or ducked behind a skyscraper.

He peeked from behind the Visage tower, grinned, and exhaled a gout of hellfire.

Ocean waters swelled to meet the fire; the harbor’s waterline sank a dozen feet; the collision of elements exploded into a cloud of superheated steam.

Lynne swore, casting her arms wide, and shoved the plume of steam into the sky.

Alisandra stepped closer. Wings…she has wings…

The angel of oceans trembled. Savage burns marred her arms and face, and gleaming Light trickled from the tattered remains of her dress.

“Are we serious enough yet?” the Wyrm taunted.

His voice ground against Alisandra’s bones. It mocked the ashen streets. Mocked Edmond Curia where he fell.

Lynne summoned savage lightning down on the monster. The bolts carved and bit across the squirming shadow…

And a rune on the beast’s bone white collar thrummed to Life, healing the burns.

The Wyrm laughed. “For a moment there, I thought I felt something promising. Alas, your aspect binds you to such trite form. Don’t you have anything better than weather?” He considered a moment, tapping claw to his lips. “Perhaps what you lack is motivation.”

The shadow snaked to the harbor with terrifying speed, landing on the cobblestones just before the Stormmother’s clipper.

“Cry for your goddess,” the monster ordered.

“Don’t take your eyes off your enemy!” Lynne roared, launching a hailstorm of spears.

The monster’s collar flared again – Death – and the spears faltered midflight, momentum sapped to nothing. They dissolved into flakes of snow far short of their target.

“When I find an enemy worthy of my attention, I will do just that,” the dragon assured. “All I see here is another disappointment and her toys.”

Alisandra’s vision drew closer so that she shared the deck of the ship. The Wyrm loomed above, peering down his sharp muzzle at the creatures below.

Some of the priestesses wept; others prayed; one attempted to leap for the safety of the water.

That one the Wyrm smashed against the hull with a flick of his tail.

To Alisandra’s left, a heavily pregnant woman clutched her husband’s shirt and buried her head in his shoulder. “Aure save us,” she whispered. “Aure above forgive us…”

“I won’t let you go,” the husband whispered in return, holding her tight. “No matter what!”

“Excuse me,” interjected the Wyrm. “I specifically stated goddess. The one behind you with the fondness for blue.” He puffed sulfur onto the deck as he spoke. “Admittedly, chances are she can’t save you, but one should play the odds presented.”

“Fight me!” Lynne shouted desperately. The air around her bent, and she vanished with a flicker of color.

The Wyrm pulsed Knowing, reared sideways, and batted her charge away with a wing. “Oh? I fight whomever I choose, my dear Lynne, and you bore me. Toothpicks and raindrops! Is that all you can find under heaven? Is this the limit of angels in the age after Eden?”

In the pregnant woman’s belly, a small light pulsed. The child within shivered at that voice, unborn but dimly aware.

That child would be born into a world where smoke covered a sunless sky. A world swiftly cooling and soon to fade into the dark.

“Pathetic! The Tyrant would have used you to charge his phone on Eden. How did a speck of an angel challenge a Foundation?”

The father lowered his head, including the unborn child in his prayers. “Aure gave us fire that we might light the way for our children. Aure gave us tools that we might build them a world.”

His wife clutched him together, and the unborn child reached for both.

“You’ll have to ask Aure how that worked out,” the Wyrm said.

He raised one claw and ran the husband through.

Wife, child and Alisandra all cried together.

A hole rent in an unborn world.

Pillar removed from beneath her feet.

The shape of a father now empty.

She will feel her throat clench every time she sees a father bounce his daughter on his knee.

Just as Alisandra felt the stab in her heart when she saw a mother hug her daughter.

The horrid vision faded into the mist.

Alisandra stumbled after. “I have to help them!”

Tears dripped down her cheeks, and she fought the sobs.

“I have to save him…”

The father this child will never know…

“We are lost in dream,” the butterfly explained.

She could only witness a world whirling by at blinding speed.

A prisoner of her Reverie.

No Great Work would return that husband to his wife. No Great Work would force Time to allow Lumia to return to the day before the fire. All the secret runes and all the eldritch tomes were ash before what was and would be.

“I can’t…I can’t help them at all like this…”

Alisandra collapsed in the water and began to sob. Not the delicate weeping of a Lady in her artful mourning; nor the beautiful sadness of an angel safe in her tower; she sobbed with wracking coughs and snot down her face.

She could do nothing.

Helpless as a child.

The butterfly floated close and spoke with soft compassion. “Are you ready to hear, Alisandra?”

The young angel hiccupped, wiped at her face, and fought to stem the tide. To stop crying!

“I will tell you the wisdom of children, Ali.”

Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. Bonds of Light shredded with such simple disregard…

“They cry when they are hurt. Noble or commoner, rich or poor, alone or witnessed. It does not matter if they will one day be a grand Lady or a terrible angel. They allow themselves to indulge in weakness.”

The island at the center of the lake slowly began to materialize before the sobbing child.

“They allow others in.”

Painted white benches; amateur flower arrangements; an old gazebo with a view over the swan lake where only ducks lived.

“Some who have been waiting a very long time.”

Stripped raw, and tear-blinded, Alisandra ran for the gazebo by instinct. She left Lady Mishkan and the Angel Alisandra behind in the water, and she scrambled where her heart led.

Lynne waited.

Alisandra flung herself into the angel’s arms, wailing. The torrent would not stop, a floodgate breached, and she could not dam what rushed forth.

Lynne wrapped Alisandra tight and sang.

As once the angel of oceans sang to a child who thought she saw a wolf in the gardens.

Lynne helped Alisandra to the hard bench.

As once the angel of oceans carried the child who broke her leg in a pony race.

Lynne placed a hand between Alisandra’s shoulder blades and asked, “What’s wrong, Ali?”

As once the angel of oceans soothed the child who broke her heart over a stupid boy.

Alisandra wiped at her face.

The tears had stopped.

Lynne smiled. “Better?”

Slowly, Alisandra nodded.

When was the last I cried like that? When was the last Lady Mishkan did not whisper in my ear? That weight of a towering and ancient name…

Tentatively, she slid from the bench. The dream flowed around her as she slipped forward; she stood and grew in the same breath. Shedding pinafore and buckle shoes for workman’s pants and a blood-soaked shirt, she stood at the center of the gazebo at the center of the lake.

At the center of her garden where once her own guardian whispered. Where her guardian had recorded every glimpse and every laugh for the day when Alisandra would have the need.

Twirling, she found Lynne in every archway.

Helping her onto that pony; reading her the first runes of a dead language; singing her to sleep in winter nights; sharing scandalous secrets about the wonder and idiocy of men; correcting her form in dance and song.

Lynne who waited beside her bed when she was sick.

When the child Alisandra asked, “Do you know when I will get to meet my Mommy?”

Lynne who hid the wince of pain behind a shallow smile. “Someday, buttercup. Someday, I sincerely hope.”

“I miss her…”

“Me too, Ali. Me too.”

The gazebo faded. The dream faded.

All was darkness in her heart’s realm except the gleam of a butterfly with hazel eyes.

The visitor in Alisandra’s garden spoke not as a shade or figment, but as one who followed the tangled path of gardens and the inevitability of what would be.

“There was a time when your heart knew Truth, and it must know Truth again if you are to walk in the Light. You aspire to such heights, but do you wish to raise others higher?

“You who would heal must embrace pain. You who would shine brightest must endure despair. You who would harness Light must wash the feet of the lowest beggar.

“For all that you are given, so much more is required.”

Alisandra reached to wipe the evidence of tears from her cheeks, but she stopped herself.

“You hear their need, angel. Will you serve?”

Hazel eyes, the same color as Alisandra’s own.

Alisandra Mishkan truly Witnessed the butterfly at last.

She tried to speak, but her voice caught. She had to force the words out, ugly and rasping. “You…you would surrender so easily?” she challenged.

The butterfly gleamed brighter, proud as a woman could be.

“I never owned you, Ali. I only whispered where to find the beginning of your path. If you chose the hardest, the greatest…it is only because you are your father’s daughter.”

The angel bit her lip, tears beading on her eyelashes.

“Where do you stand, Alisandra Mishkan?”

Alisandra squeezed her eyes shut.

Some choices were made in the dark; some were forced in a heartbeat; some were discovered, already made, only by looking back upon a thousand tiny steps.

She knew what she would be.

The angel looked to the heavens.

A flash.

Then the butterfly was alone on the little island. Unwitnessed, she tucked back a brunette lock and ran a finger over the indent where two lovers wore a groove with their palms. Carefully, she reached into happier times. There she found pen, paper, and a bouquet of bluebells.

She did not write much.

One final caress for the bluebells.

“You will be needed before the end, Ali.”

Then both gazebo and garden were empty.

***

Lynne gathered her strength and her spear.

The Wyrm arched his back, chin tilted to the sky, so she might have a clean shot.

She drove the weapon forward, and her chosen weapon finally shattered.

Broken by the despair in the heart of a woman who would be powerless to stop what came next.

He twisted dramatically. “Alas! That fifteenth stab in a row finally pierced my armor!” He wrenched the shaft to his side and writhed. “My only weakness – the failing attack of a despairing angel repeated several dozen times!”

Behind Lynne, the priestesses no longer cried. They watched, numb, with no choice but to wait for the death their goddess could not prevent.

The Wyrm shifted to his feet. “You don’t seem amused.”

She recalled the shattered lance to her hands.

It ached, as brittle and defeated as she was.

All that the ocean could offer, Tempest or Maiden, was not enough.

“I don’t care for your jokes,” she coughed, wiping the bloody Light from her head. When had her blood began to glow with such purity? If only that was enough…

Jörmungandr huffed. “Understandable. Still, I must point out that I only fulfilled your request. Now, then, if you are satisfied with my seriousness…”

He surged forward, slammed two claws through Lynne’s belly, and drove her into the cobblestones so hard roads broke and buildings toppled.

“I will share another of my names, holy one,” he whispered intimately, parting his claws in her abdomen.

She screamed.

“Angel eater,” he shared like a lover.

His runes throbbed with pain.

But that pain was not his own.

Jörmungandr opened his maw wide. The maelstrom within crackled and roared with thunderous hunger, a pit without end. It promised new worlds, but not ones Lynne would ever wish to see…

A column of Light erupted from the ground.

From within the column, a figure slammed into the monster.

He soared into the ruined warehouses, the sound of his jaw smacking shut echoing to the horizon.

The Wyrm shook free of the rubble like a cat, rocking his jaw back and forth. Life pulsed frantically, reattaching sinew and rebuilding bone.

“Hmm,” he muttered at last.

Before him, a young woman blocked his path to the angel of oceans. She wore denim pants, a blood-soaked shirt, and no shoes.

Above her head, a crown of rusted fire smoldered. Three points of the crown pointed to the heavens and two anchored towards the ground.

A halo of war.

“Keep your filthy claws off my mother, you bastard!” Alisandra Mishkan spat.