The heir to Eden Blooms

Gabriel inhaled the familiar scent of ruin. Dust and blood; ash and fire. Hellfire left a very specific scent, more than mere flame and smoke; it smoldered in dreams and memories long after the buildings collapsed to ash.

He witnessed ruined Lumia, but he saw forgotten cities on a forgotten world.

I once more fail in my duty.

His daughter perched amongst the rubble, reforged. She glowed from within, her purpose written to the marrow, and smelled of the fresh sea. Above her stained hair, she wore a crown Gabriel had thought consigned to the void.

I fail her as well.

The time for regret was past. If Alisandra grasped that Tyrant’s crown, she did so to redeem what had been profaned.

Tilting his head, he even heard the echoes of a lullaby from the Cathedral now roaring with the sea.

Lynne assumes the reins of her own fate, and even Mirielle defied the dark as long as she could.

“You have your mother’s hair,” he praised Alisandra softly. “Stand tall, Azure-blessed. Alice was so many things, but she was never the jealous type.”

Alisandra straightened at his words, and a chip of rust flaked from her crown.

Jörmungandr bunched his legs, craning forward like a curious snake. “Ah! Sergeant Asher of the last army that ever mattered!”

Gabriel cast forth his hand.

“I wondered if you would–”

The Wyrm choked on his words. He swallowed against a sudden lump in his throat, coughed, and worked his jaw. Knowing upon his collar tried to flare but instead fizzled.

Gabriel squeezed.

A searing, burning Light erupted from the center of the dragon’s neck. No playful patterns, no scintillating aura. Just Light, blinding bright and merciless, that severed flesh and shadow with equal ease and cut the Wyrm’s foul head from its squirming body.

Instead of toppling to the road, Jörmungandr’s head sank as slow as a bottle cap in oil, and tendrils of the writhing shadows groped towards the stump above.

“Actually, Jörmungandr, I took my wife’s surname,” the Archangel corrected.

For the first time since doom arrived, silence held in the city.

After a moment, Alisandra swallowed. “Holy hells…Father, you…”

Gabriel maintained his grip on that Light lest the dragon rejoin what was severed. With his other hand, he reached for the smothered sun.

The star was gone. Devoured. This world coasted on momentum, and already the alignment of the heavens began to skew.

“Is that enough?” his daughter wondered, staring at the Wyrm’s twitching tail.

One of the dragon’s baleful eyes feebly focused on the Archangel.

No.

“The time for contemplation has passed,” Gabriel said. “I am sorry, Ali. I wished that you would never need such things.”

A halo of war.

I had wished you to find an aspect of peace and love, but instead you follow in my footsteps.

My angel of valor.

By heaven and hells, I have passed my curse onwards – you are a soldier’s daughter.

Would they never escape Eden?

“The heavens must be mended,” he explained, “and the heavens are more than the plasma of a star.”

Jörmungandr’s head had stopped its descent, frozen five stories above the ground. It began to growl.

“We go together now, my daughter.”

For a moment, she stared at him wide eyed, the child gawking at her fool of her father.

Then she caught herself, firmed her lips, and nodded.

“Give no quarter.”

He released his shield.

Alisandra warped space with wonderful ease. She dashed from Here to There, leaving a hoarfrost wake, and slammed into the rejuvenating dragon like a thunderstorm.

Ah, the nimbleness of youth.

Gabriel leaped skyward as well. He parted the way Through not as a pinpoint or a tunnel but like a meteorite streaking through the heavens. The sky for twenty miles around erupted into color like daylight, and his sidestep left a false dawn in its wake.

He crossed the gulf to where a sun once lived.

The dragon opened the way to follow, carving the thunder of death even in soundless space. His pollution scraped at the air, but it could not penetrate the Archangel’s radiance in the clouds.

With a careful downbeat and the focus honed by holy wars, Gabriel found the junction of Here and There, thousands of miles writhing with the Wyrm’s presence at once…and he reminded Separation of what the Foundation held until earlier today.

Jörmungandr’s upper half soared into the void, roaring. His lower half topped to the ground in Lumia.

Undeterred, the Wyrm flared his six foul runes and inhaled.

Gabriel spun to face the creature, pulling his wings together before his arms.

Hellfire roared forth.

Gabriel flared his pinions and drank deep.

If it burned, he was well used to the dregs.

Feathers sizzling, the Archangel swallowed that fire.

Alisandra arrived a moment after, leading with her fists.

If his daughter perhaps lacked subtlety, she excelled at enthusiasm. She would keep the half-severed Wyrm busy a few more moments.

The Archangel spun towards the sun’s cold grave and spread himself wide.

By Gloria’s sacrifice we dwell upon a thousand worlds.

By Ariel’s sacrifice we know the dance of seasons.

He acclaimed.

Those who understood their debts.

By Jeremiah we learn the taste of family.

By Rose we dwell in the silence of wisdom.

He honored.

Those who faced their fate with courage.

By Raphael, mending.

By Michael, sweet words.

He remembered.

Those who cast away their names and rose to answer the call.

By Hylas we trust.

By Verdandi we grow.

By the memory of those gone, lost, and still to be found.

Jörmungandr rose from behind, jaw yawning wide, his teeth crackling with hatred and fire, and surged forth.

Gabriel trusted in his daughter.

I remember the sun. The first one. The day we understood what warmth and spring and life all meant.

Alisandra sidestepped into the Archangel’s wings, back to back.

Shoved into his flared wings, she caught the dragon by the maw and held.

It is not enough to restart a ball of plasma. Not enough to adjust celestial mechanics. Like Aure, I must build greater things.

On his wings, by his faith, he sounded a horn of dawn - of hope.

Reawaken to the dance of a world not yet spent!

A star remembered life.

Even angels stumbled before a birth so grand, and Gabriel tumbled a moment in the fire and light.

It would be perhaps pleasant to nap at the center of the star for a few centuries, but he thought of Alisandra. Found her a moment later, overwhelmed by the thunderous inferno, and wrapped her tight in his wings.

Just like the wagon rides, he thought tenderly, carrying her Through to the fifth planet in this system. Here the air was nothing but thin wisps, and the sun a distant speck.

He released his shocked daughter to the fine dirt, unmarred by footsteps, and watched the approach of a hateful shade.

Jörmungandr intentionally slammed into the crust at speed. A billowing cloud crashed across the angels, sweeping through the thin atmosphere and scattering sand beyond the planet’s weak grasp. Cracks splintered for miles, and the long-cooled planet shuddered.

“What is this?” the dragon growled from his crater, laying on the ground with tendrils of shadowy entrails dangling. “Not even the courtesy to chat with an old friend?!”

His rune of Life began to frantically pulse.

“Father!” Alisandra hissed. “That collar…we must find a way to remove the damned thing!”

Gabriel watched the Wyrm from the crater’s edge.

The Archangel’s lip curled.

“Stop playing, Wyrm.”

The trail of sand floated into space, glimmering.

“As you wish,” rumbled the dragon.

The rune flickered out.

Jörmungandr continued to rebuild himself.

“Father…?” Alisandra whispered.

Jörmungandr stretched, letting his rebuilt joints snap like fresh branches. “Don’t fret, little girl. Your father is here to solve everything. Aren’t you, Gabriel?”

No rune of Knowing to learn her father’s history.

“Oh, I hope you aren’t too offended,” the dragon addressed Alisandra, flicking his growing tail. “Nothing personal. It’s just so rare to meet new people in this place.”

Jörmungandr grinned.

“And you’re just so earnest about this whole affair! How could I deny you that?”

“Father…what is he?”

“A remnant,” Gabriel replied. “A serpent skulking at the edge of the garden.”

She looked at the Archangel anew. She saw in his grave eyes and his tensed hands not the lackadaisical father who let her run around the mansion in a shield ball. Instead, she saw a warrior, forged in fire, who fought a foe he considered a threat.

A threat that may yet win.

For the first time, Alisandra saw the figure beyond her father. A man striving his best to find a future among the chaos for those under his wing. A man just as lost as the rest of them.

The adoration of a little girl broke inside of her, and she mourned its passage.

The angel of valor and the angel of protection were not beings given the grace of gentle walks along Harvest gardens any longer.

“Ah, that’s the Sergeant Asher I remember! I met your right hand earlier, you know…” Jörmungandr flexed his newly rebuilt hind claws. “…and I think he gave you something rather interesting…”

The dragon sidestepped, bursting into Gabriel’s face with claws extended.

“Show me!”

Gabriel yielded a single step back and raised his wing overhead.

The dragon’s claws met the gentle feathers; a soft ringing filled the air; the claws glanced away without so much as raising a puff of dirt.

“You may be the soldier still, but you’ll find I have grown!” boasted the dragon, sucking in his gut. His collar flared: Fire – Power – Death.

But it was the ground beneath their feet that exploded instead.

Undaunted, Gabriel caught his daughter in a wing, found the stillness in himself, and clapped his palms to the fracturing mantle.

The cracks froze, the stone cooled, and the destruction ceased.

“I liked your old style better!” the dragon snapped. Jörmungandr surged through the cloud of debris, caught Gabriel by one wing in his teeth, and flung the Archangel into the exposed fire. “This obnoxious harmony of yours is ill-suited to a warrior!”

Alisandra then caught the Wyrm by the tail and threw him through the old, cold mountains.

Jörmungandr returned, swatted her away with a tch of annoyance, and dove for the Archangel. “You’ve had millenia. Don’t tell me you spent the entire time screwing dolls! What are you really up to?!”

Knowing flared.

Swimming in the molten canyon, Gabriel swirled his hands like the water’s flow and stilled that foul inquiry the same as any blade.

“You evaded every trap laid in your name,” the Archangel replied evenly. “Can you find no more constructive use for your freedom?”

“Yes, my freedom!” Jörmungandr laughed. “And the Tyrant slumbers in the cage meant for a dove-winged soldier! Oh, the irony is delicious enough to whet my appetite!”

Shadow – Death.

Gabriel raised his wings and wove his hands, drawing together a bubble of tranquility.

But this was not a display meant for him.

Alisandra, trailing, saw an entirely different scene. She saw the Wyrm duck past her father’s guard and drive foul teeth into the Archangel’s soft belly.

She sidestepped, roaring in rage.

Jörmungandr winked to Gabriel and spun, jaws wide and gullet wet, to accept his meal.

Gabriel in that moment did not hesitate.

Not as the Archangel.

Not as the angel of protection.

Not as Alisandra’s father.

He found the Will to sidestep as nimbly as his daughter, darted forward, and stole her place.

Met the oncoming darkness head on.

Jörmungandr devoured the Archangel in a single bite.

***

A flash of blood-red muscle gave way to the truth beneath. The air boiled, choked with malice and sulfur. The tunnel opened into a boiling sea of black clouds and a blackened, desolate land.

Heart realm. Garden. Soul.

Now we can play as long as we want, rumbled the entire world in the Wyrm’s sated voice. You will dwell here forever, my newest morsel, and I will make your daughter beg for death before she joins you in my belly.

Gabriel plummeted through the clouds, buffeted in all directions. He beat his wings and strove to fly, but he did not set the Rules here.

And the Rules said, Crawl on your hands and knees like the worm you are.

He slammed into a sludge of mud and blood, thickened by hate and age, peppered with bones.

It can be pleasant in here, you know. You’re the one who spoiled for a fight.

The Archangel pushed himself to his knees, shoulders quaking with the effort.

The Rules said that his wings were far too heavy and stupid looking besides. How were they even supposed to work?! Clearly…they didn’t.

Gabriel snarled, stretching his pinions against gravity, and pushed to his feet.

Still kicking. Dear Alisandra was happy to show me her toys…why are you so reluctant to do the same? Would it help if I showed you mine first?

The clouds drew back.

Both near and far, six ghastly monuments waited on the horizon. Statues, twisted and broken, that groped for the heavens they could no longer reach with their faces frozen in eternal agony. A river of bone-white light emanated from the center of each, fragments of power drawn into the darkness above.

Mockeries of Foundations.

Angels and fuel.

Aren’t they beautiful, Gabriel? What can I say? You inspired me! All those dear friends of yours, flinging themselves onto the pile to hold down that Tyrant for a few more seconds!

He was so limited, you know. The Tyrant saw Light and thought it gasoline – as though Light were a conveniently renewable resource! For all his prowess – and I will give him that – he was still a slave to his little notions of order and purpose. Still a slave in the image of the God who minted him.

The enslaved angels began to shudder like marionettes upon their strings. They opened their eyes, but they were blind. They saw only shadow; they heard only Jörmungandr.

His was the Song here.

You, though…Sergeant Asher, you saw what it would take, the incision to stem the bleeding…and you built something new in this universe of petty rules.

Even if it meant striking down everyone you loved.

Six twisted souls, bound and bleeding, turned to face him as one.

Give me a couple more meals, old soldier, and I’ll eat that Tyrant too.

The enslaved angels began to howl like knives.

Gabriel breathed in the stink of blood and hate.

Remembered shattered plains, the cries of good men, and the end of Eden.

From a certain perspective, the black channels in the endless plain rather resembled trenches, and the rumbling skies above sounded like the salvo of artillery. It was a choked, grimy world – so far removed from the clean quiet built among the stars.

You still stink of that old war, angel. You never really escaped.

“In that we agree,” the Archangel said.

The six slaves stumbled forward, titans under the reeking clouds. Fire, Shadow, Life, Death, Knowing and Power burned upon their brows.

“There is no running now.”

You will not defeat them with gentle hymns, Sergeant Asher.

Show me the prize you hide!

Gabriel held forth his hands, prayed to the dawn his soul could not hear, and drew forth the Hand of God.

***

Between one heartbeat and the next, Gabriel disappeared down the Wyrm’s gullet. One quick bite, and one self-satisfied grin.

Another Light snuffed out.

Another father stolen.

Alisandra screamed.

“Daddy!”

Jörmungandr licked his lips. “Well aged.”

He could not be gone. He was the Archangel! Any moment now, he would erupt from that monster’s belly with a faint scowl and the rushing of wings!

“Fathers are so predictable, don’t you think?”

A terrible ringing began in Alisandra’s ears, high and mighty.

“And we weren’t done with your toys, were we?”

She heard so many screams. Felt the grief of so many fathers and mothers.

The Wyrm vanished, shade tearing wounds across the heavens back towards Lumia.

This will not stop.

The Wyrm batted the Cathedral of Fire like a bauble, and Lynne screamed.

He will not stop.

A darkness to devour the cosmos with all the interest of a bored housecat.

The Wyrm wants to see someone who can break Foundations.

The edges of her half-rusted halo began to fracture.

He wants it so bad he will kill everyone to get it.

Something more glowed within.

***

The dragon rushed the Cathedral, setting the air ablaze with his passage. He crashed into the square so hard that the seas began to quake and the skies to shudder. He struck so hard that good memories dimmed and laughter paled.

The refugees within the Cathedral shivered in their sleep, the nightmare growing near.

Lynne, angel of oceans, prayed.

The Cathedral throbbed.

Pipes like veins pumped in time with her heart.

The dragon spit hellfire into the ocean just for the fun of it. Why not let the seas burn away?!

Yet Lynne remembered the cool of morning; the golden pipes stained azure and sang of hope; the seas refused to burn.

She was weak…

She was sinful…

She was not here for herself.

I

Hold!

***

Alisandra emerged above the Cathedral square, but she did not recognize her home.

There was a roaring Cathedral of oceans and waves, shot through with the same Azure-blessed colors as her own hair. Great pipes ran through the broken ground, holding the city together like sutures. No, holding the world together, lest the plates fly free under a bored dragon’s blows.

The flock of phoenix from the Conclave swirled overhead, answering to the Stormmother’s unspoken plea, to confront the Devourer and die.

He flared a new, seventh rune upon his collar.

Protection.

A bloody, venous wall of shadow split the air before the flock, and the leading elemental birds could not bank in time.

This was the Song of the Wyrm; its notes were death, decay, and mockery.

Let no holy word remain atop another.

Let no sacrifice be consecrated.

Let nothing be remembered.

Cragbears appeared on the city streets, summoned across the sea by the Cathedral. Roaring, they tore their claws through the rubble, forcing the broken earth to draw closed.

Serpents thrashed through the boiling seas, drawing the scalding steam into their own bodies.

Fairies danced in the skies above, drawing away the choking smog.

All of which was undone by a casual gout of hellfire from the dragon.

“Angels! Have you even been listening to a word I’ve said? Eh, Lynne?! If you wish to huddle in that ark, I will bleed your branded brat to the bone.”

More elemental beasts swarmed from every quarter. To mend the damage. To fling themselves against a foe they could never hope to defeat.

Like a tide, these reinforcements crashed into the Wyrm.

“What power fuels these gnats?!” roared the dragon in exasperation. “Have I missed something…?”

They were only creatures of instinct, beasts given a touch of power, but in that hopeless charge Alisandra saw gleaming knights on crusade.

They too will serve.

“Or someone…?”

His stolen runes flared bright, and he tore into the elemental beasts with renewed interest.

Even here…in this land that brands them heresy for the crime of existing…they serve…

“Verdandi…?” rumbled Jörmungandr. “A seer of green leaves? Terrible! You people do realize Skuld is the one who sees the future, right?!”

The torrent of elemental beasts continued, and Lynne’s Work toiled to mend earth, sky and seas.

There was an election here once, Alisandra marveled in her daze. How important it seemed at the time.

Spiderweb cracks danced along her crown.

As the beasts died by the score; as Lynne held; as Alisandra felt vertigo like a Blooming…

She stood in the ash, but she also walked her garden.

Found a bouquet of bluebells left by a woman who wore a pale mint dress with a butterfly lapel and shared Alisandra’s own eyes.

With trembling fingers, opened the note beneath.

No matter the cost, Ali.

No matter the pain.

Hear their need.

Then build with care.

Huffing in vexation, Jörmungandr blanketed the harbor in flame.

Yet no matter how he scoured the city…something remained. A power worthy of angels, a seed to nurture from even this place.

Dreams.

Rich, poor, young, old. Dreams of mythological heroes; dreams of furtive lovers; dreams of small children and world leaders.

“You really aren’t getting the hint!” Jörmungandr inhaled again – and coughed, smoke stuttering. “Hmm. A touch of indigestion…”

Dreams from other worlds where humans lived in mud huts or spires of gleaming metal.

Dreams of deep currents; wild, open flight; the loyalty of men; the harmony of man and beast.

Daydreams, fantasies, indulgences…

Even a father’s dreams for a willful daughter.

Even her Daddy’s dreams for his willful daughter.

Let her be the angel of motherhood. The angel of laughter. The angel of regality. Let her follow any path but my own.

Even her mothers’ dreams – both of them.

Let her forgive me, pled the one.

Let her forget me, surrendered the other.

Dreams of Foundations, a Chorus in holy service.

A horrible dream, tucked away deep within where no one could reach: the dream of a monster who only saw himself – constant, eternal, and hungry.

And distant, faint, buried deep in the Song, dreams that arose from two voices in harmony…

Wake up, Alisandra.

Alisandra’s halo cracked.

For a better world.

Her world.

Her crown.

Radiant as the sun.

“I think we’re finally running thin!” the dragon grumbled, tearing a cragbear in half. “What an infestation!”

Alisandra brushed past him, sidestepping to the easternmost cliff of Ruhum. There she met the sea.

He arrived a heartbeat after, trailing rot. “What’s this? Do you tire of the quest? I am going to go tear that little branded girl’s limbs off, one at a time, and then pull out her entrails. Would you like to watch?”

The sun approached.

Her mantle awaited.

Blade and crown.

Jörmungandr cocked his head. “Strange…This familiar feeling…”

As the first ray of dawn split the horizon, Alisandra called her birthright home.

***

This cannot be

Turn from this folly

Cast down this crown

This chaos will be brought to heel.

Your obedience is required.

Would you sever the dawn and the dusk?

Would you rebel against the Song itself?

I

Will

Claim

My

THRONE

***

Mountains like statues and statues like mountains rose against her.

The angel of valor charged.

Where they met, in the darkness of caves or the distance of stars, she dared reach her arm beyond the boundaries they decreed.

And her fingers found purchase.

She grasped the blade that could cut music.

The edge that could carve time.

The weapon drawn across a thousand battlefields and christened by as many lives.

She wrenched the Hand of God from Sebastian’s hands as he kneeled, defeated, before Sergeant Gabriel Asher.

She stole it from the embers of its forging in the first note, fresh from the hands of a man she knew she would know.

She yanked the blade from its final home at the cold, dark end of Time.

She stole the blade from her Father’s hand as he swung for a twisted mockery of a Foundation in a realm of dusk and malice.

“Daughter! No!”

She pulled all the pieces together – one Blade, one Edge, one Purpose.

One Key.

***

Gabriel stumbled, swing aborted – his hand empty.

The awful weight of his sworn burden relieved.

He leaped away from the blind angels, aching and tired, and slipped amongst the mud.

His weapon of war stolen, he was no longer a match for these six. Though they were broken, hobbled by the Will wound through them like poison, they operated with the sanction of the Rules in this heart realm.

A door open only by invitation and closed just as tight.

The Archangel squeezed his eyes shut and laughed weakly.

I finally understand what must be.

Six puppets loomed.

A fool to the last.

“I am called for by name.”

***

The cavalry blade in her hands was as light as a feather.

She gripped the hilt with both hands. “Edge beyond the reach of Time…reveal yourself.”

The blade – her blade - unfolded. The metal bled away, revealing the fractal fire, the twisting labyrinthine, the etched history. It twisted and swelled and shrunk and burned into a hard, fixed point. A weapon seared into the heavens.

Into the Song.

Her sword roared to life. The Light of heaven, distilled drop by drop into a blade of a higher realm.

For once, Jörmungandr stared agape.

The sword Sang of glorious battle.

“I will drive this through your heart,” she vowed.

Slowly, the Wyrm started to chuckle. Then his scoff grew into a fit and into a black howl of astonishment.

“You would carve a place in Time itself?!” He pounded on the cliff with laughter. “Alisandra Mishkan, glorious angel of valor, you dare to go against the Rules?!”

Her weapon drew in the choked air and offered nothing in return.

“At last, at last! A kindred soul! You don’t care what They laid down any more than I!”

“I will carve my father free.”

She sidestepped, and no longer did she dart nimble as a sparrow. Her wake coated miles to either side in hoarfrost and ocean spray. She emerged under the Wyrm, feet poised, and struck deep through the blackened scales.

The Hand of God bit deep and true.

He roared in agony, shuddered, and slumped.

Let his name be forgotten, she thought, preparing to gut him throat to tail.

Then his tail spike lanced through her chest and spine.

The pain was distant; her halo Sang so much louder.

Instead of blood, she leaked a mist of Light.

Just as the dragon seeped a foul black miasma.

“You will never kill me like that,” she whispered, though she had no throat to speak. What was flesh but a shell? What was this body but a vessel? “I am forged of Light.”

Intimate and loving, Jörmungandr whispered, “As am I.”

Her halo heard his truth.

Of course he was Light – a predator of his own kind.

“Hello, sister. Shall we war for eternity?”

She shifted stance, gripped her destiny, and cut off his wing. Not the squirming shadow seeming, but his wing.

He tumbled away, seeping darkness, and laughed.

“It hurts! It actually hurts!” He leaped to the sky, flaunting petty physics on a single wing. “We who are sentenced to eternity – let us dance!”

He vanished to Lumia.

Alisandra cut Through with the Hand of God and arrived before he thought to leave.

The better so she could strike the horn from his head.

“I witnessed the golden Throne at the beginning of creation!” he crowed. “And you were there with me, sister, if only you remembered! Oh, how could we fall any further?!”

Jörmungandr exhaled his trite hellfire, and she cut the fire from its fury.

Then he bit on her extended arm, Hand of God and all, and tore her limb free.

She staggered a moment, halo Singing.

Thought of her father in his belly.

Forged an arm out of Light and Will and remembered the truth:

The Hand of God was still in her hand – the place where it Belonged.

Where no Song would ever dare to oppose her.

They warred in the sky then, and Alisandra released all concern for the world below.

She no longer heard Lynne’s cries of pain.

Let no angel be felled by petty wounds.

Let no angel ignore the call of glory and strife.

Let no angel live as mortals might.

Her armaments of war glowed brighter than the sun.

***

The sun jerked on its axis: morning, then night, then day, then empty space.

The tides reversed themselves.

Water turned to fire, and fish breathed in flame.

A glancing blow from the Blade tore a window into the Lumian night. Jazz music and laughter spilled out and mingled with the thunder of a sky that could not settle on storm or summer.

The next sent shards of darkness – scales tiny and whispering – spraying to the beginning and the end of this place to await their role in this war.

One landed not far from a hateful, hungry young witch named Charlotte Broadleaf.

Lynne gripped her Great Work by the thin and fraying thought of love.

“Alisandra!” she moaned. “Heed what is!”

Fury and power to sunder what has been so carefully wrought…

Playful blows from a shadow sent Alisandra through the crust, through the core, and out the other side. The tectonic shocks began, lifting the mantle around the point of impact…

And Lynne held, her Work the thread that held a fraying cloth in place…

“Glorious freedom!” sang the madcap Wyrm. “This is what we are, Alisandra! Kings among kings, the mighty undiminished!”

Alisandra’s Blade sundered the Harvest wind.

“Together let us bring ruination to the Rules of petty tyrants!”

A shadow, a mist, a snake, he grinned.

Opposed by a girl of Light, her halo a burning beacon, who roared not like a human but like the trumpets of the final war.

A glancing blow returned Lynne to the black waters where she drowned. Where she Bloomed.

She clung to the threads.

Aaliyah…Malala….Sophia…Esmie…Belle…Alisandra…

“Free us all, Alisandra Mishkan!”

The moon shattered into a million shards of glass.

But the shadow remained, gleaming black and true.

Aaliyah…Malala….Sophia…Esmie…Belle…Alisandra…

Mountains like statues or statues like mountains shuddered, and Lynne heard the first cracks…

There is no flight from this Eden, she realized. No renewal beyond this burning dawn…

Bricks floated free of their rubble, spun in place, and reassembled themselves into a wall. Which then rotted to dust on an empty plain. Trees grew and rotted and grew again along the boulevards, and the shells that remained of men after the soul passed walked with blind eyes to their daily routine. All this mingled with the desolate whistle of Lumia future, an accursed and abandoned place.

Aaliyah…Malala….Sophia…Esmie…Belle…Alisandra…

“Gabriel…help…”

***

No angel.

No demon.

No Chorus.

No God.

Alisandra would carve the Wyrm to shreds. She would cut his name from the skein so that he never was!

The daylight stuttered; the seasons veered like a drunk. She hurled him through the heaving volcanic crust of a newborn planet, and he pinned her to the bottom of a dead, black ocean.

Every blow, every moment, enflamed her brighter.

No more doubts.

No more consequences.

Only her Will and the Blade to forge it.

When she swung the Hand of God, its tip ground against Foundations.

The Wyrm still laughed.

She cleaved his head from his neck with fifteen separate, instantaneous strokes.

Still he laughed.

She carved at him like a butcher, seeking that gleaming core.

The sky began to dim, and the lightning of broken skies revealed figures like giants who could only watch.

“I am forged from stars and Song!” she roared, her voice the thunderclap of storms and birth of planets.

“You are alive!” he howled back. Shadow and night, the long shadow of heaven. He bit another of her limbs off with glee. “Alive as I am!”

As though she required limbs. As though she cared for the Rules.

Alisandra abandoned the pretense. No more breath, no more flesh, no more cycles. She expanded, radiant, a many-armed sentinel with a thousand Edges to one Hand of God, each an inferno for her unbridled fury.

Becoming Light: a name in ink upon God’s own rolls. The glory, the trumpets, the stillness of ages.

A naked soul quaking the world of men.

“Welcome, sister,” Jörmungandr goaded.

His belly began to swell, and he glanced down in puzzlement.

“Ah.” The Wyrm chuckled. “Well, that doesn’t matter now. How I have waited for you…”

Light began to seep from within his shadow.

Alisandra sensed her opening, and she gathered.

Jörmungandr exploded.

Releasing six souls from bondage, and one sacrifice who had once been a man and an Archangel.

With his dead, undying final breath, knowing full well what the words wrought, the man whispered,

Let no bondage be eternal.

And it was so.

Jörmungandr tumbled, disintegrating before the wrath of a Foundation.

Until nothing but a black gem remained.

A blight in the perfection of Light.

A soul beyond redemption.

Alisandra Mishkan clutched the Hand of God, the birthright etched for her alone, and struck to finish what she started. The perfect blow – the final blow – the end to eternity.

Yet, somehow, by no power nor no Will seen or unseen, she did not strike true.

She was slipped by the softest note of the Song.

Her blade crashed into Jörmungandr like the first words of heaven and scattered him across the breadth of the stars in deepest Reverie.

“Why?!” she cried.

Her ascendancy too slipped. She felt the fetid clasp of Rules grasping at her, dragging at her like so much baggage, trying to mute her glory!

“Why would you save him?!”

She who could steal from Time herself.

She who would brave any depths, Chorus be damned, to complete her duty.

She who quaked with every step.

“You would spare a creature that murders millions and consumes the holy?!”

In her heart, she railed against the only One whom could possibly have stayed her hand.

But the drumbeats of war faded, and the Chorus exerted its Song against her burning star.

How the Hand of God hungered to turn its thirsty Edge on those who denied glory…

“Spare even him…” she hissed, hot tears on her cheeks.

Her halo ached with the bitter aftertaste of war, valor unfulfilled, and the world of thick and cloying material things reasserted itself around her.

A human body felt alien. A farce of flesh and blood drawn over the truth within.

She considered casting it off…

But she thought of the Foundation who had once been her father, and she suddenly did not wish to discard the face of his daughter.

The rush of battle past, she remembered too late.

“Heavens above…” she cried. “I have lost him!”

She toppled amongst the dirt.

Lumia had been pounded flat, and the sky smoldered a strange and unnatural color.

Azure pipes toiled and hissed, attempting to close the wound. Elsewhere in this world, they would mend the damage…but not here.

Not where naked souls had trod the earth.

“I will honor your sacrifice,” Alisandra vowed, slamming her fist into the dirt. But it was only a mortal blow, weak as a mortal girl was, and did not ravage the land.

I will wear your mantle with pride.

The Cathedral of Fire slowly opened. The doors nearly fell from their hinges, and the windows remained together by tiny filaments of hardened light, but the Great Work held.

Lynne emerged, dazed and reeling. Her eyes were oceans, and her wings of mist floated behind her like a wedding gown.

At the sight of her, Alisandra rose. “Mother?”

The angel of oceans blinked and focused on the girl before her. Smiling, she trailed a loving finger across Alisandra’s cheek.

“You did well.” She brushed the back of her hand across Alisandra’s crown. “You are beautiful.”

Alisandra felt the crushing weariness; the wrung hopes; the cost of holding the line.

“I need to sleep a while,” Lynne mumbled apologetically. “Take care of your little sister, would you?”

“With…with my life.”

“That’s my girl. Tell her…that I love her. That I’m a fool. That I’m sorry for presuming to brand her. Remove it if she asks. I know you can.”

With one final, encouraging smile, Lynne stumbled to the ocean and Reverie.

After a few moments, a handful of sleepy mortals straggled out the Cathedral door.

Heavens above… Alisandra swore, watching the little creatures crawl forth. Tiny and limited, foolish and amnesiac, these creatures stumbled between life and death with only the barest glimmer of their souls cast down from the heavens above.

Was this all a mortal was?

She turned away, shivering, and caught the glimpse of Light that lurked within her fingers. It made her nails glow gold, as though she was a freshly forged blade still hot from the kiln.

Never again would she gaze at those fingertips and see only flesh.

Driven by an unspoken need, she struck out across the wasteland formerly known as Lumia towards the sea.

A steel beam here. A heap of bricks there. A ripple in the choking dust that hinted at a street.

Look upon the works of men…

The sun rose. It always did. Time bade all things forward.

Except perhaps the Blade she carried in her own breath.

She needed to find the right vantage for this before the sour toll of the bell caught up.

***

The Inventor Oliver saw Alisandra mount the ruined remains of his laboratory, but he did not recognize her.

The woman atop the rubble held silent vigil, a world apart.

She did not breathe, a force of nature untouched by the tepid breeze.

She carried a sword that burned against his eyes and set the taste of copper on his tongue.

Her radiant, golden crown cut shadows deep in her face.

A mask of Light and power carved from stone.

***

The angel of valor spared a glance at a mortal boy.

Oliver Oshton, she noted distantly. A man I might have loved.

But that was not her path, and she could not be a girl in his arms anymore.

The Archangel by virtue of survival surveyed the ruin of her domain.

A rarified being of Light and Will, alone in her glory.

She shifted among the shredded metal – all that remained of Inventors’ petty hubris – and raised her Blade to the east.

Alisandra Mishkan, the Morning Star, closed her eyes and Sang the last dregs of dawn.

Just as someone she had once loved.