Fort Gillem, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Tuesday, October 8th, 2019. 05:58c.

Most survivors remained unconscious for days after Armageddon.

A man in military uniform woke up, tasting ashes. It was still night. His body ached as he stood up. Remembering the sensation of his entire being burning, he checked and found no wounds on himself. As he recalled, he remembered the meteors. How every other person in the military base screamed along with him. The haunting memories broke something in the man's psyche, the same that would happen to several survivors.

Looking around him, everyone was burned, cooked from the inside, faces locked in expressions of pain, horror, and death. They were already smelling bad.

For hours, He walked among the dead, civilians and soldiers alike. Anywhere he went, he only saw people he knew, their faces frozen in their last moment of agony like a grotesque wax museum of horror. The man decided he'd died and went to hell. Or this was just a hallucination. Drawing his gun, he shot the base commander's head. It exploded in a spray of gore and blood.

"Having fun?" A female voice rang behind him.

He turned around, aiming his gun at the woman. Not a woman, a girl. Young, small, her skin too tanned, probably mixed-race. But what drew his attention were the wings behind her and the scythe in her hand. The pitch-black scythe.

"Who are you?"

"You're Pete, right?" The angel asked.

"Don't come any closer," he threatened with his gun, failing miserably to hide his fear.

"Do you know who I am?"

He shot the girl. Her wings flapped faster than he could see and shielded her from the bullet as it ricocheted on the feathers. Next, he saw, she was right in front of him, brandishing the scythe, cutting off his arms at the elbows. Another slash and his knees were gone.

She grabbed the stumps one by one and froze them as he screamed. Corporal Peterson was pinned to the ground by four blocks of ice that were stopping him from bleeding to death.

"Death is too good for you, Necropolis King," the angel of death rambled. "Survive if you will. I don't care."

Sara walked out of the commander's office.

*

*

Flankers Road, Forest Park, Clayton County, Georgia. Tuesday, October 8th, 2019. 10:00c.

Outside the base near the main entrance, Sara found three men approaching. She already missed the outlines Abby projected for her. But losing that was well worth her freedom.

"Howdy there, good folk!" She shouted.

"What?"

"Dude, do you see what I'm seeing?"

"No way, a fucking angel!"

Sara pointed the scythe at them, "Language!"

"Sorry, ma'am."

It wasn't that they were pushovers but Sara's wings and scythe were that impressive.

Sara rested her scythe on her shoulder. "I know you want to go inside and get some weapons. It's useless. I assure you, nobody needs weapons. What we need is people to organize a search and rescue of the survivors. We need to save as many lives as we can, understood?"

These men became, in another timeline, the Necropolis King's lieutenants. She recognized two of them from the Costco shooting. Though they had the potential to become rapists and murderers, Sara hated Minority Report or any notion of pre-emptive criminal prosecution.

"Are you really an angel?" One of them asked.

"Death?" Another tried.

"Yes on both counts," Sara owned her mantle. "But I'm not here to kill people but to save. We have a lot to do. Gather supplies. Rescue survivors. Rebuild a community. Survive ourselves. I promise you, I won't let any warlord think they can enslave and claim a kingdom here. This is still America, despite the Apocalypse."

The three talked among themselves, then reached a conclusion. "We'll do what we can to help."

"Good. The first thing we need to do is go inside the military base and get some radios for us. Not weapons, but gear. Come on!"

*

*

Clayton State University, Clayton County, Georgia. Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019. 18:00c.

For two weeks, Sara mobilized the survivors to scavenge and loot the houses, gather the bodies, rescue the pets, secure survivors, and take them to the university campus. Several buildings on the campus were demolished by falling debris but the student villa was intact. They even had some electricity from the Atlanta Archives' rooftop solar panels. Hickory Ridge, however, was back to just a landfill.

Her wings and scythe were a symbol of power and hope. People looked up to her. She cleared the highway passes and killed ghouls for half a mile in each direction. The survivors came with tractors and tow trucks. They erected barricades and repaired the roads enough to allow a car to pass through safely. She met ghosts and saved them too.

That didn't come without a cost. A heavy, personal one. The relationships she built with people in the other dimension, the original one, were gone. She wasn't friends with Kelly, she didn't squabble with Amanda, and she wasn't bothered by Hainsworth's daddy vibes. Keynes died when Lakeview Apartments was destroyed. She was not alone but lonely. She had people's respect as much as she had their adulation and worship. To them, she was not a girl from Seattle, she was an angel from the Heavens sent by God to deliver the chosen.

Dissuading them was pointless. Even the scythe, they thought it was a prop.

Now, she stood on a stage, with two hundred people waiting for her speech. Sara looked at the sea of faces. Mrs. Wilson. Kelly. Brett. Not Keynes. Officer Jones. Amanda and Peterson. Trevor, Patricia, Philip. The airliner pilot and the survivors from Hartsfield-Jackson. Major Hainsworth and Princess Cupcake and Friendzone Todd. Ted. Whatever. All of them were alive.

Also, Mr. Brown but not Catherine. She could not save that little ray of sunshine.

She couldn't save everyone. She couldn't save even Hickory Ridge solar plant. Either by fate or by the Seraph intervention, a massive pyroclastic rock fell on the repurposed landfill and destroyed everything.

She took the microphone. "Greetings everyone." People replied. "I am happy we managed to gather so many survivors. We. This is not my achievement but one that belongs to every one of you. I know everyone here has lost loved ones. That we managed to save two hundred out of tens of thousands. I also know that some of you are wondering what happened. And what is my involvement with the events back in the seventh?

"On October 7th, 2019, the world ended at rush hour. Hell and Heaven went to war. It was Armageddon, as foretold in the Book of Revelation. The fight was so intense it shattered their reality. The debris fell on Earth and with them came the energies of those higher realities. Magic. A few people on Earth awakened their bloodline. Before that day, I was an ordinary high school student like any other. Now, this."

She unfolded her wings. It still drew gasps of admiration from the people. She actually had to break down a cult that was forming around herself a few days ago.

"Now, we need to rebuild our community, barricade ourselves against the highways. The ghouls can only be defeated by magic."

At this point, she lamented she didn't have the System Core to just grant everyone magic by fiat. No. Everyone would need to awaken their magic the hard way.

"Major Hainsworth volunteered to be the first one to try. Tomorrow, we're going to set out toward downtown Atlanta, to open a way for the remaining survivors there. The more people we bring into the fold, the safer all of us will be. Major?"

Hainsworth climbed on the stage. Sara grabbed both of his hands.

"Will this hurt?" He asked with a chuckle.

"Like hell, soldier. Worse than if you got captured by Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Get ready to scream like a schoolgirl in a slasher flick."

Sara turned to face the audience. "Anyone with a faint heart, please go away or look the other way."

She grabbed Hainsworth's hands in hers, as firm as a steel vise. Then she infused Mana on the Major. It was costly and he resisted with all his being. Steam started to rise from the man's arms, then torso, legs, and head. Hainsworth screamed in absolute pain and black impurities flowed out of his every pore. He vomited black and bled black from his ears and nose. This went on for a minute, then Sara stopped.

Hainsworth fell to his knees. He coughed and spat a blob of the congealed black stuff. The stage stank like Satan's clogged toilet after a Tex-Mex party in hell. With lots of Tabasco and grilled Jalapeños.

Sara checked. More than half the people had fled.

Then the Major started laughing. He climbed back to his feet on uneasy legs. He was covered in ejected impurities. This was just his skin being purified. Yet he already felt the benefits.

Sara lifted the microphone to her mouth. "How do you feel, Hainsworth?"

"Like shit," he replied. "But I can feel the power. It's like my skin was made of steel now."

"Easy there. You're not bulletproof yet," Sara joked. "Could someone help the good Major find a shower?"

Officer Jones sans the hole in his stomach came on the stage and offered his arm. He led Hainsworth away.

Sara scanned the dwindling crowd. "So, who's next?"

The venue was vacated as if a fire had started on stage.

*

*

Conley, Clayton County, Georgia. Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. 09:00c.

The whole Atlanta metropolitan region was secured. Sara had cleared intersections, escorted workers as they repaired bridges, and overpasses, barricaded arterial highways to avoid letting the undead get closer, killed prospective gang members, rescued hostages, raided supermarkets and other stores, cleared Mana Channels for a couple dozen volunteers so they would have a fighting chance against the undead.

Only one frontier remained. Verachiel's time bubble. Sara approached the boundary, tossed a handful of dirt to mark it, then pushed Verachiel's feather into it.

Nothing happened. She pushed harder. The feather was stuck halfway inside the time bubble. Sara tried to pull it out but nothing happened.

"What is this fucker thinking? Is he in there with the System Core anyway?"

Sara started to pour her Mana into the feather, causing it to glow like the Sun. She kept pumping Mana into what seemed like an endless pit. The dirt stuck to the time boundary fell to the ground. Then it burst open with a loud bang. Sara was flung a dozen yards away but stabilized herself with her wings and glided down, landing on her feet.

The time bubble was open. She could finally pluck some feathers out of an overgrown chicken.

Sara ran with her wings unfurled, then leaped and took flight. Without a tail, she kept her legs stiff to the back pretending she was in a wing glider. Sara flew as fast as she could toward Panthersville. She went past the Regal Lakeshore Hotel AKA Sky Pencil, and over the lake. Verachiel should be at the center, near where the System Core should be. Lo and behold, there he was in all his feathery glory.

"Welcome, Nephilim!" The Seraph said. "I hope you are not entertaining thoughts of fighting with me. You are too weak to face me."

Sara stopped some hundred yards from him. "Where is the System Core?"

"Sorry, Princess. Your Mario is in another castle," The ball of feathers joked, smiling with a thousand eyes and no mouth. "The Core is lost. I completed my mission and delivered it to humanity. It is not my fault you managed to get sucked in with me. Somewhere, somewhen, the Core is doing its job."

She saw the magic diagram behind the Seraph. "Escaping already?"

"Not escaping, no. Nothing here can threaten me but I am leaving this place nonetheless. My task is completed. I am not your enemy, Sara. Never was. The deception was necessary. Weak as you were, you would not have survived unscathed. Out of the previous seven times, I watched you live this October, five times you ended as a destructive force bent on eradicating all humans. You wield the scythe, Death. I only wished to save you from slavery."

The titan's words sounded true. But his spell had finished. Verachiel would escape. Again.

"Just as I gifted Wisdom to Eve and Hope to my sister-in-law Pandora, I'll give you one gift and one warning. This dimension's bandwidth in the conceptual dimension is too weak. It cannot hold beings such as you, me, or Abby who already fled. My gift to you is this spell. Fix your broken past, Sara. Find happiness."

And just like that, Verachiel winked out of reality with a loud pop. The magical diagram shrank to the size of a baseball, then flew and seared Sara's shoulder. She understood what the spell did. Power it with a massive amount of Mana, and travel in time to another reality.

She glanced at the new tattoo on her shoulder. "The Mark of Time?" She committed copyright infringement. Her only luck was that KrazeKode was orders of magnitude a nicer person and a better writer than a certain someone.

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