Angels and Demons - The First Arc
The attack

Ange hadn’t quite reached home when they heard the angel’s scream. They ran, ducking into the nearest alley, and searched for the winged shape among the clouds. The skies were as gray as the concrete metropolis below. Still…

There. A flicker of light, a reflection from a bloodshot eye.

Nothing stirred in the small plaza Ange had escaped, except for a pair of stray cats toying with the fallen planks of a rotting public bench.

Good. This was between them and the beast.

It now dove, the ground cracking even as it merely glided close to it. For something tall enough to reach the second floor of one of the flats, it was fast. Too fast.

Ange breathed in, and merged with the shadows. When their vision cleared, they were underneath a dead tree in the plaza. The wild cats darted away after Ange’s sudden appearance.

The world shook.

Shaking its many heads, the angel dug its sharp fingernails out of the building it had crashed into. In some places, the indent it left revealed upturned rooms.

Focus. Ange would rand to the casualties once the battle was through.

They evoked their fire, and it swirled around them in a burning tornado. As the angel swiped at them, their shield clung to its wrist, blocking its attack. Through the newly formed opening, Ange stared at the pit of one of the creature’s maws. It had too many rows of teeth.

They flung a fireball at it, but a beam of white light tore the flames apart. It would have hit Ange, had they not reported away at the last moment.

Panting, they considered their escape routes: three streets, one wider than the other two. Not that it would come to that.

Ange disappeared into the shadows once again. The angel roared in rage as it felt them materialize on its back, skin sizzling underneath their boots.

Wings beat frantically around them, and the creature took off once again. Tears formed in Ange’s eyes as the air they breathed grew cold and thin. They wiped them away, and crouched. Where their hands touched the angel, its form disintegrated into black dust. Ash, perhaps?

Ange had no time for idle pondering. They slammed the bulk of their power into the creature, regardless of the shape it took - fire or shadow or something else. What mattered was that the thing died.

“Mortal,” This was a pleading, desperate voice, if one could call it a voice at all. It existed in the same way thoughts exist, and was gone just as quickly. “There are thousands of us. What do you hope to achieve in killing one?”

Ange didn’t stop, and the angel released a great cry, spinning in the air until they could see the city as a colorless dot in a colorless plain, somewhere above their head.

The monster’s spines - for it had many, twisted around each other - cracked underneath Ange’s palms, and its shape folded into itself. Around them, heads snapped at them, but, at their command, shadows took shape around the exposed throats.

And squeezed.

“Child, if you kill me now, you will be doi g the demons’ work, will you not? You will make yourself part of our war on their side.”

“I don’t care! I don’t have a side.” They shook their head. They did have a side. “You killed one of my friends, and soon another might die from your magic. If nothing else, you will pay for that.”

“You are a fool, then, as predictable and short sighted, as any of those you claim you will defend.”

There was no point in taking its bait, in letting it save itself through trickery. Ange breathed in, and held out their hand.

They felt the creature’s heart beat in it.

“I see,” the angel said. “Go ahead, then. In the end, you are the one who falls.”

Ange closed their hand.

There was no noise, no sudden burst, no explosion. Like the demon before it, the angel disintegrated into a cloud of dust.

Ange, like many things suspended high in the air, fell. Their pulse pounded in their ears, but they knew better than to be afraid.

A knot had come undone inside of them, and now they could understand shadows. They told Ange how to float. Thus, they neared the surface like a feather held aloft in the wind.

Once their feet touched the ground, they had expected to feel something. Anything. But nothing came, as if they had forgotten the shape of their emotions. The emptiness was as deafening as the silence in the empty plaza.

From the damaged building came shouts, human shouts. Next to Ange, a shard of mirror had impaled a dust-covered sofa.

That reflection…

It was them, wasn’t it?

The inhuman all-black eyes, the sharp teeth, the blood-red skin.

It was them.

Of course it was.

How could they go home to their friends now? What would Gran’ma say? Ange snorted, because experience told them that she would replace it the most natural thing in the world and return to her everyday routine without even a blink.

Unfortunately, they weren’t like that.

They just couldn’t go back.

Not now.

They had killed an angel with their bare hands. Their friends were so, so fragile, in comparison.

Because, in the end, they still didn’t know how to save Briz. Perhaps the Darkness would save her, perhaps not, and, either way, it tasted like a failure.

Just then, it was regular human tears that came to Ange’s eyes.