Eagle Fall – Angelverse Episode 4

[This is the sequel to Phoenix Rise, so I'd recommend reading that story first. Also, "Altair" is the name of a star in the Summer Triangle. It  is a two-syllable name rhyming with "hair." The character in this story is NOT named for Altaïr (a three-syllable name) from Assassin's Creed, they just both got their names from the same star. It was an unfortunate accident.]

It had been two centuries since Vega had last flown. At the time, she’d traded her feathers for flames without a second thought. But now, as the wind caressed her skin and the sunlight reflected off the ocean of clouds below her, she wondered how she ever could have given it up. Soaring just above the cloud layer, she reached down a hand to graze the glowing surface. Her skin, she saw, was still on fire. Or rather, it was fire. There was no distinct point at which flesh became flame; instead, the two blended together seamlessly. The evening sun cast her shadow some distance ahead of her, and so Vega had to rise high above the clouds to make it out. A vaguely humanoid shape surrounded by a flickering transparent haze ghosted over the sea of white.

At long last, this was her array in its pure form, the dream worth the conversion of her original wings. The power was as exhilarating as the sensation of flight. She knew her limits, and flying without true wings should have been far beyond them. Where the sudden energy had come from she did not know. The same was true of her destination, although she had a guess. Every fiber of her being was pulling her onwards; she could not have stopped if she wanted to. Only her connection to her brothers could affect her like that, and she was desperate to find them. It had been forty days, one hour, and eleven minutes since they had disappeared, for the first time in their centuries-long existence. This sensation pulling her now must be a sign of their reappearance.

Vega tried not to think of the rumors she’d heard. Or the pain that had racked her body one hour and eleven minutes ago.  After all, her wings were still with her, and stronger than ever. The rumors could not be true.

Nothing in the multiverse could be so horrific.

Vega tried to push such thoughts from her mind as she drifted in the purple shadows between cloud layers. But the opalescent mountains and milky plains had lost their majesty and now looked to Vega as only bringers of storms. And what  storm awaited her, she shuddered to think.

***

Flames licked at Vega’s face as she looked up at the stone spires of the cathedral.  There was no question—this was the place. She closed her eyes and concentrated. In the past, it had been so easy to house the fires within her. She imagined wrapping them up around themselves and storing them on a shelf somewhere inside her chest, neatly contained. But now they were like wild beasts barely within her control. It took great force of will to gather them all into herself.

Rather than a shelf, it took the image of a great vault to house her new power. She slammed the door shut and gasped for breath, realizing she had been holding her breath the entire time. The fires disappeared, leaving only her flesh and blood. A golden glow emanated from the center of her chest, hinting at the flame housed within. Vega frowned at it, wondering if her body was up to the task of containing her wings, but now was not the time.

She started for the church door, an ornamental slab of wood and iron, when something caught her eye. A gargoyle sat perched on the very pinnacle of the roof above the door. Vega had never liked humans’ use of such creatures in artwork. They seemed too close in kin to the angels which also adorned the churches of the past. As if angels were only a few steps away from demons.

The church door was locked. Vega backed away and looked around for some other sort of entrance. Her eyes drifted up the sides of the building, wondering if she should just break a window. Then she glanced at the roof. The gargoyle was standing up.

It was not a monster in form, but a person. Vega stared up, frozen to the spot, until it reached its full height and appeared to look down at her. It raised an arm slowly, almost lazily, and snatched something from the air. When the arm returned to the person’s side, it gripped a large scythe. Had she been a human, Vega might have been intimidated by the intentional imitation of the classic representation of death. Instead, she opened the vault door, allowing a little flame to slip out. She meant to only ignite her hands, but instantly her entire arms were ablaze. She’d have to work on control later, if there was a later.

The death imitator cocked his head to the side for a moment. Vega silently dared him to come down and face her. But he turned on his heel and disappeared across the rooftop. Vega braced herself to soar after him, but the call for her to enter the building was too great. She went to the door and placed her hands on it before unleashing the rest of her power. In less than a minute, she was able to batter her way through the smoldering remains.

The vestibule was dark and empty, but surprisingly clean for an abandoned building. Several metal framed signs leaned against the wall. Vega ignited a hand—she’d been aiming for a finger, but close enough—to provide enough light to read the signs. They were from realtors. The church was for sale, not abandoned. The place seemed far less ominous when one knew the last service had been held only two months ago. The pulling sensation nagged at her, so she returned the flames to her center and continued on into the sanctuary.

Vega did not have to search long. The room had been cleared of pews, so the dark shape in the center of the floor was easy to spot. She was torn between the force pulling her towards that shadowy figure on the floor and the primal fear that gripped her. Hesitantly, each step a mighty battle, she made her way across the floor. Before she was even half there, she recognized him. Her little brother lay unmoving on the floor, his wings on either side of him.

She had seen his wings a thousand times—he’d been the last of the three of them to convert to an array—but she’d never seen them like this. Each wing was twice, perhaps even three times the size of his body. Even in the fading gray light filtering through the windows, Vega could make out the glossy shine of his dark feathers. He was magnificent.

Vega moved carefully around his wings and knelt beside his head. “Deneb?” she said softly.

He stirred, his dark lashes parting as he looked up at her. “Vega?” His voice cracked as if his throat was dry. He gave a cough, and then cringed, his face twisted in pain.

“Are you hurt?” Vega asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

“Been better.” His eyes found hers again. “Everything hurts.”

“What happened?”

“Hard to explain.” Before he could say more, he was seized by a coughing fit, accompanied by muscle spasms in his limbs as pain shot through him. Vega cradled his head in her hands so it would not hit the stone floor. “Got any water?” Deneb managed to croak.

“Water?” Deneb’s array had allowed him to gather water out of thin air. Their brother had always teased him mercilessly for choosing such a pathetic power, but there was no denying that even in the driest desert Deneb could do quite well for himself. If he was asking Vega, manipulator of flame, for water, something was terribly wrong. Vega tried to allay her fears by inspecting his wings. They seemed healthy and fully attached to his shoulder blades as far as she could tell. No cause for alarm there.

“Let’s get you out of here,” she said. “We’ll go and get you some water.”

“Wait,” he croaked. “Have to tell…”

“Shhhh.” Vega stroked his mop of dark hair back, the same way she always had comforted him. The gesture seemed so futile in the face of whatever horrors were now driving Deneb to choke out his story. “Wait here and I’ll get water. I’ll come back, I promise.”

She could clearly see the fear in Deneb’s eyes, but he nodded bravely. Vega returned to the entryway, where she had seen a sign for restrooms. Mercifully, water was still running in the building. With no sort of cup in sight, Vega looked around the bathroom until her eyes feel on the soap dispenser hanging on the wall. A bit of brute force snapped the faceplate of the dispenser clean off. Vega washed it and filled it with water before returning to her brother.

Deneb was attempting to sit up. If coughing had caused him pain, the exertion of movement must have been agony. His wings were not making it any easier, catching on the floor and his limbs with every movement. Vega set the makeshift bowl on the ground and tried to help him, but there was really nothing she could do.

“Can you retract your wings?” she asked quietly. “That would help.”

Deneb paused. His expression went from pained to thoughtful to panicked. “I can’t! Vega, I can’t!”

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Vega told him, knowing her words to be a complete lie. Everything was wrong. “Here, I’ve got water.”

Deneb accepted the container without question, his hands shaky but managing. He drank the water down in one go. When he’d finished, he looked at Vega. “Could I have more?” he asked, his voice apologetic.

“Of course, just take it easy.” It took two more trips to the restroom before Deneb had had enough. Then the story came pouring out.

“He caught us and boxed us in for forty days. He was counting. We couldn’t contact you, couldn’t even sense you.”

“Slow down,” Vega interrupted. “Who caught you?”

“An Angel. He never said his name, and I didn’t recognize his array.”

“What was it?”

“He could…make things. I didn’t get it. But he made the walls around us.” When Vega looked around questioningly, Deneb shook his head. “They’re gone now.”

“When you say he could make things, could he make a scythe?”

“Maybe. He made a knife when…” Deneb’s eyes went wide with fear.

“What? What is it?”

He stared at her. “He was after our wings, Vega.”

A chill went up Vega’s spine. “What do you mean?”

“The walls he made, I think…I think they cut us off from the birth plane.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I mean it, Vega! I couldn’t sense anything. It was like it wasn’t there anymore. Just like you.” Vega tried not to look as hurt as she felt, but she must have betrayed some emotion because Deneb hurriedly said, “I didn’t mean it like that. He didn’t catch you, that’s a good thing.”

“You still haven’t explained what you meant about him being after your wings.”

“After a while in the box, our wings started to appear. Our original wings at first, but then more. Our wings were pulled into this plane, entirely.”

Vega looked at his wings, so much larger than she had ever seen before. What had looked beautiful now looked sick, wrong. For an Angel’s wings to exist entirely in one plane, in one dimension, was as unthinkable as an Angel cut off from her birth plane. Wings were a bridge between planes; that was the base of their existence. To try and alter that fundamental element of reality was as unthinkable as trying to make fire burn cold.

“Today, he said our wings were fully here. He took down the walls and made a knife. We tried to run, but we were so slow because of these…things,” he said, giving his wings a half-hearted flap. “I couldn’t get away and he grabbed me, but then…” Deneb cut off as a cry of pain reverberated off the walls.

Vega looked around sharply. “Was that…?”

Deneb drew his legs up against his chest and crossed his arms on his knees, beating his wings once or twice to keep his balance. “Yeah.” He buried his face in his arms. “It is.”

Vega stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

Deneb just nodded, not even looking up.

Slowly, she walked towards the front of the sanctuary. Several meters in front of the steps up to the apse, a smear of blood covered the floor. A trail of red stains and drops led off to the side of the room. Cautiously, Vega followed.

He lay in a heap in front of a heavy wooden door, trying to escape. He appeared dead, but as Vega drew closer, he turned almost imperceptibly to look at her. Vega breathed a sigh of relief. Always the survivor.

Then she saw his back. Under a sheen of blood, two wounds, impossibly deep, streaked down both sides of his back. The rumors were true. The impossible could happen. Someone had stolen his wings.

Vega crouched on the floor beside him trying to meet his eyes. “Brother.”

His eyes flickered towards her, then away.

“Brother, it’s me.”

He looked at her again, his face blank. “Who…are you?” His voice was a rough as Deneb’s had been.

Vega tried to contain her despair. “You know me, I’m your sister. Vega.”

“I don’t have a sister.”

“Do you remember your brother, then? Deneb?”

There was a long silence that seemed to reach into eternity.

“Do you remember anything? Anything at all?”

“I remember…the church.”

“This church?”

“No,” he said, vehemently. “The church of Holy Wisdom.”

Vega understood. “Hagia Sophia,” she said, almost eagerly, trying to jog his memories. “You always liked it. Do you remember the first time you went? It was already almost a thousand years old then and you said it would last a thousand years more. You said you hoped it would outlast you.”

His eyes narrowed. “How could you know that?”

“Because you told me!” Vega closed her eyes and tried to stay calm. “You took me there centuries later, when I was just a fledgling. ”

“I don’t remember. I remember the place but…”

“Do you remember why you’d always go back there, even after it became a mosque?”

“I know I did, but I don’t know why…”

Vega hesitated. “You don’t remember yourself?”

Again, there was only silence. Then he spoke.

“I don’t understand. You have to help me.”

“I will,” said Vega, but he grabbed her hand with surprising force. She could feel the blood on his palm.

“Please help me!”

“I will.” She couldn’t bear to see him like this, begging for aid.

“Help me stand.”

“Brother, are you sure—”

“Help me!”

Vega put his arm across her shoulders and gripped him around his waist and, as slowly and delicately as she could, began to lift him off the floor. She could feel his muscles clench against the pain.

“Take me away from this place.”

“I’ll try.”

They hobbled across the church floor, Vega bearing most of their combined weight. Her brother was nearly a head taller than she was, and broad-shouldered, so their progress was slow. Deneb turned to look at them approaching.

“He’s alive?” Deneb asked.

“That’s my brother?”

“Yes,” Vega said eagerly. “Do you remember him?”

“No, but you told me I have one.” His voice was dull, indifferent. Vega just tried to keep moving forward.

Deneb stood, his wings fanning out around him. The man in Vega’s arms froze. “What is he?”

“He’s an Angel,” said Vega. “Just like you and me.”

“I’m an…Angel?”

“You remember Angels, don’t you?”

Deneb approached them. He was shaky but Vega was relieved to see he was looking better. “Altair?” he asked hesitantly.

“Deneb, he needs some time to recover,” Vega said, not wanting to tell her young sibling the truth, that there would be no recovery. They were still ten meters or so from the young Angel when his left wing shifted suddenly upwards. He was thrown off balance and landed on the floor.

“Are you alright?” Vega shouted.

“I think I’m fine,” Deneb said, examining his wing. Then his voice turned tremulous. “Vega?”

The edge of his wing was blurring, shifting. A scrap of blackness peeled away from the rest and soared through the air. The three Angels watched it as it slowly arced towards Vega. At the last moment, it twisted past her to land on her brother’s injured back. She watched, a sick feeling forming in her stomach, as the flake landed on the wounded skin, and vanished. His body shook.

“Vega!” Deneb screamed. She looked up. A cloud of black particles was now drifting away from the edge of his wing. He flapped his wings frantically, but that only made it worse. A dark stream flowed across the room and into their brother’s tortured back. On this day in which every nightmare came true and every impossibility a reality, Vega didn’t doubt what she was seeing. It was all too simple. Her brother was absorbing Deneb’s wings.

“Deneb, get out of the church!” she shouted. Either he didn’t hear her or couldn’t move, because he stayed where he was. The outer edge of his wing was entirely gone; now the middle was being eaten away. He whimpered as he watched it go.

Vega judged the situation quickly. The process had only begun when the two of them got too close, so she had to separate them to stop it. Deneb had been standing on his own, so he’d be the easier of the two to move. She lowered Altair’s shaking body to the ground as quickly as she could and ran to Deneb. Hoisting the boy up was difficult with his wings, but she put his arms over either of her shoulders and picked him up piggy-back style, as she remembered humans called it. His body pulled away from her and she realized it was the tug of his wings. Still she pushed onwards until they reached the vestibule. “Stay in here,” she told Deneb and slammed the door to the sanctuary. The river of particles flowed unfalteringly through the thick wooden door.

“Vega!” her little brother cried.

“Deneb, listen to me!” she shouted through the door. “Try and fight it!”

“I can’t!”

“Fine, then just stay there!” She dashed towards Altair. He’d always been the strongest of the three of them, maybe he was strong enough to stop this. When she reached his side, he was no longer twitching. Instead, he looked at her with clear eyes. “Vega.”

“You remember?”

“Yes, I remember.” She watched in amazement as he rose from the floor and stood facing her.

“Then can you help us? Can you stop whatever’s happening?”

“No.”

“No?” Vega repeated. “You’re hurting Deneb!”

“It’s beyond my control. The multiverse is trying to repair itself.”

“What does that mean? How can hurting Deneb—”

“There’s no time. Essentially, instead of transmitting energy through the planes as we should, Deneb can now only emit and I can only receive. The multiverse is completing the circuit. That’s my guess, at least. Understand?”

“I think so. How do we stop it?”

“We can’t. Right now Deneb and I are doing exactly what we were designed to do. It won’t stop until all Deneb’s power is gone.”

“So you’re just going to wait?”

“You think I would wait?” he demanded. “Until my little brother is stripped of his wings? You’d probably be next. I would not wish this fate on anyone. I spent forty days cut off from the birth plane. It was like suffocating in open air, perpetually dying and never reaching rest. I had to watch my brother go through the same thing, unable to help him. I thought that was hell. But I was wrong. I still had my wings. Now…” he shook his head. “I won’t tell you what it’s like. I pray you never find out. But unless we stop this transfer, that will be your fate.”

“But you said we can’t do anything!”

“I have an idea. What did I always tell you, Vega? Without wings, an Angel…”

“Would be a mortal,” Vega concluded automatically. He’d always said that when chastising her for looking down on humans.  “You think you’re mortal now?”

“I have no wings, what do I have left? I’m sorry, Vega, I’m truly sorry. But to save Deneb and yourself, there’s only one thing to be done.”

Vega starred at him, disbelieving. The energy from Deneb’s wings flowed past, stronger than ever. Who knew how much longer the boy had before he became like his brother. Still, she could not do it. “You can’t mean it.”

“Did you suddenly find yourself stronger today?” She nodded. “I thought you might. I wondered what would happen with all my old power. It couldn’t go to Deneb, cut off as he was. It all went to you.” He put his hands on Vega’s shoulders. “You’ve got my power now. Use it well.”

“I won’t use it to kill you.”

Altair nodded, as if he expected her reply. “Then run.”

“What?”

“Run. Take Deneb. Get as far away as you can. Don’t stop running. Don’t come back. That should stop it.”

She looked him square in the eye. “Do you mean that?”

“Vega, do as I say. Go.”

She hesitated, and then nodded. Her brother let her go and she turned away from him. After a few steps she broke into a run, willing herself not to look back. In the vestibule, Deneb shivered uncontrollably. His left wing was mostly gone and the right side was beginning to blur. Without pausing for explanation, Vega slung him over her back and ran as best she could. Out the church door and down the street, not caring who saw. Humans had spent millennia almost oblivious to Angels; no reason to think they’d start to notice now. The road was empty, anyway. Night had fallen while she was in the church, and Vega had not even noticed. Apparently the glow from her chest was brighter than she thought.

They were three blocks away from the church when Deneb spoke. “Vega, I think it’s stopped.”

She set him down and examined his wings. They were solid at the edges, no sign of further erosion.

“You want to go back and check on Altair now?” he asked.

“No, he told me to take you.”

“But just to see if he’s alright?”

“Deneb. He told us to run, and what’s we’re going to do. Run and not go back.”

“Well, if he said so…” Deneb paused. “Are you crying?”

“What?” Vega said, quickly wiping her eyes. “Of course not. You steady on your feet now?”

“I think so.”

“Then run.”