Fantasy Heaven Has Had Enough

[leafyx8]

Evangeline had never claimed to be a good person. Certainly not a saint, but she would never have dubbed herself as bad either. She believed she existed in that common middle ground that most people would find themselves in. Her vices and past decisions aside, she had never put much thought into what would have made her a ‘better person.’ She could remember sitting in uncomfortable church pews when she was younger, listening to some old man preach about the need for salvation and being absolved of sins she was already deemed guilty of. Back then, she couldn't help but think- what was the point of trying?

Hindsight was always twenty-twenty, though. Maybe if she had bowed her head deeper those days, or said her prayers at night, or took her mother seriously when she’d scold her about misbehaving, quoting she’d only make it to heaven if she acted right. Evangeline had a feeling that even if she had followed her mother’s advice, her life would have always turned out the same. Even with the rapture happening before her eyes, she still had that seed of doubt that any of this was right, judged by an unknown scale humanity was subjected to the day the world turned over. Nothing made quite enough sense to her even still- the information that the small group her brother and her had formed was mostly assumptions. The only thing they knew for sure was that they could not get caught.

The first encounter of angels that Evangeline remembered was when Landon and herself were hightailing it out of Portland on Day One. Stuck in an endless line of traffic as the city behind them lit up in flames, they only decided to ditch the car when they saw swooping figures attached to the cars behind them, screams echoing and growing closer and closer. The pair grabbed their packs and descended down the grassy hill of the highway, only turning around briefly to watch as a couple were pulled out of their car, one person gutted while the other swept away. They later pieced the little information they had with another traveling group, ultimately coming to the very basic understanding that they were being hunted, and to get caught would have meant probable, if not certain, death. The group had remained fairly hidden, avoiding major cities as they traveled down, no set destination other than to stay clear of highly populated areas. They had eventually made it to barren lands of Arizona, the group almost half the size from what it was once. Casualties and close calls had happened along the way, but they never had much time to stop and grieve before they had to move on. Now, their group was a measly seven, with herself and her brother included. A family of three and a younger couple made up the rest of the group, all strangers that now relied on each other for safety.

They had been running off of little water and hardly any food for days, too afraid to spend much time in the open to scavenge and far too weary of actually entering a town. Their desperation had reached an all time peak, though, and eventually they had rationalized that a quick trip into the smallest town they could come across would be worth the risk.

That was how her and Landon had ended up approaching the little town of Williams- they assumed that the more that went, the more likely for trouble. Landon had wanted Evangeline to stay behind, but knew her stubbornness was never going to let him go alone. She was the older sister, after all. They went at night, hoping for the cover of darkness to aid them in their quick run. A mess of a convenience store was where they had managed to fill their backpacks with whatever they could find, their raid going almost too well. That very feeling should have been the indication that it certainly was too good to be true.

Just as the duo was going to make their break out, Evangeline reached out her arm in front of Landon, stopping him in his tracks as they heard the eerie sound of the bell of the front door open. Without much time to think, Evangeline and Landon made a run for the back of the store, the dark figure that loomed in the aisle, one that radiated bad intentions. A terrible laugh that brought the hair up on her neck, the two didn’t dare to look back twice as they rushed to the door. Evangeline felt her feet become swept out from under her, her right leg embedded with three deep scratches as she stumbled to the floor. Call it stupid, or selfless, or simply giving up, but as Landon burst through the back door of the store, Evangeline shoved her backpack to him, using her non-injured leg to kick the door closed behind her- thankfully the door locked automatically from the inside. The look of horror etched onto her younger brother’s face was one the last thing she’d ever see, she assumed. She scrambled back as the figure approached until she was against the wall, the twisted face of something only somewhat human in appearance showing in the brief moments the lights of the store would flash. Evangeline would have never thought she’d stoop so low, but in the face of death, she found herself squeezing her eyes shut, sending a chastise prayer up to whatever being might be above- a hail Mary at the end of her life. Before the relief of death could save her from this nightmare, the two were interrupted by a rumbling from outside, the doors to the store flung open. Evangeline might have thought she was saved- if it hadn't been the shadow of wings attached to the group that had made their entrance.

 

[Ryees]

Marzo Farin awoke in the morning in another sweat, images of a feminine face fading into the back of his mind as he blinked the sleep out of his eyes. The dawn had broken just a few minutes before, and it was a tour day for him and his Cohort. Dawn to dusk, they would ride out into the human world, hunting for human stragglers and demon invaders and capturing or killing as deemed practical and necessary. In Farin's experience, it had often been more of the latter.

The morning passed and he had been served breakfast from the camp pages to whom only he was ever courteous; donned the armor he would spend the next twelve hours in; and reviewed the maps of the area, noting major landmarks and buildings and, in particular, stores and shops where food would have been left when humanity scattered. It was those hotspots that they most often found their human prey, and where there were humans, there would inevitably be demons.

With a final gear check, he and his five wingmates walked through the tall gate erected at the camp's edge, the chain-link barrier once a human prison wall that they had repurposed as their base of operations in this sector. Every soul within had been damned the moment the skies had opened; it was empty by the time they had been dispatched.

The skies were, as always, a respite. As the clouds came close and the ground fell away, even as he scouted, even as he remained diligent and alert, a peace settled about him. The wind under his wings and in his hair, even through the helmet, lifted away some of the weight of his duty, a task that still sat sour in his belly. The fervor with which is men, even from his own Cohort, sought and slaughtered mankind unsettled him. God had created them in His image, and while it was true that they had squandered that honor, he was not so certain that this was the recompense deserved. Not that he had a choice in the matter—his station would require action, and he had not spent his life catering to these high-brow winglets to let it fall apart now.

The scent was what always came first. That sour, rotten, acrid odor of burning hair and moldering flesh that only came along with Hellspawn and their ilk. There was a small town ahead, barely big enough to be on any of the modern maps, but a noted potential hotspot for their search. With their intelligence once again proving accurate, the squadron began their descent.

"For You have girded me with strength for battle; You have subdued under me those who rose up against me." Light wove around them in swaths, forming gleaming steel armor out of motes of light, bent and forged in the heat of heaven and cladding them from toes to wingtips, only their flight feathers left unburdened by holy steel. "Behold, you have given me authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure me!" They all tucked their swords close to their bodies. The high arches of their wings bent together and their long, gleaming feathers closed around them. Their armor shone brightly, and like a six-shooter firing all its chambers at once, they began their bullet drop. The aerodynamic pod that their wings formed cut through the air, propelled downward by a jet of holy light. Six sonic booms rent from them in unison as sound lost track of their position, and like a Wild West meteor, they impacted the ground just outside the doors to the store.

The humans inside would one see the one figure that had broken rank from the cluster of black-swathed forms crowding around the door. The shop had been surrounded, nearly a hundred demonkin by their rough estimate—thirty of which were evaporated in a heaven-fall of holy heat as six ballistic angels blasted into the pavement, sending a rippling shockwave of force and holy fire in six concentric rings that tossed ground and bodies with equal ease.

Farin exhaled slowly and let his wings unfurl, standing from within the crater his drop had made and letting his senses return. As the dust settled, he firmed up his grip on his sword.

Six figures emerged simultaneously from within the cloud in six directions, launching into the crowd swords-first. These low-circle demons were nothing to them, chaff and rabble for the slaughter. But it was clear that they were fighting through the crowd, making their way towards the shop.

 

[leafyx8]

The worst part was the smell, Evangeline soon realized.

Sure, the thing was something out of nightmares- contorted limbs and gnashing jaws bound together by black flesh. It moved painstakingly slow now that it had her backed into a corner, as if toying with its pray in some sick game it knew it would come out as the winner. The closer it drew, the more pronounced the smell of hot rott fanned over her face, actively making her wish for death sooner rather than later, if only to escape the suffocating presence of the hellish thing.

Her mouth had opened to scream, yet there was no sound, too much shock and fear controlling her, rendering her speachles and frozen in place, at the mercy of thing.

The building shook when a series of loud booms rang through from outside, pulling the creature’s attention from Evangeline long enough to allow her self-preservation to kick back in. Shaky hands fumbled with the pocket knife in her jeans, the small blade kicked out, so pathetic in the dire situation she might’ve laughed. She held the blade out at an arms length, using what little strength she did have from her free arm to attempt to reach for the back door handle. Her fingertips brushed the cold metal as she strained to make purchase. What she would do once the door was opened was a problem for then- her calf felt like it was on fire from the cuts left in the skin, the blood staining through her clothes and onto the tile. Everything was stacked against her-and whatever was outside that briefly stole the creature’s attention didn’t strike confidence in her that she’d be able to get past that, even if she were to manage some way out of her current problem.

Heavy footsteps on linuleum tile and broken glass sounded off at the front of the store, Evangeline found no comfort in the thought that she wasn't left alone with the gruesome creature. There was a shift in the air, an energy that was so foreboding that she understood while the creature had paused in the middle of claiming its dinner. Evangeline would have rathered taking her chances with the creature rather than momentarily and involuntarily saved by whoever-or whatever- was outside.

A terrible, ear splitting sound cut through the air as the creature regarded the intrusion, causing Evangeline to pause her own escape in favor of covering her ears, the knife clattering to the floor beside her. It moved with speed that didn’t match its clunky appearance, lunging after its new target, though the screech that would follow soon after suggested that it was no match for what had come in its stead.

The annoying yet persistent will to live still existed even in this bleak scene. Evangeline placed all the energy she had in standing on her good leg, the pocket knife retrieved from the ground at her side. Even in the bitter end, she couldn’t just accept this was how she went out. Anticipation and adrenaline kept her going, feeling more like a mouse trapped as she was left to be the focus of what was encroaching from the front of the store.

 

[Ryees]

A field of rapidly-decaying corpses released a nauseating, acrid, sour smell into the air in waves. Demonic bodies, when brought earthside, did not last the way they did in the underworld. They decayed even while they lived, fueled by an ever-increasing need for ichor that prompted their hunting. When they were killed, those bodies began to flake away and decay into ash within minutes, leaving a burnt, bloody smell lingering in the air along with the hanging remnants of their desecrated corpses.

With the crowd cleared, Farin raised a hand and flicked out a complex series of gestures. His brothers- and sisters-in-arms spread out around the shop, two on each side and one at his side, separating into three groups. When they had reached their positions, Farin touched his thumb and forefinger together, a mote of golden light flickering to life between his digits that rapidly grew to a blazing marble of holy energy. He hefted it in his palm for a moment, rolling it around and letting the glittering sparkles of its energy settle and solidify, then, with a heave that suggested that tiny marble was many times its weight in size, threw it through the shattered windows at the front of the store.

The air went silent as all pressure was sucked into that marble, then it erupted.

Rolling waves of fire split the crowd inside the door in half. In that same moment, six ironclad figures burst into the space from all sides, golden swords carving a swath of glorious retribution through the sickening, inky creatures. Farin led the charge with his pair—an older seraph named Gil'Dera—their paths dancing in an organized, tight helix. An imp leapt up behind Gil's head, speared by a lance of golden light from Farin's outstretched fingers. Gil'Dera lunged forward straight for Farin, who calmly dropped his knees and pivoted on his heel to allow Gil's claymore to pierce the space his abdomen had departed from, ripping into the chest of an imp who had been leaping for the back of Farin's legs.

The smell of demon death was permeating the room, but all of the seraphs had, upon their first entry, smelled the sweeter, lighter scent of human occupancy. It was laced with the lofty sour scent of sin that was always laid over the top of the scent of mankind, but given the context of all the demonic filth spreading in the supermarket, following that scent was like hunting for the smell of wildflowers in a cesspool.

Marzo squeezed down on the hilt of his sword, channeling a gout of fire through its blade to burn away the flesh of a demon whose body had blood-stuck his blade. As its body burnt to ash, he cast his gaze up and around—there. At the back of the store, near one of the employee exits to the back parking lots, a blonde human woman with a gash in her leg and a petrified look on her face was standing just behind a horrible quadrupedal demon with red blood on its claws, still wet and fresh. It was a higher circle than its brethren by at least two, but still paled in comparison to the power within either Farin or Gil'Dera on their own, much less the pair of them.

"Help the others," Farin commanded in his resonant, melodic baritone. "Clear the space. Search for the survivors. Meet by the front registers." Gil'dera nodded, flaring his wings and, with a single pump that lifted him a foot off the ground, launched himself up and over the shelving to disappear into the store.

Farin leveled his blade at the demon, purposefully moving forward on the balls of his feet. Now fully engaged, the creature bounded forward at him, gnashing its jaws as it leapt up and swung one of those great paws down at Farin like a moldering bear. Farin dipped his shoulder and pushed back on his right leg, locking his left heel to the floor and pivoting to let that palm whistle through the air and impact the floor. His sword whipped forward, tip-first, driving up and through the beast's jaw and poking out the top of its head. It roared and struggled against the pinned blade as Farin ripped his arm back, bisecting the demon's head from crown to snout.

It screamed and reared back—but did not die, its head lacing back together with bloody strands of flesh as it charged him again. With a bitten off curse, Farin threw his open hand forward, a searing bolt of golden energy ripping from each of his five fingertips. They seared through the air and impacted the demon in the head and chest, exploding on contact. That was enough; with its head blown in half and its chest blown through from two angles, it finally flopped over on its side. Its skin was already floating up into ash as Farin stepped past it to regard the woman on the ground.

The gashes in her leg would keep her here, left unattended, and demonic wounds would fester and taint and eventually turn her into a demon herself, if they did not drain her body's energy and kill her outright. The scent of sin was lighter about her, but still present; she would have been an edge case of judgment, to be killed or spared as seen fit, but that was a decision that would be made by the camp council. He was obligated to take her back with him, and that meant first tending to her wound.

"Do not move," he commanded her as he slipped his sword into the hardened leather sheath on his hip, "if you move, you may die." Despite that warning, as he bent to reach a hand out to her leg, she jolted upright. A tiny pocket knife in her hand, she swiped it at his arm, its blade bouncing off his armor and putting a deep gouge in the cheap metal blade. Farin rolled his eyes, catching the woman's hand as it passed by him and locking his grip down. He pressed, and her palm bent back, opening and dropping the blade, and then he leaned forward, putting his face very close to hers. He smelled of golden flowers, honeysuckle tinged with vanilla, and his silver eyes pierced her blue ones.

"I'm trying to help you, right now," he growled. "You'll get nowhere on that leg. Now, be still." He released her hand and sat back on his haunches. From the small of his back, he pulled a belt knife, pulling the hand-length blade free of its ivory sheath and sliding it into the cuff of the woman's jeans. With a quick slide, he sliced up her pant leg halfway up the thigh, lifting her leg at the knee with surprising gentleness. With a half-circular slice and another mirrored below, he stripped the denim away, clearing his workspace.

Farin stowed the knife, placing one hand on the woman's thigh just above her knee, while the other settled at her ankle, inches below her cuts. Gold-dust motes of light sputtered from his fingertips, curling around her leg and wrapping the limb in a billowing, comforting warmth like the first summer's balmy breeze. The pain in her leg dulled, turning to an acute ache like a day-old cramp. Her skin, beginning to blacken from the taint of the creature's claws, pinkened and woke up, fibers knitting slowly back together strand by strand. The battle raging around them made the calmness and care he exhibited all the more surreal, having transitioned from brutal slayer of monsters to halcyon healer in the blink of an eye.

Slowly, Farin released her high and ankle, pulling his hands away. Dried blood smeared up and down her leg, but the triplicate wound was closed. A trio of pink, jagged lines wound up from her ankle to the back of her knee, and would likely remain for the rest of her life, but the muscle underneath had begun its natural healing. By no means was it without pain, and it would give her grief for many days to come, but she would be able to walk on it. Farin stood, and held out a hand to her, expectant. "Put some weight on it. Test."

 

[leafyx8]

Evangeline’s breath came easier, if only for the brief moment, as the monster switched focus in favor of the bigger threat at the front of the store. She wasn’t naive enough to feel relief- whatever or whoever had stepped in was doubtfully there as a savior for her. If anything, the intrusion was only delaying inevitable death to allow the adrenaline to subside, searing pain shooting through her leg pulling her focus. It was an ugly scene, flesh and blood peeking through the slits of denim. The white hot burning sensation tingled through her leg, rendering it useless and pinning her to the floor.

Her head fell back against the wall behind her, half lidded eyes clouded with tears. It was exhausting, the constant fight to live another day. Even more frustrating to still hope to push death away when she saw no way out of her current predicament. She’d either be picked off by whatever creature would win against the other at the front of the store, or give to the gash in her leg. Yet, when the squelch and screech of monster signified it’s death, she snapped into the present once more, left to the slayer of the beast.

She had acted on instinct, her hand coming up with the shoddy blade despite his warning. She found it counterproductive to nurse her wound when she’d be no better off than the creature from before soon enough. A string of protests died on her tongue as his gaze cut through her, his entire presence was like fresh air in the middle of a wild fire. It wasn’t enough to lull her into comfort. If anything, it was even more unnerving, to have such a windless countenance while the sword on his hip probably took countless lives without a second thought. If she had more fight in her, she might’ve reached for it. The thought was tempting, she knew the odds of anything other than her death coming out of it was slim, but even if she only managed to mildly inconvenience him, she’d feel some satisfaction.

Her eyes swept over his features as he dutifully played nurse. For someone so ethereal and powerful, he looked far too human. He wasn’t, that much was clear. Like something written in fiction, the cascading light that fluttered straight from his fingertips melted into her skin. If she wasn’t in the predicament she was in, she wouldn’t have believed it possible.

Her mind regained her senses slowly as the pain retreated to something only lingering, the oddity of her situation striking harder as she was presented his hand. She didn’t miss that his words were not at all a suggestion and much closer to a command- the cheek he had to be a saint one moment and irritatingly sharp the next. Her expression gave away the flash of annoyance, but it only took a moment to shuffle through her options. Her hand reached out in the space between them, clasping his own.

Shaky legs pushed herself off the tiled floor, her free hand reached behind her to support herself against the wall. She took a step, and while her leg looked worse for wear, she was surprised to find that it didn’t come with too much difficulty. The brief thought of making a run for the back door crossed her mind, but she was sure her thoughts were rather transparent at the moment, and the hand she had used for support a moment ago felt more like a shackle now rather than helpful.

Her head tilted back to regard the man fully, at his height. Too many questions built up and back piled in her throat, none of which seemed worth speaking out loud. She sifted through her words, piecing them together.

“Who are you?” Out of everything she could have asked, it was the simplest and yet pointless. The better question was ‘what’ was he. In the dim light that existed, she could hardly make out the notable features, but faint inklings of something familiar existed in the air around him.

That, or she just lost too much blood.

 

[Ryees]

Farin looked down at her for a long moment. Despite the way his eyes scanned her up and down, lingering on her face, he was not so much gauging or judging about her. Rather, he was listening to the room, the cadence of combat, the sounds of conflict, determining if he had time to answer questions or if the situation was too dire. The obvious sound of a holy blade rending black flesh spurred him to speak.

"My name is Marzo Farin." He raised a hand, and, like tapping on an invisible touch screen, tapped his finger in a line downwards, five blips of golden energy appearing in the air. When his hand came up to the second dot and he poked a mote of light into either side, the golden cross flashed whole, then split down the middle, expanding out to either side with a golden haze between it like the parchment of a scroll being held up by its half-cross scroll case. "And you are..."

Evangeline Clara Grace​

His eyes scanned over the scroll as text populated below it, no longer in a human language. "Death of your fellow man; coveting what is not yours; affairs in the bed of a man..." Farin's lips twisted to one side, his head tilting back and forth contemplatively. "A shorter list than some, certainly. The council may be easy on you, if you are honest in your confessions to them." He waved a hand and the scroll snapped shut, disappearing a moment later in a shower of golden sparks. "That entirely depends on getting you out of here first, however."

Farin suddenly stepped closer to her, barely a hand's width between his chest and her nose. He bent low, his face in hers, their noses an inch apart. "Chin up." The command came with a staunch finger that touched the bottom of her chin, thrusting her chin into the air. That finger traced down the center of her neck, stopping at the center of her throat. "Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck." A mote of silver light coalesced at his fingertip, then darkened, becoming opaque, then glimmering as a polished bead of liquid metal that spread out to both sides. The metal crept around Evangeline's neck, forming a silvery loop of flat metal a thumb's width but impossibly thin for how sturdy it felt. On each side of the collar, in line with her ears, was a small silver cross mounted on the collar that extended just above and just below the band's width.

From each of those crosses, a wisp of silver light formed, tracing towards Farin's fingertips with a spectral light, then disappearing entirely. He grasped at the air as if taking some invisible rein, and, after inspecting the air in his palm, nodded with some satisfaction. He waved his hand through the air experimentally, with no effect. When he twitched his fingers, though, the ghost of a silver line flashed momentarily through the air, and Evangeline felt the sides of that collar jitter with a minor tug in time with his hand.

"Not that you'll have much choice," he said as he started to turn back towards the front of the store, "but stay close. It'll be more comfortable for you if you can stay with me."

 

[leafyx8]

Evangeline was sure that she had simply lost too much at this point- that was the only reasonable explanation for what she was witnessing. The man before her had such a strange way of speaking, even his name was something she’d never heard, contradicting the weird sense of familiarity that she had first sense about him. As he rattled off in that strange way of his, seemingly listing her wrong doings, she was left with more questions than answers. The mention of a council- while she had no idea what that even entailed, she was sure it probably wouldn’t bode well for her.

“Wait, what do you-“ She started, before she was then just an inch from his person. She meant to take a step back when he stepped forward instinctively, but she was already close to the wall behind her and his face looked just before hers. Wide eyed, her head nudged upward by a single finger, she found herself holding her breath as the cold index followed the curve of her throat, sending a shiver that carried through her spine. The skin on her neck prickled into goosebumps, the feeling of something formed around her neck was only slightly noticeable. She wanted to push him away, to get some air from the suffocatingly bright and sterile atmosphere around him, but her hands could only clench together in fists at her side.

A huff escaped her lips when she felt a sudden tug at her neck- not at all painful, but certainly commanding. She reached to her throat when he turned from her, trying to feel whatever he had placed around her, but her fingers felt nothing, only finding the surface of her skin. She was positive something was there though, because as he moved farther, she was urged forward along with him, given barely a few feet of slack before a flash of light would become visible, connecting her neck to his hand.

She dug her heals in, though the tile on the store floor was far too slick to provide her enough traction to actually put up anything more than an annoyance to the man. “Hey! What’s wrong with you?” She argued when she had found her voice back, waving her hands infront of her to try to catch the leash, but to no avail. “I’m not-going anywhere- with you!” She tried to demand, her hands catching the sides of shelves as they went through the store, only to loose her grip and be tugged along like a misbehaving pup. Weirdly enough, it still wasn’t even the oddest thing that had happened to her that day.

The closer they came to the front of the store, the worse the smell of rot was, the sounds of screeching wails dwindling, but still present. She wasn’t sure what was happening outside- it seemed like her chances of staying alive were annoyingly higher by his side.

Another tug at her resistance brought her stumbling forward, making contact with his back, the armor not quite the softness landing pad. She looked up to his profile, and while she was hardly in any place to ask demands, she had ran out of pleasantries when he dragged her through the store. “Where are you taking me? Can I at least know what…this all is?” She questioned pointedly, as if encompassing the absurdity of it all with a wave of her arm.

 

[Ryees]

Farin's eyes were scanning the store, vaguely aware of the protests and whines from the girl behind him but seemingly ignoring her. His seraphs had retreated from the building, as far as he could tell, by the way the sounds of fighting now echoed dimly in a way that sounded like open-air conflict. The only sounds left inside were the dull scrabbling of still-dying demons and the smell of sulfur permeating their senses.

A scratching sound to his right made him stop up short, head jerking to one side—and in that moment, she ran into his back, tossing him forward and off balance as a set of black claws tore from the aisle next to them, dipping into the space just under his arm. A distressed shout left his lips, and his other hand raked forward. Lines of golden light sprayed from his knuckles and, like four whips of metallic light, swept across the demon's head with a crack. They sliced through black flesh like a laser, spraying black blood over the floor and wall.

His right arm hung at his side as he fell against one of the support pillars, punching his fist against his chest. In a shower of shimmering motes of golden light, his armor dissolved away, leaving just the white tunic that was rapidly staining with red down his right side. With a struggling grunt, Farin lifted his right shoulder enough to slip his left hand under his arm and press it to his ribs. "For they are life to those who find them, and healing unto the entire body." White waves of energy washed out from around his hand in slow, undulating floes.

Farin's eyes shot up to Evangeline. "What do you think this is?" he spat, throwing his head in a circle. "The rapture, the second coming, your species has hailed it for millenia, now. And always with their noses in the air, claiming they knew a thing about His word and His vision." He scoffed and rolled his eyes, shaking his head. "You've never known anything but greed and gluttony from the outset. There was never any hope for you." Even as he said it, the script faltered, his faith in his words less ironclad than his faith in his Lord. But the pain in his side let him press on without missing a beat. "Your judgment day came, and you were found wanting. So here we are."

He flared his wings the way one would flare their arms. "God's chosen, come to deliver you unto your final days—just not the days you all thought. You spent so many years desecreating this planet and killing each other that it was decided you couldn't handle your own responsibilities anymore. We're taking over where you left off." He tried to raise his right arm, winced, then let it drop again, taking another breath as another wave of light washed over his side. "Those of you who are redeemable, will be judged by the council. Those not will be sent back to the Lord and reborn to try again."

He looked up at her, irritation still coloring his green irises, but something more apologetic underneath, something softer. "As for you, you're clean enough to warrant a council visit. So I'm taking you there." His left hand twitched, causing the leash to flash into being for a moment. "Which is better than catching a stray claw from one of these things—" his head jerked at the decaying black corpse to his side "—or having one of my more brazen colleagues simply decide you're not worth the trouble and lop your head off on the spot. I, at least, am giving you a chance at life."

 

[leafyx8]

Evangeline hardly had any time to react when she saw the flash of a large claw leer out of from one of the aisles. A gasp escaped her at the sound of flesh breaking and a terrible, ear splitting scratch. She turned her head away from the sight just in time to save her face from a splash zone of black blood, though the same couldn’t be said for her clothes.

Once Evangeline looked to the Marzo once more, it was a surprise to see him bleed. Something about his entrance and the unexplainable part about him made him seem practically invincible, but the scene before her made him out to be far more human than what she had thought. A part of her grew worried for the man, if only because she didn’t understand what was happening and she was better off at his side- he had answers. She knelt before him when he slouched to the ground, though she wasn’t much of help. Her eyes were stuck watching with awe at the display of light emitting from under the white tunic. Though she wouldn’t lie- the thought of running while he was down didn’t escape her. It was only the reminder of the form of a leash tethering her to him that kept her from attempting to do so. She wasn’t that heartfelt, after all.

If she had been hoping for a clear answer, it wasn’t given. It was difficult to listen to him when he spoke so harshly, as if she had personally caused some great offense. A scoff even passed her lips as he berated her for all of humanity’s doings, dissolving any lingering feelings of concern for him as easily as it had come. “ God? As in, like- that God?” She clarified with disbelieving laugh, an index finger used to point up above them, as if to the heavens.

It was insane- and yet it scarily made sense. Or she was simply shell shocked enough to believe anything at this point “And you’re suppose to be…an angel, is that right?” The context of his wings made it clear enough, his words spoken in truth and yet all she could do was mock them- it was her initial reaction to being defensive in response to the judgments casted on her. Who was this guy to determine her worthy of living or not?

“Well excuse me for not being more grateful for being your prisoner,” she huffed, standing up from her knelt position in front of him, her hands placed upon her hips as she looked down to him. A frown etched into her features, frustration brimming over fear for the moment. “You’re any better? Never done anything wrong, is that it? That’s why you get a pass to kill anyone that you don’t think is…’good’ enough-“ she was hardly wanting to jump into some philosophical debate about the confinements of good and bad, but the mounting feeling of hypocrisy pissed her off.

Her words fell off when she heard a familiar, deep voice shouting from outside the shop. Her eyes widened in a newfound horror- she was sure Landon had gotten away. What was the point of her whole noble sacrificial act if he got caught in the end? She took a couple of steps towards the exit, only to be reminded of the limited space she was allowed to create between her and Marzo when the tug at her neck stopped her in her place. Her head whipped around to him, frantic in her movements.

“You have to let me go, get this thing off-“ she fell to his level once more with a thud, her fingernails scratching skin on her neck, though just as before, it was useless. Her hands instead reached out and made purchase with the collar of his tunic, her tone entirely different from when she had just been berating him from before. “Look, I don’t care, I’ll go with you-“ not that she had much of a choice in the matter, but she had little in terms of bargaining chips, “but he, my brother, he didn’t do anything! You gotta let him go, he’s a good guy. Do something!”

 

[Ryees]

And there it was, the same argument they always fell back to when they realized that their desperation was not being answered. The assault on his character had bothered Farin the first few times, but reminding himself that it came from a place of hurt and non-understanding had tempered it into something more piteous. He had opened his mouth to respond to her deeply flawed argument when her attention was drawn by a commotion outside, shouting and more sounds of fighting.

"Your brother?" Farin tapped those five dots into place again as he strode toward the front of the shop. As he moved, he tweaked a finger, and the leash attached to Evangeline's collar shortened, pulling her to stay within an arm's length of him. He pushed her ahead of him, herding her out of the dim, failed light of the shop into the bright light of day.

A scattering of freshly-fading demon corpses lay at the feet of his battalion's blades. The small moving trailer with its doors peeled from its hinges suggested that the demons had been holed up inside, waiting in ambush, but the lack of any visible wounds on the two seraphs with their blades drawn suggested that the ambush had gone poorly. Farin made to call out when one of the human men's eyes caught them, and he bolted over towards them, only to be jerked back into place by his light lead. The sour fury in the glance that he shot back at his keeper would have ignited dry tinder, but Farin ignored it as his light blips expanded once more into that golden-cross scroll.

Landon Drew Grace​

Farin read over the foreign text with a finger perched on his chin. "Landon Drew Grace... Mm. Well. A 'good guy,' you say, miss Evangeline?" he questioned, quirking a brow at her. "Substance abuse and murder? Adultery? Violence in the public eye? Consumption in excess? It's a wonder you humanfolk made it this far, acting like you did. If this is what a 'good' man looks like in your eyes, well, maybe we should have come sooner."

Farin's sharp eyes took in the blank and panicking stare on Landon's face and the confusion on Evangeline's. "Oh ho, you didn't know, then?" he droned, turning to look sidewise at Evangeline before his eyes locked back onto Landon. "Well won't that be a fun story to tell your sister on the way."

Marzo glanced at this lieutenant and gave a commanding nod, and the seraph reached into his leather pack and pulled an ivory horn chased in gold from within. Placing it to his lips, he blew a single, long, clarion tone, a pure and righteous note that reverberated all the way to the Heavens. "A carriage is on its way," Farin explained as the captives were slowly migrated back towards the store. "You have some time to chat." Like a lineup, the captives were placed just outside the store, in a line against the wall. Most of them slumped against the brick, assessing wounds or generally panicking, trying to come to terms with the situation that had lunged for their throats and placed the silver bands of shackled light around their necks.

 

[leafyx8]

Evangeline stumbled ahead of him out into the bright of day, her hand coming up instinctively to shield herself from the sudden blinding sun. Ash floated from mounds of decaying beasts, some far more gone than others, but all releasing that same terrible stench that the one Eva had faced inside gave off. Her attention was cut from the gruesome scene when she heard Landon call out of her, causing her head to whip around to greet him. Clearly he had been struck with the same luck of getting caught and led on a leash. Her face cringed when his body jerked back harshly from the force he applied of trying to step towards her and away from the angel behind him.

As Farin listed off Landon’s misdeeds, the girl’s first instinct was to call his bluff. The Landon she knew would have never done such a thing as murder- and if he had, there was no way-

“Landon, is that true?” She questioned, her brows furrowed together at the look on her brother’s face. Why was he not vehemently shutting down what was being said about him? How could he stand there and look at her like that, as if everything was crashing down, unless he had actually done those things. Evangeline turned her face to look away from the smug tone of the angel and the guilty expression of her brother. Her stomach twisted in a terrible way at the thought of Farin possibly being right. She had stood up and threw herself in line of danger for Landon, all for the skeletons in his closet to be revealed so easily by the angel.

Evangeline leaned back against the brick of the store with a sigh, glancing down the row of other captives. One man was crouched on the ground beside her, his head held in his hands, whispering some sort of prayer over and over again. Another at the end of the line continued to yell profanities at their capturers. It was an array of the grieving process. Landon seemed to fall closer to the latter side, as he stood before his sister, his eyes sweeping over her in concern to analyze if she was hurt.

“Are you alright, Ev? You shouldn’t have done that, are you stupid? You could have-“

Landon’s rambling of concern were broken off by Evangeline’s direct questioning. Her tone wasn’t accusatory, instead it was simply inquisitive, leaving no room for him to deny it. Evangeline didn’t like one bit that Farin had got to enjoy such a satisfying moment of proving his point, but she knew, somehow, he had been telling the truth. Her own ‘sins’ were correct, after all- he somehow had rattled off those correctly without knowing her.

“Who’d you kill?”

Landon’s jaw open and closed a multitude of times, trying to form some string of denials to the accusation. Evangeline’s face was grim, expecting an answer. Eventually his words found him, and he took the defense. “Come on, you’re not actually going to believe them? Look, we need to focus on getting out out of this, then we can hash this out.”

Evangeline shook her head, threading her fingers through the top of her hair. She couldn’t blame her brother for having secrets- she wasn’t some saint. But murder was on the last line of things she’d think him capable of.

“Did Katy know about it?” She questioned, his ex wife’s name causing Landon to flinch in response at the unpleasant memory. He too looked away, as if recalling whatever fateful day it happened. His fist clenched at his side, his teeth gritted in an intense battle of choosing his words.

“It was an accident. It was after the divorce, I had too much liquor in me, some…some fucking prick ran his mouth at the bar, and I blacked out.” His eyes retuned to his sister, searching her face for some kind of forgiveness that she wasn’t qualified to give. “I couldn’t tell ya- hell, it was a dumb mistake-“

Evangeline scoffed, almost as a laugh at the absurdity of it all. “A mistake? You got piss drunk, killed some guy in a bar fight because he said something you didn’t like, and now you look back on it and just call it a dumb mistake?”

Arguing with Landon was the last productive thing that the siblings could do- and a part of her wondered if that’s exactly what Farin had hoped for in the first place. Not that the two would have a real shot at escaping, even if they did get past this and collaborate a plan. Despite the situation, they were still shackled by an unknown force, and even if they managed to get out, they’d be just as easily caught. At least for the moment, they were simply a line of trapped mice.