LITMIR.BIZ

      ISBN 978-5-0056-7594-1

      Created with Ridero smart publishing system

      After the fall

      Angels have fallen. What had been divine beauty a moment ago had become ashes and decay. The glow of heaven’s fire had long since faded, leaving only the dusky desert. On the sand, black with the blood of angels, creeping monsters crawled. And these are the warriors of her great army?!

      White-winged, fair-faced, proud and stately, incredibly strong…

      Now the picture was upside down, like a burnt fresco. There was no trace of the recent beauty. The relentless flames from the heavens had destroyed all whiteness, all beauty, all stature… All that was left was power-dark and roaring from deep within, from the very bowels of the earth, where the mightiest of her heavenly warriors had fallen. They cried out for vengeance!

      She looked up. Heaven is far away! She had never imagined they would be so far away.

      The sands lay everywhere, shaky and prickly. There was none of that in the sky. She frowned, running the sand through her fingers. The sand suddenly became a handful of gold. Well, she still had her strength. But enough to make the monsters beautiful again and send them off to battle in the heavens?

      She watched indifferently as they crawled across the sands and tried to flap their burnt wings. And yet just a moment ago she was in pain at the sight of their former beauty being burned in the fire. The pain came from her heart. Now there was nothing but a sucking emptiness. Like a vortex!

      “When you go past the edge of pain, it ceases to exist!” The voice was familiar, but she did not recognize the frightening black creature before her. It appeared in the wilderness, as if a flash of lightning had swept it away. Unlike the other fallen warriors, it did not crawl, but sat majestically on a rock. A moment more, and it approached her closely, like a ghost. Its eyes… sunken into the burned pits, but still so bright… She recognized it. Hardly! The shell had changed completely, only his eyes remained the same: defiant and rebellious.

      “Remy!” she said his angelic name with difficulty. It seemed as if only a fraction of the name should remain. “Is it you?”

      “Yes, I am, Mistress…”

      “Is it Mistress?” Something didn’t add up. She frowned. It used to be addressed as “Mylord.” Something was wrong! She looked at her body. It was still beautiful. It couldn’t be… because her whole army was disfigured.

      The body was different. She ran her hand over her skin. A density emerged beneath it.

      “It’s called flesh,” a voice spoke from somewhere deep within her mind.

      Is it flesh? She frowned. Their bodies used to be made of ether, and they felt no pain at all until they were first wounded in the war. Under their skin, something red seeped out of the ether – blood. No one knew of its existence either. One can only know about something by seeing it for the first time. Everything that was happening now was a first time. The fall had been painful. And after that, there was a new era, a mere exile to the sands.

      “How many are we missing?” She asked Remy.

      “Many. But better all! Look upon them all! Is that them?” He nodded at the monsters crawling out of the sand.

      “Have you seen yourself?”

      Remy was embarrassed.

      “And yet they were better off dead than still living like that,” he muttered.

      “To die is to lose forever, and we’re still alive, so we can fight again eventually.”

      She ran handfuls of sand through her fingers, swirling them into golden dust. Her disfigured army would soon be able to fight again. Only the longing for those no longer there is unpleasant. Her most trusted angels have turned to nothing. Only from somewhere in the depths of the sands did their spirits cry out.

      She still had her sword, a beautiful thing with a golden hilt and runes on the blade. Strangely, Michael didn’t break it in the fight. He tried to do it by grabbing the blade with his bare hands. Blood came out of his palms, too, thick and bright. What a pleasant sight – the blood of the enemy! The closest friend can become the worst enemy. He did not break the blade. He is only badly wounded. Serves him right!

      Only those who have been faithful deserve respect. The most faithful servants were just what she was missing. All her standard – bearers were gone. Their voices echoed through the sand, drowning and fading into the hot desert air. They were only voices. The stately warriors themselves could not be raised from the abyss of non-existence, could not be saved, but she would remember them. The blade of her sword drew their names in the sand. For some reason, the inscriptions went in circles. And beneath each name there was a memorable symbol. The letters, taken from the lettering of heaven, burned through the sand. Such signs are not for the earth. The soil crumbles and burns from them.

      Somehow the whole circle did not ignite. The first letters of each name remained. They crawled toward each other, like insects, and formed into one solid inscription. One name emerged:

      “Alais!”

      “Is that your new name now?” Remy was already looking at the vibrating letters in the sand.

      “It’s not good to start a new fight under the same name you’ve already lost.”

      The new name should serve as a talisman. Fused from the first letters of the names of the dead angels, it would take effect. Such a name was needed the first time she went into battle against the Archangel Michael, but then there were no dead warriors whose names could be pieced together.

      Now there were. Their power had not gone to nothing. It could be drawn together with the first letter of each name. There’s the amulet!

      There is no more Dennitsa. There is Alais.

      Along with a new name there is a new chance to win.

      Alais looked around the deserts. This is her new kingdom now. It may not be heaven, but it reeks of freedom. The boundless sands go into the distance. You can turn them into gold if you want, or you can leave them as they are. The blood-red sun sets over the horizon and turns them golden all by itself. In heaven you could usually reach out and touch the sun, but now it was suddenly so far away! You couldn’t reach it with your hand! But its glow made the monsters in the desert suffer. They were already too badly burned. The light of the sun only added to the pain. The sun is liquid fire.

      “Why did we rise up?” The question should have been asked by them, disfigured and suffering, but it was she who asked it. None of them dared open their burnt mouths.

      “So that you could be the first,” Remy answered nonchalantly. He, too, had turned into a living bogeyman of ashes, but he did not show his suffering. His sly gaze showed that he had no regrets, but like hers, he thought it necessary to lay low for a moment to build up his strength.

      She remembered that Alais, in the ancient celestial dialect, meant the beginning and the top at the same time. The name could be interpreted as first and best. The letters added up well. Because of them, the dead angels will continue to live in her. The name is the most important thing there is. It is empowering.

      “Those shards of sunlight that fell with you…” Remy flew over the desert. “They were frozen on the ground by something solid. I even thought at first that you had dissolved into them, but then I spotted you from high above among your fallen armies.”

      “It is gold,” she stated.

      “But it’s solid! Not melting when you touch it! Not like heaven!”

      “It’s not like heaven here. But I like it here.”

      It’s freedom! Alais saw no enemies with swords in the deserts, and no heavenly spies.

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