In the End

by Alexandra Rowland

  “Don't –” Lalael said sharply. Lucien didn't, and the angel took a breath. “We were Made, on each of the thousands of days of the Innocent Time, and we were loved by the Síela, and for a time, it was good. But we were perfect, with our shining wings and bright eyes, and therefore imperfect. We lived but to adore the Sko Meala. When the Síela created the humans – out of animals – it saw the flaws, and it saw the wildness and the animal in man's nature, and that made human goodness all the more miraculous. And so after a time, the Síela realized the humans were something that we could never be. They were different. Special. They had the power of Belief that we didn't. To us, the Sko Meala is a leader, a guardian, a beloved and worshiped parent. To the humans, it was a ruler. They made thousands and thousands of gods out of the disgustingly tiny amount of it that they could perceive and understand. And then the Unpleasantness happened. Don't interrupt.” Lucien had been about to say something.

  “And then the Evildoer... Well, you remember. His power was greater than that of humans, but... He might have conquered all of Ríel before they cast him out.” Lalael twisted a pen between his fingers. “I remember how afraid we were.”

  “So do I,” said Lucien, but Lalael didn't seem to hear.

  “It was terrifying. No one knew who would disappear. First it was the rebels, then it was the supporters, and then the people who had stayed neutral. They weren't even giving trials by that point. You just kept your head down and sang as loud as you could or you got thrown into the Pit.” Lalael twisted the pen faster now and glanced at Lucien. “Was that when...?”

  Lucien nodded. “We don't talk about it in the Lower Realm. Lots of wrongs to avenge. Everyone has one.”

  Lalael put the pen down and laced his fingers, speaking from ancient memory, as if he had heard this story a thousand times and now had to tell it for himself. “The Sko Meala divided us into the Nine Ranks. I was an Angel to begin with. In the choir.” He smiled faintly. “That was before the trouble started. It was where I met Arael-pir, the Choir.” His smile faded, replaced with a look of such twisted pain that Lucien felt like gasping for breath. “For a time, I was the favorite of all the angels – I was the most human. Because I had flaws. I was a novelty. Fashionable. I think It and the Honored Archangels saw me as a pet of sorts. And then time passed...” He took a deep breath. “It became apparent that I wasn't good at it. I could never figure out which way the music sheets were written; I made mistakes. Was I holding them upside down again? And suddenly imperfection wasn't fashionable anymore. It created discord in the Song, and it was inconvenient, and so they sent me somewhere else.” Lalael shook his head, picked up the pen again, twirling it slowly. “This... This isn't the first time I've been on Earth. I was a Guardian. I was a messenger. I was a guard of the gate.” He shrugged. “Needless to say, I fumbled those as well. The Sko Meala wasn't happy. I was withdrawn from each position and sent elsewhere.

  “The Most Honored Archangel Raphael was the next to try me, so I was sent into the legion of healers. Two months and I was out. They handed me to the Most Honored Archangel Uriel. I was assigned to be a Laista – a, um...? I don't know what you'd call those.”

  “Guide,” Lucien answered promptly. They still had laista'a in Rielat, too.

  “Except, apparently I wasn't subtle or persuasive enough. The woman told her friends that she was hearing the voice of the angels, which was correct, but they didn't believe her. I think in the end, she went mad. They killed her.

  “So I was pushed thither and yon around Ríel, trying to find something I was truly good at, which wasn't much,” he added with a sharp laugh, “and never learning much of anything.” He fell silent again for a moment. “They called me the misfit,” he said. “The embarrassment. The disgrace. So eventually, about a hundred or so years ago, they finally stuck me in the Army.”

  ***

  He stood before the Archangel Michael, with his armor and uniform clutched in his arms, eyes downcast and wings limp to show his abject respect. Lalael was silent, humble, humiliated; Michael said no more than he, and neither did the two angels who sat at the ends of Lalael's wings and cleaned off his last assignment's brethuchirou – the patterns of color on the primary feathers that marked rank, distinction, and position. No one else had theirs changed as much as he did. Some people had been painted the same colors for their whole lives. As he waited, still, silent, and demure, it occurred to him that his feathers must have been painted with every color and every pattern there had ever been.

  The Archangel Michael crossed his arms, and Lalael knew without looking that his jaw would be clenched, the vein on his forehead would be pulsing, his eyes would be dark with fire and fury – Lalael knew where he wasn't wanted, and the Archangel certainly did not want the Embarrassment in his army. He knew they wished he'd been cast out while they had the chance to get rid of him.

  Lalael had been forced upon him, dumped on him like a pile of rubbish: Michael's frustration at having to deal with the Misfit's incompetency was the talk of the City. He held a sheathed sword that he shoved into Lalael's arms so hard that the angel nearly fell over onto the groomers behind him.

  Lalael raised his eyes; Michael met them, held his gaze for a moment before looking him over with disgust. “Don't get in anyone's way,” he said, and that was all.

  A few years later, Lalael knew why he had ended up there. He developed a feeling, a conviction that they'd put him there in the hopes that when the End came, he would be killed. Then they wouldn't have to deal with him for the rest of eternity, would they? And one day, it would come. They simply had to wait: Patience was a virtue.

  ***

  “I wasn't wanted. I knew nothing I ever did would be good enough.” He hesitated, continued, “Arael never...” He didn't finish, and Lucien didn't make a sound. “I'm tired,” Lalael said with feeling somewhere between supplication and sigh. “Tired of everything; of life, of existence – tired of sleeping, of waking, of dreaming, of breathing. There's always a little of me that just wants some nameless peace, and I don't know where to look for it except in death, and I'm a coward.” As he finished, Lalael buried his head in his arms and was quiet.

  And Lucien, Lucien began to speak.

  “It wasn't my fault that I Fell.” Lalael looked up at him, questioning, blotchy faced and eyes too bright. “I'll swear it. On anything. I just... We were so young. Even the wisest, and the highest. So passionate for our new world. I felt like the entirety of Creation had been made just for me.

  “I remember when we were Felled. I thought that the Lightbringer's banishment hadn't been fair, and I happened to mention it to someone within earshot of a pair of the Guards of the Gate. Lucien dragged Antichrist into his lap and ran his fingers through the cat's fur. “They swooped down on us, and wrestled us before the Throne of, um.”

  “Shousán,” supplied Lalael.

  “That one is the Light, then?”

  Lalael nodded into his arms.

  “All the angels were assembled,” Lucien continued, lacing his fingers together. “It was amazing. I'd never seen so many of us in one place. I was there, in the crowd of those who disagreed. And then the Speaker of Truth declared us guilty of treason and we were taken to the edge of Ríel. If you went willingly, they tied weights to your wings, but if you didn't... they did worse than that. They did the same to the ringleaders – the Lightbringer and the others with him. And then after they'd Done It, they pushed them over the edge and threw their wings down after them. And then everyone else stopped fighting.

  “Uncountable years in the Lower Realm,” Lucien said with a kind of horrified wonder. “And I still wonder how I survived without my sanity.”

  “Uncountable years,” Lalael echoed.

  “In pain and darkness and fear. And I remained... me. My name has changed many times, as I moved and as the humans and the other Fallen named me. I've been on earth before, too, more often than you.” Lucien's eyes became distant, as if seeing into the past, and his voice husked with old
memory: “In Babylonia, they called me Tishn, the demon of thirst, when I appeared to them in the desert. I can't remember most of them; it's been so long.. Göker in Persia. Daleel was the last name I was given – the last before I named myself. Lucien I am now and Lucien I shall always be. I was sinking into madness there in the dark, and I brought with me the only light I could. It was my way of clinging to my memory of the Higher Realm, just as it began to flicker and die out. All those years in darkness without even the tiny light of a little candle, and my name was my light. And the years in the heat of fire and the weight of the earth above me, and my name was the water and the wind. Years alone among my foes, and I was my own companion, for my name kept me sane. And then one day,” he said slowly, “I forgot my true name.”

  “You forgot your name?” Lalael demanded suddenly. “You forgot your name?”

  “The name I gave myself, my name, it kept me... me. And that, Lael, is how I Fell.” The angel was silent. Lucien added, gently, “This is the part where you say...?”

  “I hate that name,” he whispered, but he sounded unsure.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Lucien!”

  “Please tell me it's not another vision!” he wailed, clutching his toasting fork. “I just want to finish a meal! Just once! Is that too much to ask?”

  “Oh come on, it won't take long!” Lalael said, tugging on Lucien's arm. Lucien sighed and blew out the candles while Lalael shifted with impatience. When he hauled himself to his feet, Lalael said, “This way!” and dashed out the door. He pounded up the stairs.

  “How far?”

  “To the roof!”

  “Not before breakfast!”

  “Climb.”

  Lucien grumbled and followed. Lalael burst out onto the roof into the chilly October air, Lucien close behind. Lalael's little garden of pots was neatly lined up against one wall, filled with dirt and clippings from the rose bush he had encouraged and other plants he was experimenting with.

  “You should take those inside before it gets too cold.”

  “This way!” Lalael called.

  “Lalael, why are you – Oh dear. Please don't jump again. Please. My wings hurt for a week; please, please don't jump again.”

  But Lalael just laughed, and took off his coat – he'd cut slits up the back of the shirt, which were now raggedy with loose strings. Lucien dearly hoped he hadn't done that to his whole wardrobe. The angel really, really didn't need any more tells.

  And then Lalael called up his wings and jumped. Lucien had a split second to reflect that Lalael had actually gone insane this time – and living with an insane angel did not sound like a safe thing to do – but as he dashed towards the ledge, just a step before he got there, a blur of color and feathers shot up into the air.

  Lucien pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, well, well. Look who's all better,” Lucien mumbled to himself, lax with relief. No insane angels around here, thank you. At least, none without debate. “Congratulations!” he shouted as Lalael executed joyful swoops and loops in the air. “Can I go eat now?”

  “No! Come fly with me!”

  “Why?”

  “I'll race you!”

  “Are you okay?” Lucien asked. He recanted; Lalael had definitely gone crazy.

  Lalael swooped again, a broad grin plastered all over his face. “I'm fine. Get your wings out! It's the best day ever. It's glorious.”

  “You're sounding at the moment like you pawned off a few marbles, I think you should know. And it's not objectively glorious,” Lucien said, crossing his arms against the chilly wind that Lalael was generating, even though he did in his own highly subjective opinion find the weather today pretty damn awesome. “It's overcast and it's freezing.”

  “You like it. Stop complaining! I'll hold two more toasting forks of bacon for you.” With a flip, flick, and wingtip-pivot, Lalael shifted into a hover in front of Lucien, who still stood on the roof's edge. “I dare you!” he laughed, and shifted back into flight, fluttering and chivvying around Lucien's head. “Hah! You know you're going to lose! That's why you won't do it!”

  Lalael seemed to be much lighter and agile on the wings than was good for him, Lucien thought, as this agility allowed him to twist and twirl encouragingly in the air around Lucien without so much as mussing Lucien's hair.

  However, Lucien had a bit on him. Millenia of flight, matched with bodies that were admittedly physical impossibilities in this dimension, along with an intellect that had had a lot of time to practice – well, that had resulted in a few tricks. Or an arsenal of them. One of Lucien's favorites – one of his own invention, but then all of them were – was something that he used in cases like this, cornered by an aerial enemy. No one was a friend in the Forsaken Lands, and there had been a lot of potentially airborne adversaries around.

  Lucien's trick was a complicated trick, and hitherto one of a kind, for no one who had seen it had ever able to exactly reproduce it:

  Twist, duck, and roll into a crouch, ending behind and a little beneath Lalael. That was the first part of the trick, and designed both to offset his opponent and to remove him from the swarm or the center of focus, depending on who he was up against. Lalael, like the demons that Lucien used to experiment with, was unfazed, and he had to spend a moment maneuvering through the air currents to refocus.

  From crouch into spring, from spring to a feinted stumble; Lalael was already laughing, but then with an explosion of feathers and the gunshot crack of suddenly-displaced air (and a rip as his shirt tore), Lucien's wings were out and he was in flight, aided by the drop off the roof. Lalael shouted something in surprise and delight, but collected himself and shot off like a bullet, twenty stories above the street.

  Lucien shook his head, circling in the air, gray wings beating with steady, strong strokes. He couldn't hover like Lalael for more than a few seconds – it hurt his wings. They were the wrong shape for it. He focused his effort and began gaining altitude swiftly. From above the city, he could see flashes of Lalael's dove-white wings as he swooped and danced in the air. Lucien guessed his target spot, beat towards it twice, folded his wings back and fell.

  This was another of his tricks. With his wings stiff, but not tight, against his back, just unfolded, he had some guiding ability, while the lack of air resistance meant that he was speeding towards Lalael, straight and true as an arrow, a striking falcon. The wind rushed past his face, the landscape blurring around him as he gained speed, focused on a point just ahead of Lalael... Another bang sounded as he snapped open his wings, abruptly slowing him: This hurt too, but it was an amazingly good hurt, and he'd timed it perfectly – he landed square on Lalael's back and pushed off again, hard. Lalael stumbled, falling and staggering in the air. An instant later, he'd regained his wind, and then they were flying and shoving and wrestling all at once, like a battle and a ballet, tumbling through the air as they both tried to slam the other into a flagpole or make him crash into a building...

  Lucien managed to pin Lalael into a glass-sided office building for half a heartbeat, but instead of surrendering, Lalael turned, planted his feet against the glass window of the office building (in fact, the only window on that floor that hadn't been broken by flying shards of brimstone), and shoved off again into the air. His shoulder slammed Lucien's stomach, and he peeled away with a sharp laugh as Lucien began to fall again.

  Neither of them had even really gotten going yet.

  Lucien let his momentum propel him through the air until he hit the building on the other side of the street, and, setting his feet firmly against blackened stucco, he shoved off as hard as he could. The cold wind stung anew, blowing into his eyes and rippling through his hair and feathers, whirling around him. Lalael bolted down a side alley. Lucien backstroked, pivoted, and followed sideways, for the alley walls pressed in, too narrow for him to fly horizontally with his wings fully outstretched. The bricks flew by in blurs of red and gray. Lalael had surely chosen this alley because of its dimensions – it was just barely wid
e enough for him, Lucien saw, to extend. The bastard had known Lucien would have to compensate here.

  Then up ahead, Lalael found a dead end. Lucien, unable to stop soon enough at such speeds, threw caution to the winds and hoped that Lalael could maneuver in close spaces as well as he could in the open. The angel, wings cupped and backwinging, stopped his forward shot with a foot and a knee against the wall and shifted into hovering pace.

  “Lalael, move!” Lucien shouted against the wind. Lalael glanced back, alarmed, and flung himself upwards into the air, wings fluttering in the tight space. At the last second, Lucien managed to change his direction, winching his wings in tight, turning perpendicular to the wall as it rushed at him, and landing against the wall as Lalael had, foot, knee and both hands. He managed to run two steps up the side of the wall, awkwardly scrambling through the air with his wings at the same time before they grabbed the air again, and then, his angle changed, he was rushing upward with the speed of his momentum, until he snapped his wings open just as he came above the roofs of the buildings on either side. Lalael hadn't gotten his bearings, he was still fluttering overhead, looking back to make sure Lucien was alright.

  No instincts. No practice in leaving your pursuer in the dust, perhaps to die.

  They were going to crash.

  Rather than that, Lucien threw his arms around Lalael's waist, carrying them both aloft so that their wings wouldn't tangle in the air. Neither of them would have walked away unharmed from that.

  This, from the entrance to the alley, had taken the space of fifteen seconds.

  They shot into the air again, separating as they rose, and gained a clear shot to the park. They didn't even need to look at each other. Both pair of wings beat twice in perfect synchronization, and the two strained to maximum speed. The buildings shot by in blurs, the park and trees raced towards them; once again, time slowed down.

  ***

  Lucien could feel every breath of wind upon his skin, every tickle of down at the joints of his shoulderblades, every hair on his head as the wind shifted and whipped it at his face, and he knew if he could speed up just a little more it would run back smoothly. A primary feather shifted the slightest bit, and in these long moments he could feel its shift and the instinctive, automatic, hair's breadth adjustment against it.