Prophecy Betrayed

Chapter 2

I left come morning, not having any particular goal in mind. That's how it usually was after. I never knew precisely where to go next. I had to wait for the feeling, the alert my body gave me that told me where to go. It never took long, a day or two at the most. Until then I was free to wander the earth as I liked, pretending that this once glorious world was glorious still. I would pass by abandoned cities and pretend that they were filled with life. Flags flying, wagons entering and exiting with their merchants, streets filled with chatter about life and love, children being reprimanded by their parents for running too fast and crashing into things. At least, that was my idea of normalcy. I had no memory of such things, no past taste of that kind of life. Killing demons and transporting human souls...that was my normal.

Sometimes, when I walked through yellow pastures and dead forests, I liked to imagine how different my life would have been if I were human. I liked to imagine what my parents would have been like. Kind? Noble? Strict? What about my siblings? Cousins? Friends, children of my mother and father's acquaintances? My mind liked to wander to places like these often, and while I was unneeded to the world I would indulge in these thoughts. I would dream of laughter and picking flowers in the spring with other children, getting dirt under my fingernails, feeling the wind blowing across my face so sweet.

Sometimes I wished that I had a companion, someone to lean on those times when the seeds of doubt would bloom. I would feel guilty soon after, for why would I doubt that I was doing a great deed? I was chosen by Fate to save humanity. Yet I couldn't deny the pang in my heart whenever I saw the Tears of Bliss. Sometimes I couldn't help wondering if they were tears of pain instead.

I needed someone to walk with me and kill the doubt before it sprouted, someone to reassure me that what I'd been doing for the past two centuries was good.

I took a break at a pond overgrown with algae and the carcasses of dehydrated birds. I scooped up some water in my hands and took a sip. The salty flavor danced on my tongue and I reached over and grabbed a handful of the algae. It was salty and slimy and enough to satiate my hunger for the time being. I gazed down at my reflection in the water. I could have passed for human if I tried. I'd seen many with the same long white-blonde hair I had, same alabaster skin, same lean figure. Though I supposed if my eyes were blue instead of a shining silver I would blend in better. Then, of course, there was the itch...on my back where my wings would sprout whenever they felt too encumbered inside my body. The surest sign of my angelic heritage, what little heritage there actually was. Would people care what I was? I liked to think not, but without knowing them deeply there was no way to know for sure.

I pressed on for a few more hours, until the sun had slid down towards the horizon. I had just stepped out into an empty crop field from an elderly grey forest when I felt it. The magnetic pull and blazing of my heart and eyes. I looked around me and was pulled west. I couldn't refuse the call, but I didn't want to anyway. The call meant that there were people in trouble. And who would I be to turn away from them?

~*~

My wings, finally free from their fleshy prison, beat harder against the wind in time with my racing and blazing heart. My blood rushed through my veins like a rushing river I had once seen. I was pushed closer and closer to the desert lands and away from the forest lands, closer to the dusty brown sky and crackled fields and sandy wastelands of old. I hadn't ever been to this part of the world. I couldn't enjoy the passing beauty--or what once was. My body ached from the force of my wings. I hurried faster and faster until in the distance I saw it, a mountain of red and gold growing higher still. My body blazed hotter and as I drew closer I could see dark figures running in all directions into the night. I recognized some of them, their hunched over bodies with twisted disfigured limbs and wild hair. The village, small and unassuming, was ablaze. The screams reached my ears and triggered a deeper protective instinct in me. I circled the village once, twice, then dove down to the center of the square. I was surrounded by walls of fire, dark and angry, roaring like animals. I withdrew my sword and at once demons were on me. They swarmed me like a pack of wolves, snarling at me and lunging for me with gaping jaws and bloody claws. I swung my sword and they fell back, some with fewer limbs than before. It didn't take me long to dispatch them. I didn't stop until their black blood soaked the ground and the last wisps of life had left them.

I followed the screams and the smell of blood and ash, killing more demons in my wake, scenting the air with putrefying flesh and anger. I found more demons attacking a family inside one of the buildings. The father was swinging at them with a fishing pole. One had murdered the child and was feasting on his remains and only after I ushered the rest of them to safety did I unleash my fury onto the monster, over and over and over again until the body no longer resembled a body.

I looked for more survivors but strangely there were few. And what few I did see I quickly lost in all the chaos. My heart pounded as panic began to set in. I needed them to be in a single place easily found so I could collect their souls later...but it looked like that would have to wait. I had to focus on destroying all the demons...though there were actually fewer than I expected. I couldn't believe it. A small group of monsters did so much damage. I had seen hordes of demons overwhelm villages smaller than this one. A part of me glittered with the hope that at long last the population was finally stagnating and soon there would be no more demons. My master would be proud.

I ran around the village, slaying a couple more demons--the last of them it seemed--and searching for survivors. I used my cold silver fire to snuff out the furious red flames engulfing the place as I went, wishing I could instead reverse the damage done entirely. My stomach lurched in pain when I saw innocent bodies lying on the ground, their souls long gone, unprotected. I burned those as well, to prevent any straggling monsters from finding them and ripping them apart with their disgusting hands and horrendous mouths.

I saw movement out the corner of my eye inside one of the buildings and charged inside. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness and I saw it, hunched over a child too young to know to scream. He just stared up at it, frozen in fear yet...seemingly unharmed. The monster wasn't doing anything to him. I didn't waste time in case that were to change, barreling forward with my sword.

"Leave him be!" I shouted. The monster whirled around and pushed the child behind him, an action that startled me enough to pause me in my tracks. In that instant the child scrambled to his feet and ran outside but the monster didn't move. I took this opportunity to raise my sword over my head, preparing to strike, but I was suddenly stopped by an urgent voice.

"Stop!"