Shadowveil

The Beginning

For the first time in years, Clary dreamed of Jace. 

There was a great expanse of blue water, the color of the midnight sky. It stretched as far as the eye could see, its edges blending with the dome of the heavens above. Not too far from the shore was an island; a rocky, terraced thing, hardly raised more than an inch above the water. Ruins stabbed from its center, cutouts of black buildings darker than the sky. 

Clary smiled. It reminded her of her seventh-grade play, back when the world was simply divided between black and white, and fairies and werewolves little more than high-grossing movies and bedtime stories. She'd volunteered to be the set designer, and had spent hours and hours painting stars onto sheets of paper and cutting out buildings to be the town background. It was a happy memory. 

Hardly knowing what she was doing, she stepped into the water, wading towards the island. The water was warm as a bath, and very still. It soaked through her pants and up her legs, but never grew deeper than her waist. 

It took only a few minutes to reach the island, its crumbling shore rough on her skin as she hauled herself up. The ruins were near enough to touch; close up, they looked forbidding and mazelike, not at all flat and still like they'd seemed from the shore. Whispers echoed from their depths, faint and hollow. Clary, the voice said. Child of the Angel. Come to me. She followed the sound, curious and not at all afraid. 

It was only a dream, after all. Only a dream. 

She broke into a clear space. There was a great pedestal of iron and copper in the midst of it, like fire frozen atop a shadow. On the pedestal was a statue of marble, smooth and cold and unfeeling. Its wings spread up, up, up--reaching to the heavens, each feather as clear-cut as if it had been real. A ripple spread across them. She blinked. 

Colors washed across the statue, marble bleeding into skin and feather and hair. She took an involuntary step back. The wings beat once, twice, sending a building toppling down in the distance. The statue was Jace now, with alabaster wings spread wide, holding all the stars and their stories within the folds of feathers. Clary looked into his eyes and shivered. 

They were beautiful, yes, but empty. Whatever gazed out of them had seen it all: creation, birth, death and life, war and peace, beauty and ugliness, truth and lies. There was no feeling left in them, nothing to be surprised by. Jace looked down at her with his cruel eyes and spoke. The words fractured away, sounding both very far and very near. She was cold all over; somehow she knew what Jace was telling her was very important and could mean the difference between life and death. 

She tried to ask him to repeat, to say them again. But the dream world was slipping away, its edges blurring like watercolor. She reached desperately for Jace, whose face was shattering like glass. He looked at her sternly and spoke the first word she understood. Remember, he said, and the dream shattered into dust. 

Clary jerked awake. She was spread-eagled flat on her bed, as if she'd fallen from a great height. She'd slept in her gear, with a seraph blade in hand. Isabelle was leaning over her, face cast in shadow from the witchlight in her hand, trying to speak over the horrendous wailing alarm echoing through the room. 

"Clary," Isabelle said. "Clary, wake up. The attack's started." The redhead swung herself out of bed. "Where are the kids?" she asked, quickly fitting her weapons belt on. Isabelle's expression turned grim. "In one of the towers. We've left some Shadowhunters to guard them, but they're only safe so long as we can keep the inner city from being breached. If the demons get through, they're sitting ducks."

The two women half-ran through the corridors, joining the swarm of Shadowhunters. Clary ignited her witchlight, blending seamlessly into the throng. Isabelle's whip uncoiled, lashing through the air in a bright spark of gold. "The warding party is back," the older woman whispered over the soundless tide of footsteps. "Jace and Magnus are holding back the tide on the west wall."

Clary felt as if a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. At the same time, though, she felt uneasy. She'd been dreaming about something important--she grasped for the details, but they slipped through her mind. Never mind, she thought. Focus on the battle. They made it onto the city streets. At some point Simon had joined them, a bow and arrow already half engaged in his hands and a look of grim determination on his face. 

The air stank of blood and smoke. Shadowhunters split off from the main party, heading down side streets and readying to form a barricade around the inner city. Clary followed Isabelle until they ended on a terrace overlooking a steep drop and the outer city. Fires burned across the buildings; strange, hunched shadows flickered across the ground. Airborne demons wheeled through clouds of smoke, screeching in challenge. 

She could see groups of Shadowhunters sprinting through the maze of buildings, sometimes accompanied by a hooded Silent Brother. Werewolves circled demons, some of them in human form, others fully shifted with teeth bared. Flashes of magic targeted fire-breathing, draconic creatures, warlocks weaving in and out of ruined buildings. A winged demon spotted their group and plummeted towards their terrace, claws outstretched. 

Clary's blood seemed to leap to life in her veins, ablaze with Shadowhunter's rage. Simon's arrow pierced through the demon's eye in a beautiful, clean arc. It jerked sideways with a screech, and Isabelle's whip slashed through its membranous wing. 

A slight crumbling sound echoed from the cliff. Clary leaned over the edge carefully. A tentacle smashed by her head, cutting a thin line across her cheek. She slashed through it with her sword and the demon screamed as it finished hauling itself up, tentacles flailing. Alongside two other Shadowhunters and a vampire, she threw herself at the demon, weaving in and out of its appendages to reach the heart. Behind her, the winged demon fell out of the sky with a thud, smashing through the railings. She saw Simon leap forward, dropping his bow and drawing a sword to dispatch a killing blow. 

Her blade sank into the demon, and it crumbled into dust. But behind it came more demons, three, four, five of them, hauling themselves up the cliff, spittle dripping from their fanged maws. She screamed in challenge and leaped for them, flanked to the right and the left. Across the outer city, demons crawled and flew and skittered and oozed through the streets, coming in a relentless tide. 

A roar sounded from above. The largest of the flying demons twisted madly in the air, a seraph blade buried in its neck. Jace crouched on its back, bracing himself against one of its spikes as he sawed patiently through its wing with a serrated knife, ignoring the demon's frantic flips and undulations. He saw Clary below and freed a hand to wave brightly, as if they weren't in the middle of a lethal situation. 

She felt a laugh bubble up as she cut down another demon and waved back. The demon winged away with a desperate shriek, and he disappeared into the distance. Clary dispatched the last of the tentacled demons and turned to survey the city. A click sounded behind her, and she turned over her shoulder to see four demons oozing their way into the inner city. They'd climbed unnoticed up the opposite side of the cliff while the other demons distracted the defenders.

Clary thought of the children hiding in the inner tower and felt the blood drain from her face. 

She turned on her heel and ran after them. 

Nobody noticed her leave. 

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How do you think the battle's going so far? And sorry if the dream scene seemed a little weird, I've never tried writing one before.