This Isn't About Reya

Chapter Twelve

As the sky turned black with the night, the branches of the pines began to stir. The air grew thin, then thick, then thin again, and the wind blew forcefully across the open plains, skirting around the walls of Dragotsennost', the Jewel of the Northern Snow. The gusts touched at the edges of the woods, shaking the boughs and littering the ground with needles, and the sky grew ever darker with the setting sun and the thick blankets of grey clouds. Soon, the nightly snows would begin, and with them, his tracks would be covered once again. 

He was alone, resting on the end of one of the branches of the taller trees which stood vigil in the center of the wood. The space around him was shaking, the branches waving more and more zealously, brushed by the wind, igniting the air with energy. The sky began to leak snowflakes, and he looked up at them. They were grasped by the gusts, and strewn about the air, tumbling. Yes, the storm was brewing. Quickly. 

It would be a furious one tonight, and no one would look for the clues. He would have to be fast, though. 

He rose to his full height, his legs extending. Such strong legs, like sinewy tree trunks. Azrael turned his face skyward, smelling the sky. It brimmed with agitation and ice. He lifted a thick, muscled arm, the hand reaching upwards. A single snowflake swirled through the air, dodging the branches, and landed on the tip of his finger. 

Yes, if he were to remain hidden, he would have to set out now. 

The energy continued building in the sky.

He snarled, the noise deep, guttural. He felt it in his throat, felt the muscles contracting, vibrating. He flexed his shoulders, then his thighs. They ached to work. They ached to run. He blinked once up at the sky, and then he leapt from the tree branch. The cloak that restrained his body during the day slipped from his muscled form, catching in the branches and sticking to the needles. He slammed into the ground with massive force, scattering the red pine needles and fracturing the earthen floor. It did not hurt him - his bones, like lead, were too solid to be broken by anything so menial as a fall. He stooped, reached low, placed his hands on the ground, curled his fingers into the earth, posing them. His toes imitated the action, and he flexed his core again, the muscles deep, the bones strong, the skin cold without the cloaks, stretched taught over his massive build.

Almost twelve feet tall. Zero body fat. He was so much more than the other nephilim. They were nothing to him, and he would be Gabriel's flagship. He smiled.

Suddenly, the energy in the air reached the peak, and it snapped - burst forth in an explosion of lightning and sound. The thunderclap echoed through the whole world, and the snow poured from the heavens.

And Azrael set forth, carried by the wind. 

******

Vladimir Charzhinkar was a highly respected officer in the military police branch of the metel'. His underlings usually considered him a no-nonsense, disciplined, skeptical, and hesitant man. Thus, it was highly unusual when one of the minor officers in the branch walked into Charzhinkar's office on the night of November 29th, 1886 RV and found his superior standing in front of a large hardlight sheet, projected onto the wall, detailing several "sightings" of unidentified flying objects over the past few weeks. 

Charzhinkar was silent, focused intently on the reports, his eyes scanning the witnesses' descriptions. He was not aware of the other man having entered the room.

"Sir?" the officer said meekly. 

Charzhinkar started, blinked a few times, and spun around. "What is it?" he asked in a gruff voice, the whiskers of his jet black mustache wriggling while his heavy, scarred brow accordioned together. 

"The scouts from Yel' Gorod just reported in, sir."

"Did they find anything?"

"Just the usual, sir."

Charzhinkar sighed and turned back to the hardlight sheet. He clasped his hands behind his back and stared for a moment. "Send a fresh detachment to Ozero," he said to the officer. "Tell them to check the surrounding forests. Also the lake."

"Sir, yes, sir." The man's footsteps clapped out of the room and down the hall. 

Charzhinkar silently examined the reports for another moment. Then, he minimized them and pulled up another sheet, this one with reports detailing the single meteorite that had struck the planet over a month ago. Most of them were classified, labeled top secret, and compressed into inaccessible files. The only report he could access was the report he himself had made on the object.

"Jagged teardrop shape, highly magnetic, unknown black metal alloy," Charzhinkar repeated to himself. "What are you?"

He knew he had been the subject of controversy in the station ever since the investigation on the meteorite was made. Every officer in the building thought he had lost his mind. "UFOs?" they asked incredulously. "Come on Vlad, that's absurd."

And he agreed. It was absurd. He knew it. But nothing else made any sense. An object with that shape did not just chip off of an asteroid and land conveniently close to the capital city of the New Soviet Union. It had even slipped past the anti-debris field, the gigantic softlight shield which hovered like a shell over the entire planet. It could keep a small ship from entering the atmosphere, and that meteorite had been no bigger than a man. 

Charzhinkar shook his head in exasperation, swore, and minimized that hardlight sheet, too. It was then that he noticed he had received a message. 

It was from his old friend Gorgovitch, who lived about four hundred miles away from Dragotsennost'.

Vlad,

   Have you heard about this yet? I expect not; the department is trying hard to keep its lips sealed about this. The last thing we need, what with the Redeemed forces infringing on our territory and then that fucking meteorite landing by you guys, is a misinformed panic amongst the public. So I guess I'll just give you the rundown.

   About two days ago, we get a call at the station that we have a report of a missing person. So we head out and look around the house and in the streets and in the woods and in the waterways - you know how it is, check all the obvious places first. We got nothing. So we start doing some undercover work after a few days and start checking around with the local gangs. None of them knew anything about it. In fact, they tried to report a few of their own missing persons. We blew em off, naturally, but it raises a few questions.

   The victim in question was a four year old boy. We still don't have a lead. But I haven't even gotten to the interesting part yet. 

   So I'm looking around when we get a call from the next district over. Seems they've got a missing person, too, and were wondering if any of our guys had seen the person around. We tell em no, and then about a day later we get a call from the district on the opposite side of us. Yeah, same thing. So I started looking around a bit deeper, and there have been anywhere from one to three supposed kidnappings in almost a third of the districts in the northeastern hemisphere of Aquilo Nix. And they're all children. No lead, no trail, no DNA traces, no goddamn witnesses or sightings at all. These kids just up and vanish.

   And the best part is that the first disappearance happened about two weeks after that meteorite landed.

   Watch out, Vlad. I think the disappearances are getting closer to Dragotsennost'.  

- Gorgovitch