This Isn't About Reya

Chapter Forty-Three

The last of the bledno-pauka hung limply from Azrael's extended sword in the center of the woods. It had discovered the gaping hole in the ground leading to Azrael's tunnels just before he speared it through its chest. Once its death throes ceased, he dipped the end of his sword towards the hole in the ground, and the corpse slid slowly off of it, falling down into the entry room.

Azrael stared at it blankly for a moment before dropping in after it. He made his way calmly through the smoke-filled tunnels, his lungs filtering the ash in the air. When he returned to the control room, he plugged his nerves back into the wall and opened more holes into other parts of the forest. The torrents of sudden, new airflow began to cleanse the tunnels of smoke as the Nixan winds blew away the ash above ground. 

He waited for a moment before sending an all-clear message to the rest of the newborns still in hiding. Slowly, they began to emerge from their coves in the floor; the pods unsealed from the walls, and some of them broke open, the newborns within fully-grown and ready to awaken. The tunnels returned to life.

Azrael strode over to Reya's protective shell and tapped on its surface with one of his taloned fingers. It slid open, and Azrael met Reya's eyes as she sat in the divot of the floor.

"It's over," he told her, his voice humming magnetically.

"What happened?" Reya asked.

Azrael turned around and watched the shield over the pool slide apart, revealing the blue-white glow of the inert proto-matter. "Svetlana betrayed us," he said to Reya. "She told the Tsar of War of our hiding spot, and as soon as she had Daniil and left the forest, they burnt it to the ground."

"The whole forest?" Reya breathed.

"Yes," he muttered.

"There's nothing left above ground?"

"Only ash and the skeletons of burnt trees." He looked up towards the entrance of the room as the newly hatched newborns began tentatively investigating the pool. "We are exposed and discovered. I killed all of the bledno-pauka that came to burn the forest, but when they do not report in, the Union will send a larger force." Azrael watched the first of the newborns dip their heads and drink from the pool, their skins shedding, becoming ghostly like his own. "They would be no match for an army of this size, but still. It disrupts our plans."

"We have to act soon, then," Reya said, standing from her seat in the divot. "We have to invade now, before they send another detachment."

Azrael glanced back at her with amusement. "No, we won't invade now. We will wait until Michael and the other Archangels topple the Tsars. Then, in the ensuing chaos, we will invade, just as we've planned." He paused for a moment, a smirk tugging at his human face. His milky blue eyes, pupil-less and invasive, shined out of the corner of his eyelids. "Besides, there is no 'we.' You have no part in this invasion."

"What?" Reya walked around to stand in front of Azrael defiantly. She stared up at him, and he back at her. "I've been a part of this whole thing. You can't abandon me for the final act."

"Hmm," Azrael mused. He looked away from her and returned to the controls on the wall. As his tendrils snaked into them, his mind flooded the tunnels. 

"All of the pods have opened," he breathed. "Excellent." He probed the minds of the rest of the Nephilim in the tunnels, spreading his essence throughout them all. Cannibalize the tunnels, he instructed them. Arm yourselves. Every newborn will be armored in the voidmetal that has nurtured them.

He turned back to Reya, who still stood on the other side of the pool. Between them, the newborns cycled in and out of the room constantly, swarming the pool, mutating with its power.