This Isn't About Reya

Chapter Forty-Six

Svetlana stood between Dmitri and Stasja aboard a kozodoy quadthruster as it descended through the tiered levels of Dragotsennost', yawing its way between and around the buildings of the city. Four bledno-pauka stood around them, the bay of the kozodoy at the brim of its personnel capacity. Svetlana clutched one of its ceiling rails tight, her body lurching as the quadthruster heaved side to side, avoiding Nephilim strikes. They were flying through the heat of the battle; Svetlana could hear softlight explosions outside, the red light of the quadthruster bay flickering with each concussion of energy. 

She was not afraid. Her jaw was clenched hard, her other hand balled up into a fist at her side. Daniil was gone; Reya was the last thing she could save in her crumbling world.

She would not fail this time.

Svetlana looked up at Stasja. Neither she nor Dmitri had donned helmets, and their black hair gleamed under the bay's red glow. 

"Azrael's different from the rest of the Nephilim," Svetlana told her quietly.

Stasja looked down at her, duty and honor branded upon her face. 

"You can feel him when he's near you," Svetlana continued. Dmitri looked over at her as she spoke, his dark eyes attentive and focused. "He seeps into your essence, like ink." Svetlana paused, remembering the times she'd felt him leaking into her soul. "They call him their king."

"We'll be careful," Stasja assured her. "But this isn't the first time we've fought the Nephilim."

Svetlana nodded slowly.

"Regicide," Dmitri muttered to himself. 

Another softlight explosion rocked the kozodoy, and the quadthruster heaved to the right in avoidance. Svetlana heard a Nephilim scream past the outside of the bay, hurtling behind them.

The bay drenched itself in somber muteness. 

Svetlana hardened her jaw further and waited.

******

Azrael emerged from the Tower of Knowledge first, this time, stepping out of the crumbling tower and into the orange flicker of the sunset and a burning city. He angled his head up towards the sky and breathed, his throat gurgling in a low snarl. The smell of death and fire snaked its way into his nostrils. 

Reya no longer rode on his shoulders. The newborns filed out of the tower around Azrael, stepping carefully, reverently. 

Behind them, a huge black monolith followed of its own accord, horizontal, floating along the ground with an insistent, bellowing vibration.

Reya followed along behind it, her eyes wide, fixated on the monolith. She was silent; she barely breathed.

"Welcome back to the world," Azrael hissed, stretching his arms wide towards the falling city in a gesture of display, "my god."

Amidst the chaos, Azrael and his newborns strode resolutely onward, slow and austere, a funeral procession, a procession of worship. The screams of the Nephilim carried on the wind around them, echoing between the buildings and through the streets. Skyscrapers collapsed, undulating in dust and rubble; fire ebbed and flowed, the dark worldships breathing pestilence unto the city; the wails of the dying sang a hymn to the Dark God, an inverted lullaby, a cry of awakening.

The monolith resounded along the ground, singing its bleak approval. 

Reya walked silently at the back, unable to tear her eyes away from it.