Not Fallen... Yet

Chapter 3 - The Angel

The boy let out a strangled cry and yanked his arm back, all but stumbling over himself in an attempt to put some distance between his own body and the demon's. He lifted his wings up once more despite the pained reaction his last attempt had elicited and drug them down in a lagging beat. Momentarily, his body was sent airborne as he began to flap them sporadically in a flurry of desperate motion, managing to get a few feet off the ground and away from Aryan when he abruptly fell back to the stone with a pained gasp, his left wing dragging the floor despite the obvious effort put in by his right one.

Aryan stared on in mute shock, pieces slowly beginning to come together in his head as if the scenario were a giant puzzle and the crudely shaped odds and ends were starting to fall into place to reveal the whole, ugly picture, one that would undoubtedly make whatever unfortunate child who'd bought the toy throw a temper tantrum as all their hard work paid off in naught but a disgusting, mangled excuse of a result. The pure white feathers that still covered a dragging wing, the inexplicable terror painted across the boy's face, the searing burn at the slightest contact. . . It all pointed to one thing and one thing alone.

The creature before Aryan was not a demon like himself, not a disgrace fallen from on high and cast dejectedly to the underworld in vengeance for what he'd done, but rather was truly an angel - An angel with a broken wing.

The angel drug himself as far from Aryan as he possibly could, his lagging wing obviously slowing him down as the thing pulled heavily along the cold ground with each movement, forcing an injured sound from the guy's full lips every time he scooted back. Despite this, the boy's glimmering green orbs blazed with a ferocity that even Aryan knew was uncommon among the creature's race, his forest orbs practically sparking with outright anger as if the demon before him were to blame for the fate that had befallen him, though it didn't take much to see the poorly concealed fear dancing about that spiteful glare.

Aryan didn't move for a long moment, failing to even breathe as his lungs simply decided they didn't really feel like working today and his heart eloped with his stomach as realization slowly settled upon the demon. There were laws for situations like this. Harsh, unbendable laws that dictated Aryan must turn the injured angel over to the proper authorities where he would, undoubtedly, be put to death, lest the demon himself suffer the same fate for failing to comply with this rule. Demon's were not, by nature, lawful creatures but they did fall under some sort of order and what few rules did prevail in that chaotic society were unignorable and of the utmost importance.

However, Aryan hesitated all the same, gazing blankly at the boy before him who's soft face twisted in a dangerous snarl even as his small body began to tremor, like a feral animal who knew it was cornered.

While the ominous risks weighed heavily on the back of his mind, Aryan wasn't exactly keen on having the broken boy's death laid at his feet, not wanting to have that blood on his hands and disliking the thought of simply handing someone over for death without cause. All the boy was guilty of was stumbling into the wrong hole and, excuse him for being too forward thinking, but Aryan really didn't see that as a capital crime punishable by death.

Which is why, when the familiar thud of heavy boots colliding with the stone floor underfoot abruptly became audible from the hallway Aryan had come down moments ago, the demon only paused a breath of a moment before he made his decision.

"Here!" Aryan demanded urgently, gesturing towards a skinny side path that wound off from one edge of the faintly illuminated passageway before trailing off into inky blackness beyond, the darkness so thick and absolute one might very well mistake it for a black wall rather than a hazy exit.

"One good reason I should listen to you, demon?" The angel hissed back spitefully, spitting out the final word of his question as if it were something disgusting he couldn't bare on his tongue.