Coin of ivory- A Sabriel fanfic

Chapter 13

-Xaphan's POV-

I stared at the ashy remains of my brother, unable to cry any more tears because I used them all up. Within the remains, his demonic grace remained. I never even knew demons had grace until now, but I wasn't going to let him just disintegrate.

I would keep a little part of him with me by my side, forever.

I opened up a spare vial I kept on me at all times, just in case my grace necklace got destroyed and placed as much of his grace as I could into it. It glowed a dark red in the vial, swirling around and flickering like a flame, then took off my necklace which contained my grace, and attached Xaphan's vial of grace right beside it, before putting the necklace back on.

I took a moment to watch Gusion's grace rush about in the vial, completely mesmerised, but also grieving his murder. This reminded me of a time we spent together as children.

-Flashback-

"Smoky? Come here real quick. Me, Ashy and Luci need to show you something. God said it was important."

I obeyed like the little soldier I was and approached them, my head slightly cocked in confusion "what is it?"

Castiel waved, before taking my hand. "Okay, Xaphan. This will probably be highly agonising for you, so, I apologise for any pain it may cause y-"

"Woah, wait a sec" I nudged Castiel away from me. "What's this all about?"

Cas turned to Gusion, a pissed expression upon his face. "You didn't tell him?"

Gusion shook his head "I forgot, sorry"

Cas rolled his eyes and showed me his angel knife, which immediately created fear in me.

"God wants us to create grace vials. We cut our throats or hands and store some of the grace in there, then, if the time comes when we lose our grace, we have it as a backup."

"Why would He want us to have backup grace, though?"

Luci sighed "because the Lord works in mysterious ways and all that crap. Sometimes, I don't even think He knows what He's doing. Anyway, I think I overheard one of the other archangels saying something about "leaf eye thing" and that if He doesn't do something about it, it could easily eradicate all of us? No idea what a leaf eye thing means, but it sounds dumb. God's the most powerful guy alive. If this.. leaf eye thing.. was to cause severe harm to us, surely he'd get rid of them?"

"Luci, what are you getting at?" I enquired, cocking my head a little from confusion.

"I'm just saying that.. if he really loved cherubs, seraphs, rit zien and grigori, he'd actually keep us safe from harm."

1 month later, homo sapiens populated the Earth, and so Heaven's hell began.

-end of flashback-

I then remembered, I still needed to resume time, as Gabe had just been watching me with a look of shock/fear for about 1 whole hour. I inhaled a deep breath, trying to forget about what I had just done. My own brother was dead. There was nothing I could ever do to bring him back. This wasn't a simulation. This was real life, and you only get one shot. I messed up, but there was no other way.