Chapter 25
“Don’t touch the pointy sides. It’s very sharp.”
I shift the short, skinny sword in my hand, inspecting it. Everything about it is gorgeous, from the shooting star engraved in the guard to the black metal blade that reflects light like fire opal.
It’s way too fine for me to be wielding. Dusk must be losing his mind.
“You’re serious? It’s mine?”
He nods towards my hands, beckoning me to keep it.
“Of course. I had it commissioned for you. It’s not a celestial weapon made from the Aether like mine, but it is made from one of the finest forges in Elohim.
” With a cheeky shrug, he adds, “Very exclusive clientele, by the way. Cadets don’t usually receive such legendary weapons. ”
I’m fairly certain neither of us is a cadet. “How did you get it, then?”
Drawing a hand over his heart, he gasps. “Oh, you wound me, love. I may not be a principality, but I am still a true archangel. In a society with millions of lower angels, we’re the elites. The very top of the food chain.”
“So in other words, you’re not just an old motherfucker, but you’re a privileged, rich old motherfucker, too?
” The sword slices through the air with the finest sound as I practice a fighting stance or two.
“Sounds like somebody’s pride took a hit yesterday, if you feel the need to remind me of your position. ”
“You have such a vile tongue for a lady, you know?”
“Yep. You can blame Jackie for that. When I was a kid, I thought I’d never say the ‘bad words.’ But then Jackie picked up the habit, and it eventually rubbed off on me.” I swipe the sword left, twisting my hips to put my weight into the strike.
“You’ll lose your balance if you keep dancing around on your feet like that.”
One of my eyebrows raises, though it’s mostly covered by dark hair that has fallen across my face and stuck to the sweat on my forehead. I swear, I keep trying to pin my bangs back while they grow out, but they just won’t behave. “I’m perfectly in control of my balance, thank you.”
“If you’re hitting an inanimate object, maybe. But if someone catches your blade during that hit and pushes back with more force, then you’ve lost all the leverage you could have had by keeping your right foot on the ground.”
“Huh. Well, maybe I would have known that if I had real sparring partners—” Without a word, he pulls his greatsword off its place on his back, the gold metal blinding me with the reflection of the artificial sun.
Instinctively, I hiss, bringing up a hand to block my eyes from the shine.
“Hell, Dusk. As much as I appreciate your very pretty, very special weapon, I like my eyesight more. Please, go into the shadows with it or something.”
“Why is your instinctual reaction to complain when someone draws a weapon on you? Get in a defensive position, Dawn.”
I groan, but I still comply, planting my feet firmly into the ground and holding my sword in front of me. “You can’t be serious right now. If you swing that thing at me, you’ll slice right through my brand new katana and my body. I quite like having both of those, you know.”
“It’s a wakizashi, not a katana,” he huffs.
I roll my eyes heavily. “Oh, excuse me for not being able to correctly identify all the different types of stabby objects. It hasn’t exactly been in my curriculum.”
“I’m not going to give you a custom weapon just to immediately break it.” He raises his shiny longsword, swinging it around a couple of times before taking a defensive stance. “Adtonitus is very capable of being a regular sword when I ask it to be. Now, quit being a smart ass and attack me.”
“Gladly.” I lunge.
He dodges.
I lunge again.
He still dodges, but at least he offers some instruction.
When I go for him a third time, he parries. I throw all my weight into the force of my strike, but he pushes back with his ethereal weapon, sending me stumbling backward with enough force to make me fall on my ass.
“Told you,” he gloats, looking down at me.
“Shut up. That was an accident.”
“Whatever you say, darling.”
We go on and on and on and on. Attacking, blocking, dodging, parrying. I get knocked down more times than I can count, but I keep getting back up.
This is what I’ve been missing.
There’s nothing else quite like the feeling.
It’s a bloodlust for personal growth, and I can’t get enough of it.
I keep take, take, taking. I want the lethality, the strength, the power.
By the time I have to leave the training yard for Abaddon’s session, I’m covered in dirt, sweat, a bit of blood—and the smile of a maniac.
Exhaustion consumes me, yet somehow, it also invigorates me.
Despite Dusk’s ill-advised offer for the Council to drop in on my training today, I’ve managed to avoid any unwanted attention.
So far, at least. The day is still young.
Once again, I’m back on the godforsaken ledge that overlooks the Abyss.
Just being up here usually puts me in a bad mood now, thanks to classic psychological conditioning.
After all, this is the place where I’ve tried and failed dozens—maybe even hundreds—of times to control the star’s power.
Or to confront the entity. Kill it, eat it…
I don’t know. I’ve taken every approach to the problem that I can think of, and I’m running out of patience.
Abaddon said it could be Divine Timing, which I assume is a fancy word for the “if it’s God’s Will” fallacy.
Personally, I think the slippery little parasite just doesn’t like me.
The atmosphere today is different, though.
I blame the two angels hovering over my shoulder.
They radiate a polarity of light and darkness. Like No Man’s Land, I am caught in the middle. It’s a fitting title, really, considering they hate each other and neither will dare to touch me—
“Focus, Kae,” Abaddon commands, his tone holding enough bite to suck the remaining life out of the air around me. I hate how he always seems to know when I’m not paying attention. “Immerse yourself.”
“You’ve got this,” Dusk adds in a sweet, encouraging little whisper.
With a deep breath, I let the world melt away.
If nothing else, I’ve become highly efficient at reaching this different level of consciousness.
It would be nice if I could navigate it better, though.
All of my senses are utterly useless here, and I feel like I’m moving through it by blindly bumping into anything and everything—particularly two very hefty anchors.
“I need you both to back up,” I mutter. “You’re derailing my concentration.”
Surprisingly, they both listen. The tethers between us weaken, ebbing away. They don’t disappear, but they’re no longer front-and-center of my focus.
That position becomes rightfully occupied by my soul leech.
‘Leech’ implies that the parasite will eventually get full and fall off of me.
If only that were the case. The star is always with me.
Even when I can’t feel the slightest trace of it, I know it’s still there, taunting me.
It’s a never-ending game of cat and mouse, always one step ahead of me, just out of reach.
Minutes pass, maybe hours. It’s hard for me to tell. Time is unconventional when I’m focused like this.
“Why won’t you let me win already?” I think, hearing the words in my head as clearly as if I were speaking them.
Even if the entity never replies, I haven’t been able to rule out the possibility that it’s sentient enough to understand me.
“Am I not good enough for you? Who are you? What are you? Why—”
An unrecognizable presence, like a dark force of nature, materializes behind me. From it comes a male voice, growling in my ear, “What do you wait for?”
For a moment, I think it could be the star talking, but that can’t be true. I still feel its presence in front of me, holding a unique and different energy from the stranger at my back.
No, this is someone in the real world. A voice I can’t quite place.
“Take it. Now.” The man gives me no further explanation, no real warning, before snatching the entity into a chokehold.
Immediately, my world is tilted on its axis, tossing all of my systems into chaos.
A suffocating, intangible pressure rolls in, radiating from the force at my back, quickly consuming my every sensation. It’s similar to the intrusiveness I felt when Abaddon inspected the entity, but exponentially more violent.
There’s only one other time I’ve felt like this before, in a dream I once had, so long ago. Still, I recognize it.
Power.
An overwhelming, unmistakable, colossal amount of raw power.
It feels like the fabric of reality between the entity and me is ripping at the seams. Like we’re two magnets of the same poles, being forced together against our natural repulsion. It’s foreign and wrong. So very wrong.
This is a mistake; I’m not ready.
Stop.
STOP.
The words, they won’t form on my lips. I can’t even feel my body anymore, let alone force it to listen to me. I’m drowning, overwhelmed, caged by this power.
But… I’m not alone in this cage.
I can feel how close the entity is to my grasp, writhing with a will of its own.
For reasons I cannot explain, I feel the strangest urge to protect it, which…
cannot be true. I hate the damn worm. In fact, this is the closest I’ve come to catching it, and I’d be a fool to waste the opportunity.
No matter how wrong this entire situation feels, I have to be logical. In the end, it’s kill or be killed.
We cannot continue to exist together.
I must kill it.
With every bit of strength I can muster, I push myself through the metaphysical world, grasping for the parasite. Because how dare anyone else catch it before me? I will be the one to clear this stain from my soul.
And, for the first time in a thousand attempts, it doesn’t slip through my grasp.
Almost immediately, I’m flooded with a different kind of raw power, bright and overwhelming in every fiber of my being, in every dimension.
Holy fuck.
It’s—
Holy fuck, that hurts.
Innumerable tiny hooks of blinding, burning pain latch onto my soul.
They pierce and pierce, rapidly, relentlessly covering what feels like a spiritual replica of my physical body.
I feel myself separating into two halves.
I feel every agonizing needle, every stab and gouge and rip and tear.
It’s a pain that’s deeper than skin, deeper than flesh.
The agony drags me further and further away from my body, so much that I can’t find my way back to it.
I’m pushed so far beyond my limit that I lose all connection to reality.
My mind is awash with pain, nothing but pain. Something inside my remaining lizard brain forces a scream from my flaccid body as it topples over in convulsions, avoiding falling off the ledge by sheer luck.
The hooks suddenly invert, collapsing inward, sucking my soul back into my body.
The pain lifts, but its effects linger.
I’m barely hanging onto awareness, unable to keep my eyes open. It’s as if a violent fever has taken over me, or the world is on fire. My body is covered in sweat, collapsed in a heap on the ground, shaking and shivering.
“You could have killed her, Michael!” Abaddon’s voice is seething with venom, rising above all the sound and commotion around me.
Michael—so that’s who the stranger’s voice was. I should have known. Why didn’t anyone try to pull me out sooner? How long was I under that spell? It could have been seconds or hours.
“The girl nearly had it, but she wouldn’t bridge the gap,” he replies, his voice apathetic enough to almost turn my sweat cold. “I gave her the extra push she needed. You should be thanking me.”
“You can’t fuck around with souls like that, you sick bastard!” Dusk takes over, yelling at the lead archangel.
During his distraction, Abaddon uses the opportunity to scoop my limp body into his arms.
“She’ll be fine,” Michael scoffs.
“She’ll be fine? Yeah, I’m sure she’ll survive, but it’s the fucking principle! You can’t just torture her because you’re impatient!”
The sound of the heated argument becomes dulled as I’m quickly carried away from the scene.
“It’s okay,” Abaddon coos, tugging me closer to his chest. “I have you. You’re safe.”
Safe? The world is ending. I’ll never be safe again.
“We’re going to fly now, okay?”
If I wanted to disagree, Abaddon leaves me no time. Wings beat, gravity shoves against me, and I lose consciousness.