Chapter 3
Uriel’s headache waxed and waned over the next few days.
He learned to use the bathroom on his own, eat solid food, and even stepped outside to stand in the sun, though someone always accompanied him.
They watched him warily, not only the humans, but the changed seraphim as well, as though afraid of something.
Had he done something when he was unconscious? No one would answer his questions. Wade worked the late shift, and was a rare kind of chatty Uriel thought unusual among the seraphim, what little he could remember of them.
On the third day of his recovery, he had a rare few moments of free time when the group brought someone else in, taking their focus from him, and he spent it wandering the halls.
The building had been an old school. The equipment recovered from a nearby hospital leveled in the last Fracture.
Uriel remembered nothing about the last several Fractures.
The far end of the school stretched empty, stripped of resources, with peeling walls and dirty floors.
Part of it used to be a gym they’d told Uriel, with locker rooms and small workout areas.
Alone for the first time since awakening in this strange new world, he wandered, finding peace in the quiet, until he eventually heard a soft keening sound. Crying?
Uriel let the sound guide him to a locked double door with a handwritten sign on it. He stared at the sign, his mind tracing the words to translate them.
Do not enter. Dangerous.
A coiled chain wrapped the two handles together, locked in a dozen ways.
A stack of trays sat beside the door, some empty, others molding with rotten food.
He traced the chain with his fingertips, finding magic coated the links to strengthen them.
A flash of something… someone chained up in the dark, tied to agony, made Uriel’s heart race.
The crying came from within, soft sniffling heartbreak echoing a terrible sadness. Familiar, yet not.
He pressed his hand to his chest, fearing his heart would leap free for a second, the pain so intense, but with it came an unfettered well of rage.
Why would anyone be chained up to suffer in the mortal realm?
The links beneath his fingers snapped and slipped from the door.
The release of his anger felt good. Right. Like he’d held back too long.
Uriel stared at the closed door, a thousand ideas of possible horrors inside keeping him from pushing it open.
He was tempted to smash the wood to pieces and hurl them across the broken school.
How strange it was to be mortal and feel fear and rage like tangible bubbles of floating emotions he could reach out and grab hold of.
The weeping continued, filled with heartbreak and pain.
The guardian senses Uriel bestowed on his half of the seraphim gripped his guts with a brutal demand to save.
He shivered. The pooling rage rising to a boil inside him.
Someone was in there. Hurt. A memory of a roaring beast flickered through his mind again. Was there a monster inside?
A growl trickled from his lips as he readied himself to fight, then he kicked the doors, the pair snapping and breaking off their hinges from the hit.
Light seeped through the dark space which loomed large as a mausoleum.
Open and stripped of nearly everything, it was a few swatches of darkness that made Uriel hesitate.
Shadows? Didn’t Wade say the catalyst released them? Had they congregated here? He studied the dark for movement, finding it looming but free of sentient shadows.
Something made a terrified cry when the light sliced into the room.
Uriel stepped inside, fearing an animal or a child had gotten locked in the space, but as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he caught the outline of three forms with wings, each easily the size of a seraph.
He hesitated in the doorway, expecting an attack for a few seconds, though none came.
The lack of light made it hard for him to define much about them, but the room stank of human waste and mortal depression, two things Uriel had vivid memories of encountering in his long life.
The weight of them draped the room like a beast ready to manifest itself. The hopeless cry muted for a half second before continuing from the one furthest to the left. Chains rattled.
Uriel took a step in their direction, but none of them moved.
The one on the right side lay slumped like a broken doll cast in a web of half-darkness.
Uriel manifested a ball of light to illuminate the space, burning his eyes with the intensity and gracing him with the horrors of three seraphim chained to the floor several meters apart.
The one on the left made a startled noise, shifted in the chains as if he tried to get away, but remained firmly bound. The other two didn’t move.
“Are you hurt?” Uriel asked the one on the left, and chucked the ball of light up toward the ceiling to hover, then made his way to the chains. More magic encased the links to strengthen them.
“Who are you?” The one on the left asked in a tiny voice. Healer class, that one. Why was he here and not out helping the others?
“Uriel,” Uriel told him as he studied the chains for a section of weakness.
“There’s no opening,” a voice came from the seraph bound in the middle. “They will add you to the group for trying to help. If you’re lucky they won’t cut off your wings and leave you bleeding in the dark.”
Uriel glanced his way, finding his eyes open and clear, glowing a deep amber. His hair and skin touched with a bronze undertone. “You warrior class?”
“No classes anymore,” the middle one said. “Only those who assimilate and those who refuse are left to die.”
Assimilate what? Into humans? Seraphim weren’t humans, nor were they ever meant to be the same. Much as Morningstar’s first species, the seraphim were meant to learn, grow and celebrate the progression of their existence. Parallel, yet different.
“I am guardian class,” Uriel said. “My heart’s goal is to protect.”
“Then you’ve wound up in the wrong place,” the middle one said.
Uriel stared at him a few seconds longer, then grabbed the chains of the one on the left and snapped them apart, drinking down the magic. The newly free seraph made a startled noise, and the one in the center gasped.
“How did you do that?”
The freed seraph scrambled to his feet, shaking off the chains and spreading his wings, moving them to stretch.
He was dirty and bloody, but didn’t look injured.
Uriel wasn’t much of a healer himself, and found himself wishing for someone in particular as a face crossed his memory again.
The headache returned with a brutal throb to his left temple. He winced.
“Can you free Silas?” The seraph asked.
“It’s okay, Mason. Fly. Get away. Find a safe space,” the bound seraph in the center said.
“There is no safe space in this world,” Mason said, his hands clenched in fists and pressed against his chest. “Everything is too much.”
“They bound you because you were overwhelmed?” Uriel asked.
“Because I refuse to stay. I belong to the celestial world. Why can’t I be there?” Mason demanded.
Uriel grabbed the edge of Silas’s chains and drained the magic from them too, then snapped them open. They slithered away with a loud clinking. His stomach roiled. The extra magic making him dizzy. He’d always taken it with ease. Now he trembled with the need to vomit again.
Silas slowly freed himself and stretched, wary of Uriel.
Uriel took a step toward the third, the mess of wings confusing him. Why wasn’t that one moving at all.
“He’s dead,” Silas said. “Was the first. They cut off his wings and let him bleed to death. Threw the wings on top of him to mock that he couldn’t heal it.”
Uriel stared at the seraph, his heart pounding, gut churning.
The idea of mortality not new, but startling.
He reached for one of the fallen wings, fingertips carefully brushing the edge fearing he’d hurt the seraph, but the wing slipped to the side, falling free.
The seraph lay unmoving, beginning to rot in death, blood staining the remains in a dozen places with a nasty brown ooze.
The scent of feces intensified the closer he got. The seraph’s bowels had been spilled. Meant to be mortal, similar to humans, Uriel recalled and understood they’d let this seraph die a slow and brutal death. New to mortality, pain, emotion, he would have suffered as few others could.
“Who did this?” Uriel whispered, fighting to keep his stomach from adding to the mess of the poor tortured seraph.
Noise came from outside. Footsteps and voices.
Silas grabbed Mason. “We have to go. They are coming.” He looked around in panic. “We have to get out.”
Uriel’s gaze flitted to the doorway as he caught the movement of several humans. One a doctor who avoided him while he sat in the main part of the recovery space.
“What are you doing?” The doctor demanded. “They are dangerous. Seize him. He’ll tear our sanctuary apart.” The humans beside the doctor took a step forward, long sticks in their hands, which Uriel didn’t recognize.
“That’s the one who ripped Yaser from this world,” Silas said as Mason hid behind him.
Uriel glared at them as they stalked his way. The magic churned inside him, needing release. He gagged, and couldn’t fight the need to vomit anymore as a thick wad of something came up.
“Gross,” one of the humans said and jabbed at him with the stick.
A jolt of pain lanced through Uriel. He shuddered and dropped to the ground.
The other humans approached Silas. Uriel growled, a snarl coming from him that shook the room.
Everyone froze and the magic slipped from Uriel in a wave of uncontrolled energy.
For a few seconds the world shifted and rumbled around them. Uriel had a few seconds to decide to release the magic or hold it, but could only think protect them.
A raging growl howled a deafening cry. Scaled legs straddled Uriel as a large beast loomed over him, protective and fierce. Uriel continued to heave, his guts churning, from the electricity zapping through every muscle and nerve. Magic broke free from his hold and pooled into the beast above him.
“Shoot it!” The human screamed at the others. “And the male! He’s a creator. Best to snuff his power before he brings the whole building down.”
Silas and Mason crouched several feet away, keeping out of the notice of the beast. Uriel’s light above faltered as the creature stretched up and snapped it from its floating perch. Illuminated for a half second, Uriel thought it reminded him of a dragon from mortal storybooks.
The beast snarled and whipped a giant set of wings out, smashing walls and opening a hole in the ceiling. Uriel met Silas’s gaze and flicked his own upward. Telling them to escape. Silas hesitated only a moment before grabbing Mason and launching the two of them toward freedom.
Uriel shuddered as the dragon snapped at the humans, killing the guards and aiming for the doctor.
He found himself not caring. Evil existed in every facet of life, best to snuff it quickly.
But a mass of loud bangs erupted above him.
His hearing faded to an echo and the dragon’s hot blood dripped on him.
Get away, Uriel thought as a dagger of pain erupted in his back.
The dragon hesitated, swiped out another wall and jolted through it.
Blood poured from Uriel, a strange, yet familiar feeling.
His vision faded as he watched the doctor aim a dark bit of metal at him.
The dim light illuminated a head of red hair as someone rushed to throw themselves over him.
Wade… Uriel thought with horror as the metal weapon exploded again. He fell into darkness with Wade’s weight pressing him to the floor and prayed the chatty seraph would somehow survive.