Architecti
Betrayal has a distinctive flavour. A little sharp, though if you see it coming, a little sweet too. Like the tang of regret, or the lover that got away. Only this wasn’t that kind of betrayal. No, this was far deeper, more insidious.
This was blood.
A sister that was supposed to be my twin flame. The dark to my soul’s light.
Twins born of one cell. One subsistence—separated. Perhaps that separation should have been indication enough.
Should I have realised? Maybe it was obvious that she was always going to betray me.
For years, I looked after her. Cared for her. Kept her out of trouble, and yet she pushed and shoved and kept me coming back like a puppy desperate for attention.
I wasn’t desperate, and I didn’t need attention for the sake of an ego caress.
I was lonely.
What I needed was a friend, or more reasonably, my sister. Someone to share my dollhouses made of light with. Instead, I got a sibling hell-bent on destroying everything I created.
I’m not even sure it’s her fault. She was born destructive, the same as I was born to harness possibility. No one should be forsaken for merely existing.
This story needs a far better ending and I intend to rewrite it.
I made a mistake trusting in blood. Put faith in my sister for the very fact she was a beloved.
One that I thought would come around in the end.
Though I confess, I did not leave that entirely to fate.
Seems I was wrong.
The fall from the Celestial Realm stretches into endless wind and growing darkness. I fall both forever and no time at all.
Clouds howl in my ear like the cries of reaped souls. Desperate, hollow, and shrill.
My life.
Our life washes into my mind as I ponder whether the landing will kill me. Angels are meant to be robust. Immortal of sorts. But if our wings cannot beat, we fall like any other mortal.
Memories and thoughts coagulate and rush, swirling until my consciousness swells. Stars fill my vision and I’m sucked under.
As colour seeps in, a wail rends through me, piercing and full, making the tiny hairs in my ears sting.
I clutch my head in my hands to make it stop.
The noise echoes and vibrates around my skull, it’s too disembodied to be me.
It is familiar, though, far too familiar. The kind of frustrated scream that’s filled with a viscous poison and malice.
“Interitus?” I moan. Or I think I do, it comes out garbled and jumbled.
The underworld sounds odd. The air is crude and hot, making all the syllables harsh and raspy.
I roll onto my front and spit on the ground.
Blood speckles the barren earth in shimmering twinkles.
They are the only things that move. There doesn’t even seem to be sand ants.
So it wasn’t a dream. This is the underworld.
The ground isn’t the only thing smeared in flecks of blood; my wings are too. The glistening liquid is more like a blanket of stars than a river running from wounds.
When I crane my neck up, I find Interitus emitting banshee-like sounds, stomping around and periodically punching anything she can.
It reminds me of the mortal toddlers begging for sugar, especially when she flings herself onto the ground in a huff.
“Sister?” I mumble. The Severed Moth flutters around her head, darting in quick jabs this way and that as if it can’t decide whether to explore or attack.
The crowned moth trembles beneath my cloak. At least it lives and breathes.
Thank the gods they survived. If we’d lost them, we’d be powerless as well as fallen.
“It didn’t work,” Interitus barks at me.
“What didn’t?” My words finally find purchase in my throat and sound coherent.
“I thought we would fall to the mortal realm.”
I cough out a croaky laugh. “The bridge leads to the underworld. What made you think we’d cross?” Surely she isn’t that naive?
“Because, you idiot, we’re angels. Not demons. I figured we’d be able to penetrate straight through.”
“Not without wings or the ability to cut through the realm’s fabric. And I’ve never tried.”
Her expression simmers like the froth and bubble of broiled meat.
“Then I’ll just have to find another way,” she snaps and hauls herself up, her fists balled and bloody. Her claret is a deeper shade than mine. Closer to that of mortal red than my pearlescent colour, though hers still glitters like all angels.
I turn away from the splatters she drips on the floor. Interitus’s blood has decayed. As if the cells want to destroy themselves and bleed inside her veins, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Fitting, I think. Even her blood is out for destruction.
Will her hunger for destruction end up destroying her?
The thought makes my throat ache. Yes, I resent what she has done and everything she has taken from me.
But she is still my sister, my twin, even.
I will forgive her this sin because as much as I despise her in this moment, I don’t want to see her dead.
I lie on my back, gazing up. Thick, shrouding cloud fills the space between two cliffs. It hides both the bridge and the Celestial Realm from the underworld.
It’s at this moment a tear leaks out. I’ll never bear witness to the Celestial City again.
No towering glass buildings or blue skies or reflective towers that I call home.
Interitus has taken it all from us, and for what?
A misguided belief she was going to land in the mortal realm? Surely there is more to this facade.
The more I strain to see up to the heavens, the more the weight of reality hits me.
We can never go home.
“Are you happy now? Did you get what you wanted?” I say, my voice, for once, full of the spite I’m riddled with.
That makes her halt and turn on her heel, eyes narrowed to knives and blades and serrated feathers. How easily she expresses the hatred I’m trying to bury.
I might love her.
But she broke us.
Perhaps there is no coming back from this.
She folds her arms before beginning. “No. But the underworld is just another obstacle in my way. I will do this, sister. We must remake our world into one where we’re all truly free. You’ll see.”
I shake my head and pull myself to standing. My legs are weak, my wings worse. Every muscle in my body trembles as I clutch a reddish boulder to steady myself. Gods, I need a moment before I can chase after her.
“Destroying everything is not the way to make a new world,” I say.
She sneers, all lips and razors for teeth. “It’s a shame the knock to your head hasn’t resulted in any more sense. Destroying our system and starting again is the only way to make a new world. You cannot build perfection on broken foundations.”
“It doesn’t mean you can create a new one on its bones either.”
She falters before her mouth pinches. “How foolish you are. A clean slate is the only way for true creativity to prosper. For us to be able to design a new system of free will.”
This time it’s my mouth gnarling into a venomous pout. “It’s you who is ignorant, Interitus. Creativity doesn’t work without restraints, without boundaries and parameters. It’s from within those that we are our most creative.”
We stay motionless, staring at each other, neither willing to give an inch.
“Why are you doing this?” I exhale, already exhausted from fighting.
The curve of a sneer curls like a cat in the corner of her mouth. “Because not everyone is privileged enough to have a fate like yours. Sometimes the fates forsake us, and it needs to change.”
“You’re wrong. We all have a destiny.”
She recoils away from me; a visible shudder passes over her. “This is the line then, dear sister. The one where we part.”
“I won’t let you do this. Our system works.”
Interitus glowers at me. “You only think that because you are part of it, you create possibilities, shape fate.”
“You’re part of the system too…” I take a staggered step towards her, but she backs away.
“You would think that, you’re at the heart of it. Perhaps you’re part of the problem.”
My chest hitches like she’s stabbed me, my shoulders drop. How can she think that? My insides cool, solidifying and hardening. “You truly think you can undo the very fabric of our universe?”
Endless nights and voids filled with violence pool in her eyes.
“That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Tear down the walls between all three of our worlds.
Let the fabric consume itself and all potential.
And when all probabilities, all futures are gone, there will only remain undifferentiated possibility. ”
I wipe a hand across my face trying to process her words. It doesn’t make any sense. “What in the name of the gods are you talking about? That’s a paradox. You cannot have no possibility and all possibility exist simultaneously.”
“Of course you can. How else do you think we’re truly supposed to have free will?”
“The universe cannot tolerate that kind of instability. It will implode.”
She waggles a finger at me. “You’re wrong.”
“Please, this won’t work. You’ll fail.”
“No,” she says, and takes a single, definitive step away. The line is drawn in the barren underworld sand. “I won’t.”
I stand a little straighter, my strength replenishing, fuelled by the desire to stop Interitus. “I’ll be on your tail. Every step. Every move. I’ll be there.”
“Then the day I succeed will be a sad day indeed.” She tears her gaze away from mine. “Because I will remove any barrier or obstacle in my way… Even if that’s you.”
She marches into the underworld with her head held high, ignoring the fact she’s limping, carrying damaged wings and probably a dozen injuries.
She never once glances back at me chasing after her one hobbled step at a time. What’s most horrifying, though, is that she moves with the confidence of someone who has already successfully ended the world.
It’s then I realise the enormity of what I’m facing.
Three realms in danger.
Two troubled sisters.
And a fate only one of us can fulfil.