Architecti
PRESENT DAY
You know how the rest of my story goes. I stayed imprisoned for forty long years while I coaxed and encouraged our moths to merge. To rip from Interitus the one thing she needed to fulfil her dreams.
Power.
When I knew without doubt that I owned her power, that her moth was mine to wield, to control, to possess, that’s when it was time to leave my prison of grief and destroy my sister once and for all.
And so our story comes full circle.
Did I lie to you?
Perhaps.
Or perhaps this is the truest story I’ve ever told.
Either way, this is where it ends.
And I know, we’re all very sad Lucy will have to die etcetera, etcetera. But it’s a worthy sacrifice. She’ll be the hero her father never could be. And without her, I cannot kill my sister.
There’s an old adage that goes:
A sensible demon will spin you a line that goes something like: I need you to know, I started out as a good person. It’s how they lure you in, you see. How they manipulate frail hearts and sweet minds.
I did, though… start out as a good person. I mean… I am an angel after all. Or maybe I was only ever half an angel living half a life that was always destined to go bad.
Sour.
Bitter.
I struggle to believe it, though. Not when I saw the ruins Interitus is fated to make. The burden I was meant to carry. It was always her. I was the good one.
The good half?
I was so certain of it.
It doesn’t matter anymore.
This ends tonight.
I suppose I needed someone to know that I didn’t start out bad.
It was what happened next that ruined me.
In all the celestial years I’ve lived, I never expected judgement day to look like this. I am laid down, my wings spread beneath me so long that they’re going numb.
This is the field I took so many innocent lives in. The field where everything changed.
It’s all so ironic.
I think the fates have forsaken me. Where did I go wrong? I roll over and stand, staring at a garden of ruin.
I brush dust from my wings and shuck them away. Memories of Interitus and me standing before the Mirror of Fate flood my mind.
So many eons ago.
I laugh. I can’t help it. It bubbles up and spills over until I’m pulling at my hair and smashing my fists against the desiccated earth.
I laugh and howl and roar.
THIS.
This is the fucking garden of ruin? It is not Interitus standing in it, but me. Was it showing me another fate? Were they both mine and never hers?
Gods.
She’s a speck at first. A bug in the sky growing bigger and bigger until her feet land on the scorched earth and now it is both of us.
We walk towards each other the same way we did in the mirror and I’m laughing again. It’s all coming true. All of it.
Fate strikes again.
In place of the old field and playground, it’s now a ruined garden. It’s desolate; even the air is icy. Not with cold, but the frigid wrongness of what happened here. The light is muted and flat. The plants grow, wilted and dying, as if in honour of Gellara.
In the distance, there’s even a derelict castle the town once called its crown. As she nears, the clouds spill their stars and it hails. Fate is complete.
“You still don’t believe, do you, Sister?” I say.
“In fate?” she asks.
I nod.
“Not even slightly.”
“And yet, this is exactly what I saw in the Mirror of Fate when you stood in front of it.”
She frowns. “What do you mean? What vision is it you speak of?”
It’s my turn to furrow my brow. “The one of you in a garden of ruin. It’s what I saw when you stood in front of the mirror.”
She throws her head back and bellows out a shriek of triumph. “Ha! All this time you have been hell-bent on stopping me because you thought I was going to destroy everything?”
I step back, hesitant. Of course that’s what I’ve been doing. I value our world. I wanted to live with Gellara for as long as the realms would have us.
My wings bristle, stretching out behind me. “I… don’t understand. Did you not see the same vision?”
She huffs, shaking her head at me as if I’m the most ignorant child she’s ever met. “No, Sister. I did not.”
I shuffle away from her. This is all wrong. She has to be lying. “Then what did you see?”
She turns away, running her fingers over the rusty climbing frame. “Does it matter now? This is the end for us. We won’t last long without our moths.”
“Of course it matters. Innocents have died in the pursuit of each other. Gellara died because of this absurd obsession with ending fate you have been pursuing. Is it not the least you can do for me? To give me this resolution?”
She sighs, her wings spreading behind her. I suspect we look much like peacocks standing off against each other. Ready to fight.
Her fist clenches around the metal pole she was picking at. It crumbles beneath her grip.
Destroyed.
She will never change.
Not even at the end.
“I saw…” She rubs her hands, the rust dust sprinkling on to the floor, and then she rounds on me. “Absolutely nothing.”
I hesitate, step away from her. “No. That’s not… what do you mean? You had to see a vision, an image even.”
“I saw nothing,” she growls it this time. “No fate. No future. I received nothing.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I breathe. “You have no fate?”
She shrugs. “Why would I believe in a system that forgot me? A system that abandoned me and didn’t think I deserved a fate?”
“But all angels get a fate.”
“Yes,” she says and inches closer to me. “But what are we? Truly, I mean?”
“I…”
“Come on, Architecti. What did the elder angel say to you?”
“You heard?” I gasp.
“Oh, get over yourself. I stayed and eavesdropped. Now tell me. What was it he said?”
“Angels aren’t meant to be twins. Our magic is powerful. But it is supposed to be contained inside one vessel. Not split between twins,” I breathe, already knowing where this is going.
“Yessss,” she drawls. “So the system didn’t just forget me, it eradicated my entire existence and gave it all to you, dear fucking sister.”
“It’s not possible.”
“And yet, here we are.”
“So you did all of this out of what? Spite? A fucking abandonment complex? YOU KILLED GELLARA.”
“Lies. You self-righteous fucking ego-centred cunt. I didn’t do this because I was rejected.
Fate erased me. It gave me nothing. Because I am not good enough to warrant a destiny.
Because of you… you got everything. All the goodness.
The fucking light. Gods, I am so exhausted by you and your vitriol.
” She paces up and down the park, dragging her feet and kicking stones as she moves.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Do you have any idea how many people have died because of you?” I shriek.
“And what of you? You are no longer innocent in this game, sister. Look around us. Do you not recall the thousands you slaughtered in the name of rendering me powerless?”
“Then we are as bad as one another and there is only one way to end this. You and I cannot continue to coexist. And I will not allow you to get away with murdering Gellara.”
“And what is it you propose? Given we are both powerless now?” She stretches her wings, fluttering them in the air, teasing out her frustration.
“We are, but there is a source of power in the city. One that is powerful beyond comprehension. I made certain of that…”
She stops in her tracks and glares at me. “Ah yes, our mutual obsession. Lucy could undo an angel…”
“Or perhaps the fabric of our entire realm and fate itself,” I add and Interitus nods at me. “Quite the predicament we are in.”
“Indeed. You want me dead, and I want the world ruined. What to do? What to do?”
Arrogance has always blinded a person. It blinded Ignatius to my trickery and it’s going to blind Interitus now.
“A covenant then? A truce? An offering,” I say.
“Go on…” she says and folds her arms, listening.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Only one of us will come out of this achieving our goal. I won’t let you destroy fate, and you’re not going to let me kill you. So perhaps we make a deal of sorts…”
She tilts her head. I have her attention.
“We help each other get the source.”
She scoffs. “You want to work together to get Lucy?”
“Yes.”
She laughs. “Preposterous. There is only one Lucy. One source of power. We’re hardly about to change the habits of eons and share, are we?”
“Oh, I have no intention of sharing. Once we isolate her, we fight to the death. It’s the logical option. Only one of us can use her for our cause. But neither of us can use her if we don’t possess her.”
Interitus’s jaw ticks. Her mind racing through all the plausible options. But there are none. This is the end of the road for us both. By tomorrow there will only be one survivor. One victor, and I plan on making it me.
“I see your point.” She strides up and down again. Always with frenetic energy. She moves from one end of the park to the other, over and over until finally she draws to a stop in front of me.
“So be it.” She holds her hand out, light glistening in her palm. Such a rare sight to see her wield light instead of destruction.
My smile is soft and sad. I didn’t know she possessed the ability. It makes sense now, of course. If I was capable of choosing darkness and destruction then she too had the ability to choose the light.
I think this saddens me, that I never gave her the benefit of the doubt and always assumed the worst.
She crunches my hand as she shakes it. And I’m snapped back to reality. “There is no going back from this,” she says as light wraps our hands in a blinding covenant.
My eyes glance to where her feet have come to a stop. She stands upon the spot Gellara died.
“Oh, I have no intention of going back. We see this through to the end. No matter what.”
“It is done,” she says. And for the first time in our long lives, we take flight…
Together.