Page 87 of Angel in Absentia
Ryson materialized in the clearing ahead, a clearing that had once been a mass of burning buildings, now nothing but a frozen crater. Clothes rewound themselves along his skin like serpents as a gruesome slash healed across his face. Alina appeared beside him, claws drawn, her body haggard and bloody, but a white grin plastered across her face. Blood dripped from her silver hair. Her lips were painted in it. The two of them walked around each other, back to back, seamless and in sync like two fish circling one another. Enemy forces swarmed in a twister of darkness around them.
Let me have your ears and you will understand.Prince said, hiding her at the edge of the whirling swarm of beasts. Clea consented, and the Kaletik soon filtered through his cover and translated itself into her ears.
“Is that all?” Alina roared, and her shoulders peeled back, her chest lifting as if it was indeed a roar. “This is your revenge?” she screamed into the darkness and then howled with laughter.Ryson was silent behind her, scythe drawn. They were two different elements, fire and steel, forging a dangerous balance.
A massive beast broke from the darkness and tackled Alina. She shrieked and howled, her form transforming into a massive, serpent-like monster that quickly wrapped the beast and exposed its throat. Ryson leapt with such speed that he seemed to vanish, appearing before the throat and tearing it wide with the scythe before the monster collapsed in a rain of blood. Its body thundered into the earth before Alina unraveled back into her human form. She brushed past Ryson, her skin slick with the devastation of their latest kill, and there was something perfectly balanced in the way they both delivered death together. Clea was reminded that they had been fighting for years. They had been killing for years. Still, the situation seemed helpless, the enemies endless in the stirring darkness that covered every wall around them.
“Why do the others hate them so much?” she repeated her question. “All of these enemies, not just the Ashanas, congregating for them. They used Ruedom as bait?” Clea breathed through the mask, Prince seeming to make her invisible to the scene.
Because they govern Shambelin, and they were once heroes,Prince said.Once Veilin. They set out to save the world and made many enemies before they too fell into darkness. They’ve made many enemies since.
Another beast, perhaps another officer or warlord in the vast, mixed army, charged forth. Ryson acted first, calling on practiced movements in a dance as they exchanged brief blows. Ryson opened up the shoulder of the monster, and it fell like the rest. He landed back in his place next to Alina with lightnessof foot, and Clea sensed that beyond the coldness of the air, there was a vibration of something else she’d never felt before. It electrified the world around them, a torrent of spinning energy that somehow made the icy tundra seem hot.
“Oh, Alkerrai,” Alina complained, her hands dripping with blood as she tipped his chin and passed him. “So serious. This isn’t good enough for you yet?” She slung blood from her hands and prowled in a tight circle. “So hard to please.”
It’s time, she heard Prince say. Clea felt her body move of its own accord, vanishing and appearing again between Alina and Ryson, her back to them.
Clea peered through the haze of her dark shield, noting how Ryson didn’t seem to sense her inside it.
“Interesting form,” Alina noted to Prince. Ryson was looking away and didn’t seem to pay it any mind. He prepared his weapon, a surge of dark energy slicing into the scythe before he tore it into two pieces. One was like a sword, the other a hook.
It seems we’re all presenting special forms for this special occasion.Prince said.I’m pleased to see the hook and spire in your hands again.
“I need to finish this quickly,” Ryson said sharply, the weapons in his hands seeming to vibrate with cien. “Prince, use all of the corpses in your reserve.”
Alina cackled. “What? Afraid you’re starting to feel something?”
“If I lose my heart, we’re all dead,” Ryson replied.
All back to back, they faced the swirling chaos around them, and silence settled among the trio. Clea’s heart pounded as sheseemed prepared to join the frey inside Prince’s form. She didn’t object, not wanting to risk Alina or Ryson hearing her voice.
“It’s just like the old days,” Alina whispered as they paused before the final onslaught. “Only we’re missing Oliver, though he’s here in spirit, isn’t he?” she mocked.
“Oliver is just as present as Helena Hart is,” Ryson whispered back. “You are nothing but a ghost of her and have no claim to that name.”
“Hmm,” Alina purred. “You always get a little mean before you let go. No one is farther from our former selves than you,” Alina hissed back with a grin as she eased into a predatory crouch. “When I’m done here, I’ll cut the princess’s throat and set you free. You’re always but a thread away from being the monster you are.”
“Like I said,” Ryson replied firmly, Clea shocked to see him smile as he tightened his grip on his weapons. Something dark and vicious stirred through them, connecting the trio around the potency of Ryson’s energy. “Let’s finish this quickly.”
Clea barely had time to digest the exchange, to understand Prince’s prior suggestion, and Alina’s harsh words. The realization dawned on her for a second, a single truth that she didn’t have the time or attention to dissect beyond the initial revelation.
The vicious and bloodthirsty Alina al Nevana had once been the hero of Loda: Helena Hart.
A moment after the reality of it hit her, the three burst into action, and Clea was thrown into a violent torrent of battle within Prince’s form. She was whipped from one location toanother with a sickening speed as the cien around her thickened like a paste that threatened to seep into her body even beyond Prince’s protective cover.
The space around them was painted in ice and bloodshed. Clea heard nothing but the sickening squelch of carnage, tearing beasts, roars, and colliding metal. Her sights moved too quickly, Prince fighting through her, pushing her to action, and then that strange vibration she’d once felt outside of her, rippled into her body.
The battle around her slowed down. She could see Alina as she tore and ripped through one foe after the next. Every wound only seemed to spur Alina on. The more she used her power, the more it seemed to drive her. She could see Alina fighting in the corner of her eye, building up corpses, but Clea couldn’t push herself to feel horrified. She felt something else.
“What is this?” she whispered almost passively, her mind numbed by the feeling. A powerful ripple of force washed through them from behind her, blasting back the enemies in front of her and clearing them into darkness.
She turned, and the horrors of Alina’s carnage paled in comparison to what she witnessed behind her.
The Warlord of Shambelin.
The claim was that he’d never built a kingdom, but she witnessed it now: the throne of a warlord. The bodies of beasts and Venennin were not torn or dismembered like Alina’s, but they lay in piles around him, bowing in death.
Alina continued fighting, but Ryson was done, basking in the aftermath of foes who had tempted fate and now built a templeof death around him. The smog beyond no longer stirred with enemies, but rested emptily and was lit by fires that burned outside of the tundra they fought in.
