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1
Return to the Lost City
Iwalked across the broken highway, which cut right to the middle of the Lost City. There, at the epicenter of desolation, the highway ended abruptly in a massive crater. I passed the rotting husks of buildings, relics of an ancient era. The city was a forgotten piece of the past, a throwback to a lost world that we’d never return to again, a world ravaged by the immortal war the gods and demons had brought to Earth.
The Lost City had lain mostly dormant for over two centuries. Treasure hunters sometimes braved the ruins in search of great fortune, but that very rarely happened. There might have been treasures hidden within the decaying buildings, but there were monsters hidden there too.
Sounds rang in my ears. The clash of swords. The rapid beat of gunfire. Magic, ancient and unyielding. Powerful and arrogant. So beautiful. And so terrible that it had consumed the city.
The Lost City lay on the Black Plains, the wide, beast-infested expanses on Earth that humans shunned and where monsters reigned supreme. I sure wasn’t here for the fun times. I’d come back here because this was where it had all begun…where the visions had first appeared to me.
The first time I’d seen the visions—these memories of the past—had been on a mission just a few months after joining the Legion of Angels, the gods’ Earthly army. I’d had a few more flashes here and there in the two years since, but lately these visions flowed like the floodgates of the past had opened up and unloaded everything it had onto me.
That might have had something to do with my newly-gained telepathic powers. Or maybe the visions were another ‘present’ my demon mother Grace had left with me. Whatever the case, there was something about these visions from the past, something I was sure held the key to the future. I just had to figure out what they were trying to tell me.
And so I’d traveled to the Lost City against orders…hell, without even telling the First Angel where I was at all. But now, being here, I knew I’d made the right decision. The visions were strong here, in the Lost City, just as I’d known they would be. I could hear those memories all again in perfect clarity.
I saw Sierra, the angel with the red hair and the silver wings. She walked down the highway of the Lost City, the very same highway I was now standing on. And yet not the same. The highway of Sierra’s era was intact. Mine had fallen into ruin. The tall buildings on either side of her shone brightly, the light of a pleasant sun bouncing off the pristine windows.
Nowadays, the buildings on either side of me could hardly be called buildings at all. Their windows were shattered, their insides gobbled up by enemy fire and the slow, inevitable passage of time.
Sierra’s city was not the Lost City. Back then, it had been called the Golden City. I’d seen that in the visions. I saw—no, I felt the ground beneath Sierra’s feet shake. The Golden City was under siege. I recognized these visions. They were of the city’s final golden moments.
The heavens roared. An angel landed beside Sierra.
“Sierra,” he said, dropping to one knee.
“Why do you bow before me, Calin?” she asked him.
“Because you are the Keeper,” he said. “You are our savior.”
I knew Sierra didn’t feel like a savior. She felt so…so lost. So trapped by her destiny, a destiny which had been forced upon her without her ever having any say in the matter. She felt like she’d been thrown into this whole war, a war she didn’t understand, a war that had been raging since long before she’d been born.
“Sierra, we must hurry.” Calin took her arm and led her to the gateway of the Treasury. “They are coming. You need to don the armor and wield the weapons of heaven and hell. You need to save us all.”
The weapons of heaven and hell. I had encountered them before. Worn them before. I guessed I was Sierra’s successor, a version of her in the present era.
The weapons of heaven and hell were immortal artifacts of great power, the power to kill a deity. They were unique among the immortal artifacts in that they could only be worn by someone with balanced light and dark magic. Whereas most immortal artifacts could be used by anyone with enough magical might to control them.
The memory faded away. Back in my time, I’d reached the end of the broken highway. I looked down into the crater. Beside me, my sister Gin released a deep, uneasy breath.
“Leda, are you sure we have to go down there?” she asked, gaping into the crater. “I can’t even see the bottom.”
My sister Tessa giggled. “What’s the matter, Gin? Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“I left it back in my bed. Where I wish I had remained instead of setting out on Leda’s crazy quest,” said Gin.
Gin’s words didn’t fool me. She might have been a little scared right now, but she was even more excited. She was an avid reader of adventure books and had always dreamed of being part of a great adventure of her own.
“You love it, and you know it,” Tessa told Gin. She wasn’t fooled either.
Gin and Tessa weren’t my sisters by blood, but they were my sisters in all the ways it truly mattered. We had grown up together under the guidance of our amazing foster mother Calli. It had been a good home, full of love and understanding and guidance. All those things that I didn’t get from my blood parents: Faris, the God of Heaven’s Army, and Grace, the Demon of the Faith.
I looked all around. Most of the Lost City had been consumed by the final battle for Earth and had deteriorated even further in the time that had passed since then. The streets had split open, and the buildings were slowly crumbling to pieces. Some of the underground structures were still intact, though.
“Don’t worry,” I told Gin. “I won’t let you fall.”
I wrapped one arm around her and the other around Tessa. Then I spread my angel wings, beating them gently as I slowly lowered us into the crater, all the way down to the ground. Angel, my feline companion, hopped in after us.
