Assuming the wide fighting stance he remembered from lessons, Luc raised his sword to the right of his head. He stepped forward with his left foot and placed his right foot at a right angle. Legs bent. Back straight. Chin up.
Michael’s lips quirked up in the tiniest smile, as though this battle was what he’d wanted all along. To show Michael he’d made a mistake by testing him, Luc struck first. His sword glanced off Michael’s, and Michael struck back quickly, but Luc leapt out of range. Parrying the Void itself on his journey to Earth had revived his muscle memory, so the movement felt more natural than it would have otherwise. Luc had always been a fast learner, and everything he learned stuck.
He and Michael circled each other.
“You’d fare better having Braun fight in your stead.”
“Would you prefer fighting a student, Michael?”
“At least it wouldn’t be over so quickly.”
Luc lunged—an overhead blow, which Michael blocked. He struck at Luc from the side, but Luc slashed his face with the tip of his blade, simultaneously leaping out of range again. They circled, swords readied, feet mirroring each other. The blood dripping from Michael’s cheek emboldened Luc. But Michael didn’t flinch.
“Do you know that every action you’ve taken since you were created, even this cut on my face, only happened because I allowed it?”
“You allowed death to enter the world? How curious for someone so concerned with safety.”
Michael’s face darkened.
As one, they struck—Michael from overhead, Luc from below. Upon meeting the opposing force of Michael’s sword, the power in Luc’s sword surged into it. Dark matter supercharged the air and blew the older angel back, shrouding him in thick black smoke.
“Forging dark weaponry?! What else have you done?!” Michael demanded, his voice shaking with fury. It took a moment for the smoke to clear, for Luc to see him gathering himself off the ground.
“I exist to displease you, Michael. You should know that by now. Perhaps the better question is, ‘What else will I do?’”
Michael charged at him. Their swords clanged, then grated against each other, meeting in a perilous dance: strike, block, advance, retreat. Luc struck from the side, and Michael swatted his sword away, evading another wound to his face. With a fierceness that showed no fear, he closed the gap between them and struck Luc on his forearm, his shoulder, the side of his face. Blood seeped from the wounds, staining Luc’s white robes. He couldn’t match the speed of Michael’s shorter sword, but he parried the blows often enough to keep Michael from striking any vital points. And each time his sword collided with Michael’s, meeting a strike of equal force, a burst of furious dark energy electrified the air around them and drove Michael back.
Still, Michael was relentless in his pursuit of Luc, and in the end, his persistence paid off. Catching Luc’s sword near the hilt, he disarmed him in one rapid motion. Only the wall of granite that appeared between them prevented Michael from running him through.
Luc fell onto his back, stunned and grasping for the sword Michael had knocked aside, but it lay on the other side of the wall. The scent of grass and dirt filled his nose. The sun beat down.
Circling the stone column, Michael lunged for him again, andeverything slowed. Michael’s outraged expression, the glint of his blade in the sunlight, the point of it barreling down on Luc from overhead.
Shield,Luc thought, and one appeared in his hand, guarding his chest. Michael’s sword glanced off it, but the impact sent tremors through Luc’s body.
Fire,he thought in his panic, and fire rained down on the spot Michael had occupied. Not Heaven’s temperate fire, but Earth’s. Flush with heat that could weaken even angel bone. Michael swooped away before it touched him.
Luc leapt up, emboldened by the knowledge that he didn’t need weapons if he could summon anything, but Michael ascended into the atmosphere. And if he thought he would get away after everything he’d done…
Chasing after the warrior, Luc hurled streams of fire that poured past Earth’s atmosphere into the dark brilliance of the cosmos, but Michael evaded him each time, flying in a pattern of zigs and zags until he reached a shimmering border Luc knew must lead into Heaven. The warrior was there, and then gone, and Luc sped after him. Shooting through the Gates, Luc slammed into a body, solid and bearded and familiar.
Hadri turned and shoved Luc back, but not before Luc saw the gaping wound in his chest, leaking blood. He fell to the marble platform below, and there, he collapsed, gasping for aether.
“Hadri!” Luc dropped to the ground beside his former friend. His oldest friend. His only friend. Hadri brought Luc’s hand to his chest, and Luc tried to make sense of his bloodied state. To ask why. But nearby, Michael hovered in the aether—his face blanched, his body rigid, his sword drenched in blood—and the answer was clear.
“What did you do?!” Luc demanded of Michael. Death was coming for Hadri. He didn’t know how he knew, but heknew.
Michael said nothing.
The bearded angel moved his lips, but he didn’t speak; he wheezed, and Luc knelt over him, cradling his head in his hands. Hadri’s labored breaths continued, his eyes shifting from Luc to the aether above them. After a time, his head lolled back. His body went limp. Finally, Hadri’s soul, cleft from his body, seeped through his robes and rose, a golden wisp, into the aether. There, his soul lingered, as if saying a final farewell, then drifted off and wasno more.
Hadri’s eyes glazed over, devoid of everything that made him…himself.
“Hadri!” Luc pleaded, slapping Hadri’s cheeks. Shaking his shoulders. The wounded angel didn’t respond, and Luc tore at his robes, ripping them until he found the wound in Hadri’s chest—a garish puncture dispensing blood like liquid rubies from some horrible, jeweled fountain.
“Hadri, Hadri,” Luc repeated over and over, tears streaming down his cheeks.
But Hadri didn’t rouse. He wasn’t coming back. Another thing Luc just…knew.
