1
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.
