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Romulus pulls away from me, but slowly. Like all his movements, he does so with calculation, while staring me in the eye. “Do not pretend you do this for all our sakes. I see that, like always, you are simply taking the path most expedient to your own desires. You and my twin have that in common. You are both utterly predictable. Also, you are a fool if you think he is becoming civilized.”
I narrow my eyes at him, but this time he reaches out to clap me on the back. “But your predictability is one of the things I like most about you, brother. And I agree, if there is anything out there that might be coming at us, we must be ready now that there is something precious to protect. I will scry for you.”
We move away from the dining table toward the empty half of the large hall, so that nothing obstructs Romulus as he spreads his wings to their full span and lifts his hands. His leonine tail whips furiously behind him as the air begins to stir with his chanting in the bell-like angelic language.
Theoretically, all of us should be able to scry since we carry the spark, but Romulus is the only one with the patience to sit down and learn the language of angels.
I was there the day Father poured the angel-fire into clay and created the twins. Each experiment was more disastrous than the last, and yet he would not be dissuaded. And at first, when he looked upon the beautiful, winged creature that was left in the basin of his creation chamber, he laughed with such joy.
Because Romulus is indeed as handsome as any of the heavenly host. Our father had come so close to perfection.
But how he did howl with fury when their head spun on its axis and he first met Remus. Creator-Father immediately began to strike Remus across his equally handsome face, and that was the first memory my brother awoke to in this world: being beaten by his Creator-Father for daring to exist.
When our father recovered from his fury, he bestowed a “gift” on them as he did each of us at our birth once he saw what his creation had wrought—they would thereafter carry the spirit of War. Warring always for control of a single body and bringing spite and enmity wherever our spiteful father would send us out as his soldiers.
It has not been an easy path for any of us, perhaps, though like my father, it was easy to blame Remus when he was a wrathful and unruly youth.
Romulus bore the brunt of it, and as I look upon him now, almost a millennium later, for the first time, in shame, I acknowledge my part in it all.
I am the eldest. It is an unkind world, and if not each other, who else do we have in this cold universe?
I ought to have protected them. Too long I believed our Creator-Father’s lies that his way is the only way.
I was weak to be so deceived.
Young perhaps, but also weak.
And I despise nothing else more than weakness.
In front of me, Romulus’s brow furrows and wind sweeps through the hall, whipping in a circle around him and his outspread, dark grey wings.
It is beginning.
The white-blue runes begin to glow in the whirring air, arcing between his outspread hands, cutting through the other realm to this one.
But almost as soon as the runes begin to appear, Romulus’s eyes widen in shock.
And then he’s blasted backward as if shot by cannon fire. I struggle to stay on my feet as the wind disbands like a whipping tornado, runes disappearing almost as soon as they appeared.
Thing lopes across the floor to where Romulus lies in the blasted-apart dining room table, which is now just kindling.
“Brother!” Thing pulls Romulus back to his feet and helps to clear wood chips from his wing feathers.
“What the hell was that?” I bark.
Romulus’s eyes are wide as he coughs and sputters, looking around as if trying to get his bearings.
“An angel,” he whispers.
“That’s not possible,” I spit. “They retreated behind the gates to retire in the Great Hall.”
“Well obviously not all of them,” Romulus says heatedly. It’s so out of character for him to seem ruffled, but I cover my surprise.
“We should never have become so lax,” he snaps.
I get in his face, furious at the challenge in his words. “None of us knew we would ever have something that would be worth protecting.”
I leave it unsaid that before now I may not have cared if this fortress was breeched, or that if after all this time I have finally met a foe strong enough to defeat me. I’ve continued my existence for so long now more from habit and sheer stubbornness than out of any desire to live for so long…
