Title: Conjure
Author: Psuzan Death, psuzan@kekkai.org
Fandom: Angel Sanctuary
Rating: PG
Sumarry:Post-manga, Heavenly society adjusts to life after God, and two characters hook up.
Warnings: None, aside from potential spoilers.
Disclaimers: I don't AS; you don't own this fic.
Agony. Fire, pain, the smell of burning flesh and blood mingled with that of incense.
Pain overtakes rational thought for a moment; eventually she struggles back to something like consciousness, tries to take stock of her surroundings.
The scent of Dragon's Blood incense assults her, thick clouds of blue smoke. Her lungs constrict and she finds herself fighting for every breath she takes.
Unable to move an inch without pain searing her wings, she pulls them tight around her body, but they still smoulder slowly at the tips. The smoke of her own burning flesh makes her eyes water and her nostrils twitch.
She can make out circle around her, just barely: the kind used in demonic conjuration, gold and silver, inscribed with ancient Gehennan glyphs.
Invisible hands choke her, bringing waves of dizziness and nausea. Before passing out, the last thing she hears (twisting in her heart like a shard of glass) is her True Name..
---
False dawn in the desert; coming home on dragonback, she raced against the sun. The sky was stained orange-red, warm and turning the clouds to embers, but the air was nearly freezing, even without added chill of flying against the wind. Frigid air scraped against her cheeks, ravaged chapped lips.
She'd been crying, a little, but the wind had blown it away.
The dragon circled in tighter, targetting the large red circle spray-painted on the Skid Row high-rise that had become their lair. As it descended, she could just make out the tiny figure perched on the concrete ridge, legs dangling over the edge.
Civil servant on his coffee break, divine intermediary taking lunch out of a heavy black lunch box while the heels of his sensible brown shoes thudded into concrete of a building. His shirt was white and starched, but the wind whipped sun-gold hair past his face; a bureaucrat loose at the edges.
Just another thing she didn't need.
Landing kicked up a storm of concrete dust and wind; she slid down and landed, half-blind and hard, on one knee. Her mount crouched a moment and leapt back into the air, spiraling up and out over what had been one of the largest cities in Heaven.
He'd gotten up when she'd landed, stood over her and held out a hand. She made a point of getting to her feet herself and walked over to the edge of the building, peering over to the street below.
"Princess? Are you all right?"
Waving violenty with the glove she'd stripped from her hand, she scowled him off. "I'm fine!" Silver hair blew into her eyes as she stared down the storeys. She brushed it away with the gloved hand, then peeled the glove off and tied the pair to her belt. "I'm fine."
White chalk made a hopscotch grid below, the sketchy lines similar to those used to outline the corpses in a homicide. It was probably the same chalk. The surviving I-Children were remarkably inventive.... and good at getting into things, she'd found the first week living here.
The water barely ran and when it did ran brown. She had to catch her own food and nearly froze most nights. On her back, staring through the empty panes of a window decorated with small remnants of cracked glass, she watched the night sky, and counted falling stars for the firsttime in her life.
It wasn't happiness, exactly, but it was contentment.
Was contentment, until he showed up, hanging nervously at the edges of the block she claimed as turf. She never greeted him, and he never spoke to her. A glimpse of blonde hair as he bent over the sidewalk to help an albino infant inscribe the mystical diagrams of hopscotch or hangman into the sacred circle of miraculously unshelled concrete that formed their playground, flashes of that ridiculously /brown/ uniform turning the corner into an squat with his arms clutching bags of provisions, and once huge, sky-blue eyes staring with unabashed yet guileless curiousity back at her -- that was all she saw of him, for the first few months.
He'd circled in closer, like a deer approaching a drinking pool it was wary of finding surrounded by predators. After a month, he'd nod to her on the few occasions they passed each other. After two weeks after that, she found herself nodding back, and by the time a month was out they'd actually exchange greetings.
Still, it took the unexpected appearance of a small Evil girl at the edge of the I-children's impromtu playspace, bronze skin and dark hair making her stand out amongst the albino angels, to cause them to actually speak. The little girl had hung around at the outskirts for a month, looking lost -- but running away and disappearing when anyone so much as seemed to notice her presence.
She didn't emlike/em children, small children in particular were loathsome, but when she'd stormed up to the child after cutting through the frolicking, it had been anger burning through her.
Crouching beside the little girl, she'd barely managed to get out "Hey there, winglet? What's your name?", when she'd found herself backed by a crowd of wide-eyed, utterly silent albinos all peering in fascination at the diminutive Evil.
As she'd turned on the I-Children to send them running, she came eye to eye with their anxious blue-eyed guardian.
"Oh, good. You're here. We've been trying to get her to play with us, but she doesn't speak Enochian and we don't speak Anaguran..."
He seemed oblivious to her ire, peering past her shoulder to regard the child -- who had moved, coming up to tug at her skirt with a small bronze hand.
"Uval," was the answer, almost whispered in a tiny voice with a Gehennan accent. "My name is Uval."
So she'd become a reluctant translator, explaining Hanged Man and Five-Wings-Cutting and Hopscotch to Uval, and trying to give a coherent summary of Dragon's Den, Hide-and-Go-Seek, and Goblins to the angels, which he practiced as diligently as any of the children between asking her nervous questions about correct pronoun useage.
Uval started staying longer and longer into the day, and was eventually joined by her brothers -- Seere and Bathin. This had led to a worried and anxious Angelic bureaucrat nervously twitching his wings at her, suggesting that perhaps it would be a good idea if maybe they /fed/ the children between games, Princess, because isn't nutrition important?
She had no idea how to cook; he only knew how to make High Tea, he said. They broke into what had been a Thrones safehouse with a full kitchen (he knew the old passcodes, but wouldn't say how), unthawed provisions from the deep freezer, and fumbled about until they came up with something like soup and sandwiches. At that point, the crowd of kids was about half Evil, half I-Child, tousled silver and black heads mixing together like salt and pepper as they all sat on the tiled kitchen and held their spoons clumsily and amiably ate their soup.
He pestered her (but politely, always politely) for pointers on his Gehennan, and she corrected his pronunciation and rolled her eyes. He taught her how to crack some of the older encryption schemes the ST had used on their buildings, and got her water working semi-reliably.
And then she made the mistake of inviting him up for tea, once, when he said he missed making it, and she'd been -- bored, or tired from chasing some of the older evils around, or just plain not thinking.
So there he was, now, sitting on her ledge, right where she didn't want him to be.
---
Every breath she takes burns up her lungs and scorches her throat; she can breathe and broil, or spare herself the pain and suffocate. After a while, she can barely tell the difference between the burn of scorching air and the flames of asphyxiation. The skin of her lower wings is cracked and blacked, oozing pus under the protective shell of charred flesh, and she wonders if her lungs are burned as well, cracked and bloated like two roasted slugs inside her straining ribs.
Head lolling her shoulder, when the ritual participants troop in with ridiculous solemnity, she barely notices. It seems almost perversely funny. Woozy from pain and only half-conscious, she mistakes them for black robed apparitions playing childrens games, ringing her round like the rosey, pockets full of poseys, ashes to ashes as she falls down...
---
They'd all come for the funeral, a family only united in tragedy, and only then for the sake of appearance.
It was in England, where he and she had come home after all was said and done to try and have a normally-ever-after; everything came home to England, in the end.
They crowded like nervously repentant Anglican sheep into back pews of a Catholic Church that seemed both too small and too large. Their piety fit awkwardly, but to a one they had filed in neatly and took their places. All of them, the whole clan -- Powers swathed in great coats to mask their faded tattoos and half-baked paramilitary clothing, while pale Cherubim in dresses after last season's fashions clung to their arms, the few sharp-dressed women of the Virtues and Dominions in funereal black as crisp as their usual surgical white. All the Choirs, milling nervously with their wings folded back, eyeing the front of the Church while they smoked cigarettes held not-quite-correctly -- all except the three who'd been four, had some relationship to the deceased other than his position in the family.
Uriel stood with his hands at his sides in the pew second from front, eyes never swerving from the lectern, as if glowering at it would scare the proceedings into moving hastily. Dressed in a dark grey that would have been fashionable in Victoria's Britain, he was much the same as ever. Stolid, solid -- stodgy, somehow, as if someone had stuffed a clay figurine into a musty suit and stuck it down on a church bench. The Gaurdian Angel of Earth seemed to have only been stiffied by the years, hardened and dried. For all he wore his hair unbound to below his waist, he received the least disapproving glances from the widow's family --
/Japanese/, they whispered, /Well, *he* was Japanese, wasn't he? And she is, of course, well -- half, anyway. Never approved of that man her mother married; see what he did to them? Odd blood in that side of the family, rather odd all around. Fond of foreigners. Stands to reason they'd have Asian friends, doesn't it, then? Still, you'd think they'd at least try and make an *effort* not to stand out like that. Vulgar, really, is what it is!/
It was the other two that had the longest glances cast their way, for all they seemed to fit in better than the rest, the litany and the liturgy seeming familiar and well-worn on their lips.
The Great Powers had become tallest of them all, topping even Uriel by an inch or two, long of line and straight of bearing in a black overcoat as regal as angelic robes. Blood-colored hair still flopped over into his eyes in unruly spikes, but it shone red-gold in the sun and his eyes were the blue of the noonday sky now, not gasflame. The Element of Fire had been locked away, dispersed into the Seal holding the world together; its flesh and blood Avatar no longer the Angel of Flame... but whatever heat and energy had been there in their youth still shone through, but refined, reigned in, narrowed, focused: now the Angel of the Sun stood silently behind the Angel of Wind, like a classical statue of what humanity had made him, one gloved hand clutching Raphael's shoulder firmly. The gesture seemed less affectionate than simply an attempt to hold the other man up, let him leech off some of Michael's energy.
By contrast, the Great Virtues seemed the worse for wear: his wings, visible only as a translucent aura, seemed almost dingey, toned down from their former neon glow and turned in upon themselves, the Astral power flowing through them only sluggishly -- like blood through a leg riddled by vericose veins. Raphael was pale and wan, the smell of stale, recirculated air clinging to him like a shroud. He never took his eyes off her, veiled demurely on the first row, hands folded carefully in her lap.
For the three Elements, it was her funeral they were attending, not his.
Through the funeral, and the burial, they watched her, as if holding vigil at a deathbed, scrying for signs of life. When they'd all filed past her afterwards, Raphael clung to her hands and addressed her at length, until Michael pulled him gently away. She'd let go his hands and smiles the same placid, unperturbed smile she'd worn since they laid the casket in the ground.
When it came his turn, in between mumbling condolences, he found himself bending down as she beckoned him close. /Anything I shared with her is gone; that part of both of our lives is done/, he told himself, trying to will away sympathetic tugging on his heart as he watched her. /There is no bond between us anymore, if ever there was such a thing./
She'd put her hands on his cheeks and leaned up gently to kiss his forehead. For just a moment, her eyes flashed blue and he remembered the first glimpse he'd ever had of her, and he felt his skin prick and tingle under her lips. The look in her eyes was less melancholy than he'd ever seen her, almost whimsical, like she must have looked in her youth -- deep cerulean, one moment languid and the next bubbling over with chaotic mirth. A conspiratorial grin twitched over her lips as she sat back down.
Then she was smiling sadly again, once more a gracefully middle-aged English woman with only the hint of the oriental about her eyes, and he told himself it had all been in his head.
Walking along a grey sidewalk on their way to departing, trailing behind the Heavenly Host, he couldn't escape the smell of rainwater heavy on his skin. He hadn't known he'd been coming to two funerals.
---
When she comes back around, they have swords; for a moment the glint of light on sharp-edged steel kicks up old terrors, raises the taste of blood and anguished anger in her mouth, makes her stir against the circle of flame, ready to fight --
But the merely take up places around her like a circle of toy soldiers, holding the weapons stiffly as if they were nutcrackers clutching matchwood swords in silver paint.
Chanting fills her ears; Tangled tongues of Assiah mingled with Enochian:
"Adonai, Lazai, Dalmai, Aima, Elohi, by the invocation of thy most Holy Name..."
Name, name, what's in a name? She doesn't quite remember hers, the day-to-day name, well-worn like old clothes, she always goes by; the vibrating silver sounds of her True Name is still painful to think of, ringing up her spine.
"We conjure and evoke thee, O Keeper of the Mysteries, Holder of the Book, Holiest Archangel of Secrets..."
It vibrates in her flesh, holding her here in the ring of fire. The pitch gets higher and higher as they chant, splitting her eardrums, whining in her bones.
Just before it reaches a crescendo and sends her spiraling back into unconsciousness, she thinks she hears his name.
---
He'd found her shortly after, when some random tug at the back of his mind made him break from the pack and home in on the feeling. Flying felt good, the wind cold as it ruffled his feathers -- never numbing, no matter how high he went; he could feel every drop of moisture permeating the atmosphere, shivered happily as his wings cut through cloud and came out soaked to the root.
She was in some far grey and dirty part of the city, fingers clutching the links of a chain fence as she s!tared across a river he didn't know the name of. Black jacket far too big to have ever been intended for her, black boots, grey jeans that might have been black once, -- she was all grey, even the silver of her hair and the gold of her skin sorroded to pewter and brass in the London smoglight.
Head tilting like a bird's, she pointedly took no notice of him but to peer further down the water, vision pulling a perfect 180 degrees out of alignment with him.
For a few minutes, all he could hear was the squawk of birds and the rush of boats through the river and the low polite murmur of the pedestrians howling up into a dull roar. By the time his ears adjusted, he thought he might have heard muffled sobs in the mix, now silenced.
But she didn't tell him to leave, so he stayed, hands clutched behind his back as he tried not to play with them while composing something to say.
There isn't a place to start, really, so he says the first thing that comes to mind.
"I'm... I'm terribly sorry for your loss. I know he..." Swallowing abruptly, he continued, "I know he meant a lot to you, so, if there's anything I can... can /do/, Princess, th--"
But he didn't get the chance to complete the thought, as the sound of her voice cut through the murmurs of the city like a searchlight through the fog.
"That /isn't my name/."
She spoke in a language of Assiah; some tongue neither of them ever spoke except in exile. Blue irised eyes contracted to vertical slits, and the short black claws in her thumbs slid foreward a half-inch as she clenched her fists. Like a cat with her back arched, she bared her fangs and hissed her anger.
"'Princess' is my title -- except that's not /right/! Stop talking in that /stupid/ swishy language of yours! My title doesn't make any /sense/ in Enochian, and even if it did I'm not /your/ Princess! /Stop calling me something that isn't my name!/"
Silver hair had lashed into his face when she'd whirled on him and stalked off, a few strands catching on the hand he'd held up.
He tried to call out to her, the words died on his lips
---
The Great Powers owned the hallways, even the ones that spanned dimensions in their bureaucratic whiteness. Careening from side to side, whistling shrilly and off-key, he dominated the territory, and made passing him a guessing game of trajectory calculation.
He had been collecting population shift reports from the Thrones in order to take to one of the next Council meetings when Michael had rammed into him nonchalantly, one fishnet-clad shoulder slamming into his and sending him sprawling.
"HEY! Watch where you're going!"
A black boot had planted itself on the floopr between his legs as he was trying to get up; he found himself staring into the viper-green eyes of the Fire Angel. Michael's pupils always looked mismatched, somehow; it made him queasy, trying to focus on eyes that weren't, so he started to gather up the papers while still prone.
"WELL? Aren't you going to APOLOGIZE?" Leaning foreward on the balls of his feet, Michael towered over him imperiously, red hair flopping to and fro as he rocked impatiently.
"I'm sorry..." He nearly swallowed the words, trying to split his attention between Michael and the reports -- he had page 65, 66, and 68, but where was 67?
A hand swooped out of the sky and struck like a raptor, snapping up one of the papers.
"Playing ERRAND BOY, are you, Thrones?"
Page 67 flopped in Michael's hand, captured fish in the beak of a hawk, flailing with a few of its mates.
He reached up a hand for the paper, only to have it jerked out of his grasp by the sneering Great Powers.
"Let's see here..." Green eyes squinted, crossed, uncrossed and squinted harder at the text. "In the past two Grand Convocations, as the following statistical charts shall indicate, the overall settlement rate for expatriates of the former Anagura far exceeds that of the lower angelic Choirs, even given the dispa-- what IS this? A bunch of DRIVEL about the Evils? What's the POINT -- if they're moving into our territory we WEED THEM OUT!"
He managed to get to his feet and managed to rescue pages 45, 93, and 94 from the talons clutching it, but alas not 67. "The *point*," it took a deep breath to restore the calm to his voice, "the *point* is that they *are* occupying territory concurrent with theirs, and a detailed survey of their, erm, settling patterns will help make our strategies, uh, maximally effective."
Long experience as the interim representative of the Thrones had taught how to deal with the other Choir heads; the trick to managing with Great Powers was to make him think you'd said what he wanted to hear.
"Oh REALLY?"
However, very frequently what Michael wanted to hear was that you had just declared yourself Enemy, and in desperate need of a violent beating.
"And what STRATEGIES would those be?" Michael's eyes narrowed to slashes of vicious green; trust the Great Powers to pick questions sharp enough for the interrogated to impale themselves on. Sometimes he got the disturbing feeling the Great Powers only appeared dense because Michael was simply incapable of being subtle.
Like all the other natural disasters.
He swallowed and tried to look clueless; getting others to underestimate him was his oldest survival skill.
"The strategies of, er, recollect-- er, I mean relocation. Lord Michael. I mean, we can't, er, relocate them if we don't know where they *are*."
Michael pulled his lips back to reveal gleaming white teeth. "Hah! You want to know where they ARE, you follow the STENCH!" His nostrils flared and he leaned in closer.
"YOU stink of them, you know. Your ABERRANT LIFEFORMS and DEMON PRINCESSES. Thinking of defecting to the other SIDE?" Michael grabbed ahold of the shoulder of his uniform, sniffing at it like a rabid pitbull.
He nearly bent himself over backwards, trying to avoid the looming invasion of his personal space.
"I -- no! NO! ... as interim Great Thrones, it's my duty to gather information. Even in person. That's what my... what my predecessor did."
"So this is VITAL INTELLIGENCE, is it then? That needs a MILITARY ESCORT in order to maintain SECURITY?"
"Er, well, to be fair, I th--"
*Ahem*.
They both snapped their heads around simultaneously; Adjutant Powers Khamael had a remarkable way of clearing his throat that made no noise at all, yet was still clearly audible for a ten klick radius.
"What IS IT, Khamael?"
The Adjutant loudly did not clear his throat again.
"Pardon the interruption, Lord General, but the mission the Great Thrones speaks of is actually routine."
Watching Khamael's face was equally disturbing; he watched one eye flick to Michael in some kind of attempt at conveying some unspoken nuance, while the mechanical one flicked over his body repeatedly, scanning and rescanning in an endless loop.
"There have been developments in the situation previously reported on."
There was no reading any emotions in the optics and wires, but suddenly he got the impression that if there wasn't something Khamael had decided required Michael's attention, he would have been left to the wolf's clutches.
The Great Powers slowly uncurled his fingers from the handful of brown uniform they'd sunk into, eyes narrowing in counterbalance. "Right. RIGHT... well." He flicks a tongue over his teeth. "I'll be /seeing/ you, Thrones."
---
It was always there in the back of his head now, hanging like a mist, like an incense fog: strongest when he bathed or walking in the rain -- or what passed for rain, fat greysish drops pouring from the mouths of downspouts, in sheets and curtains from the heavy concrete overhangs of Skid Row sky-scrapers. They are always there, with him, behind his eyes.
He could make the rounds of the ghettos in Skid Row without ever ducking into buildings or out from under the constricting shelter of protected sidewalk tucked alongside the squat grey buildings -- just felt their colors in his mind, so condensed from the vapors of synaesthesia he swore he could have rubbed them in his fingers like silk.
Warm orange-red and pale spring green for a one-armed Powers recently demoted to military chef and a shy Cherub, one of the first couples that the Heavenly bureaucracy allows to live in 'registered civilizian domestic pairings' (but not marriage, never marriage, marriage is for humans, marriage is forbidden, marriage is the last great decadence of Hell and the Horde, their wedding feasts of scarlet, crimson and gold, wine and violins), as she twirls around in the first dress she's ever worn out of uniform while he stirs soup.
Pale silver-blue for a fellow Throne, slowly learning to let go of the artful, restrained contempt in which a professional spy holds everyone he encounters, and let himself be pleasantly suprised by a book loaned to him by a Virtue with sunny yellow hair.
Mottled purple and red and neon green pinpricks in a flat full of older kids, most of them I-Children who could 'pass' and managed to hold onto lowly positions amongst the Angels with tooth and nail while working for Anima Mundi; now students, most of them studying to be Virtues or Cherubim, a single quietly passionate girl determined to ascend to the Principalities debating her way through heavy law texts.
Up on top of one of the buildings, a bright pink Grigore turns her face to the rain in childish joy.
The children, though, he would never dream of passing by. Before he even pushed open the door to the flat he could feel them, a garden of rainbow sunflowers, brither even than the murals they've painted on the walls. A'akiel, oldest surviving girl in their band, responsible for assassinating no less than eight Thrones while they were hunting for I-Children, was bright effervescent yellowgreen as she led the younger children in some kind of dance. She had been a Canidate with the Dominions, not an I-Child herself as her name testified, but branded with the Peccato nonetheless for rebelling against orders to vivisect the woman who had been her mentor.
Sateraton, deep stormy blue run through with gold, leaned up against a corner and glowered. The lack of the honorific '-el' on his name was a testament to his illict birth, but he wore it proudly; otherwise, with glossy black hair and dark blue eyes, people were more likely to decide he was a Cherub or even a Seraph rather than Improper. There were rumors that his mother had been a high-ranking Power, and his fierce hatred of the Heavenly army was matched only by fierce love of his adopted family. A nod from the surly teenaged boy was his only aknowledgement as he padded into the room, trying not to drip.
The other kids were all the hues of the rainbow, from Casuyoieh's stubborn little rusty red -- the same color as her hair -- to Uval's deep twinkling violet. They were all holding hands in a circle with A'akiel in the middle, except for Uval, Cael, and Sitri piled together asleep in the corner, the little Evil girl stretched on the other two.
She stirred when he came in, got up and gave a huge yawn that had her wings stretched out to their full span. Rubbing at one eye with her fist, she made a beeline for where he stood puddling water onto the carpet.
"Yullo."
Uval spoke Enochian now, but with a Anaguran accent that contrasted oddly with her high, fluting voice.
"Good evening, Uval. How are you tonight?"
She blinked her wide violet eyes solemnly, then finally answered with. "... 'm 'kay. How are you? Is the Princess with you?"
He had to have been gaping at her, because A'aki came over and put her hands on Uval's shoulders.
"We haven't seen her since the afternoon we all went to the Evil's ghetto for that tree festival, when she was teaching them to play that Anaguran game. Sath--" A'Akiel jerked her head in the direction of Satetron, who nodded, "thinks he saw her going into the old Principalities building downtown, but he's not sure it was her. There were a couple of "
He would have stayed dripping on the carpet until he'd dried up, shriveled, turned to dust and and blown away, if Uval hadn't reached up and tugged at his coat.
"You'll find her, won't you? We aren't done teaching the others to play Dragons' Nest yet."
---
There wasn't a 'she' anymore so much as a being defined roughly by borders of pain and fever. Chanting comes louder and louder, for hours or minutes or days.
Harken and Attend!
Harken and Attend!
Harken and Attend!
Harken and attend to the pounding in her ears where the earrings used to hang, but she can't hear Them anymore so the pounding and the drumming is just her heart, hand tightly in his hand the way she'd held onto that feather, so hard her palm became sweaty and wet, skin and glands doing the crying for her and STILL she held on to until the bones of her hands felt like they were crushing themselves, swallowing themselves like a black hole, like a snake and its tail. She'd held it so hard, so tight, squeezed it to try and strangle the memory, strangle the pain.
A dream of being a dragon hatchling before 'birth', constricted into a shell, roasting while its unseen parent breathes fire onto the imprisoning egg becomes sudden agonizing awareness of flame as her body goes slumping over against the invisible line of the circle, then fades as she fights to breathe, becomes memories of the cramped spaces of the Gehenna Royal house, playing Dragon's Nest with the other few misfit children, crowded into one small larder or armory, waiting for the last of their cousins to find them, becomes... becomes...
A memory, cool and blue and gray, sudden and spontaneous, cutting through the fire, as it recalls itself to her.
---
"... So, er, are you sure it's safe for them to play? I mean, all of them crowding into one tiny little hiding place? What if the suffocate, or one of them steps on the others head, or some of them never get found?"
She'd rolled her eyes and stretched back along the concrete ledge of her building, settling into that huge black jacket she always wore.
"Of course its safe. My brother and I used to play it with our cousins all the time. Nothing bad ever happened..."
He'd made some noncommital noise and looked at his boots; it just drew a snort of annoyance from her, suddenly standing in front of him with her hands on her hips.
"Hey! Don't be so /wet/. They'll be just fine, and this gets them /out of our hair/ for an hour or so."
"But I /like/ taking care of the children, rea--"
She'd grunted and shoved a half-clawed finger into his chest. "You /would/. You would like... like /Tohu/, if you thought you should." Her hand had drawn black, flicked over her chest, black nails tracing some symbol into the air over her chest.
"I suppose I might, if I knew what Tohu was... er, what is it? He? Her? They?"
"It. Well, no, /not/ it. Tohu is... it means nothing. Just... formlessness. Desolation. The absence of anything."
That had taken him a while to process; she'd reverted to Anaguran, trying to express the concept, or lack of concept.
"So, er, if that's Tohu, what's the opposite?"
It had taken her a while to answer, twirling one strand of argent hair around her finger absently.
"D'zath braazha."
Root words, linguistic stems, syntactic branches sprouted up in his head, as he tried to parse the phrase into meaning while she stared off into the sunset.
"Perpetual eating?"
That had made her double over laughing, biting at her lower lip in an effort to contain herself. After catching her breath, she'd used his sleeve to haul herself back up and grinned.
"No, no -- close. 'Braazha', not 'Brazhaa', which is what you're thinking of."
"Wait, so, what's... 'braza'? 'Brazya'? And what's the... the other one, for that matter?"
"Braazha. Emphasis on the first syllable. Brazhaa is eat, like you thought, -- like '/V'rascha yakisoba brazhaa-en/', I would like to eat some yakisoba. Braazha is like... uh..." She'd wrinkled her nose and made a hand. "'/V'rascha tzaad-ti braazha-yan/', I guess."
He made it halfway through a mental navigation of the fiendishly complex pronoun system before giving up.
"And what does /that/ mean? Er, Vuhrawsha sawwdee brawwzuh-yawn, I mean."
"Arrrgh! Listen, it's V'rascha tzaad-ti braazha-yan! V'rascha. Tzaad-ti. Braazha-yan. I'm not going to tell you until you get it right."
Head coming up to just above his chin, she stood on her tiptoes to give him a mock glare. "Your pronunciation is horrible!"
The words were annoyed, but for the first time that day there had been amusement in her eyes, a shade brighter and bluer than the sky.
"Er... V'rawjuh tzawwdee buhrawwzuh-yan?"
Her earrings jangled as she shook her head, leading his eyes to the golden length of her neck, darker and richer than he could ever hope to be.
"Not quite. One more try..."
"... V'rascha tzaad-ti braazha-yan."
She'd applaued him, greatly amused, and then burst into laughter for several long minutes. He'd almost gotten worried she'd run out of breath laughing, after she'd thunked down on the ledge of the building and howled with her feet dangling off the edge.
"Er, are you all right?"
"Yeah, yeah..." She waved a hand and finally caught her brreath; he took it as an opportunity to sit down next to her.
"So, ah, what does it mean?"
"... oh." One golden arm wrapped round her knees and hugged them close. "D'zath braazha? It means... literally, 'endless kiss' or 'endless kissing'. The principle is sort of like... being one with all life, reaching out and embracing it. Kissing it. 'Endless' isn't quite right, it doesn't translate well. Maybe 'ceaseless' is better. Our ideas of time are more, um, immediate than yours, I think."
They'd sat a while in silence, as the sun slowly sank down towards the horizon, deepening the sky from blue to yellow to pale orange to flame.
"So... what does 'V'rascha tzaad-ti braazha-yan' mean?"
She'd sat bolt up suddenly and stared at him, one hand clapped over her mouth.
"Er, Princess? It... it wasn't another obscene phrase, was it no?"
Her head shook, eyes growing wider and wider.
"No, no -- the CHILDREN! I totally forgot about finding them!"
---
He'd come out of the buildings to walk in the middle of the storm, following the white lanes down the middle of the street. Rain helped him think better. One foot after the other, knee socks soaked and clinging to his ankles, he'd followed the branching rivulets of the downpour as they flowed along riverbeds of cracked concrete.
She was gone. She wasn't /there/. That was a certainty; he'd known it the second he'd looked at Uval's eyes, knew it by the way the tape on her windows had frayed a little, knew it without even having to check in to the Thrones office, knew what they'd hand him if he asked them to make a report.
He had known, and he'd ignored it.
Water was soaking his hair and making it hang heavily in his eyes.
"I'm an IDIOT. You never should have entrusted all this to me; ahuge responsibility and all I do is trip over my own feet, make an idiot of myself and fail people. Fail her... why'd you pick me, anyway?"
And just about the time his tears join the rain coursing down, the water answers him.
---
It is near completion, near the apex of its power, this ritual of theirs. They have been promised power, and knowledge, amd as surely as they have slowly ascended the Paths and Spheres, all this and more has been granted to them.
Their work is righteous; though other magicians might blanch from so much as calling up a Goetia, fearing the taint of black magician, they know they are doing God's will.
The demon-queen will burn, and in burning she will become pure, a worthy sacrifice, that will grant them God's grace.
As soon as the ritual is complete.
Only one stage has yet to be attained, but first the proper precautions must be taken. God is their shield, but a little celestial protection never goes amiss.
"YHVH! ADONAI! AHAIA! AGLA!"
With each of the Names of God, the power in the sanctum rises, singing and vibrating like a mighty choir. They can feel the strength of divinity, the heady and intoxicating rush of power.
Holy sword held before him, their leader commands the first Archangel to manifest and give his protection. "On my right hand, Michael!"
Again, they can feel the heat of the Angel lending his firey grace to them, heeding their righteous commands.
"On my left hand, Uriel!"
"Behind me, Raphael!"
"Before me, Gabriel!"
They can feel the four elements converging, the energy of fire with the stability of earth and the insight of wind with the intuition of...
A beautiful young man, almost too pretty to be real, all calm blue eyes and golden hair, suddenly dripping water on their Holy Circle?
"You really shouldn't take the names of the dead in vain, you know. It's not polite... and I don't think you'd like Raphael anywhere near you, let alone behind."
And before they can open their mouths to banish this apparition, this phantasm, this /demon/ that has assaulted their ritual, the force of a very real tidal wave comes and leaves them all very high and very, very dry.
---
Gradually, gracefully, the burning and the ring of fire are washed away, the pain rinsed clean of her body. Not sudden; she has time to learn how to breathe again, almost enough time to decide what she wants to say when she's done drinking in more air than has passed through her lungs in a life time.
He stands over her while she's sobbing in breaths on the floor, wings trembling with exhaustion and sudden and unexpected freedom. When he holds out his hand, silently, she's too greatful not to take it, too relieved not to start crying onto his shoulder.
It feels good to cry, anyway, makes her eyes feel somewhat less like they've been roasted. Crying keeps her from having to say anything, which is probably a good thing.
"Er... are you... is that... I mean."
She lifts her head and blinks at him, and says the first thing that comes to mind. "V'rascha tzaad-ti braazha-yan."
It makes him swallow and blush in a way that tells her he's probably figured it out anyway. "Um, what does that... what does that actually /mean/, Princess?"
She lays a finger on his lips and grins, trying hard not to laugh. "It means /I want to kiss you/."
"Oh... perpetually?"
"... was that a /joke/, Ratziel?"
"Actually, no, Kurai, it wasn't."
So, they do.