Sora looked at the windows of the room discontentedly, shifted in his chair, and winced. His wings ached. The angels had clipped his feathers to prevent him from flying, which was slightly painful and annoying but they would eventually grow back. And technically, he could still fly… just not well or easily.
Sighing, he picked up a piece of reindeer steak and popped it in his mouth, chewing slowly. The angels seemed to eat mostly meat, with salads made of a strange green, waxy fruit. It didn't taste that good… it reminded him of oil mixed with sawdust… but the demons had said that the Land of Light wasn't very fruitful, food wise. Particularly in the winter. It seemed they had been correct.
He was bored and wanted desperately to get out, but the room was a very effective prison. It wasn't obvious, but the stain glass window with its beautiful pattern was strong as steel and infused with some kind of angelic power. He could touch it, but it was impossible for him to break. As for the door, he couldn't touch that at all. An angel lock had been put on it that stung his hands like acid when he tried.
Riku opened the door, stepping inside, and Sora favored him with a glare.
"Stop being a bitch, Sora." Riku kicked the door shut behind him, then sat down across from him, meeting Sora's glare with one of his own. "You made Kairi cry. Don't you even feel bad about it?" Sora's eyes slid away. He had had several harsh things to say to them as they brought him to the Land of Light, and while the angels had told Riku and Kairi to just ignore it, Kairi hadn't been able to. He did feel a bit bad about that, but…
"You shouldn't have come." Sora muttered, looking down at the table. "I just want to go home to Axel." And it was home. Sora wasn't sure exactly when it had become home, but the Dark Land had fitted with him somehow, and it was certainly home now. "I love him, Riku."
"You love a Heartless?" Riku sounded skeptical. "Heartless can't love, Sora. It's not possible without a soul."
"Axel's different." Sora said fiercely, looking up to meet Riku's eyes, his own blue ones burning with intensity. "He still has a few shreds of his soul left, Riku, and if what he feels for me isn't love its close enough." Sora swallowed for a moment as he thought about how Axel was going to react when he found out Sora had been taken prisoner. "And he… he might do something rash." That was an understatement. Sora was really worried about what Axel was going to do. Riku was silent for a moment, then sighed.
"Well, the Queen says she'll have removed any demonic power from you in a few days. Then you can decide. But you really should apologize to Kairi… we're just trying to help."
"I know." And he did know. But it was still hard to bear.
The road to Hell… real Hell, not the Dark Land… was paved with good intentions.
Riku sighed as he climbed the stairs leading to Galaros' glass studio. He wasn't sure what to think anymore. Sora seemed pretty much his usual self, just more confident and abrasive. Harder somehow. But he seemed happy with it, and it didn't seem wrong… it just seemed like… Sora had grown up.
Still, it had only been a few months so was that much change normal? Riku wasn't sure. It was all very confusing. Riku wanted to see Galaros working his glass, and quietly think. As he touched the door, though, he heard a familiar and unexpected voice.
"Your work is beautiful as always, Galaros." The Queen's sweet voice floated out, and Riku dropped his hand, surprised. He had never seen her outside the Hall of Light… although the way she often vanished into light seemed to hint that maybe she was everywhere. Riku hesitated, then stayed at the door, listening. It wasn't polite to eavesdrop, but that had never stopped him before.
"You do me too much honor, my Queen." Galaros said smoothly. "I was not expecting you, but since you are here… I was wondering. I sense no bindings on the child." There was a brief pause before the Queen laughed.
"They are too subtle for you to find, Galaros. They must have been set by the High Lord himself. But that is of no moment. For now, there is something else we must see to."
"And that is, my Queen?"
"We cannot let this opportunity pass us by, my angel. Using the boy, we can lure the High Lord to a ground of our choosing and finally strike the head from the viper. Then, while the demons are weakened and struggling we can begin our holy purge and finally remove the darkness from this land."
"Ah… I see." Galaros was briefly silent. "Is that the reason you agreed to… rescue the boy?" Riku frowned as he listened to Galaros speak. He could only detect admiration for the Queen in his tone. The Queen laughed again.
"Of course. He's tainted by the darkness. Hopefully, we can send him and the other two home, but if not… well. We can't have that here. Ephraim will do what needs to be done."
Riku's face felt hot and cold as he realized what she meant, and his fists clenched. A buzzing seemed to start in his ears, but he held back his rage. The Queen meant to kill Sora if they couldn't be sent home, because he was 'tainted.' And Galaros was just listening to this? Somehow, that was worse. Riku felt a sharp jab of betrayal… he had liked Galaros and thought the angel was being honest with them.
"I'm telling you this because, since you deal with the children so directly, it would be good if you could keep them in ignorance of this. It would only worry them."
"As you desire, my Queen." Galaros said obediently, and then Riku heard him begin to go back to work. He hesitated a moment, then knocked on the door. He needed to speak to the angel. "Come in." Galaros looked up from his work as he walked in, and strangely, the Seraphim didn't seem at all surprised to see him. And his amber eyes were dark with an emotion Riku couldn't recognize, as he looked at him.
"Galaros…" Riku felt all the angry words bubbling up, and took a deep breath. But before he could say anything more, the angel took three long strides towards him and laid a finger across his lips. With his other hand, Galaros tapped his ear, and Riku's eyes widened.
Someone is listening to us? Riku's eyes narrowed. It had to be the Queen. Galaros smiled, but it was a sad, tired smile.
"Trust in the cat, Riku, and it won't steer you wrong." Galaros said quietly, then said in a lighter tone. "Did you want to see some new techniques? I'm working on a special piece for the Queen."
"Uh, no, I was wondering if you wanted to come to breakfast. But if you're working on that maybe not," Riku replied, thinking quickly. What was going on? He wasn't quite sure, but he still wanted to trust Galaros, and Galaros seemed to know he had been listening and wanted to conceal the fact that he knew. It was pretty confusing, but he decided to play along.
"Perhaps you should go see if you could share breakfast with Kairi and Sora, and show them the cat. It may not be my best work, technically speaking, but it has some special properties." Galaros said, his tone completely serene. But the sadness in his eyes didn't match that at all.
"That sounds like a good idea. Thanks, Galaros." Riku replied, and beat a hasty retreat, leaving the angel to watch him go. Galaros looked down at a piece of glass, and shook his head.
Galaros remained in his studio for some time. There were no angels to observe him as he chewed on a thumbnail, quietly thinking.
He wondered when things had started going wrong. He predated the current Queen of Light by quite a bit, but he had served her faithfully for hundreds of years. She had always been hard on them, but she had held herself to her own code of conduct and he had respected her.
When had that changed?
He thought it had started the day the glass had broke. It had been his most beautiful scene… a panel depicting the creation of the Land of Light and the Land of Dark. He had depicted the Creator as an angel with black wings like a Power, with thick raven hair and an outstretched hand, willing the land into being from a churning chaos of light and darkness. The King at the time had liked it, but the Queen who came after had disapproved because he had made the Land of Dark as beautiful as the Land of Light. She thought it should have been as twisted and dark as the demons themselves. Galaros hadn't been able to offer a defense except that he had been inspired to make it that way.
He'd never expected her to smash it. In all honesty, he wasn't sure she had, but something she had done had ripped through the Seat like the scream of a banshee. It had torn apart his greatest work, and he had been wild with grief and rage. The Queen had had to threaten discipline on him to make him go away and drop the subject.
But he was a follower by nature, or at least he had been, so he had eventually settled back into his usual routine. But then the second blow to his faith had come. The Queen had forbidden any angels to walk through the wreckage of his glass to the place the Creator could be met, but when the Creator had directly summoned him… well. The voice of the Creator meant more than any Queen. So he had gone. Fortunately, he had been lucky, and no one had noticed his absence. The Queen could go weeks without summoning him and no lesser angel would intrude if he wished privacy.
It had been the worst experience of his life. He could remember it quite clearly. He had felt separated from his body, lost and floating in space, when he had sensed someone else. An Other. That Other had felt glad to see him, and he had been puzzled because it didn't feel like an angel, and why would a demon be pleased to have an angel present?
It had quickly begun to make sense when their torment had begun. He had begun reliving every pain, every hurt that had brought him to the Land of Light… and those had been cruel hurts indeed. The way his uncle had touched him. The words he had whispered. The pleasure, the pain and the dirty, used feeling that was worse than both.
He had finally told, and his uncle had been banned from the house, but nothing more. He still remembered when he was grown into a young man and his uncle had been invited to a house party. And when he had tried to protest he had been told by his parents, quite curtly, that nothing had ever happened.
That was when he had realized that justice was just an illusion. There was no fairness in the world, and the ones closest to him could not be trusted. Looking for something he could trust, a justice he could put faith in, he had found the Land of Light.
The Creator had brought all that anguish back to him, and drained it off with a lance of fire. But not only the anguish. It had brought into focus the Land of Light as well, all the angels who were his friends, and the quiet joy he had found in his art. The triumph of making beautiful things. The Creator had drained that off too, and he could feel it doing the same to the Other, but suffering shared was suffering halved.
Horribly, in the middle of the pain, he had realized why the Creator was doing this to them. Their entire life forces could not have supported the Creator for even an instant, but that wasn't what it needed from them. It was merely a side-effect. What the creator needed was their emotions, their memories, the things the Land of Light and Dark meant to them. Because the Creator was unstable, teetering constantly on the edge of a kind of senility. And if it gave in to that and lost its sense of self, the senility would be quickly followed by death.
So it took from them mercilessly, imposing a kind of order on itself from their memories, dreams and hopes. And with that realization he had dropped the few defenses he had and given freely, letting it take what it needed.
When it was over his body was a ruin, and he had taken days to recover, hiding in his rooms to hide what had occurred. But strangely, he had felt… stronger. It made very little sense. Galaros worked with metal and glass every day of his life, and he knew that if you flexed a piece of metal to the breaking point repeatedly, or worked glass too much, you would end up with nothing but a mess of broken shards. So he didn't understand why an ordeal made him feel better, more complete.
But it had, and over the years he had been summoned twice more. The sessions with the Creator had made him realize how much he had not grown. Despite being perhaps five hundred years old, a Seraphim and a master artisan, a large part of him had remained in thrall to a small, vile little man. If Riku had touched his hand that way even ten years ago, he would have been indifferent to or repulsed by the attraction. Finally, Galaros had come to peace with his memories and would no longer be bound by them.
That was how his mind felt stronger, and it translated into bolder deeds, but there was more. He had gradually gained powers he should not have had. The Queen had tips of pure light on her wings… he had similar tips that he kept hidden, but instead of pure light they looked like balls of blown glass, glittering like rare jewels.
And he had gained an awareness for all the angels in the city. If he wished, he had only to spread out his perceptions and he knew where each and everyone one of them were, their names and if he concentrated, he could hear what they were saying. It was a power that only the Queen was supposed to possess.
He had justified all this to himself. The Queen should have been down there, giving from herself to the Creator, but perhaps she could not. Perhaps there had been a falling out. Perhaps she knew what he was doing and approved. Perhaps perhaps perhaps.
But because of his new powers, he knew Riku had overheard the Queen's comments to him. And he knew that the Queen knew Riku had overheard. That she wanted him to overhear. And he also knew, with absolute certainty, that there were no bindings on Sora.
And that was the final blow to his faith, because the Queen had manipulated them. She had led a pair of innocent children down the garden path to get what she wanted. Galaros wasn't certain what that was yet, but he would have to be cautious. He needed to pick precisely the right time to act, and his instincts told him it was not now.
But it would be soon. And when he did act, the Land of Light would once again see the power of a Seraphim.
