War


The noxious scent of death hung heavy in the air, mingling with the acrid odor of burnt flesh to create a virulent, suffocating air pressure. The path of destruction was immense, stretching across the landscape in every direction, corpses strewn across the wreckage like discarded toys. Plumes of smoke still rose from the razed landscape, clogging her nostril and burning her lungs as raw energy hummed in the air around her, a testament to the immense amount of magic that had been expelled just moments before. Already Shadowhunters, circle members, were working their way through the destruction, retrieving their fallen and collecting their gruesome prizes from the slaughtered Downworlders.

"No…" her voice came out barely more than a broken whisper. She clutched the small boy in her arms tighter to her chest, hiding his face against the curve of her neck to spare him the horror of the battlefield just beyond the compound gate. His small gray wings twitched, delicate feathers brushing against her hands as he wiggled in her arms.

"Mamma?"

She felt sick. This was not the will of the Angel. It never had been. But she had been taken in by Valentine Morgenstern's charisma, believed his talks of ultimate peace, of eradicating the demonic threat from their world. It was too late when she realized that all the denizens of the Downworld had been included in his plans. And when she had dared speak against him, he'd threatened her son, threatened the children of all those who sought to defy him, and in doing so had created an army the likes of which the Shadowhunters had never seen. He then used that army to cow the clave and seize their power for his own. Once the Mortal Cup was firmly in his grasp he then began to recruit mundanes, primarily targeting religious groups and appealing to their desire to attain a higher purpose and preying on their fears. They died in droves, but for every 10 mundanes that fell to the Mortal Cup one ascended. They were loyal to the circle, loyal to Valentine and scions of the bloodiest war the Shadow World would ever see.

And she had aided in this insanity.

Maryse Lightwood closed her eyes and prayed for a forgiveness she wasn't sure she deserved.


AN: This one is a little short, but it was sort of an exploration of a concept that I'm thinking of eventually turning into a longer fic. Thank you all for reading.

-GPO