(Mini) Ch. 3 Mirrors and Fragments
Xaoc shook himself off, feet planted firmly back into the world's earth, and sprayed little bits of volcanic ash from his crackling white-gray body.
"Angels..." He growled with contempt, letting the magma blood in his veins char his formerly pale white skin.
"Tossers, all of them," Nodded Helena, though any anger she may have harbored was invisible. She looked thoughtful. "We told them what's fair, and if they have their heads too far up their arses to give a damn, we don't need Heaven."
"I would have thought," Rumbled Xaoc, "That at least the Radiant Master would have put some effort into the charade—some indication, however duplicitous, that he cared for his mortal pets. But he must be more withered and useless than even I supposed."
"Perhaps," said the expressionless gray angel, "we shall see for ourselves," she whispered, pulling a glittering pocket-mirror from her robe.
Xaoc stumbled back a step, and lowered his voice to a deadly quiet, "You are mad to use that here! My brother will find out and torture you out of your mind—if my father does not crawl through and devour you himself!"
"Your father's quarrel is not with me, it is with your foolish, prideful brother and his temptress." She sat on a stone facing the bog opposite from the caverns where Darkness had claimed his first domain.
"But in his wrath, you will be destroyed..." Xaoc could not help himself. He peered deeply into the mirror, and the expressionless angel changed, smiling mischievously behind him. For the gray angel who had been alone for so long, tempting a tempter was utterly satisfying.
Blinding light, but Xaoc did not turn away from the mirror. Blinding light, and then an eye as blue as the crystal seas. The eye looked like it should have been laughing, but the creature that held it seemed not to be amused. The royal angel Arthuriel grasped the great blue eye with resentment, and with the other hand was playing a fast, disjointed tune on some celestial harp. His ears were curved, his eye-sockets sunken, and his cold silver light flowed down his ragged floor-length hair into the very clouds. The angel peeked into the mirror with dread at himself, growing old, growing …. bitter. He mustered the luminance from his stomach and transformed his face into a younger creature of impeccable beauty, and sang a few notes that would have seemed perfect, if they weren't so sad.
The angel turned away from his mirror, and his face became more jaded and fearsome than before. His light was powerful, not warm; sophisticated, not graceful. He would not look into the eye.
Xaoc handed the mirror away in stunned silence for a moment, and Helena folded it neatly back into the nether of her robe.
Then the demon started to laugh, "Is it truly..." he started soft, and the laugh became bolder and wilder, like all the creatures of the wild wood were laughing along with the demon, as if they had all just learned the terrible and wonderful secret. "... That there is nothing left... of the Radiant Master... the anchor of the mighty angels... but one eye!"
A defeated, shriveled Devil in hell, and only the hopeless shred of a God left in the heavens.
"It seems, my dear lady," Xaoc said, purring with excitement, "That it is time for a new order in the universe."