I. Nightide
They came like a tide in the blanket of darkness. Seventy strong, bloodthirsty and invincible.
Issa's city was one of the first to go, and now she was one of them. She flexed her fingers, watching the blue veins gleaming at the back of her hands. Humans couldn't see the glow marking her as one of the drones, but the hell-dwellers could. There was poison burning inside her and the unnatural glow gave her away every time.
An Acolyte.
The irony struck hard. The name was religious, reminiscent of altar boys in flowing white, so different from the murdering soldier she was. It fit the she-demon's mocking cruelty. Lilith wanted her revenge on the world that turned its back on her and now she was decimating it city by city, using their very own survivors. If only they knew. If only they all knew.
Light as air, Issa leapt, landing barefoot on the cold concrete of yet another fallen city, her sharp eyes scanning dusty cars and abandoned streets as she listened for the telltale hum.
In the beginning, she'd thought Acolytes horrid—monsters without feeling. Now that she was one of them, now that she knew the masters they were made to serve, the emotions that lay behind the frozen orbs they'd been forced to wear as eyes, she knew better.
They had no choice.
Like the rest of the hell-dwellers, they were mere instruments, puppets dancing to the tune of an evil puppeteer. The poison in their blood made sure of it.
She let herself drop from the graffiti-covered building, feeling the brush of wind against her cheeks as she touched down on the rough asphalt. On her right, there were shards of glass from where the windows had been blown out of a shop, its wooden sign creaking in the breeze. She stepped towards it, careless of the way the glass cut her feet. She'd been ordered to fetch the hell-dweller to the best of her ability, but nothing had been said about how much of that ability she'd have to preserve.
She looked up at the rotting sign. The words had long been wiped away but she retained enough of her human memories to recognise it as an antique shop from the shattered ceramic and broken figurines. The hum was strongest here. She could feel it thrumming with the beat of her heart.
Her fingers found the web of heat enclosing the entirety of the compound before her, binding its prisoner in a place that was neither here nor there, and began the delicate process of untangling.
The blue in her veins was fading. Now that her Keeper was dead, she had no sustenance. Her body was dying—not that she cared. Much. The only thing that kept her moving was the force of the poison, the force of the order she'd been given by the she-devil herself.
"Edvardiel."
The name misted on her lips, tendrils of moisture curling upwards into the frozen air. For the first time in a century, Issa had been instructed to fetch and not kill. The vile empress had dragged Issa from the darkness she'd been left to rot in, claws digging into her nape.
Her hands curled into fists. She did have another reason to keep going.
Vengeance.
With that, she ripped apart the energy threads and stepped into the void.
A giddy sensation overtook her, the ground having disappeared beneath her feet. She was no longer bleeding on dirty glass but green, green grass. They tickled and she wiggled her toes, feeling dewdrops as they licked her cuts.
High above, she heard the cry of seagulls. It was sunset in Lilith's glorified prison and the beach was scattered with laughing people walking in an endless loop, smiling the same smile, exchanging the same words, shadows without substance. Issa looked around, goosebumps rising on her arms. This void was too pretty, the details too real, and everything she'd pushed into the back of her mind to survive came rushing back.
Catch it, Issa, catch it!
A volleyball had plummeted towards her on that very beach, her friend's cry shrill in her ears and she'd dived down, tasting bitter sand as she'd saved their game. She blinked and the vision vanished. She no longer remembered her friend's name or his face but she knew that she'd been here many times.
She knew this beach, she knew this sunset and when she looked at the shadow children, she thought she knew their blurry faces.
This hell-dweller—this Edvardiel—he'd created this particular place with his mind. It meant that he was from her time. Perhaps even from her home city. Everything here, from the palm trees and clean sand to the children with their plastic shovels was untainted by the world as it was now, which meant he'd never seen the present.
It meant he'd never taken part.
She gazed at the orange skies and clear ocean. It had been so long since she'd seen something so beautiful. The world before was flawed but the world now was hideous. Something ached inside her and suddenly, the fierce desire for vengeance, the desire to destroy this particular hell-dweller ebbed.
Killing him made no sense.
His void was so peaceful, so entirely devoid of violence that it swept her up and cradled her in its calm. She moved towards the beach, past entwined lovers and giggly children until she was right beside the frothy seawater as it lapped her toes. A shard of broken glass floated towards the shore, iridescent in the setting sun and in between the blinding flashes, she could see her own face.
The moments were brief and the glass was then swallowed by the waves but the absurd image was burned into her mind: wide eyes, delicate wrists, a silk dress. The stranger could've been a nymph or an angel, fantastical beings that didn't fit in their filthy world. She'd been young when she'd risen from the ashes of her city's ruins. And like everything else, her frozen youth was simply another tool to be used.
It is of utmost importance, my disobedient child, that you present innocence. I want the empath alive.
Empath.
Her mind had dismissed the word instantly—hell-dwellers never were, angels were forbidden from such things, and anyone else with a shred of it were wiped out decades ago. The altruists died first, Issa knew that, and she'd chosen to kill her own emotions.
"Hello. You're new here."
Issa's hands reached for daggers that weren't there. The move had been unnecessary—unlike the other hell-dwellers, this one didn't have sharp teeth. And unlike the others, he was crippled, so shrunken it seemed each movement would cause his skeletal frame to wither. Eyes not leaving her face, he drew two gleaming blades from within his sleeves—hers.
"You dropped these."
A breeze tugged his hair, long and silk-like, the only soft thing in his face as he held them out, hilts towards her.
It is of utmost importance that you present innocence.
"Thank you," she said, her lips moving mechanically, the poison bending her to Lilith's order. "They were a gift." A gift to herself after she murdered its owner but he didn't need to know that.
"Then you should take them back, shouldn't you?" he asked, slanting his head at her. He spoke so quietly she had to strain to hear him.
Present innocence.
"I have no use for such things," she said.
Something glimmered in his inky, bottomless eyes—could he tell she was lying?
"Neither do I." He let the blades drop into the sand and she memorised the sound, every muscle poised to grab the falling knives and slash him open.
I want the empath alive.
The very same muscles slackened, beyond her control, and the slim weapons plunged into the sand, half-buried. "How will you defend yourself?" she asked.
"Against what?" he asked. "You? Them?" He nodded towards the shadow children at the shore, who were building the same crumbling sandcastle for the dozenth time, the girl passing the shovel to her brother with the same toothy smile. "There's nothing to do here but wait."
Issa blinked, caught off-guard by the comparison. He grouped her with the children of his imagination. He thought her harmless—
I want you to do everything in your power to bring him to me whole.
The poison snapped her wandering mind back to attention. Her practised eyes took in his broken, withered legs. In Lilith's void, he was a prisoner locked in his own mind, free to move in the space of his making, but if she were to take him back to the she-devil's den, she'd have to carry him. Weight wasn't a problem—he had little on his bones—but he could make things difficult for her. Screaming. Biting. Considering what was waiting for them in Lilith's nest, letting him win wouldn't be a bad ide—
Do everything in your power.
Once again, the poison took hold of her will, and like clockwork, her mind returned to the task. Trust. Trust was the priority. She had to earn his trust.
In one graceful motion, she settled beside him on the sand, stretching out her legs and leaning back on her arms, the perfect picture of leisure as she looked out at the eternal sunset, hanging so precariously between the sky and ocean. The longer he stayed in Lilith's prison, the longer he thought of her as a figment of his imagination, the harder it would be to pull him out sane. And her orders were clear. Bring him to me whole.
"Do you fear the sunset?" she asked bluntly. "Is this..." she looked around at the place his mind had created within Lilith's void, "your worst fear?"
A crease formed between his brows. "What did you say?"
Her lips curled into a pleased smile. He'd noticed the peculiarity of her words almost instantly, which meant he was still halfway sane. It meant she could push harder.
"Your worst fear," she repeated slowly, leaning towards him, one hand stealthily reaching for her half-buried blade, "as Lilith's prisoner. Sunset on a beach, really?"
His eyes flashed long before she finished speaking and she found her hand closing around his hand instead of her weapon.
"Not bad," she remarked, glancing at their entwined hands. They could've been lovers, except the curved blade ruined the illusion. His hand was steadied only by her grip—she could feel his fingers shake with the effort of trying to pry the weapon from her. "For someone who's been trapped over a hundred years, you're not bad at all."
His calm shattered. "A hundred years?"
"More," she said unsympathetically. Tired of the game, she twisted. She would've waited for the satisfying crack, except yet again, the order crushed her will.
Bring him to me whole.
"He's already in pieces, you bitch," she snarled under her breath, but her muscles obeyed, powerless against the poison, as always, as fucking always. She twisted just enough to inspire pain, and she caught the first falling blade, her other hand grasping for the second. It wasn't there.
She looked up in time to find it whistling down towards her.
A century of experience answered, her arm meeting his blow faster than a blink. The movement itself was monotonous, part of a routine she'd done a million times, but exhilaration trilled through her veins. It was the poison. It altered her chemistry, filling her with bloodthirst, and before she could stop herself, her lips curled into an involuntary grin.
Present innocence.
How could she fix her mistake? Her attention snapped to his face, searching for the familiar revulsion but surprisingly, there was none. She was Lilith's best reader, and yet, she couldn't comprehend the emotion flaring in his eyes.
"What are you?" he asked, gazing at the glowing blue in her veins. They burned brighter now, thrumming with the energy she was expending.
"Hell-bound," she said, resisting the push of his blade with her own. It required so little effort that the poison in her howled its disappointment. "Like you are."
"You're no hell-dweller," he said.
She blinked.
He wasn't pretending. He truly didn't know what she was—what an Acolyte was.
"You must have been stuck here for a very long time, Edvardiel." She rolled his name in her mouth like a cherry stalk, tilting her head up at him and enjoying the way his eyes narrowed.
He rose from the sand, pushing his blade harder against hers, harder, until kissing blades shook. She could disarm him at any moment but it served little purpose. For now, she would let him think he was winning.
Her eyes wandered to his ruined legs. Do everything in your power to bring him to me. She knew nothing about him. She needed his trust but she needed information more. And what better way to get information from a male than to target his pride?
"So you can stand after all," she sneered. "For a while, I wondered what Lilith saw in a cripple."
His jaw tightened but he didn't take the bait.
"What do you want?" he asked.
The question riled her. What did she want? She wanted to finish this, to get him out of her sight, and she wanted the free will that had been robbed from her. What did she want indeed—when did that matter? She'd been sent to fetch him like a trained dog!
Bring him to me. Present innocence.
She clamped down on her growing rage, schooling her features. She could still fix this. "It isn't what I want that matters, it's what Lilith wants," she crooned. "And you're right, I'm no hell-dweller, just a servant. Poison-bound. I can't help myself."
She stopped resisting, letting his blade graze her throat, the steel caressing her skin like a lover's lips.
It wasn't something she would risk with another hell-dweller but her intuition had always been her greatest strength—she'd learned to obey it no matter what. It was the right move.
Edvardiel dropped the weapon as though it burned him.
She touched her neck, finding the smallest of cuts and catching the droplet of glowing blue. It turned red on her thumb and his eyes followed it with—finally—revulsion.
Issa studied his movements raptly, for the first time out of interest than the poison's force. In a hundred years, she'd never seen a hell-dweller so hopelessly careless. She was still holding her weapon and for all he knew, she was going to stab him with it.
"Thank you," she said sweetly.
It was the wrong thing to say. Another emotion blazed across his features and this time she recognised it—anger.
"Tell your mistress the answer is no."
The names: "Issa" sounds like a hiss which I thought fit the snake theme since she's a demon's servant. And angels seemed to have "-ael"/ "-iel" at the ends of their names like Raphael, Gabriel so I thought "Edvardiel" would be fitting.
This story is actually inspired by one I've already written, Beautiful World, so those of you who've read that will recognise similarities. I wanted to write a version with angels and demons.