Phantom Pain (trilogy)

The Feeling

Chapter 6: The Feeling

Lucifer was there waiting for me. Soft lighting removed the evil from his features, making his pitch black hair look like down.

“Can you let me sleep, brother, please?” I asked. “If only for one night?”

“But we have much to discuss,” Lucifer said, beginning to walk towards me.

“I have nothing to say to you.” I looked away, waiting for an opportunity for escape to present itself.

“You have come in contact with your brothers?”

I did not bother asking how he knew that. They had been his demons we were fighting after all.

“Camael leads Raphael's legion, does she not?”

Still, I did not answer. I wondered if he was even fully present here. I doubted that he had this much time to devote to an almost useless potential ally.

“I know how to do it Ramiel,” he began to circle me. “I know how to bring our brothers back to this world, when heaven does not.”

“How?” I tried not to look at him, tried to ignore the way the light glanced off of his wings.

“Join me and we will do it together.”

A head shake, on my part.

“As you wish, brother. It would appear that we do not have as much in common as I had originally thought. Remember, my gratitude has not yet ran out, do not waist that.”

In a flurry of feathers, and I was falling.

“Enjoy your dreams...” The voice came from nothing, filling my entire head.

I hit the ground with a familiar thud. It was always falling. My mind had become repetitive in its torments. I had landed in a room full of angels. They stood at attention, wings held tight to their backs. None of them seemed to notice me. Even as I got to my feet, not one of them turned their heads. It was my legion.

“Ariel?” I asked, touching one of them softy on the shoulder.

No response. She stared blankly ahead, as if I did not exist at all.

“Hoel?” My brother did not acknowledge me. “Please,” I begged, pushing through the lines frantically, forced to move their wings out of my way. “It's me, brothers. Can you see me?”

The angels seemed too tall, and I could not see over them. Pushing through the last line of wings, I stumbled into a small empty space, around the base of a pedestal. On it stood Raphael, alive in all of his splendour. He was not alone. A human woman whose face I did not see or register, stood beside him, more a silhouette than a person.