Children of the Archangels

CHAPTER 54: ARMY OF THE VOID

Luke's balls shrunk from the sudden change in temperature.

Bye-bye paradise and hello sub-freezing temperatures. If you ask Luke, he'll tell you good riddance to the Garden. If it were up to him, he'd never go back again. The howling Antarctic wind was music to his ears.

Once in the cold environment, Uriel's aspect changed back to fire as his wings went to fiery white and warmed the group like a hearth. His age seemed to fast-forward as well, back to his wise old self.

Nil kept rubbing his eyes, hoping he'd see something soon. Luke looked to Uriel for answers.

"The fruit from the tree doesn't cause blinds unless eaten in excess, but a single bite is far from excessive. This leaves only one explanation..."

Suddenly all ambiance stopped. The wind, the ice cracking beneath their feet, the snow caking the ground. The area was dead quiet, as if all noise was vacuumed from the continent.

"As I feared..." Uriel said allowing Luke to breathe easy knowing he hadn't randomly gone deaf just as easily as Nil had gone blind.

Although he'd probably wouldn't mind borrowing some of that blindness after seeing what was lurking atop an icy mound about a mile or so off in the distance.

All around Luke was a sea of white and perched atop an icy hill was a figure robed in all black. Its head was hidden behind a hood blacker than darkness. Its wings behind it looked like they were coated in squid ink as they leaked down his feathers like molten tar but refused to fall from his wings. Besides his wings were two sheaths that held two different sized swords. One was in the shape of a Khopesh, or a medium-sized sword in the shape of a sickle. The other sheath looked like a row of arrowheads running down the length of a snake. Luke could only imagine what the sword would look like.

Luke gulped and wondered if that was Jurgen up on that ridge. Then he got ahold of himself. Jurgen was never that scary-looking, no matter how ugly he was.

Then who was this person? Was it...

"Is that..." Luke turned to Uriel hoping he knew.

Uriel's eyes squinted. His hand rested atop the handle of his fiery sword. "Trouble."

Then the only bit of color in the figure was displayed when his eyes opened and displayed two blue and black eyes that shone with the intensity of a resistant star being siphoned of its energy by a nearby black hole. Appearing by his side were two wingless people. Then two more joined, and another two...

Soon, the entire ridge was lined in a row of hooded figures that stretched the length of the world's longest train. An army had showed up to greet Luke and his friends after surviving the Garden Run. How nice of them.

"Who said that?" Nil said suddenly and scared the heck out of Luke and Sirius but didn't even cause Uriel or Alpha to flinch.

"No one said anything Nil," Luke said.

Nil seemed to ignore Luke. "I think...he's calling me." Nil stepped forward in the direction of the army.

Luke ordered him to stop. "What are you doing? Get back here."

"He says my sight will only be restored with him. You guys and SGA can't help me any further."

"Any further?" Luke repeated with a hint of audacity to it. How dare Nil just treat him and the others like they were used pens he could write off. They risked their damn lives to bring him here and now he was going to toss them aside and waltz on over to the enemy or whatever that thing was.

"Nil, it's too dangerous," Sirius tried to reason with him. "Don't listen to him."

Nil paused for a second as if thinking—no he was listening. "He said not to trust you," Nil turned to Sirius. His voice was normal, but his words were not. He was clearly a messenger. "He said you're an unstable entity."

Unstable entity? Luke thought. How does this creature pretend to know Sirius? More importantly, why was Nil listening to this thing? Yes, he was five-years-old and probably curious, but Luke and Sirius were practically his parents since they escorted him over here. He needed to listen to them.

Then, out of all people, Nil turned to Alpha and relayed a question. "He asked if you found it."

Alpha avoided making eye contact with Nil and instead stared out at the creature above the ridge. If Alpha was aware of anything, he didn't show it. But the fact the creature was calling out to Alpha and asking him a question made Luke look at Alpha in a whole new light. After eating the fruit, Alpha was out of his child-like mind and more aware of himself and maybe even his past. Although he was still only 15-years-old, Luke wondered what that past entailed.

Even Uriel looked at Alpha as if he was a specimen worth studying.

Nil seemed to accept Alpha's silence as an answer. Then he turned to Uriel. "He says to let me go brother. You of all people should know that this fight cannot be won or should even be fought."

Uriel's face didn't show any contempt or fear. It stood as solid as stone in the face of blatant disrespect. However, after thinking through this message, he removed his hand from the handle of his sword.

Luke's jaw dropped. "Are we just giving up because this kid is rambling random stuff? He just ate the fruit; he's delusional."

"He said you should focus on the major decision you'll have to make soon instead of interfering in his work," Nil turned to Luke.

"Well tell him to say this to my face instead of playing with the emotions of a defenseless five-year-old," Luke gritted his teeth as a flame erupted in one hand and a lightning bolt in the other.

"He said if he got too close to you, you'd be lost to the void," Nil said. "By speaking through me, he's saving you. He thanks you for saving me from the Gaze, but he says only he can take care of me from here."

And with that, Nil turned back towards the dark angel in the distance and started walking towards him. Luke turned off his voice and turned on his actions. He ran after Nil and put his hand on Nil's shoulder.

He seemingly pleaded with Nil. "Nil, you can't go. I—we promised to bring you back."

"A promise you had no right to make. Now let go of me," Nil said and shook Luke's hand off like a rebellious teenager telling his parents he hated them.

Luke stood for a second lost. But he wasn't going to let another person walk away from him. He stepped in front of Nil and kept his back towards him. He faced the dark angel with his hands spread out.

"If you want Nil," he shouted into the cold desert. "Then you'll have to pry him from me first."

The creature's blue eyes were motionless as they darted into Luke's soul. In the blue spark he saw light being drowned by endless darkness, a chaos that God most likely found the universe in before He conquered it.

"Let him go," Alpha said from behind. "Luke, just let him go."

"I won't let him go to die or worse, be used by this evil corrupt angel." Then Luke started piecing things together, or at least the way he saw things. The dark angel called Uriel brother.

Then this must be the Lord of Darkness himself. "I won't let him fall to Lucifer, the snake hiding outside the Garden."

At the mention of that name the dark angel's hand rose into the air and all the soldiers along the ridge unveiled bows that glinted like obsidian. The arrows flickered with a black flame at the tip, almost like miniature swirling black holes.

"He didn't like what you said," Nil noted, although Luke could figure that out on his own.

Soon, Luke found his courage sapped away as a volley of arrows soared through the air like a murder of crows that was about to rain down upon him like black rain.