Knights of the Grey City

Chapter 74 - MONSTERS

Our blades clashed. Yael's skidded off of mine and she drifted back a surprised step, looking down at me. I was hunched with my face turned away, flinching, the blade held up in an awkward defense of my face.

"It won't help," Yael told me. I didn't have to have Rayne's powers to hear the note of sadness in her voice.

"Then go ahead and kill me," I snapped, repositioning the blade. Like hers, it was light and took almost no strength to move.

"Camilo," Huang warned me from where he was leaning on Rayne for support.

Yael struck again. This time, the force of it was brutal, skidding me back a foot, but my sword absorbed the impact and it barely even hurt my arm. The base of the platform hit me in the back.

"Why did you give up?" I repeated. Huang lurched forward in my peripheral vision and I knew he was about to transform, but I held up a hand to tell him to wait.

Yael's blade drooped. "You don't understand. I tried so hard. I tried... Everything..."

"But you still gave up," I said. I waited for her to strike again, but she just looked at me.

"Of course I did. Anyone would. No human is able to cure what my brother did."

"He really fucked it up that bad, huh?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. Irreparably." Her skull-face peered past me at the platform which was nearly within reach. If she wanted to, she could probably just stab the sword down over my head and be done with it, but she was hesitating. I watched her sword drift down an extra inch until it touched the ground. "I didn't think it would be easy, but when I started, I at least thought that it would be possible."

"Can't you tell me what happened before you go ahead and kill us?" I asked. "Is it too much that I want to understand why it is we have to die?"

"I suppose not... You've fought hard... led hard lives... When I offered you the chance to kill me first, I..." she drifted off, as if considering her words for the first time. "Well, I knew you weren't strong enough. No one could be with the tools you were given. I know it's all very unfair. Of course it is. It was so unfair for me, too."

The gold around us shifted.

"I didn't sign up for this... I know I should have protected the Core from Aram, but the time for regretting that has long since passed."

The colour slowly leeched out of the gold as it formed into walls of grey. The empty streets and towers of a fortress formed around us. Grotesque shapes wandered through the dull alleys, white eyes and inky bodies.

Then, a blade sliced through them. The memory-Angel that emerged from the streets was a different kind than the one who faced me now. The old Angel was a stunning patchwork of creatures. Her wings weren't solid black, but mottled grey with black tips, much more like those of a bird. Her face was nearly human, but more severe, her skin strangely textured, her eyes glowing fiercely gold. Instead of the pooling mists, a black robe draped over her, obscuring most of her body.

"I wore black for mourning and performed my funeral rites by destroying the demons," Yael said softly. "I destroyed them again and again and again. Patrolling the streets, watching the mist reform into more whenever I killed them. I soon realized that a more permanent solution was called for."

The mourning Angel found a set of stairs and descended it. The scene blurred into gold for a moment, then reformed around us as a dark, featureless stone room. The mourning Angel stood in the center, blade braced against the ground.

"In time, I learned to access the Core from anywhere. Its power ran through the entire dimension. Even in that demonic land I made, which I had isolated as much as possible, I could still reach out to it."