Bereft: Foretold

25 | A Servant's Aspiration

The dowdy city street below was dark and drawn in the gloaming hour.

Aurelius rode the current of the late winter air through the smog above the City of Angels, listening to the empty howl of the wind and its hollow song. A dated basilica waited in the quiet street, its slanted roof burdened by the weight of a slouching birch tree. There were no symbols of denomination decorating the lintel, no definite sign of religious bias. Just stained glass windows and untouched autumn leaves.

The Absolian angled his wings and plummeted.

A web of scripts woven through the air tugged against him and tore like the gossamer strands they were. He thrust his hand out, raw energy held in his palm, and didn't so much as blink when he passed through the roof, shingles and rafters shattering into splinters, the beams breaking with calamitous sounds. 

Aurelius twisted mid-air and landed upon the interior floor in a hailstorm of debris. A man in a black cassock balked and reeled from the downpour, crying in protests when the wooden pews scattered like terrified children in the presence of a cruel parent. The faux-priest laying prostrate upon the ground gawked in horror as the winged creature stood in the abrasive light reflected by the overhead pollution.

The Absolian granted the worthless mage a bored glance and a thoughtless gesture. Power swelled, invisible yet undeniable, and struck the mage across his torso. Flesh was rent and bones popped like rocks going through a metal fan.

Aurelius lowered his cold eyes from the red smear to the well-trod carpet. He sensed the other mages below him, scurrying about in their tunnels, alerted by his less than subtle entrance. Already their spells rose toward the church in effort to reinforce their barrier, dozens of masculine voices mixed in a terrified cacophony.

They thought themselves safe in the earth, safe behind their wards and scripts even as Aurelius' spiraling power shredded the incandescent constructs and runes etched into the church's rotting frame.

A smile tipped the Absolian's lips. 

He concentrated and the unleashed magic changed, driving itself downward, forming large, cracked furrows in concrete and stone. The energy ripped itself in two opposing directions and, in an instant, tore the basilica's foundation apart, sending a shockwave out that shattered what windows remained and poured colored glass over the broken altar. 

It's been too long since I've allowed myself a bit of fun. 

The Absolian's dark wings disappeared as he hopped into the opened hole. 

Many of the mages had fled deeper into the stone hovel, unable to fight their fear in the face of such an indomitable foe. Some men in their uniformed coats of gray and violet remained, older mages of an older generation, and they slung spells toward Aurelius with reckless abandon. Some landed, peppering his lean body with aggravating bites and stings, but most rebounded, glanced away, or were devoured by his riled magic.

Aurelius swung his arm perpendicular to his body and his power mimicked the motion, slicing outward in an unsheathed blade of screaming energy. It cut through the mages without hesitation, silencing their hurled spells, and they crumpled in so many piles of diced, crimson pieces.

He walked on, booted feet sluicing through red lakes as the ground trembled under his weight and his magic enveloped him in a storm of silent pressure. Cracks appeared in the concrete walls and crawled from Aurelius in shaken spirals, the corridor buckling and bowing as if a creature of much larger mass was traipsing its narrow confines.