XXXXXXXII
URIEL
Solstice
Fallen Chapel, Earth
Faust stood up and extended a hand burning with black fire towards the incoming projectile. Using only his palm, he grabbed the ball and then threw it off to the side, like he was swatting aside a rubber ball. "Credit where credit's due; that's an impressive increase in power you've managed in such a short amount of time. But you're still behind the curve. I've spent years preparing for this moment. It'll take more than a few sloppy fireworks to best me," Faustt said with a laugh as he brushed off the snow on his shoulders. "He'd be so disappointed with you."
Uriel spun his silverwood sword and summoned a second blade composed of Dawn. "You have no idea how hard I've fought for this moment," he spat, snow sizzling as it fell against his burning flesh. "You've killed others, burned down everything in your path to get what you wanted. Manipulated others, played on their fears. I bled and fought for every last bit of power I've gained; I won't be beaten by someone who's just a shadow."
"I'd rather be a shadow than a sham," Faust said, dark embers lining his body as he began to rise into the air. "I know what I am and I accept it gladly. But you? I can tell there's a part of you that's playing at being human, running around with your little friends and pretending to feel what they feel," he continued, drawing Jonathan's warped sabre from beneath his cloak. "One day, you're going to wake up and realize that this was all just a game of pretend. You'll look at the people you once held dear, the people you think you're doing all this for, and you'll realize that they don't really know you at all. That you're a different breed. That you always have been. And they'll look at you and think the same. And they'll be afraid."
Uriel charged through the falling snow, his blazing aura melting the fragile flakes as flew towards his opponent. He met Faust in midair with a thrust of his right sword. "You're wrong. I know who I am, and so do my friends. They would never turn on me. You wouldn't know this, but not every relationship ends with a bloody sword."
"How can they possibly know you when you don't even know yourself?" Faust asked, vanishing into a black portal before Uriel's blade could reach its target. "The only reason you're still sane right now," he said as he reappeared behind Uriel and raised his blade for an overhead strike, "is because you're ignoring everything that presents questions. The feel of soft grass on your hand, a cool breeze on your cheek, even a wet kiss on your lips. You will never, ever know if what you're feeling is real or something you manufactured for yourself to fit in with what you've been told you should feel. You were trained to believe that you were human because they wanted you to serve them. I'll bet Lady Vigilant knew. Why wouldn't she tell you your true nature apart from fear?"
A blade of Dawn formed out of thin air to block Faust's strike. "You can't trick me, Faust. That's the difference between us," Uriel growled, whirling around and slashing the Nephilim across the chest. "I have people in my life that don't try to manipulate me or use me. Friends that let me decide who I want to be."
Faust scowled down as the wound on his chest quickly healed. "Friends? That's your reason for living? That's where you find your psychological clarity? Don't make me laugh," he spat, a flaming black chain shooting out from his hands and wrapping around Uriel. "Everyone is using everyone else, Uriel. Even if they don't know it. We're all just a collection of needy, self-driven sycophants. We wander around reality finding anyone we can to meet our sexual, ideological and emotional hungers. And then we feed once we find a suitable crop. Suck it dry, then walk away and start again." He chuckled as he tightened the chains around Uriel. "We're vampires, all of us. Friends simply leave their victims living."
"You're sad," Uriel said in disgust, a wave of white sparks dissolving Faust's chain. "You spew lies and paranoia and hatred because that's all there is left inside of you. You think you're so layered, so complex. But you're not. You never grew up. You think that if you make everyone else suffer, if everyone endures as much pain and ugliness as you have, maybe you won't feel so alone." He lunged towards Faust, using the two swords in his hands and the third floating beside him to launch a deadly triple-bladed barrage.
Faust grinned as he ducked and warped between strokes. "Yes!" he said excitedly. "Now you're starting to get it! Maybe you're not such a lost cause." Midnight sparks ran along his arms as he summoned his own set of three blades, beginning a mach-speed duel as the two fighters circles around each other. "Now you're starting to understand the way that people work. What really drives them."
"Are you seriously so self-absorbed that you think you're teaching me something in the midst of all of this insanity?" Uriel said in disbelief as the snowy air flashed with white and black light. "I'm not learning from you. I'm better than you."
"Better than me?" Faust repeated, raising an eyebrow as he summoned another sword and pressed his attack. "You're not better than me. You're not even worse than me, for that matter. You're a fabrication. A toy, and an increasingly boring one at that." He rolled his eyes as he dodged one of Uriel's strikes that nearly slashed across his neck. "You have always been someone's project. Vigilant decided to call you a human and Eli decided to turn you into a new son. I decided to turn you into a hero, but you've always been part of someone else's plans."
Uriel flew backwards, gaining distance from Faust's onslaught. "I don't know if I'm a hero. I think that's what I'm here to find out," he said extending his arms and firing off a barrage of Dawn from his fingertips. "But if I am one, it's got nothing to do with you."
"It has everything to do with me!" Faust roared, firing his own volley and hitting every single one of Uriel's shots with his own. "Didn't you listen to a single thing that Isaac told you? We've been structuring this whole little misadventure of yours from the beginning." He pointed at Uriel with a maniacal grin. "It's always been about you, Uriel. Not because you're special, but because you're kindling. You're the fuel that lights the Beast's fire," he yelled, charging Uriel and slashing at him with the twisted sabre. "It's been about the Fruit, sure, but that was easy enough to obtain. We did all of this to prepare you to become part of something greater than you ever could be on your own. You've always been on strings, Uriel. The only thing that changes is who's pulling them."
Uriel blocked Faust's blade with his own, punching him across the face with his free hand as they locked weapons. Images of Vigilant's script, of his whole life reduced to lines in some divinely pre-ordained play, flashed before his eyes. They enraged him. "I made the choices that brought me here, no one else!" the angel shouted with a choral might.
"You may have played the cards, but we stacked the deck," Faust replied, reaching out and pressing a flaming hand against Uriel's side. "While it was fun to spend some quality time with Eli, he wasn't the important. Not on his own, anyway," He explained as the Dusk began to eat away at Uriel's flesh. "He was always bait, but the plan changed when I discovered a curious little surprise: An angel who didn't even know his own past, his own nature, was already living in Eli's own home." He shrugged as he pulled away from Uriel. "Maybe Morningstar really is on my side, because it was a miracle. It would have been nearly impossible to find some other angel, much less subdue them and drain their Breath. The best I would be able to do is fight to a standstill. But then, there you were." He smiled. "The weakest angel that the world has ever seen. So we crafted this little quest to make you strong. Your Breath was useless before you embraced your angelic nature, but now you're ready. Not strong enough to win, but strong enough to believe you could. We gave you goals, friends, mentors, challenges, and enemies. Everything a hero needs. And now? Now it all comes to an end and a new beginning. The age of the Beast. An age without the cruelty of the Brigade. Without the oppression of death itself."
Uriel rocketed towards Faust, running him through with his blade and driving them both down towards the ground. "I don't know many angels, but it seems to me that I've still got more than enough strength to take care of you."
Faust laughed as they slammed into the ground together. "Tell me," he said, snapping his neck back into place and pulling Uriel's sword from his fully healed chest, "You do know why Morningstar created humankind after all the rest of creation was complete, don't you? Why humans came after she had already fashioned his angels?"
Uriel tightened his gaze, looking down at where Faust had fallen to the ground. "No," he lied, slashing at Faust shoulder.
"See, there you go again. Ignoring the contradictions before your very eyes, refusing to face who or what you really are. It'll be the death of you," Faust chided as he rolled away from Uriel's sword stroke. "I can tell, you know the answer already. Two words, come on."
"Go to hell," Uriel spat, attempting to slash at Faust's other shoulder.
Faust shook his head after again rolling out of the way of the attack. "That's three words, and you're wrong. Morningstar created humans because she wanted beings with 'free will.' She wanted to be loved without force, so she created creatures with the ability to choose him or rebel. After all, it doesn't mean much if it comes from the flick of a switch." Faust smirked and warped behind Uriel. "And you know what question comes next. So, if I have free will, if I make all of my own decisions," he leaned in close, "then what the hell do you have?"
Uriel's wings exploded outwards, sending Faust flying backwards. He gripped his pounding forehead. "I... I choose," Uriel insisted. "This is my path. Mine." He beat his chest. "I. Am. Me."
"Is it? Are you?" Faust asked. "Think about it. The very reason I exist, that humans exist, is because angels were incapable of satisfying Morningstar's desire for true love. Unforced love." He spread his arms out wide. "Your friends and I are the very evidence that this life is not your own. Everything you are, everything you believe yourself to be? It's manufactured. Slavery to Morningstar is the essence of your very being. You choose nothing. It's in your very nature. Don't try and resist it."
"No!" Uriel shouted, his voice shaking. "You're trying to confuse me. The Penumbra are angels that turned against Morningstar, they chose to-"
Faust laughed. "Did they? Did they choose?" he pressed. "Who told you that? Morningstar? One of her followers?" He waved a dismissive hand as he rose to his feet. "Did you ever think that maybe the Penumbra were programmed the same way that you are? That they too believe they are choosing, when really it's all just some big cosmic play put on for her amusement?" Faust ran a hand along his patchwork scars. "The scriptures would be awfully boring if they ended in Eden. She might need her villain as much as I needed my hero. And maybe we're not even the first showing. Maybe it's happened again and again, over and over, like nothing more than bad song stuck in her big, omniscient head."
Uriel ran a hand along his silverwood sword, charging it with an intense concentration of Dawn. "I don't care about your lies, I will stop you!" he roared, slashing the sword through the air. The flames leapt from his blade as he swung it down towards the ground. The white blaze took on the arc of the slash and rocketed towards Faust with ferocious speed.
"Fine!" Faust yelled, pushing back against Uriel's blow with his sabre. "Obey your instructions, do as you're told! After all, this is our fate, isn't it? An agent of Morningstar in a battle to the death with the dark forces on Earth?" He whipped his sword to the side and sent the Dawn slash into the ground in front of him. "But your false love doesn't have the power to defeat me. It's going to take more than two white wings to overcome me."
"Then how about three?" Uriel growled, pounding the dead soil as a third flaming wing sprung from his back. "Or four? Or five?" Veins throbbed in his neck as two more blazing wings burst from his back. "Can you stop six?" he challenged, one final, raging mass of burning feathers joining the other five. "I'm tired of holding back. I'm tired of feeling sorry for you. I'll push through whatever limits it takes to protect the people I love from people like you, even if I have to destroy myself. This is more than just some game to me, and it's more than the right thing. It's the reason I choose to keep fighting."
Faust rested his hands behind his head. "Strong words. Too bad they've been written for you." He sighed. "Your visions of some future peace, some place without struggle, will offer you no strength here, Uriel." He gestured to the devastated land surrounding them. "This is a land of sin. I'm just trying to set one thing right."
Uriel kneeled down and pressed both palms against the cold snow. "If there is no strength left to be found in visions of peace and dreams of love, then I will find new power in the anger of the damned and the nightmares of anger. I warned you once: I am the Angel of Rage," he proclaimed, his voice echoing with divine power. His hands sizzled through the snow as he spoke. As his palms touched against the earth, brilliant white fracture lines began to quickly creep along the ground around him. Uriel reached deep into his mind, scraping across the dark place where memories are bound to twisted imagination. A place where the only reality is the strongest thought. The place where his monster had lain in wait.
Jets of white fire burst from beneath the wretched soil as the hot embers of raw creation emerged from the surface. Rigid scales formed alongside powerful legs as the behemoth rose. Sharp, crooked teeth seemed to grin as a powerful jaw locked into place. Mighty wings flapped, shaking the ground beneath them as white magma completed their frame. Jagged claws dug into the weak earth as the beast stood, raising Uriel high into the air as he stepped onto its rising head. Then it roared, its battlecry a chorus of bloodthirsty lions. Before Faust stood a dragon composed of Dawn over half the size of the church, eager steam flowing from nostrils.
Faust was paralyzed with fear for a moment, but then quickly regained his nerve. "That's nothing!" he spat, raising his hands into the air. His body churned with black flames for a moment and then the flames began to gather in a circle around Faust's feet. They swirled around his legs, quickly growing in size. They flames grew larger and larger until at last a massive cobra composed of Dusk lay coiled around Faust. The Nephilim smiled as he hopped onto his creation's head and rose up to meet Uriel's gaze. The snake hissed with a venomous glee as it flared open its hood and bared its fangs.
Uriel simply pointed at Faust and the dragon seemed to snort in contempt. The silver beast grabbed the snake in its mouth, lifting it up into the air and then slamming it back to the ground. Its powerful claws pinned the frantically hissing serpent to the ground. It lifted a hind leg and crushed the snake's head under its heel. "Let him burn," Uriel ordered. The dragon reared back its head, opened its mouth and then unleashed a screeching symphony of flames onto the pitiful recreation.
"No!" Faust roared, his shield of Dusk fading. He covered himself in black flames and leapt into the air, hurtling towards Uriel with his twisted blade drawn. "I will save her!"
"I'm sorry," Uriel said as the dragon grabbed Faust in its claws. "You won't." He pointed his finger down. The dragon tightened its grip, crushing all of Faust's bones, and then slammed him through the church wall, sending the Nephilim hurtling to the church floor in a pile of rubble.
One by one, Uriel's wings began to flicker and die out. His eyes closed. The dragon offered one final roar before evaporating into ivory steam. The angel's body began to fall towards the ground, spinning through the air wildly as his frame went limp. Just as he was about to hit the ground, a crimson blur sped up the side of the demolished church wall and kicked off of the side. Two arms extended from the red haze and caught Uriel moments from impacts. "Don't worry, Uriel. You've done enough," Daken said softly, sprinting back inside the church with his brother in his arms, "it's my turn to save you."
Uriel's eyes flickered open as Daken set him down at the front of the church. "Eli!" He yelled. "Is he-"
"He's fine," Daken said, turning Uriel's head to the right so he could see Eli lying just beside him, eyes closed. "He's unconscious, but fine."
"Where's Faust?" Uriel demanded, struggling to his feet. He shook with every movement, barely able to keep himself upright. "That last attack took everything out of me, everything. If I didn't-"
Sadness filled Daken's eyes. He lifted a finger and pointed to a pile of rubble with black blood seeping out from underneath. "This... This wasn't how it was supposed to end. I learned how to... I was going to..." He cursed himself and walked over to where the pile of stones. "I'm sorry, Faust. I'm sorry dad. I couldn't keep my-"
"Why should you be the one to change fate? It's taken everything from me. Everything. And I will still save her," Faust roared, bursting from the ruins and throwing Daken. His form was bloodied and his broken body moved with an unnatural elasticity. "All I have to do is defeat you!" he said, pointing at Uriel's heart and firing a thin, concentrated blast of Dusk from his hand.
Uriel tried to move his legs, but they refused to obey him. Exhaustion had overtaken them completely. "I can't-"
"No!" The moment the onyx flames left Faust's palm, Eli's eyes shot open with a red spark. His body jerked up and leapt in front of Uriel, shoving his son to the side. The Fisher's battered frame coursed with both red and silver energies. "I will not let my family destroy itself again!" he said, standing directly in the path of the blast.
Faust's flames tore through Eli's chest, leaving nothing in its path but a small, blackened hole. The ritualistic symbols glowed with a bright purple, as did the serpentine mark on Faust's arm. For a moment, the Nephilim's veins pulsed violet, as if in recognition that the contract was taking yet another step forward.
Eli smiled as he began to stumble forward, clutching his wound. "Look at you. All three of you. You're all so grown up." He broke into a gigantic grin. "My boys. My beautiful boys, all here together. On Earth. Our home. Like a family." He looked down at his chest, then back up at his sons. "Uriel. Daken. Faustus. I love you all so very much." Gentle tears began to stream down his cheeks. He laughed. "You kept your promises. Now... now I'm going to ask for one more." He coughed, a bit of blood seeping from his mouth. "You promised to protect your family. But I... I see now. Everyone is our family. Keep them safe."
Then he fell to the ground.