To Hell & Back

The angels are at war. 

Some angels protect; others demolish. Wings of doves and wings of crows flutter and fight across the heavens as the fallen angels once cast out of the heavens have returned. 

Against the eerie red glow of the sun, a flock of black wings cuts through the sky, descending onto the Higher Realms. Dark magic – forbidden in the pearly and golden Higher Realms – crackles through the air like a live wire, snapping and singeing all that touches it. Each angel is particularly careful to avoid the licking flames that greedily reach for any feather nearby – burn an angel’s wings and you send them to Hell. 

“Whoa,” Ember’s eyes widen as she lands and takes in the broken sight of her former home. The scene reminds her of that Deathly Hallows II movie she watched while she was on the Earth Plane. Dark clouds churn in the sky, occasionally shattered by bursts of magic coming from angels on both sides. Her ink black feathers shake off the dense, electric smog clinging like tar, and bristle in the charged, haunting wind whistling through the skeletons of rubble. Her heart wrenches seeing the destruction, especially to the Academy building. She studied in those halls; she trained to be a guardian. She knows the Agency has become corrupt: they lied, they deceived, they misled, they could have cured Ashton and they didn’t. They betrayed her and abandoned her on the Earth Plane once she knew too much. But doubt still flashes in her eyes.

Spades sees it, just a glimmer, but it’s enough for him to grab her hand and propel her down the ripped-up asphalt streets. “Don’t hesitate. Remember Ashton,” he pushes her forward. Pristine-winged angels battle with fallen angels like the two of them nearby, and a stray comet of dark magic whizzes by their heads with a high-pitched screech.

“Get down!” Spades yells and pulls Ember behind a half-crumbled wall as the comet crashes into the ground feet away from them, leaving behind a burn mark and a wisp of smoke, obliterating everything it collided with.

Ember’s heart races. “Do you think they saw us yet?”

“I don’t think so,” Spades tries to stay calm but his panting breath proves otherwise. His eyes flit alert and attentive, scanning their options as more guardians swarm nearby. “Ember, you have to go.”

“What?”

“You need to go, alone. I’m the most wanted angel in the Realms. If they see me, they’ll arrest me on the spot and send me to Hell. You’ve got to run.”

“I can’t get to the Halo Crystal alone,” Ember hisses in a low whisper.

“Then find someone you can trust and go,” he says impatiently. “But be careful who you trust. To them, you’re not the same angel you were when you left.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Create a distraction,” he stands and spreads his raven wings before she can protest. He immediately draws the attention of four guardians who fire at him. He swerves and ducks, careful to tuck his wings close around him protectively and yells frantically to Ember, “GO!”

She hesitates for the briefest moment, fearing for him, but eventually springs into action. Spades has been fallen a lot longer than she has. He can take care of himself while she would just put them in more danger and slow them down; she has a different job to do. Get to the Agency building, she decides. With or without anyone’s help, I need to get to the Halo Crystal. It’s the only ingredient that can make the cure. Ashton may be gone, but there are so many more humans who need the cure.

Spades was right that he’s taken up everyone’s attention, so Ember manages to slip through undetected. She dashes down the road to the Agency building where it stands tall over a pile of broken glass and twisted metal. The building looks like it took a lot of hits, with all its windowpanes busted out and mangled gates, but Ember knows better. The building was designed like those race cars she also saw on the Earth Plane – even in a wreck, the exterior looks crumpled and demolished, but it keeps what’s on the inside safe: the drivers, the Halo Crystal. Rightly so, as the Halo Crystal is the beacon of light, the source of life, the fuel of forever that makes the Higher Realms eternal and everlasting goodness. Only highly ranked guardians can harness its power within the boundaries of the Realms, which is why fallen angels are stripped of the privileges as soon as they are cast out. Which is why she needs to smuggle it into the Earth Plane.

Through the debris, Ember kicks down the door to the Agency building but before going in, she glances back, scanning the skies for a glimpse of black wings.

There they are, she sighs in relief, a split-second before a fireball of dark magic slams against the wall inches away from her, close enough to feel its frigid heat against her ear, and she bolts inside.

The Agency building is unusually quiet, the loudest noise being Ember’s frantic heart pounding in every fiber of her body but eventually she takes a deep breath. Creeping across the foyer as silently as she can, broken glass crunching under her feet, she makes her way down the stairs to the basement. She doesn’t dare turn on a light – if the electricity even works anymore – so she instead pinches a small twinkle of light between her fingers, the golden magic bright enough just to see a couple steps in front of her. As she turns the corner, she nearly runs into someone. In the tiny spark she holds, his face and features glow a demonic red, and she screams.

“Ember!” a familiar voice calls to her, and as her eyes adjust, she recognizes -

“Garrett!” she wraps her arms around him. “Oh, thank goodness I found you."

“You’re back! How are you here? What are you doing? What happened to your wings?”

“Garrett, I need your help. I’ll explain everything later, but we need to get to the Halo Crystal.”

“Why?”

“There’s a plague on the Earth Plane, some poison that’s making everyone sick. I think it was derived from dark magic, some sort of earthly mutation. The Crystal is the only thing that can cure them, but the Agency hasn’t done anything to help.”

“Well, that’s impossible. If there was something wrong on the Earth Plane, surely the Agency would have sent help. There must be some mistake.”

“There isn’t,” she insists to him. “Look, I’ve been there. I was on the Earth Plane. I saw people getting sick, and there is no cure for them. That’s why Spades and I came back here – ”

“Wait, Spades is here? You brought him here? Ember, what have you done?” He digs his hands into his hair. “You know Spades isn’t just a fallen angel; he’s a dark angel. Everything he does is to create chaos and mayhem. How do you know he’s not the one who created the poison in the first place?”

“He didn’t; he wouldn’t do that!” Ember fiercely defends but her thoughts bobble. All her guardian training, she’d been told that Spades is the one angel powerful and malicious enough to ignite wildfires even in a downpour, swirl up tsunamis out of puddles, crash tectonic plates in the Earth’s crust together to create earthquakes felt up to the Higher Realms, send the whole Solar System spiraling into a black hole, burn an angel’s wings if he wanted. Invent a lethal plague if he wanted. She had trusted him but had she fallen for his charms? Had he used her to get into the Higher Realms? Had he convinced her the Agency betrayed her and then betrayed her himself?

Ember’s knees start to weaken but she tries not to falter.

“Whatever Spades is or does,” she reasons, focusing on priorities, “it doesn’t change the fact that people on the Earth Plane are sick and the Halo Crystal is the only cure. That much is still true, and we have to help them. So will you help me?”

Garrett studies her for a long time before he finally agrees. “Yes, of course. Of course, you know I always trust you.” She breathes a sigh of relief, and he hugs her. “Welcome back.” 

Together, they run the rest of the way to the crystal chamber. Ember tries to block her doubts about Spades and the Agency and the origins of the poison and the dark magic exploding above them. Eventually, she and Garrett reach the crystal chamber, but as soon as they get there, Ember sees the obvious fault in her plan she didn’t think of: the chamber is secured by a handprint scanner. Technically re-classified as “fallen,” even if she weren’t her training was incomplete to give her access to the most guarded place of the heavens, and the one place she needs to enter.

“What do we do now?” she despairs.

“Don’t worry. I can get in,” Garrett says.

“You have access?” she asks, nearly in awe. Access to the crystal chamber is reserved for only the highest-ranked guardians.

“Yeah, I rose through the ranks quite fast while you were gone,” he shrugs and opens the vault door.

The chamber. It glows. It glows and radiates and bathes everything in the most beautiful, soothing golden light. It feels healing, and she can easily understand why the Halo Crystal is part of the cure. For a moment, she allows herself to bask in its comfort, its clarity. Warily, she looks over her shoulder at Garrett, the golden light glinting off her black wings seems to dull his pure white ones.

“So what are you going to do now?” he asks and it breaks her train of thought.

“Uh, I need to somehow get it back to the Earth Plane. At least, a chunk of it, enough to make the antidote, but it’s unbreakable,” she muses, lost in thought that she doesn’t realize when Garrett hovers right over her.

“I knew it,” Garrett’s jaw sets to stone and his eyes harden over with a glaze unrecognizable to Ember. “You’re working with him.”

“What?” she stares at him, bewildered.

“Spades and the fallen angels. The Agency was right: you’re here to steal the Crystal and overthrow the Higher Realms.”

“What are you talking about?” she reels back in shock.

“Because of Spades, the fallen angels have re-entered the Higher Realms. They’re invading us, and Spades has started the war. But really, it’s because of you.” 

“The fallen angels are here to help! They’ve lived on the Earth Plane, they’ve lived with humans and they care about them, so they want to help with the cure.”

“The cure that can only be made with the Halo Crystal?” Garrett sneers. “The most important artifact in the Higher Realms? That’s convenient.”

“Look, I know it seems that way,” she explains. “And I know it might be hard to trust me right now, but – what is that?”

Cold, frizzy, black lightning sparks at his fingertips and she gasps in horror: dark magic. “You,” she breathes, stunned. It wasn’t the fallen angels wielding dark magic, it wasn’t the fallen angels who created the poison. It was the guardians; it was Garrett.

“Surprise,” an oily smile stretches across his face and it makes her sick.

“I trusted you!” 

“Well, that was your first mistake. Your second was that you never did know how to fly fast enough.”

Before she can move, he wicks a flame of dark magic at her, and it ignites the tips of her wings.

“No!” she cries and tries to flap and flutter the fire out but it’s no use. The burning feathers fill the air with an acrid smell, and she collapses to the ground. Her body jolts and writhes in terrible pain, but the worst anguish is knowing the only thing she’ll hear in eternal Hell is Garrett’s cackling laughter. Her vision goes blind and blank to black, the charred smell seems to dissolve around her and take her with it, everything slips away…

                                                      ****

Unearthly pain wracks my body. Wait. I’m still an angel. Maybe – unheavenly, rather? Am I still an angel? With this pain it doesn’t seem like I can be anything else than nerves and feathers ablaze. Blinding sear. Broken. Hurts as if I fell from the heavens. Crashed right onto the ground. No soft cushion landing. Just…fallen. Ha. I am fallen. Black wings prove it. Black before they ignited. Black when the char and soot covered them. Funny they stay black even when burned. Still black in those few seconds before they crumble away into ash. Into nothing. Don’t think I’m screaming anymore but I can’t be sure. Nothing here seems sure. Nothing here seems…anything. Perhaps that’s what should be expected from nothingness – nothing.

“What did you do to her? Ember, Ember, please. Can you hear me?” 

Spades’s voice echoes somewhere near me. But that’s impossible. That would be something in nothingness. Something out of nothing – so many laws of science violated. Spades wasn’t in the crystal chamber. Or is this Hell? Did the guardians catch him and send him to Hell too and we now dwell in the grave of Eden?

Actually. This is too nice to be Hell. It glows. It glows and radiates and bathes everything in the most beautiful, soothing golden light. It feels healing. It feels like it’s cradling me. Keeping me cozy in a cocoon. Like a butterfly when its wings are forming. I wonder what color my wings will be. Oh wait. Right. I don’t have wings anymore. Garrett burned them. But wait. He’s not laughing anymore. I hear Spades too. Shh, let me listen.

                                                         ****

“You’ll pay for this. I swear, I’ll make you pay for this,” Spades hisses bitterly, lunging at Garrett, ready to pluck the feathers out of his wings one at a time.

Black and white feathers clash against each other like on a lethal chessboard, desperately avoiding a charred checkmate. White moves first, hurling dark magic at Spades who leaps out of the way just in time as it collides with the wall, leaving a smoky smear. Spades presses his back against the Crystal to catch his footing and breath. For the first time, he is afraid. He was exiled from the Higher Realms for wielding dark magic but he’s never touched the stuff; everyone had turned on him, and the one person who believed in him he was too late to save, her body still here but her soul in the unknown abyss. It’s not fair, it’s not right, he’s never done anything wrong and yet pays everyone’s price and he’s sick of it. Attempting to deflect another burst of dark magic from someone who claimed he was a guardian, he trips and crashes against the Crystal. The dark flames inch closer to him and he braces himself for their fiery impact – right as the Halo Crystal topples over. It shatters into thousands of pieces with a supernova of such golden force that it smashes the sonic barrier, ripples the atmosphere, and throws Garrett right out of the Higher Realms, fallen below even the Earth Plane – possibly even lower than Hell?

Dazed and disoriented, Spades lifts himself off the floor, coughing through the dust. The Halo Crystal rains down in a fine golden rain, and Spades cups his hands out to it. Sunlight slants in through the broken fragments of the walls, cutting through the dust and the final smog of dark magic clearing out. It glows. Everything glows. For the first time in a long time, Spades raises his head proudly in the Higher Realms. If only Ember could have been here to witness it.

“Geez, Spades, you couldn’t have taken it a little easier?” Ember brushes off her bruised, dirty knees, golden resurrected wings spreading behind her.

Spades would roll his eyes if he weren’t crying as he hugs her tight.