Angels and Forks

The quiet bustle of a lovely summer day, broken by pyre.

A great blaze rolls over the city, a wall of pitch smoke pouring into the sky as the flame claims the heart of the Verdant Grasp. Thick smog befalls the far half of the town as the trees around it begin to smolder and singe, choking haze rolling over bloodied cobble and staining the Architect’s countenance a bright ruby red.

One noise, one terror supplanted with another—the staccato clamor of battle is swallowed whole by the steady roaring of the flame. The armored brutes have disappeared into the smoke, and the sounds of swords crossing and gunshots died with them, leaving only the deafening, boiling end.

The Knights cook in their armor, perish in the rubble they created, but it’s no matter. Hundreds of lives given, thousands taken—and among them, Umara Azwar, the Verdure Itself. Many escape, but more die. The Verdant Grasp is decapitated, its upper echelons reduced to ash in a single day by a maniac with a grudge.

There is no place anymore in the world for Starpeak. The addled mind of their motionless king glimpsed the masks of the Lantern-Bearers in the shadows of his throne room every day, and caught the smell of degenerate alchemy and wicked magics wafting along the breeze, reminding him that even in the beauty of the mountains there can be no escape from savagery so long as savagery still lives. It drove him to action.

He heard Death knocking on his door, and greeted it with a shotgun. Twin shadows, a bird and a snake, both descend upon his castle, heralding waves of soldiers flooding past the walls of his beautiful city, seeking vengeance.

They’ll have his head, but he had at least one of theirs first—and that’s all that matters to him. As the door to his throne room is kicked wide by a hulking armored figure, a small smile plays on his usually expressionless lips. He sits up, leaning forward on his cane, and looks through the eyes of the mask to the savage beneath it.

“Come, then.”

—

Night falls, the moonlight crawling up the grill that binds the stained glass of your tower window. You sit back, staring long into the maze of city streets below... watching it slip into the embrace of night for the last time.

It's not as loud as you thought the apocalypse would be. Not as chaotic. Everything seems as normal. Spare figures swim in the lamplight just like always—but as the night grows long, a subtle fear begins to grip the city. You stare for hours, unable to pry yourself away from the window but to take glimpses at the empty vial behind you. At the last vestiges of that sickly fluid clinging to the creases in the bottle's loving engravings.

Guards roll through the streets with doctors shortly behind them. The streets begin to come alive again, under the indifferent glimmer of the midnight sky. The Kingdom draws its last breaths.

You turn, looking into the corners of your room. You scan the shadows for any sign of disruption; any imprint, any figure, and find nothing. On this night, of all nights, that wretch sees fit to leave you be. You've never before felt yourself longing for Its presence, for Its cold assurance that this was the right decision. Your leg shakes, your nails dig into it, and you summon the courage to look back through the window.

The streets have gone still, again.

Come the Architect's countenance, you'll be alone. Again. You'll walk out into the streets, lined with bodies, and beg the shadows for Its return. Because, as of now, you're sober—with no Knights to threaten you, and no Angels to torment you, you've stepped out of your little world... and into a mass grave of your doing.

Did the Angel ever truly exist? Were you merely insane, all along?

You will never know. The world is different now. You are different now. ATHAROA is gone, and so is Starpeak, and all that remains...

is you.

—

Panting, heaving, drenched in blood and proceeded by a wave of black smoke and embers, you burst into your tower. The room has been ransacked, searched high and low for anything the knights who now litter the halls could have used to stop you, clearly to no avail. The roaring flames prompt the building to creak and howl beneath you, but your room, near the peak of the castle, remains untouched by the pyre.

"ATHAROA," you call out into the darkness, "I know you are here! Face me!"

That creeping, wretched radiance begins to unfurl into your mind like a corpseflower in full bloom, the ear-raking static overtaking the howl of the flames. Yet... when you look down at your feet, you find that the energy scatters from your footfalls, baring just the slightest hint of the floor, and for once, you don't feel quite so sickened.

There, ATHAROA stands, gazing long out the window. It turns the white voids It calls eyes upon you, and though It has no lips from which to read its sneering rage, you can still feel it. It reaches to Its hip, drawing a long, thin blade out of the air. It speaks, planting words directly into your mind that crowd out all of the anxiety and rage that currently dominates you: "ALL THIS TIME, YOU THOUGHT PERHAPS THAT I WAS A SIGN OF YOUR MADNESS. NO, CYRIL. THIS—" It motions out what must be the window, which briefly unveils from the sprawl of un-light to reveal the smoke that billows from the castle below, "THIS IS A SIGN OF YOUR MADNESS."

"It was a sign of my madness that I ever even listened to you, you rat bastard," you spit in return without even a second of thought, lips constantly pulled back into a twitching, snarling scowl, baring your blood-soaked fangs to the Angel. It begins to step towards you, a motion that always made you back away—but this time, you begin to approach It as well, briefly taking It aback. It brandishes Its blade, Its eyes narrowing.

"YOU CANNOT TRULY EXPECT THIS TO END WELL. I THOUGHT YOU A FOOL, BUT NOT ONE WITH A DEATHWISH." Its voice in your mind wavers a bit, almost as if it briefly struggles to fully communicate with you. In that moment, its eyes widen.

You start to speak, but your primal instincts take over—they wash the Angel's next words out of your mind.

You throw yourself into it shoulder first, displaying an ability you've never had before—to influence it. It moves against your shoulder, thrown back as if it were any other person, sent careening out of the window that it was behind not long ago. That wretched energy subsides for a moment, letting you glimpse the city below, where civilians are engaged in brutal riots against what remains of the Kingdom's shattered forces.

The two of you hang in the air for a long moment, before you can draw your sword against the creature—it tries to parry with its own, but wreathed in brilliant light magic, your sword shatters Atharoa's and strikes straight through the angel in one swift motion, cleaving it in two from shoulder to hip.

Stunned, horrified, and howling with rage, Atharoa falls, disappearing as it sinks back into the Deep, leaving you hurling out the window.

The people below, fighting viciously against their oppressors, watch as a figure wielding a radiant blade flies aloft on wide black wings from the last tower of the burning, crumbling palace.