Excerpt: Surrender

“So you were human once?” he asked the now-angel, shifting the conversation to safer waters.

Noviel shot him an odd look – something of a cross between exasperated annoyance and muted understanding. He seemed to evaluate Marc’s question, turning it over in his mind as marc waited, curiosity piquing the longer it took for Noviel to answer. He hadn’t intended to care about the answer, he had just wanted a simple way to get off the topic of death and now that he had he found he was suddenly awaiting Noviel’s answer with genuine curiosity.

“Yes.” Noviel said at last, apparently finding Marc’s question worth his time. “I was born on –“ his face screwed up in concentration, brow furrowing as a thin frown pulled at his lips. “It was winter.” He amended, still frowning as though he hadn’t quite found the information he had been looking for. Marc wasn’t sure if he was editing the story or if he merely did not remember. Perhaps he just didn’t want to tell him. “I remember the cold,” at this a light shiver seemed to pass over him and he trembled, twisting the blanket lying across his lap in his hands. “I hated the cold.” He muttered to himself.

He looked off into the distance, gazing at the far wall behind Marc with a glossy look of reminiscence on his face. He seemed to be thinking hard, pulling at the memories. When he spoke his voice was wistful and far-away.

“District eighty-three was a fairly calm district back then…”

“DISTRICT EIGHTY THREE WAS in the Fourth Tier, part of the city known for its unusual landscaping. The contractors who had built on the land said that they had built over the bones of older buildings and were merely reconstructing the past, but everybody knew they had taken some liberties with the design. The rumors had it that they had played with the blueprints as a means of escape, taking the generic grid-pattern formula for the lay of the land and morphing it into a citadel. A spiraling mass of larger homes fortressing the smaller less-resilient ones. The streets wound through the district in thin, snaking lines that were treacherous to navigate with the few automobiles that still remained and laid with plates of stone that cut into the bare feet of passengers on foot.

But this is the way the contractors had envisioned their Tier, a climbing spiral of hills and obstacles. They had taken what preparations they could against their enemies – everyone was at war then, your closest friend most often turned out to be your most hated enemy, but their defenses had to remain subtle. It was just before the dawning age of the First Century after the Apocalypse and the angels had yet to storm our trembling skies with torrents of golden flame and hailstones, but they had stirred plenty of unrest among the countries during their first siege and that unrest quickly grew to war. War fever consumed the globe and nation after nation fell prey to rogue militias.

“Our district had long since fallen prey to the destructive power of war and, as I said, we had rebuilt with the intention of defending against such attacks. It is hard to remember clearly the early years of my life though I know bloodshed featured prominently in them, but I remember clearly the day that changed my life forever.

I lived in one of the simpler houses towards the center of the District with my mother and baby sister, though she had just been born and I regret not having the chance to see her grow up. My father had split on us after he found out my mother was pregnant with my sister. Unfortunately their names were lost in the transition I would soon be facing.

“I was eighteen and both thrilled and terrified of the new power and responsibility this age put upon my shoulders. Technically I was an adult, though no one paid much attention to the old rules anymore and most found it suitable to stick close to their families well after they reached that age. I was one of those people. I cherished my family but I also felt bound to them. I couldn’t leave them to fend for themselves, when it was just my mother, who had my baby sister to care for.

But a week into my eighteenth year, everything changed. The angels came down from heaven in streams of golden fire, swords alight and leaving streaks of light to linger after them in the air. Their armor shone golden and copper and gleaming brass, reflecting the holy light of their blades in a dazzling array of metallic sparks.

“I was in the market that morning, gathering what meager food they would allow me to take and I was heading home when I caught the first streak in the air. It was a bright stream of golden light, a perfect straight line that cut through the clouds with such a force that the earth rumbled as if to welcome them.

And it was when I looked up to observe that one gleaming oddity that I noticed there were hundreds of such lights in the sky. I was dazzled, I was mesmerized. I must have stood in place for hours gazing up at those brilliant lights, wondering about them.

I turned to hurry home after someone jostled me in the street and I nearly dropped the food I had come out to retrieve. That brought me back to the present and I was suddenly excited to rush home and tell my mother and baby sister of what I had seen.

I never made it that far.

“It seemed as soon as I had turned my back on those dazzling lights that chaos struck.

The angels rained down like falling stars, their mighty wings cut through the air with graceful, even strokes that stirred up gales of wind, flattening stalls and tossing people and loose items around as though they weighed nothing.

It was with a hurricane of wing beats that they descended, legions of angels in gleaming armor with indescribably beautiful faces: the faces of warriors with hard glowing eyes.

I was flattened to the ground by a strong gust of wind and fell roughly onto my hands, skinning my knees and slicing my palms on the sharp cobbled street.

I heard the screams before I smelled the smoke and I saw the stones below me glow in the light of the fires that had sprung up as the angels landed. When I turned around to observe the damage for myself I was hit in the face with a tick, suffocating cloud of smoke that stung my eyes and burned my throat and rendered me effectively blind.

I choked on the smoke, fighting to get fresh air in to starving lungs and managed, somehow, to propel myself desperately to my feet.

I sucked greedily at the reprieve of fresh air before it could be smothered with the wretched smoke and finally managed to force my eyes open.

There was destruction all around me; the market was gone, blown to pieces by the angel’s mighty wings and engulfed by gluttonous fires that cracked and sizzled and hissed all around me, licking hungrily at the air and pouring out smoke in thick, sulphorous black billows.

People around me were screaming in terror and fear, scrambling to escape the fires and avoid the eyes of the seeking angels. It was chaos and I took it all in without really seeing any of it. This is all a dream, my mind supplemented and I grasped to that thought and held tight to it. It was all a dream. A dream I could handle, but this reality, this sudden hot and burning Hell I had stumbled into, I could not.

“And then a cold feeling swept over my body and I shivered, wonderingly absently how such a cold could have no effect on the fires that roared around me. It was with an odd sort of detachment that I noticed the clamor of the frenzied citizens had died down to a muted roar and saw out of the corner of my eye bodies dropping suddenly to the ground as though impossibly, inexplicability their life merely vanished from them.

And then I forgot about the other people entirely when the angel landed in front of me. It was sudden; first there was only the cold feeling of air on my arms and then a being stood before me looking proud and beautiful in its gleaming armor. It held the vague shape of a human being, neither expressively male nor female and its skin seemed to glow as though light from within, lending an eerie compliment to those emotionless, ethereal eyes.