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The last few recollections were the ones that she cherished most. Within them was the same face, the same smile, the same person. She held them close to her, clutched them tight like an artist would the last clean fragments of a vandalized masterpiece.
Not these. Not these.
It was no use. Each one was pried from her grasp. Shredded before her eyes. Gone like everything else about her.
No! No! No!
The last one now. The very last. An image of a boy holding an accepting hand out to her.
Regret. Regret. Regret.
Let me have this one.
She sounded like she was pleading, but there was no concept of pride in this hollow place, and she felt no shame in begging.
At the very least, let me have this one.
The image began to fade. She reached out for it, trying to claw it back, knowing it was futile, but trying anyways. Her last thought was stained with pained acceptance even as they were laden with weary defiance.
Not this one. Never this one.
And then she was falling, falling, falling away, everything about her gone, everything that made her her torn away, and she was floating in the void, consigned to this wandering, drifting fate…
She jerked in surprise as a hand grasped her own. Real and corporeal and warm. She recoiled against it at first, for nothing could break the darkness of this place.
The hand came with a face, a familiar one, and her fear faded. She was glad that she would at least get a chance to see him before the end.
"I'm sorry," she said to him.
The face smiled. The hand pulled.
A thousand flickering images ran through her mind. It was like being dragged through quicksand, being pulled through existence itself. The darkness snapped at her heels, trying to drag her back but the grip around her wrist was stronger and it heaved her free in an explosion of color.
Light. Light everywhere. It burned her with its brightness. Her vision was blinded by flashes of it as it sought to reorient itself. She could not see but she could still hear and the voice that once spoke with deep reproach in an abandoned church was now intoning in solemn respect.
Fallen. Your Sins were Absolved by Death. The Slate has been Wiped Clean.
Realization twisted its unwelcome blade. The memories flooded back. Like a wave they crashed into her conscience and overwhelmed her through sheer sensation. It lasted but a second, this tide of feeling, and when it did, she started laughing, laughing at the utter impossibility of it all.
In Your Last Moments You Refused the Path of Darkness and Reached Out for the Light. Your Cry for Aid will not Go Unheeded. Heaven Will Take Back its Own.
Her sight returned and when it did, she looked up into the stern frown of a silver mask.
With Armor We Will Clad You.
She shivered as a sensation crawled upwards along her spine. Cried out in surprise as the feeling crept into her limbs and spread to every inch of her body. Over pale flesh liquid silver flowed, hardening into rigid plates across her chest, toughening into segmented shields over her shoulders, covering the entirety of her like a second skin. She stared down at her palms that were now gauntlets of steel, their surface so bright, so luminous, that her own face was reflected back at her by its polished sheen.
With Weapons We Will Arm You.
It fell like a lightning bolt. Streaked down from heavens in a flash of blinding light. It smote into the ground in a thunderclap of noise, smashed into the pavement like a lance hurled from the fist of an angry god.
A spear. Straight, and long, and true. It impaled itself into the earth before her, gleaming like the sun.
She reached out with trembling hands, fingers wrapping delicately around the inlaid haft, and pulled it from the ground. The blade was revealed, the tip so painfully sharp it seemed to cut the very air. And upon its surface, burnished in flaming sigils, was etched but a single word.
Inaerion.
Those Wings that were Torn from Your Shoulders Shall Now be Returned in Glory.
She arched her back. From the spaces in her armor, pinions erupted, stretching towards the sky in newfound life. They were not wings of feather or heavenly steel. They were limbs of pure light, tendrils of luminescence that moved and swayed with a purpose of their own. They trilled when she extended them to their full width, the sound like the melody of a harmonious choir.
Rise, Raynare, Archangel of Vengeance, and Take Your Place Alongside Us Once More.
She stood. The joints in her armor whispered as they supported her weight. She reached her full height and glanced up towards the figures who hovered above. The gentle tilt of her head matched the smile on her face in every way.
"Kokabiel," her voice was no longer bitter. No longer desperate. It was soft and firm, as it was so long ago, as it should have been, "You have hurt me. Allow me to return the favor. And to do that," the spear was lifted, Inaerion, singing a wrathful song as it was pointed in the direction of the hated foe, "I'm going to ram this up your ass."
They were again in the center of the storm, though this storm was of a far quieter sort. A tempest of stunned disbelief was what it was. A gale of hushed silence. Within it, the boy blinked and then turned to the angel by his side.
"Did she really just say that out loud?"
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