Trust me... I'm an Angel - 3. Part Two : Section Two : Don't Look Back In Anger

The Elderly Gentleman

He watched a woman enter his library and he wondered, "No one ever comes to here, what is she doing here?". He watched his stooping place at the top of the spiral staircase. She walked deeper into the darkness and he followed her round the upper level still looking down upon her. He looked at her closely, he felt something, something had happened with this woman before but he couldn't recall what it was.

He flicked a switch to open the shutters at the top of the central column in the library. He saw the woman turn around, intrigued by where the light came from and for the first time he saw her face properly. She was beautiful. He wasn't sure what he was feeling and turned sharply towards the steps until he realised she was looking at the design on the centre of the floor.

"Death. Life. Rebirth. It is one triangle." It said on the border to the grand circle that surrounded it, this great challenge, this great triangle. The Design of Time. Three figures were at each corner, one of darkness, one of light and one of purity. He looked at the design and thought to himself "Absolute rubbish. Who would believe in any of this? Certainly..." He paused and looked deeply into her eyes from above and saw something he had never seen before, she was there to find things. And find things she most definitely would. The darkness was calling to him to find her and explain to her. What is the design? Will she understand it? Why is it called "The Design of Time". He didn’t even know the answers himself but he wished that she was the person who would help him unlock the age old secret of the life cycle.

He began to descend the staircase, removing his glasses from his crooked nose, so he could be more personal with her. He held them in his hand gently when she turned to him.

"Who are you?"

"Who do you think I am?"

"The Librarian."

"Clever Girl. That will come in handy. My only question is; who are you?"

"I'm no one important."

"Then why did you come here? The darkness does call to you, I can see it."

"The Darkness?"

"The Library. The History. The world itself. The Reflection in the mirror and something telling you there is something that isn’t quite right about life. Am I correct?"

"Why of course. How do you know these things?"

"I've been through a lot." A sigh of regret.

"Oh... I guess you want to know why I am here?" He glared at her obviously.

"It might be handy yes."

"I'm looking for research on the fallen angels."

The elderly gentleman dropped his glasses and they smashed upon the stone floor.

"How did you know about... them...?"

"I was told."

"Who told you? I demand to know!" He rushed over to her and grabbed her by the lapels of her coat.

"An Angel. My Guardian Angel..."

"You really believe in angels?"

"Of course I do... I have met one."

"You are insane woman." He paused to take light sniff and carried on. "If you are here to research, then research you must. But I warn you...there may be things you would not want to hear."

"I have no reason to fear. To fear the truth is to fear life itself."

"You are a clever girl."

"I'm not a girl."

"Hasty female. I like it!" He laughed lightly. "Anyway, I guess you would like to know about the history of Semyaza, The Fallen Angel?"

"How did you know his name?"

"I... I do not know..." The elderly gentleman felt a pain in his forehead. "God it hurts!..." The pain sharply went. "I'm sorry... it hurts to remember, daughter of Eve." The darkness was approaching and he had to escape while he still could.

"Daughter of Eve?"

"Sorry... I really do not know what is coming over me. Anyway..." He walked over to a shelf and picked up a book, "The Book of Angelic Legends.", and lead her down and through some corridors until they reached a back room of the library.

"Here we go. A nice quiet room and there’s an escape route for you if it all gets a bit too much. I wouldn't come out the front way if I were you. You may get lost. Then you will be lost to the darkness forever."

"Okay. Sir... I just want my information so I can go, alright?"

"Okay. Okay. Don't be so excited about it." He opened the dusty old book, placed it upon the desk and located the index.

"What shall we start with then? I know... I know you will like this one. Ishtahar." The woman felt a twinge in her mind, a memory locked away forever. And yet it was coming to the surface... and she was not ready for it.

"Excuse me..."

She had zoned out of the situation.

"Am I allowed to carry on or are you going to go away from my thoughts every time I open my mouth? I might as well just leave."

"Oh please don't leave, carry on, my apologies." She sat down, rested her forehead on her arm and signalled to him that she was ready. And she truly was.. although, the darkness didn’t seem to think so.

"Are you 100% sure. I do not want to damage you."

"I'm sure."

"Okay..."

"Ishtahar was a woman of innocence. One of the purest there ever was. She was the priest's daughter in fact. She was born and raised as they were meant to. Quietly. Serenely. Then a darkness appeared in her life. The figure that was the former leader of the angels, this was in the days before Gabriel. There was a leader known as The Great One. The Great One never has his name mentioned in the legends, all we know is that he was outcast from heaven and he liked to stalk innocent woman for their blood, or some even believed for their soul. He was sentenced to death by Gabriel. Gabriel was a lower archangel than him but it was approved by the council of angels. Ishtahar found a book about the rebirth of angels within an archive into which only the gifted may step. The Cuccullus Ventilitan. Translated it means roughly ‘Death's Last Breath’.It was a book of legends and a book of research, it was a very dangerous book and only two copies now exist, one in the archive and one that is hidden with its creator." He twitched slightly.

"Are you ok?"

"Yes, yes I'm fine. Just keep me reading." He smiled sweetly. "Using this book Ishtahar, even though she didn’t really know what she was doing, summoned one of the darkest figures ever known in the history of time, according to the legends." He pause, looking up from the book. "This book isn't technically correct; its details are fine but inaccurate. With research you will discover that he was summoned by Ishtahar but he wasn’t dark, he was reborn as an angel of light but due to his previous convictions he was given a life of darkness to roam the earth hidden from the world. He of course, when she summoned him, fell in love with her. And their love was forbidden. An angel must not love a human. Chaos would ensue if they were."

He continued to read from the book. "There has only ever been one child ever born of womb of woman by an angel's touch. And that child was heavenly. Ishtahar also fell for him. This was something that was bad for the entire system. The angel of chaos, as he is sometimes known, tried to love her and for this he paid with his suffering for every time he touched her he felt the pain of a thousand wars. And she knew he was in pain.

“When she was discovered casting her spells to bring him back to her, he had to leave each time he saw because the pain was unbearable, she was taken to the leader of her village and convicted of witchcraft. She was heavily pregnant, with a stranger’s baby, a sailor who passed through the village and swept her off her feet. She was excused until after labour. After giving birth, her child was left in a stable and she was taken to the centre of the town and burnt at the stake. Thus ends the tale of the human innocence of Ishtahar because of her common compassion for those that are weak and it ends the tale of the great one, the one who is still trying to save her today, trying to find the end of her line, to warn them of their ancestral roots. The Great One."

She looked at him, intrigued. "Is that it?"

Ishtahar

"Ishtahar, of the Velaqua Family, you are sentenced to death at the stake for acts of witchcraft within the home state of your forefathers, how do you plead?" Said the wise leader of the village. He stared up to her tied to the stake surrounded by brush and wood ready for the flame.

"I plead guilty. I was doing nothing wrong. I deserve to die for a cause that should not be outlawed"

"So you admit, you were trying to use witchcraft to bring back that which should be left dead."

"I deny nothing."

The leader of the village took a branch of a tree and lit it on the warming fire for the leaders of the area. "This is your last chance, Witch of The Fallen. Choose us or your fire."

"I choose the fire. LONG LIVE THE FALLEN ANGEL!"

They gasped as the leader dropped the lit branch upon the brush and wood and it slowly burned up towards Ishtahar's feet searing her skin as she screaming in pain "Help!" She looked at her feet burning and started to scream the incantation "POXHOLAR ANGLO XEMERAN POXHOLAR ANGLO XEMERAN". She tried as hard as she could as the flame travel up her legs causing her so much pain. She wanted him there. She wanted him to see her die. The incantation caused a beam of light to rain from her eyes into the sky, a dark light and Semyaza descended to watch her die.

"I'm sorry... I am so sorry..."

"Sem! Help Me! Please!"

"I can't."

He looked as if he was trying to be strong for her, due to what he was set to do. His sentence was for a darker purpose, a purpose he never wanted to say…

He watched the flame crawl up her body as she slowly died in the flame until he heard her final words,

"I love you Semyaza!".

He looked at her face, disappearing to the flames and he felt a bleeding tear roll down his face.

The signal of light slowly faded...

Dimitri

Dimitri looked down at his ankles, adjusting to his new body and then called Pharzuph to him. He looked around his surroundings and saw he was standing outside heavens gate.

"Sir. I found it."

Pharzuph flew down to be at his side.

"Found what?"

"The Archive."

"How?"

"I asked around. Its great when everyone knows who you are."

"How did you get in?"

"My innocence." She raised the hood on her cloak "Please sir... I'm so lost... I'm trying to find my father... he told me he was going to the archive... can you tell me where it is?" She lowered her hood and laughed maliciously.

"My word Pharzuph, you are truly evil." He laughed also. "I need you to do something for me."

"Anything master."

"Cause some havoc. I need to cause some havoc, I need the achieve the weekly quota and I do not wish to cover it myself. Okay?"

"Most definitely master. The archive is the fourth turning on the left. Down the alley."

With this she flew away into the darkness and Dimitri watched her leave. He felt the shadows in his eyes turning and he foresaw another event. The Subway. She was going to do it. But there were two figures there; he couldn't see them, they were shrouded in darkness. He thought to himself "Asmodeus, it could be him..." He recoiled slightly in fear of what could happen. "or it could be... he ran away with her. Oh this is sweet vengeance." He sent a message in the hidden language to Pharzuph, the only one to stay with him when the cards were finally dropped upon the table, "Find a subway, they will be there, hopefully."

Death was hardly ever wrong. Moving between the alleys he located the hidden door on the side of a stone building and tapped four times. He stepped back knowing what was to come next. It was very useful having a creature that could penetrate such places, it was a particularly useful skill for which he was permanently grateful to Pharzuph. He observed the bricks recoiling one by one and layer by layer until a large space was cleared. He walked peacefully through and entered the archive.

The archive was large, probably large enough to cover an entire planet. But it was boxed in this little corner of heaven, in this dark little corner we like to call Utopia. He looked viciously around, The archive was decorated with the blood red stains of battle, looking like an Italian church square but yet still enclosed within its own solitude. He stepped slowly and carefully towards the desk clerk.

"May... I help you sir?"

"Recognize Me?"

"No... sir... welcome to the archive sir."

"You will remember me now..."

He leant over the desk and blew a large gasp of toxic air onto her lips. She struggled to breathe, twitching and falling to the floor, rolling around, repeatedly clasping at her throat wishing the suffering would end. She stopped still. "...won't you?" He laughed enjoying his first victim of the visit. Wandering deeper into the archive, he looked at the further paintings on the wall. One was of Asmodeus, as he had already predicted, but one of a figure he had never seen before. A slightly more interesting figure, to him but not in the desire for his soul and not even in a sexual need. He saw the figure, tall frame, wearing a grey cloak with a white paladins jersey, riding a bright white horse into the distance with his hand outstretched towards the sky. What interested him was what was within his hand.

"Impossible..." He looked into the painting and felt a sudden twitch in his mind, "That is simply impossible" The torches of light felt as if they were shining directly upon him.

He staggered and his breathing began to race as the pain in his mind grew to unbearable heights. Something was happening, he didn’t know what...

"No... I will not be defeated... again." He straightened himself up but the pain remained... He stared directly at the painting and screamed "What do you want with me?"

The spirit from the painting whispered to him "You know what I want..."

"You are never getting it... no matter how much you try..."

"What’s the worst that could happen?"

He broke free of the clasp of the pain barrier and continued to run down the corridors of the archive and didn’t look back over his shoulder. He could tell he was coming back...

The White Knight was to return... and gaze into the ashes of time once again...

**

He walked sharply along the aisles, saw a shelf stacker and approached him noticing the boy shudder in fear.

"Err..." He gulped. "Death and Despair. Aisle P... for power."

"At last someone who recognizes me. Too bad you were only good for one use." Death brushed his wrist across the boy's face and the boy turned to dust upon the floor.

Travelling among the shadows, as he often did, he came across the power aisle and found the book he required, the second in existence, to prevent the possiblity of his return and of being defeated again...

"The great plagues... the fires of London... the fear... it will all happen... I can sense it... I have to stop it... killing is always good but that was genocide..." He felt an emotion he had never felt in this form before, Compassion. The figure of death began to grow out of the host's body and was losing its power over the dead... Dimitri shuddered and Death returned to him. He picked up the book and looked on the first page.

"All respects go to the history of the Great One and the history of the female who nearly conquered all, She who must not be named and He who must not be named are the roots of this book. The destruction is rightly so and will be done." The signature was unclear but it was also signed with a kiss. A kiss of purity and loyalty. He quickly turned the pages to the character of himself. He thought, "What a befitting tribute." He saw a picture of the triangle and instantly closed the book. The pain had returned suddenly and he didn’t know what to do... he opened the page next to the page he was looking at and saw the enchantment that could be cast to stop him and extract the ashes of time. He logged it into his memory and turned the book to ashes with his wrist once more...

If he was going to be defeated then it was going to be in a fair fight...

Handicap, Dimitri.

The Fallen Seducing Angel

Pharzuph ran her hand up the side of the skirt that she was wearing, feeling her withered skin and healing it slowly, in preparation for the scene she was about to commit. Staring up at the intimidating building, Pharzuph simply laughed at the grandeur of the place. Society was always run by a strong woman. A woman behind the scenes, telling the man what to do. She knew her destiny. But she knew it would never happen, not for a very very long time.

The world was changing, and so was he. He who must not be named.

She placed her hand upon the door handle, lifted her hood and collapsed through the door. Her persona was now adopted... and it was time for her to live again...

She stepped a few paces forward onto the stone triangle and called out "Is anybody there? I'm lost, I don't know where I am. Somebody please help me..."

She saw an elderly gentleman walk down the steps towards her.She had found her victim of the day, a past meeting had forseen her decision. When you are, or have been, with Death you truly do get your final judgement carried out by Pharzuph and Pharzuph alone.

"Yes, little missy, how may I help you?"

"I don't know where I am."

"How do you not know? Are you a stranger to this place?"

"Yes... I lost my parents in another village down the lane..."

He was beginning to see that there was something not quite right about this girl, although she looked human, she was something else. She didn't realise that he remembered all of it...

"I'm afraid I can't help you. There is the exit, good afternoon miss..."

"But sir... I'm so lost and confused..." Time to turn on the waterworks she thought...

"Your waterworks will not work with me so it is useless trying and..." He picked up a glass of water. "This is for your eyes, they will start to bleed soon, I can tell..." He threw the contents of the glass at her face and this caused her to blink and her enchantments not to work. Something so simple to defeat something so complicated. "How?"

"I remembered"

"You..."

"Everything."

She felt a sudden anger within her very soul. Launching herself upon the elderly gentlemen, ready for the bite and ready for murder she said, "Where is she? You defeated my usual methods so let’s get physical."

"You really think I'm going to tell you..?." He reached behind him onto the table and held a book within his hand.

"Of course you will, or you will lose your life, again."

Without any hint of warning, he swung his arm round and hit her across the head with the book causing her to fall and her angelic status to decrease. She was being defeated by a mere human. It disgusted her.

"You will tell me..."

"No I wont." He smiled and she suddenly felt her vision turn to darkness. She fell to the floor unexpectedly and in a matter of second her mind was taken away by the darkness...

Semyaza

Of course, it was of interest to him to find out exactly where Pharzuph had gone. Of course he was obviously going to find her sooner or later. But he was accustomed to finding her in the seediest of places and never the places that you would find her enemies within. This was not this case in this situation. He followed her on her travels around her usual places, in the strip clubs, in the seedy bathrooms and through Amsterdam, the capital of sleaze. He could not catch her, like an eternal game of cat and mouse, travelling around the same spots and still he could not find her. He returned to where he thought she would end up. At the library.

He walked up the steps slowly and calmly and opened the large double doors to the sight of her about to launch herself onto an elderly gentleman. Semyaza suddenly felt a twinge from his past, something was important about this man, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it was. He hoped the elderly gentleman would be able to tell him but for now he had to save his life. Focusing in on the centre of his very soul, he managed to turn the rest of the room's vision into darkness. Focusing even deeper he even managed to create darkness within the minds of his victims.

On his travels, he found one of the fallen, Asmodeus. He was, before Semyaza, the king of the fallen angels, until Sem descended and Asmodeus saw his true dark light and stepped down from the throne. Asmodeus had the uncanny ability to turn off all the senses and, with practice, to turn off the mind itself, even to reduce his victims to a permanent state of inner fear. He looked at the situation and ran past them, searching for the one he knew he needed to help... for the life of him... he had to protect her, for he was her guardian angel.

And nothing would stop him.

The Woman

Leaning back in her chair, she came to a part in the chapter she was reading that intrigued her; the story before she was burnt at the stake and the backing up of the evidence against Ishtahar. She carried on reading as if nothing was happening. She could hear some kind of disturbance in the main entrance but she was so enthralled in her reading that she barely noticed it at all. The book was really grabbing her attention...

After reading in her head for a long while she came to a section where it was so intense for her that she had to read it out loud...

Ishtahar

The cold wind separating her from the outside world blew past with a force that she had never seen before. The stone had turned cold, her wooden bench of a bed had become rejecting towards her. She stared into the distance, a figure forming and disappearing in her mind; her angel. Arriving and departing, as if he were a ghost. He was always a ghost to her. She had summoned him once and now she just wanted him to go away. Of course she loved him but everything was based around that one act.

The problem was that she knew she wanted more. In her quiet little chasm of a jail cell, in the middle of the tower, with guards outside, she extracted from under her dress a sheet of paper. Just a simple piece of paper. But what was written on this paper was important. She muttered to herself the ancient incantation, rocking back and forth, back and forth, her mind whirring, not really sure on what to think. The madness had set in. She wasn't sure if she could get them back but she had to try and make them. She had to try and bring them down to her. Always alone; that was how she felt. She was always left by everyone; her mother, her father, even Semyaza had to go because he "broke the rules". She just sometimes wished she had someone to stay. Continuing to rock, she finished her incantation and it summoned a gathering of creatures around her...

Suddenly she felt happy, she was no longer alone, but at what price?

She has her ways of making angels.

The door swung open and the grand vizier of the court marched in on her, surrounded by her little creatures of the withered light. He stopped; glanced at her and walked slowly out. Her angels ran away through the walls and out the windows, afraid of the outcome that they could foresee.

Her mind was on the edge of breaking, she had been discovered for the second time. This was the last time she could ever summon her angels. She felt alone...

So totally alone...