[???????] One Last Prayer

Calotan, the Bell of Purifying Winds, was a Heaven of no waning virtue.

Its host numbered in the thousands and only so few because of the humility of their task: to secure every Kingdom under its curved, golden body against the direct invasions from any of the three Hells of neighboring domains. The Heavens and Hells of the Dream, trapped in a conflict too essential to discuss, did not want for food or water, for bodies or arms; a demon or angel came from the Dream by the mere whims of the King of their given home, and they arrived with an identity, a duty, and no memory save every memory of their every predecessor.

It is an existence both fleeting and eternal; the angel did not age, the demon did not forget, and vice-versa. They need not these mundane elements of time and mortality; they are instruments of a King, and the orders of the Throne are all that matter. And here, the King reigned over Calotan.

Calotan was a bell of prismatic metals the size of the moon. Outside upon its glittering surface walked the 2,222 seraphim who protected it from direct attack, each a construct of platinum gilded in diamond, bearing seven wings and seven arms, each holding seven swords, each tipped with seven glowing edges. Within the bell patrolled the 3,333 archons, the black-fleshed, four-armed humans with domed skulls within which existed only the vibrating air and the clapper that would spin, but never strike, until their final **** throes. When an archon died, the clapper would strike the side of its skull and sing a destructive tone that could disintegrate forged steel in a mile radius. At the top of the bell was the Vibrating Citadel, managed by a host of 1,111 avatars, each a pillar of screaming light that could cut flesh with a hum; around that citadel stood the Wall of Sorrows, where dark requiems numbering 555 readied to sing the sorrow of their fallen brethren; at the heart of the Citadel was the Unseen Clapper, a spire of gold where 554 cherubs served the King.

There, at the heart of the Unseen Clapper, was the Throne of Calotan: a square platform of simple, black stone topped by a red cushion that could not be frayed or cut. The entire thing was only fifty feet wide and only five feet tall, but no seraphim, no archon, no avatar, no requiem, and no cherub could dare threaten the claim upon this Throne; such was not the order of things, and so the Throne sat unwatched.

The Throne of Calotan was held by the Song of the Clean: the solemn angel who had mastered the five forms, had counted all the angels under their rule, had proven the mightiest, and so was the perfect choice to serve as the 7,777th angel, the King, and the one who secured Calotan against her enemies.

The King issued a prayer, and a golden-haired cherub was born. The cherub is an administrative angel, and the weakest of her kind: she is born naked save a single cord of silk, and that cord binds her to service until she is ready to mourn the dead or take up arms to avenge them. A hundred years of service will pass before a cherub will be allowed to do either, yet they are born with all they need to one day serve every role, even as the Song of the Clean. All angels are. But for now, she is born from a prayer, and she hears it whisper her orders, always a serene litany of duties for the next century of war against demons, of security against invaders, and of protection of the mortal Kingdoms that they govern—

SAVE ME!

But this was to be the last prayer sung for any of those hallowed duties.

The prayer was whispered… and the Throne begat a new form, birthed from the Dreamstuff of the Kingdom of Calotan. Lithe and beautiful, with the silk cord tied from right hip to left shoulder over small, virgin breasts, the cherub stood and immediately understood that something was… wrong.

The Unseen Clapper was a golden cathedral upon the holiest of bells… and the walls of its innermost sanctum, glittering with the light of a filtered sun, were now painted over with white blood.

The cherub’s name was a vibration not replicable by human voice, but it perhaps did not matter: the weak cherub just born was now the only cherub still alive.

She looked up from where she had been kneeling in the prayer of birth, of thanks to the Song of the Clean for singing her humble hymn… and saw the Song, resplendent with skin of light and a human face of diamonds, standing fifty feet tall in that grand hall. Over that colossal head burned the Crown of the King: a halo of white fire, unbroken and pulsing with the rhythm of the righteous. The cherub marveled at that absolute symbol of sovereignty, of unbreakable, righteous might.

Then the cherub watched the Song jerk... and fall backwards.

A blue flash of light, and the Song’s belly had been split open. The light of her flesh dimmed to pale, sickly flesh of blackened veins. Black blood—the oldest blood, aged from the pure white of cherubs—spilled from her aired guts in a ruptured ocean of gloom. The glittering floor and its layers of white were washed fast until they bathed the cherub’s knees, her waist, and up to her chest in the small sea of spilled blood. The twisted, pained face of that most powerful Song—the protector of all that could hear the holy tone of the most sacred bell—caught sight of the cherub. Its giant, elongated fingers scratched through its own fluids to try and reach for the horrified cherub, but it could not.

“Save… me…!” the Song sang.

The Song asked an impossibility. The Song never needed saving; the Song was salvation-

But then… a much smaller figure approached in soft, splattering steps through the blood of angels.

The cherub slowly turned from her creator… and caught sight of their Destroyer. A curtain of regal blue was drenched in bloods of white and gold and black. It hung from shoulders inhumanely broadened by large, silver pauldrons. A glittering, silver skull that almost glittered blue made its wearer’s head shine from the tips of its long, bull-like horns down to the sockets that surrounded the black pits it had for eyes. The pits then shimmered until they glowed with lights of blue and green, and their wielder sighed with a breath that vibrated until it made waves in the viscera. But it did not vibrate with a song.

A… human?

A human did this?

The monster’s figure was ample and tall, too feminine and human for the cherub to disbelieve, and covered in black leathers spared the splatters by that generous cape. With sealed leather boots, she stepped closer to the fallen Song’s face. The Song made a fist that vibrated with a wrathful chord—the cherub flinched, such a cacophony would damage the Clapper itself!—and swung its seven-fingered fist desperately at the enemy.

Another flash of blue.

The fist burst into black mists and essences before contact. The Song howled its pain in a requiem—a requiem for HERSELF, the cherub could not believe!—but the Destroyer had already leapt from the filthy floors to crash both boots into the Song’s throat, silencing her song… and with a clenched, tiny human fist, the Destroyer drove into the Song’s angular chin and silenced her altogether.

Black cracks ruptured across the Song’s face until green fire began to spew out from the gaps. Ruination spread through her entire body, but her head was the first to explode… in utter, blasphemous silence.

The Crown faded; it had been broken. The Throne was unclaimed.

The first sovereigns of Calotan had issued the First Commandment, one never revised or revoked by any Song in the millenia Calotan had guarded their charges: that the Song must never fear protecting her charges, and Calotan must never fear the end of the Song, and so the First Commandment dictated the rite of Kingship: that whatever angel in Calotan was the strongest of all her peers, she would become the new Song of Calotan. The transformation would be slow, and some would be undeserving, but the Song would always be heard… and no one could dare claim the Throne who was not a servant of this Heaven, not so long as so much as a single angel remained.

The Commandment remained to this day… and the cherub, wide-eyed and struck dumb by the horror of watching a Song be so painfully, terribly killed… was momentarily confused by the glow above her brow. She glanced up, but the Crown moved with her head. But that was enough; she realized that the impossible had been true yet again: she, a newborn cherub, could only be rivaled in weakness by some cherub born after her. None had come after… which meant…

… she was the last Angel in Calotan.

The silence outside was… deafening.

It was broken, mercifully, by the slow steps of the Destroyer. Behind her, the old Song’s corpse began to rot, rupture, and further blot out the floors with her spilling innards.

The Destroyer spoke. Her voice crawled inside the cherub’s body and silenced the music of life. The cherub cried... but could not move or speak. She already felt dead. “Surrender.”

How the cherub wanted to surrender… but could not. Her duty remained; her will, however newborn and terrified, stood without trouble where her flesh trembled and cried. She whispered in a shaky, singing voice, “You will pay for what you’ve done-”

A black-gauntleted hand was suddenly around her throat and lifting her petite, human-like body from the ground. The Destroyer was tall and strong; the fingers around the cherub’s throat barely applied pressure, but they were unwavering. The lights glittering in those shadowed sockets brightened. “You were born from sheer purpose… a prayer for servitude. You were born a ****, and you will die a ****. You know your precious song comes to an end… here, by my hand. So tell me: do you truly hope?”

The cherub did not answer, save that she did her best to glare at her enemy. The cherub had no powers, no might… nothing but the silvery, silken cord of her duty, literal and figurative, to keep her bound to the Throne that she now ruled.

“Then go on, new Song of the Clean: pray another **** into existence.”

The cherub’s duty was to do so: if she was the last angel, she had to pray another, then another, and so on until the holy host of 7,777 angels was born anew. The last Song of the Clean did not have the time to conjure a seraphim, archon, or avatar to come to war, but perhaps this human was permitting her the time to do so.

The arrogance of the human would be her ****… except…

The cherub knew what the human could do. She had been born into the bloody deaths of her fellows; she now knew how the Destroyer had laid waste onto the seraphim, survived the archon’s vengeances, and laughed through the songs of avatars. She had taken the war cry of the Song of the Clean and gutted her in response.

It was futile.

But it was duty.

But the songs of Calotan had fallen still… and the cherub, possessed of so many millennia of knowledge and war and duty… doubted.

The Destroyer stared… and waited until she grew impatient. “I will not be satisfied with so petty a final King, child… are you addled? Haven’t your kind all the knowledge of your betters? Have you not the prayers to call your greatest warriors to be born anew-?”

“I… I will not pray,” the cherub struggled to say… and nearly cried as she realized that the words were not song, her voice had not been lifted… and her hallowed home had truly fallen. She squeezed her eyes shut and let the glittering tears fall on albino cheeks… and eventually settle on the black leather clenching her throat.

The Destroyer, interrupted, stared at this as more black blood continued to pool in the hall… and, with a grunt, leaped up onto the Throne with the cherub in tow. The cherub yelped in fear as she awaited ****, but she felt only the sudden wind and the small bounce of the Destroyer's feet landing on the soft, sacred surface of the Throne… her Throne.

The Destroyer stood with blood dripping and staining the Throne from her boots and cloak. She continued to hold the cherub high. She still didn’t snap her neck or annihilate her with those same, awful powers the cherub knew the Destroyer had. Every memory the cherub could channel saw only the Destroyer. The cherub found in those memories no armies, no other warriors, no other mages... just this one, horrible being. But now... mercy? Hesitation? Why?

With something like amusement, the Destroyer answered the unasked question, “Your kind does not will anything. And yet... you are not deceiving me. The Throne would answer your prayer, and I would hear the Throne… and in this silence, then, you truly are not praying. You... are ignoring your duty. Your calling.”

The cherub did not answer. She only waited and glared at the great killer of her kind with tear-stung eyes.

So the two stood for a clean minute of insufferable tension… until the Destroyer finally dumped the cherub on her cushion. The cherub bounced and quickly felt her throat; she couldn’t believe that she had actually been spared… not after what she had witnessed through the eyes of her dead sisters.

The Destroyer laughed. It was… a human laugh. A sincere laugh. The cherub stared up at the chortling skull of blue-silver and waited for some final blow that would not come. “You are strong, child… the strongest of your kind. You are… you are impossibly stronger than every angel before you. Do you know that?”

The cherub did not understand… and did not care to understand. Calotan was silent for the first time in its entire existence; it was destroyed by blasphemy before whatever final destruction this monster contemplated. The cherub no longer had the guidance of music; she had only the pains and hatreds of her predecessors… and that mocking, awful laugh. “Then… leave!” the cherub boldly dared.

The cherub didn’t see her enemy move, but suddenly her body was launched, bare ass over tits, down into the disintegrating corpse of the old Song. The cherub shrieked in horror as her body crashed through the frail skin of that melting form, skidded through rupturing bones and organs, and slid out through the hip of her former King. The cherub climbed to her hands and knees… and stared down at her body, now covered entirely in blackened guts and sluicing chunks of melted bone.

The Destroyer appeared before her, feet firmly planted in the black blood the cherub's short journey had launched. “No, child. You are the strongest angel… but you are still an infant, crawling in the filth of your unworthy predecessors. For the former, you shall remain King… and because of the latter, you must also take the only mercy I can grant something so wretched as an angel.”

The cherub, half-drowned in gore and crying, did not feel whatever the Destroyer did as she waved her black hand over the cherub's forehead… but there was clearly something different. The cherub felt it in her will... and in her opinion of the Destroyer. She struggled to hold her grudge; somehow, hate had become... difficult.

“You’re my ****, now, cherub… and you shall remain King here under my rule.”

The cherub shook her head, unsure of how or why this had come to pass… and now finding she could only agree with the declarations of the one who slew her kind. “Why… are you doing… this…?” the cherub sobbed as she tried to wipe away the stinking fluids on her body. The Destroyer reached out... and clutched that sacred cord. The cherub gasped to protest... but with a simple tug, it had been snapped from the cherub's body. The angel wailed at the theft, the indignity of her nudity, of the physical severing of her duty... and, finally, in the mourning of her entire people.

The Destroyer whispered grimly from behind her helm, “Because you are strong… and because I need an army. One that you will provide.”