There was a slight breeze the night that a man awoke from sleeping, sweating and tangled in his white linen sheets. He could hear it as he bolted upright and sat, panting. It rustled the leaves of the elm tree that was not very far from his window. And he could see that faint breeze working, for he had left his windows open before falling asleep, and that breeze was playing with the curtains slightly.

Once he had regained his breath, he shut his eyes and took a deep breath.

That was when the smell hit him, making him feel dizzy.

It was the smell of lavender, sweet, enchanting. Oh, how the smallest whiff of that made him lose himself! A faint smile came to his lips as he sat in his empty bed, in his empty room. Oh, the memories the faintest whiff brought back!

Sweet, tender memories of a past he had left behind. Suddenly it all came back to him. The feel of her skin, the silkiness of her hair…

“You will go on and on, won’t you?” she asked in her melodious voice. They were together in a field, admiring the life that was hidden behind its beauty. In her hands she held a petal that had fallen from an ethereal flower.

“Yes, I will,” he answered in reply, looking at the flower between his fingers. The bud was so heavy that it was weighed down and the stem looked like it was about to give up.

“But… Dorian, I won’t go on forever,” she whispered, and for the first time her voice sounding unstable, vulnerable.

Dorian swallowed, glancing over that the woman who looked so strong, so capable of doing anything, and frowned.

“May I have this flower?” he whispered to the plant, turning his attention back to it. Between his fingers he felt a tingling of warmth and he knew the answer - yes. Gingerly, he took the flower from the plant, careful not to hurt it in excess.

Once he had taken the flower, he held it in his hands and walked over to the woman. She looked down at the flower with a trace of a smile on her face, and when she looked up, questioning Dorian with her eyes as to whether or not it was okay to take the flower, he nodded.

So she took the flower from his hand as carefully as he had taken it from the plant, and pulled her hair behind her ear with her free hand. With ease, she tucked the flower behind her ear, where it did not look weighed down in the least.

“Beautiful,” Dorian whispered, leaning into her to kiss the flower.

As he pulled back, he noticed the flush that had risen from her neck.

“Please don’t worry about petty things like that,” he whispered to her, looking into her fathomless gray eyes. “One day we will both go up to Heavenly Realms and ask for him to bestow upon you the gift he has given me,” he whispered, a smile coming to his face.

But when the woman did not return his smile, it quickly changed to a frown filled with sadness.

“What is it?” he asked, smoothing the skin of her cheek with his thumb.

“You’re the most beautiful dreamer I know, Dorian.”

But at the tail-end of that sweet smell, at the tail-end of each memory, there was something bitter.

It made his countenance change from a blissful look of happiness to a look of pure depression.

For eternity he was to live this way, he knew, in bitterness and memory. Everything he had held close and held dear were gone. All he had now was the white linen sheets wrapped around his body from tossing and turning all night, and the elm tree that rustled in the night breeze.

His world had stopped years ago, but the rest of the world went on around him. The moon still rose every night, the angels still sang people to sleep at night.
But not all the angels.

Some angels wept in their beds, remembering their bittersweet pasts that they had ended themselves. Some angels like Dorian.

As he hunched over, held his face in his clammy hands, and wept, the moon lit his room up with its pale delicate glow. And in the shadows of the room, you could make out the shape of his thin and frail body, along with two wings that sprouted from his back. They were long and fragile, the wings of a lost angel.

She was skipping around the emerald stream, never worrying once about slipping on one of the wet rocks and falling into the chilly water. Nothing ever seemed to cloud her days.

“This has to be the sweetest water I have ever tasted,” she sang, bending down and brining her cupped hands into the water. When she brought her hands out of the water, she held them to her mouth and sipped it.

Dorian smiled when he looked over his shoulder at her, wondering how she could just go around with such abandon, drinking the water from a stream that had who-knew-what in it. A small laugh escaped his mouth as he shook his head and looked back at the berry plant he had found.

After asking the plant if it was okay from him to take a few berries and receiving its answer, he began picking out the ripest berries from the plant.

“Dorian, you truly must try this water! Let yourself loose for once! Be spontaneous!” she cried, dancing on a rock that wasn’t covered in moss like every other one in the forest.

“I have something sweeter,” he announced, turning around and holding out the berries he had picked. “Come, let’s share them.”

“Why don’t we share them over here?” she asked, jumping to another rock, not caring that she was getting the bottom of her dress soaked.

“Over there?” he cried incredulously.

“Yes! Why shouldn’t we eat them here?” she paused in her jumping to look at him curiously.

She was so beautiful, but he was not going to go hop on any moss covered rocks and risk hurting himself. Dorian could not at all keep his balance for more than a second, and therefore could not jump on mossy rocks.

“I don’t want to drop these fabulous berries… now, come. Get off those rocks and have a taste!” he tried, but she only smiled broadly and shook her head, long black ringlets – with hints of blue like midnight - bouncing.

“Don’t be afraid, Dorian! You won’t be harmed if you fall.”

Something dark clouded her face for a moment as she said that, and for that same moment the clouds blocked out the sun, putting them in darkness.

He knew the hidden meaning in those words. He knew them too well, for it was a subject that was always brought up when the two were together, whether they wanted to bring it up or not.

Dorian could fall and crack his skull open, but the wound would heal in a few minutes time. He would be as unharmed as he had been before he fell. But if she had taken such a fall, she’d be dead, lying in a pool of her own blood.

“Very well,” he said as the sun shone through the clouds.

Darkness vanished from her face and she hopped over with a smile to meet him halfway. Holding out his hands, he offered her the berries he had picked. She looked down at them with sparkling eyes and then back up at Dorian.

Then she looked back down at the berries, and with a thin hand picked up one. She savored the sweet juices that exploded from the little things, and wiped away a little from the corner of her mouth.

“These are great!” she beamed, picking up another one and eating it. “And look! You’re being spontaneous, Dorian! You’ve come out into the stream and jumped off of mossy rocks!”

“Spontaneous? This is nothing!” he laughed, dropping all the berries he had picked to pull her into a huge bear hug that brought them both into the chilly water.

“Dorian!” she cried through laughter as her butt smacked against the rocky bottom.

After that, the two laughed with abandon in the cold stream, hugging their sides for it felt as though they might split.

Dorian was no longer in the fetal position, crying on his bed. Instead, he has sitting on the edge, putting on a pair of old boots.

No matter how hard he tried to push away the memories, the nightmares, they always came back. Nothing kept them away for long. It was impossible to keep them from coming back and haunting him.

But what he could do was put on a straight face and act as though nothing of the sort was passing through his mind. Dorian had a job to do, whether he wanted to do it or not, and he had no time for lollygagging.

With a stern expression, he got up from his bed and pulled on his coat, the last item to his ensemble. Once he stepped outside his front door into the gloomy night, his humanity left him.

Inside that house he could weep and sing as every other person would. But outside of those doors he was a straight-faced merciless angel.

If they said to kill his mother, that she might be the one, he’d stick a knife in her gut without hesitation. Not even the tears of his own mother would stop him. If she were alive.

The only thing on his mind was who to find, who to interrogate, who to kill.

“Who could love you?” hissed the snide voice of an angel in Dorian’s ear. “Certainly not her.”

“I thought I said not to come here, Jasper,” the other angel hissed back, placing his hands on the other man’s chest and pushing him away. “I said to leave us alone.”

“But, how could I?” Jasper asked, regaining his equilibrium easily.

Dorian could never beat the man, no matter how hard he tried.

The other angel simply wore a smirk on his handsome face as he looked Dorian up and down. Once he gave the man a good look he laughed heartily.

“Honestly, did you really think I would be okay with it?” he barked with laughed, doubling over. To him, Dorian’s situation obviously couldn’t have been funnier.

“Get out,” he said harshly, trying not to listen to Jasper’s words. For he knew, deep down, that they were true.

The man looked up at him and furrowed his eyebrows, stopping his laughter.

“What?” he asked, standing up straighter.

“Get out!” Dorian shouted.

Jasper cocked an eyebrow in amusement and glanced out the windows at the show the other man was creating.

“Do you honestly think that a few rattling windows will keep me from getting my sister away from you, Dorian?” he asked, looking back at the man with gray eyes he knew.

Only, he hated these eyes.

“I’ve had enough,” he whispered softly, storming out of his own home, trying to ignore Jasper’s maniacal laughter as he left his own home.

What did he know?

It was his normal routine.

Get up, go meet up with his partner, get the information, and get to work. He never paused to do something on his way there, never.

Never smile! Never look happy. It was not the way he went about things.

Night birds sang their sad songs in the buildings up high, making the already gloomy night gloomier. Thunder rolled in the distance, and as always, it would bring the rain soon. The rain that would wash away the grime that yesterday left, cleaning everything for the tomorrow to come.

Silently, his feet making no sound as he trudged down the sidewalk, Dorian turned at a corner into an alley.

As he walked further down the alley, his shadow was elongated, so that it stretched out and made him look like a “T” shaped giant.

The mark that he was an angel was always there, in his shadow. He could hide his true feelings, his thoughts. But he could never hide his wings.

Stopping in front of a marble staircase, certainly something you would never see in an alley way, he looked up into the sky.

He could see the spires of the tall buildings, the glass balls in the middle of some of those spires glowing blue in the moon’s light.

After examining the works of art that was the architecture of his home, he looked into the sky, watching lightening strike in the distance.

It was time to get to work. Throwing his long coat over to his side so he could walk easily, he ascended the marble steps to the top of the spire. It was a very steep thing, the stairs that wrapped tightly around the spire. Steep and narrow. He could hardly put two feet side by side.

When he reached the top finally, a man was sitting on the glass ball on the very top of the sphere. He seemed not to care that he might fall down stories and stories and die. Why should he?

He was already dead.

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispered in her ear, holding her gloved hand tight.

She looked so scared, he could not think of another thing to say to her. She was doing something no one else dared to. Something no one else had ever done.

Before pulling back, he kissed her ear and squeezed her hand tight. Then he pulled back and let her dark curls fall naturally over her perfect ears. He never knew someone could have perfect ears until he met her. They were a bit pointed at the top, but not insanely so that they looked like an elf’s ear. They were perfect, like the rest of her.

Like her pale skinned that had an ethereal glow to it, like her long toes that were not abnormal in the least bit, her ears-eyes-nose-mouth. Nothing was wrong with her.

She was his picture of perfection.

Now it was her turn to give his hand a squeeze as the carriage came to a stop.

“Wish me luck?” she smiled weakly as man pulled aside the curtains and held out a hand to help them out.

“You know I do,” he croaked, almost unable to speak.

They stared at each other for a moment, and he was not sure what to do.

Finally, he took her chin in his hands and kissed her on each eyelid, on her nose, her cheeks. Then he pulled back and looked into her fathomless eyes. A faint smile came to her lips and she leaned forward, kissing him ever so lightly on the lips.

“Thank you,” she whispered as he let go of her chin.

With ease, she took the man’s hand and stepped out of the carriage, never once tripping on her complicated ivory dress.

Dorian almost laughed because he was sure he was more scared for her than she was for herself.

He watched her ascend the marble steps that led to a ball of water that floated in the air, sparkling with a deathly beauty. Her back straight, she kept her eyes on the water, the silk dress following behind her, dragging on the white steps. When she reached the ball of water that floated above an otherworldly spring, she paused. Slowly, she turned and looked at Dorian, a confident smile on her face.

Good luck.

Turning back, she took and deep breath and began to walk into the fall of water.

Once her flesh touched the ball of water, it began to glow brightly.

Before Dorian knew it, she had vanished into the Heavenly Realms.

“I love full moons. They make me feel pretty,” said the angel sitting on the glass sphere, watching the sky.

“So you like them because they boost your ego?” he asked, disgusted.

The man turned and looked at him with a sly smile.

“You’re truly a puzzle, Mekayo,” he shook his head. “You love a man who has no feelings for you, and you seem to care not one bit.”

“I suppose it’s because I twisted,” the angel smirked, pulling out a cigarette from his pocket. “But I still have hope that you’ll fall for me, one day.”

Shaking his head, Dorian came over to the man and stood beside him.

They silently stared at the same moon for a while, both thinking of different things, yet both feeling warm and happy from the thoughts that the moon brought back to them.

After a while, Dorian tore his eyes from the moon and watched Mekayo smoke. The end of the cigarette flared orange when he inhaled, hypnotizing him as he watched. But when Mekayo threw the cigarette and let it fall away, Dorian shook his hand, out of the trance.

“What do we do tonight?” he asked, digging his hands in the pockets of his coat. It was chilly, up here in the sky.

“They have another lead.”

Dorian understood and nodded, waiting for the other man to lead the way.

It took Mekayo a moment, but he stood and ran a hand through his golden hair.

“I hate this,” he whispered, staring off into the sky. “I want to go out, not this.”

Finally, the grown man got over himself and jumped off of the spire, into the sky. Dorian followed suit, and they both plummeted until pure white wings sprouted from their backs. With two flaps they were up high again, watching the miraculous city from a bird’s view. An angel’s view.

Without saying a word, Dorian followed the other angel towards the palace. He immediately saw what was coming and why his friend hated it so much. Dorian let a string of colorful words escape his mouth, but he did not try to stop the other man.

Then Mekayo stopped and hovered above the palace.

“You know?” he whispered to Dorian who nodded in answer. The other man sighed before stopping his wings and freefalling to one of the spire spheres.

Dorian did the same and shut his eyes, only going in a different way from his friend. He had a different job.

His hair slapped him on his face as he fell, twirling in the night sky to the ground.

Feet from the bottom, the guards at their post spotted him. They all ran out, guns and weapons in their hand.

Dorian ignored them as he fell to the ground like a cat, on his feet, perfectly balanced. He was bent over though, one hand on the ground. He stayed like that for a moment, waiting for something.

Then, as the men were about to close in, he stood up straight, his hair whipping backwards, pulling two swords out of their sheaths.

No, he had no mercy.

How long has it been? Dorian shifted in the seat. It had been too long, he knew it. He knew something had gone wrong, he knew that he should walk up to the water and let himself be pulled inside.

But he also knew that he should not, that he should stay where he was and wait for nothing.

Because he was sure something had gone wrong up there.

Finally making his decision, he stood from the seat and jumped out of the carriage.

“My Lord!” the driver called after him, but Dorian ignored him as he looked up the immaculate stairs to the Heavenly Realms. It made the Heavenly Realms seem like the purest place in the whole world. But Dorian knew that wasn’t true. Oh, how he wished he had gone in with her!

“What are you doing?” someone called from below as he began to step into the sphere of water. Dorian did not need to turn around to see who it was who called.

“You did something,” he realized as he stared at his reflection in the water before him.

“It was not only me, my dear Dorian,” Jasper said in his deep voice, sending chills up and down the other angel’s spine.

“It may as well have been, am I not right?” he replied snidely, and before he could get a reply, he stepped into the water.

At once he lost track of everything. He was spinning, standing still, falling. He was alive, dead, happy, mad, sad, filled with ecstasy all at once. It was an exhilarating feeling, one that almost made him cry out in pain - in joy. Nothing was making sense in his head, everything was jumbled, but at the same time it was clear and empty.

And the feeling began to subside… he began to feel the impending doom as he stood on the sparkling water.

He was in the heavenly realms… a place he had been banned from years ago.

“Put down your weapons!” a guard shouted, aiming his useless gun at him.

A dark laugh, filled with death and evil escaped him. His eyes were luminescent in the night, looking ever so menacing. The man flinched when he looked into him, and Dorian took this as his chance.

He swung both swords as though it were an easy task, slicing two of the guards as the third stepped back in fear.

Dorian swung both of the swords at nothing, sending flecks of crimson blood every where. A large amount hit the other guard in the face and he flinched, almost tumbling backwards.

The same laugh escaped the angel once more, finding the near whimpering man so entertaining. He threw his head back, the laughter so strong.

“I have children!” the guard cried, backing up against the cold stone wall. “And a wife!”

“Do you think I care?” Dorian laughed. “I have a race to protect.”

The man’s eyes went wide as Dorian spun his two swords in his hands. The guard looked into his eyes for a moment, perhaps looking for a scrap of humanity in the wild, deadly eyes. But there was nothing but emptiness.

“No,” was all the guard said before stabbing himself in the gut with his own sword. Dorian looked down at him disbelievingly, unable to contemplate why the man took his own life.

But the shock passed and he was on his way again, to the room where Mekayo waited for him, the slumbering princess in her bed. Along the way he did not blink as he pulled out his barbed dagger and stuck it in the gut of a stubborn man, did not flinch when one managed to cut his shoulder. He was simply a killing machine, preserving his kind. The angels that had rebelled.

When he was outside of the room, he spotted a tapestry. He walked over to it cleaned off the blood from his blades. And as he let go of the tapestry, after cleaning off one of his swords and placing it quietly in his sheath, he looked at the scene depicted.

It was a scene with angels, now covered in blood.

Dorian paused to stare at the picture of the long haired beauties flying across the sky flowing silk clothing. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh and shred the thing to pieces.

How wrong it was. Nothing was that peaceful.

No angel was good and pure.

Deciding to simply ignore it, he cleaned his other blade and left towards the room.“Dorian?” Mekayo called softly.

“Yes?” he answered when he entered the room.

“Do you really think it’s her?” he asked softly, looking at the young woman strewn on the bed, sleeping.

She was pale, and yet her skin glowed with life. Long, ginger, wavy hair spilled over her pillow, fanning around her head. Her frail body was half covered by her heavy satin comforter. Could she be the one?

They only guessed. How they guessed, Dorian did not know. Maybe they had a list of young girl’s names and they would randomly point at one.

“That’s her!” they would cry.

But it was never her, the girl from the prophecy.

“Lies concealed,” Mekayo whispered, looking at the girl, weapon in hand. “Hell will lose an arm, Heaven will lose a leg,” continued Dorian, looking at the dark ceiling of her chamber.

There was a pause as they listened to the words echo in their ears. The words that had forced them to kill countless girls to save themselves.

“And a girl from afar, will hold them to her disposal,” whispered the soft, sweet voice of the young girl in the bed. “The Prophecy of the Angels, correct?”

“Clever girl,” Dorian hissed, pulling out his swords.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Are you going to kill me?” she whispered. “Is this the way I’m going to die?”

“No!” Dorian cried, running across the water, his feet making faint ripples that faded quickly in the water. Before him his love was hanging from above, chains wrapped around her wrists, her body, holding her tightly. The sight made him stop.

“No, my dear. I am not going to kill you,” said the rasping voice of an old man. Dorian could not see the man, could not even look in the direction any longer for his burning white light was too great for even his eyes.

“Who’s side it true?” she whispered hoarsely from above, amusement in her voice. “Who lies to us all?”

“You do not know what you speak of!” shouted a voice behind him. Jasper. “Do not speak those words! They are foolish words!”

“They are true, brother. You know it,” she laughed slightly, even though she held on to the last strings of life. What happened to her?

“Silence!” called the great light. “You do not belong here Dorian.”

“I belong where she is,” was his only reply.

“Scum!” Jasper hissed, charging ahead towards his sister. “Dirty, filthy! You’re a terrible excuse for an angel! I should have done with you when I had a chance!”

“The question is,” Dorian hissed, “Would you have been able to?”

There was a deep silence, but Dorian felt the great anger. The great fear that coated the endless room of water. What had he done? She… she was near death because of him! She was going to die if he did not do something, and he would never be able to touch her soft skin… smell her sweet hair.

“Are you going to kill me, brother?” she asked softly, shifting her hands held by chains.

“I am.”

“No!” Dorian cried at last, running once more, trying to reach her. Maybe, just maybe he could get them out of this hell. For this was not heaven, he knew, this was not a place of pure goodness. There was no such thing. “Don’t lay a hand on her!”

But then, he was now longer running on the water. The power that held him above it gave out and he fell into the chilly water. Hands began to pull him down, began to pluck the feathers from his pure white wings. Dorian cried out, but all he heard was two men laughing.

“It will not hurt you, sister,” Jasper whispered to her. “It will only hurt him.”

“Heaven and Hell, backwards they fight!” she cried out, her voice filled with pain.

But Dorian could not see, his vision was blurred by the water as the hands tried to pull him under, tried to take the immortality from him.

“Stop it!” Jasper cried.

And finally, a scream escaped her. For a moment, Dorian stopped his struggle, unable to believe it. And the hands took this as their chance to take the angel’s immortality who had tried to burn Heaven down. Water rushed up his nose, in his mouth. He tried to picture himself out of the realms.

But he couldn’t leave her body here.

He struggled to come again to the surface, to take in a breath of air.

He felt the life in him being drained away.

And finally, his head broke through the surface and he sucked in the acrid air that surrounded him.

“Heaven falls!” Dorian shouted the words from the prophecy. And then once again, he was falling down the steps to the ground.

“Do you know the entire Prophecy of the Angels?” Mekayo asked, looking at her as she sat up in bed. Dorian’s muscles tensed as he watched the girl, and his grip on the swords grew tighter.

“Yes, I do,” she smiled. “Would you like me to recite it?”

“Please.”

“Twelve years, they seek peace, so they cause destruction, their world falls apart, piece by piece, Hell arises, with a plan of extinction. Heaven falls,” she sang softly from her bed, her voice like honey. “Soldiers of silver come to assist, but they are human, too, we throw ourselves into their black abyss. Failed truth.

“Heaven and Hell, backwards they fight, humans on Earth are torn, each has his blight, each is forlorn. Confusion strikes. Whose side is true? Who lies to us all? Lies concealed. Hell will lose an arm, Heaven will lose a leg, and a girl from afar, will hold them to her disposal.”

Silence followed once she had finished reciting the only known part of the prophecy. Dorian’s grip on his sword was released a bit and Mekayo’s face looked sad.

“Why does it affect you so?” she asked.

“It is because of those words we have become murderers,” Dorian answered her.

“Weren’t you murderers in the beginning?” asked, looking at Dorian. He understood the question was directed at him.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“But so many innocent young girls have died at our hands because of it,” Mekayo offered.

“Like me?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” Dorian nodded.

“Then who will take the kingdom? My father is near death and I have no other siblings,” she paused. Realization struck her. “My uncle will take the throne, is that right?”

“I do not know who is in line for the throne. This is not my country,” Dorian replied.

“He’s a mad man!” she cried “He cannot rule a country!”

“Why are we making conversation?” Dorian asked his partner suddenly as the girl went on about her uncle.

“Good point,” Mekayo said with a frown. It took him a moment before he looked up at his partner and nodded. He slowly pulled out a dagger from his sleeve.

Slowly, they approached the girl in the moon light.

“Wait!” she cried, pushing her back against the great cherry head board. “If you are going to kill me, kill my uncle after. He is in the Men’s Apartments, the largest room.”

Mekayo nodded before handing Dorian the dagger.

“Aren’t you going to do it?” he asked.

“No. I want my last time not to be done by me,” he whispered.

“Last time?”

“Can you please hurry?” the girl asked. “And please… can you make it so it doesn’t hurt?”

“Of course,” Mekayo whispered, pushing aside her hair from her forehead before glancing over at Dorian. His partner nodded curtly before taking one look at the dagger.

Once she died, it will either do nothing, or vanish into her, bringing her back to life. If that were to happen, it would mean she was the one, and that they would have to take her to their superiors.

“Can I say one last thing?” she whispered. Dorian sighed in exasperation.

“What?”

“I’m sorry for you.”

“She’s dead,” Jasper said, standing over Dorian’s bruised body. “Only because you laid your filthy hands on her.”

“You’re twisted,” he spat from the floor, blood spilling from his mouth. That water had drained him so….

“Only as twisted as I need to be,” was his reply as he smiled down at the body of the angel. “I could not let you have her.”

“Because you, her brother, wanted her for himself,” he hissed, tears in his eyes. She was gone!

“I made her, do not forget,” Jasper whispered, walking away from the angel, no longer able to look into his pathetic face. “I was the one that gave her endless life.”

“Almost endless.”

“Well… yes… she was not chosen to be an angel at birth, and therefore could not be given immortality in the afterlife, but she was given the next best thing. And I gave it to her.”

“And you took it away.”

“Only because you have corrupted the beautiful lily that I had grown.”

“Lilies are born to die,” Dorian whispered.

Mekayo and Dorian stared at the dagger jutting from the young girl’s gut. It had been like that for the last half hour.

“I do not think she is the one,” Mekayo sighed, pulling it out of her and cleaning it with her bed sheet before re-sheathing it.

“It would seem so,” Dorian replied, staring into her gray eyes.

“Well,” his partner sighed, stretching out his white wings as he looked out into the open balcony. “This is goodbye.”

Those were Mekayo’s last words before he pushed aside the hanging silk curtains to the outside, where he stood on the ledge for a moment, soaking up the moon’s beauty. Then he leaned forwards slightly and let himself plunge down. Dorian waited to see him swoop up, and after a while he began to worry.

But at last, he saw his form fly across the moon.

Looking down once more at the girl, he left and followed Mekayo’s footsteps.

He swooped down into the palace gardens towards the other side of the palace. Slowly, he brought himself back up until he landed lightly on a man’s balcony, much similar to the girl’s. Inside sleeping was a mad man, waiting for the throne so he could bend the people of this country to his will.

Dorian was going to keep his promise to the dead girl. Slowly, he pushed past the curtains to the sleeping man in the four-poster bed. His hair was graying, but he was young, Dorian noticed. He was round and jolly looking, but he had this looked of fatigue embedded in his face.

Pulling out his sword, he said a short prayer for his soul.

Dorian stood in the water. It reached just a little above his knees, and all across the small lake, the buds of white lilies were floating. He stared off into the night sky, the chilly breeze biting his skin.

“I killed her,” he whispered to himself, speaking the words that Jasper insisted were true. And for once, the light angel was right.

He took a deep breath, taking in the clean air of the forest.

And then, as he exhaled, his knees gave out beneath him and he fell with a splash into the water. How he wished this was the water in heaven, the water that would suck the life out of him, kill him and his soul forever.

That way, he wouldn’t have to suffer anymore.

Yes, it was I that had told her to go to him, that he would be great enough to offer her eternal life. So that we could be together for all of time. I told her not to worry about her brother, that he would not I was wrong! How he would care! The sick, twisted man! He wanted his sister all to himself… and for no other man to take her… for she was his creation.

Now he understood.

All those times she called him a beautiful dreamer… she knew her brother would take her back, either by killing her or by stealing her away. She knew that they would not be together forever, and yet she agreed to walk into the Heavenly Realms and ask him!

Dorian knew he was a fool.

He just wished he had learned earlier.

Death covered his hands as he flew away from the palace.

The sun was beginning to rise, and pinks, oranges, and yellows played across the land. Seeing the sunrise up from the sky almost made all of his thoughts go away.

But then, as he looked to the west, he saw something else approaching. A black mist that left darkness behind it was rolling across the land.

He watched from the sky as it caused life to decay in its tracks.

Slowly, he watched as it spread itself across the land, leaving nothing untouched. Everything was blackened. Below him a moment before had been a blue spring. Now the spring was dark, and a black mist hovered over it. Anyone who got near it… it would mean death.

But something caught his eye, a little bit away. A girl and a boy playing by another spring that had not yet been touched. He flew over and watched.

“You can’t catch me!” he heard a girl cry as her older brother ran after her.

“Oh yes I can!” he roared, scaring his little sister, and causing her to fall backwards into the stream. He ran over to try to help her out, giving her the chance to pull him in.

They began to laugh, splashing water at each other.

And then they all heard it, all three.

There was a high pitched screeching that sounded so inhuman. It made the hair on Dorian’s neck stand on end. As well as the two in the stream.

They watched as the sky grew dark, as the wave of blackness approached. The brother looked over at the water that spilled down the rocks into the spring, seeing the mist that was rolling towards them. Quickly, he grabbed his sister and threw her out of the water.

But that did not stop him from being exposed.

Quickly, Dorian realized what this was.

He swooped down in the trees behind the stream and tucked his wings away. Through the trees he watched as the brother hopped out of the water and fell beside his sister.

“Peorin,” she whispered slightly, but he shushed her, his eyes on Dorian.

The angel emerged from the darkness, looking at the two siblings on the ground. He heard the young girl whimper.

Then Dorian began to make his way to the two, walking across the deadly water. By now, all noise had ceased. Not one bird chirped a gloomy morning song.

When he reached the other side, he stood by the two, a smirk on his face. The five year old stared at him in disbelief, and the twenty year old simply watched him.

There was something about these two. He looked down at the young man with a furrowed brow. Today the war would begin. Today everything that Dorian knew would change, and it will be because of these two. What did this mean?

“I’ll see you soon.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE

And so their story begins! I decided to post this before I posted the actual story, even though I was planning on posting it after I finished posting the entire story. I guess this works. So if Dorian's sotry has interested you, be sure to keep an eye out for the entire story, Failed Truth. I'll be posting it within this week. I hope!

please review,
Alex