Undone by a Broken Angel

22.) Darkness

“Fear took hold of them there, and pain, as a woman in travail.”

-Psalms 48:6 

Paul:

Paul’s still a few hours off his mark and it’s still going to take him even longer now if he decides to walk.  The ache in his knee will slow him down even more so now that he’s sprained it during his landing.  He could find a good sturdy stick to lean on, but he has his pride as a soldier and he won’t let himself be so weak.

He sits to catch his breath and to regain his strength.  How much longer can I do this? he wonders.  But they need his sword just as much as they need this Abigail.  His lungs still scream at him, but he gets up anyway and begins to walk.  Resting will only delay him further.  He can rest while he’s moving.  Walking is much easier than flying, after all.

As the scenery passes by, he soaks it in.  When he was young he didn’t have a mind for sights, but now that he’s older, it seems to have gotten important.  The world is beautiful, just the way the good Lord intended, but day by day Satan and his reapers get closer to destroying it all.

They will fight until the very end, he and his family.  Hopefully Abigail will do the same.

The day grows darker as he walks, but he’s closer now, closer than he was yesterday.  If he keeps this up, he’ll reach Dianna’s lake by midnight.  There he’ll find a warm bed, warm fresh food, and clean clothes.  His step goes a bit faster as he thinks about it, wanting the warmth and comfort and safety of Dianna’s underground home.

The day darkens into dusk, the forest turns into a deep orange glow.  Beautiful, he thinks, but for some odd reason, he finds it unsettling; it’s an ominous color for a strange, unfamiliar place.  He shrugs his worries aside and continues his pace.

He hears a twig snap a couple of hundred feet in front of him.  “Hello,” he calls, hoping it’s only a deer.

“Well, well, well,” a hideous voice replies from the shadow of a wide tree.

Paul turns to face it.  A reaper is crouched there, a wide smile stretched across its face.  He’s not sure if reapers are capable of feeling joy, but this one must be able to. 

“We have a lone traveler,” another exclaims, “and this one is old.”

This is so like them, he thinks, sneaking up and popping out of nowhere.  “Satan spawn,” he says, “you’re lucky I’m alone today.”

“Where is your friend?” the first one asks, “Abraham, is his name?”

“Oh you know him?  Yes, Abraham and I have been separated for now.”

“You won’t see him again,” the third one in front of him promises.

The forest finally goes dark, the clouds burst open, raining cold water down on the forest floor.  His clothes darken with moisture and weighs down his limbs.  The dark shapes around him shift and suddenly he can’t identify or locate them any more.  Panicking, he curses Nathanael for separating everyone.  The old man has never been out in the field, how could he make such a dangerous decision without thinking of their safety?

He retrieves his sword, tightening his fingers around the hilt.  “Stay away from me, you filthy creatures,” he yells so the whole forest can hear him.

He hears hissing in response.  Laughter, he assumes.

“What are you going to do to me?”  If they haven’t killed him yet, they probably won’t.  They like to drag things out, but not for this long.  They’re evil malevolent creatures, but they’re also impatient.  If they’ve been sent to kill him, they’d have done so minutes ago.

“Kill you slowly,” one replies.

“Kill you quickly,” another says.

“Make you sick,” the last one says hissing.

Thunder cracks above him.  No, he thinks, don’t make me like Abraham.  But Abraham is lucky- he’s the exception.  All those with the illness has died, consumed by evil thoughts and voices, and commit suicide to end it all.  Abraham is the only one able to cope with the sickness.

The reapers hiss again.  They now know what they’re going to do to him.  They read his fear like a book.  He’s scared that he’ll never see them again.  The other men, the young men, he’s bonded with over the past twenty years, have been family to him.  Even though they are not a true family, they dull the pain.  Little Joshua, cocky David, strong Samuel, and sad Abraham.  All of them good men, boys, and hopefully safe.

There’s a pain in his side and all of a sudden his legs cannot hold him up any more.  The ground meets him before he is ready, feeling his hip jar and bones grind with bones they should not be grinding with.  He yells in agony, but does not know what from: his hip or the stab wound in his side.  “You bastards,” he curses, and immediately feels the guilt of his sin.

The rain beats down on him, the thunder shakes the air.  He’s too old for this.  All the fight has left his body, but not his mind.  He wants to get up and cut those smirks off their faces- if it weren’t too dark to see them.

“You don’t have far to go,” a reaper says.

“Better start walking,” another whispers in his ear.

Paul stumbles to his feet, feeling the ground shift beneath them.  He doesn’t have time to balance as the three reapers poke and prod him with their dirty blades to move.  

It doesn’t take long for his wounds and joints to go completely numb- the cold rain helps some.  His sword dangles and drags at his side.  He never bothered to put it away, and he doesn’t see a point to do so now.  Maybe he should just let it go, he probably won’t ever need it again.  He knows what they did to him: stabbed him, diseased him, doomed his future and his wish to die a painless death.  He knows the sickness will begin and he’ll feel pain everywhere, and not the pain he’s used to.  It will be torturous agony, and just as the voice begins to plague him, he’ll take his own life so that he won’t hurt others.  A sin.  One of the worst ones.  The reapers think it fun to make God’s army sinful.  Perhaps he should just drop the sword- he’s a dead man walking.

Miles go by.  Sweat mixes with rainwater.  Urine mixes with both.  Once he stopped to vomit, and then once more about an hour later.  Fever rages through him, tearing at his consciousness.

It’s when his vision starts to blur that he sees his two of his companions gathered in a clearing where the rain pours down freely.  Abraham is missing; so is David.  They both have reapers behind them just as he does, looking as tough they fought hard before being tied up.  They all vomit at the same time, feeling the overwhelming aura of the reapers nearby.  There must be more unseen in the surrounding trees.

The reapers tie him to a metal post and he notices another vacant one.  They will have them arranged in a circle once David is brought here.  He wonders what is going through Joshua and Samuel’s minds.  Are they planning an escape?  Do they know what the reapers have assembled them for?  The way his energy is sapped, he doesn’t have it in him to reach out to them in their minds.  Luckily, Joshua does.  He always comes through when people need him.

Wait for David, then we strike, he tells Paul.

Okay then, Paul decides he’s going to need his energy if he’s going to help them at all.  He takes this opportunity to sleep.

“I said don’t touch me!” 

Paul is startled awake by a familiar, angry voice.  It belongs to David, there’s no doubt about that.  No one but David can go into a rage like he can.  He kicks at them, but only manages to kick up rocks, dirt, and dry plant life.  He twists and turns in their hands, but they hold him still as best he can.  His face is bright read from all the fighting, his chest heaving from the exertion.  The reapers are having some difficulty controlling the belligerent man, but they manage to force him down into a kneeling position to tie him to his post.  His mouth twists in frustration, but Paul can see he’s got an idea.

How long had he been sleeping, he wonders?  A piercing, sharp pain runs up his back, shoulders, and neck from sleeping against a thin pole.  He moves his head this way and that in an attempt to work out the stiffness, but it’s a lost cause.  His legs are numb, it’s going to take a while for them to wake up, so he tries to change position to get some blood flowing to them.

Be ready, David tells them all.

“Bring it!  What do’you got? What’s your plan!” David demands, but the reapers he challenges stand stoic at their posts behind each man.  David continues his tirade, thrashing about at his ropes and tries to stand, but the post is taller than him and he’s not able to move the binding over the top.  Paul watches him closely, trying to figure out what it is he’s doing.

“It’s time,” a reaper announces and they make their move.  They move as one and a reaper stands in front and one behind each man.  Paul looks up at the reaper in front of him, his mind devoid of everything but fear.  By the look on David’s face, he hadn’t expected this.

A sharp pinch on his right wing makes him yell out in discomfort at the same time as the others and the reaper looking down on him smirks.  What was that?  What did they just do?  He sees a feather in each hand of the reapers behind his family.  Why did they pluck out their feathers?  What are they going to do with them?

What happens next no one was expecting.  The illness that Abraham is cursed with is something every falcone fears to contract.  It means death.  You’re lucky if you kill yourself first rather than those you love.  So when the reapers start passing around a jar, even Paul starts to fight against his bindings.  Samuel falls victim first, then Joshua.  They place their blade in the jar and stab them in the arm, right below the shoulder joint.

It's not the illness! Davis shouts in his mind and he assumes the others can hear him too.  This is not how it’s done!

Paul trusts David; he’s the only one Abe told how the reapers did it.

He feels the blade pierce his skin and holds back his groan of pain.  He won’t give them the satisfaction.

David receives it last.

Their deed finished, the reapers vanish in the trees, obviously intending them to die a slow death, tied up with no hope of release.

That’s when Paul sees David smile and use every ounce of strength he has in him to push back on the metal pole.  His heels dig into the mud for traction, but he pushes all the harder and slowly, the metal bends against his will.

David slides himself free just as they all vomit at the same time.

Come on, David says in his, and their, minds.  Let’s get to Dianna’s before they know we’ve escaped.