The Fallen

“I see,” the priest said thoughtfully. “Has Camael answered for his crimes?”

Verchiel was silent, an explosive rage building inside him.

The priest smiled, pleased with the lack of response. “That is good,” Byleth said. “As long as he lives, there’s a chance that—”

“It is only a matter of time before the traitor meets with his much deserved fate,” Verchiel interrupted, his words dripping with malice.

“Did you feel it, Verchiel?” the angel asked, one of his hands leaving the confines of his robe to gently touch his forehead. “Just a few glorious hours ago, did you feel it come into its own?”

“I felt nothing,” Verchiel lied. He had been en route to Ukraine when he felt the psychic disturbance. The angel had been tracking half-breeds for hundreds of thousands of years and never had he felt an emergence so strong. It concerned him. “And if I had, what more could it be but the manifestation of another blemish upon the Creator’s world? Something to hunt down and eradicate before it has the opportunity to offend any further.”

The boy began to cough and Byleth sadly gazed at the human child who struggled against the confines of his leash.

“That poor creature should never have been brought here, Verchiel,” the angel priest said. “The poisons in this air will do it irreparable harm.”

Verchiel gazed at the creature with complete disinterest and looked back to the priest. “How else was I to find you in a timely ma

The others at the altar were standing now and had turned to watch the encounter. They all wore the same idiotic grin and Verchiel could not wait to see it burned from their faces.

“There is desperation in your tone, Verchiel. You felt it as strongly as we,” Byleth said as he shared a moment with his fellow worshippers. “And you are afraid—afraid that the prophecy is coming to fruition.”

Verchiel snarled and spread his wings, knocking Byleth to the floor by the altar in a cloud of radioactive dust. “What black sorcery did the human seer use to corrupt so many of you? Tell me so I might have any who practice such poisonous villainy scoured from the planet.”

“Always so dramatic, Verchiel,” Byleth said, struggling to his feet. “There was no magic, no corrupting spell. Nothing but a vision of unification and an end to the violence.”

A sword of fire grew in Verchiel’s hand. The larger particles of irradiated dust and dirt in the air sparked as they drifted into contact with the divine flame. Following his lead, his soldiers each manifested blazing weapons as well.

“And what has this idyllic vision brought you thus far?” asked the Powers’ leader. “You hide yourself away in the poisoned wastelands created by the animals, denying your true place in the order of things. Is this some kind of punishment, Byleth? Do you think that this half-breed prophet you imagine is coming will look upon you fondly because of it?” Verchiel said with disgust. “Pathetic.”

“This place and the poisoned land around it reminds us of what we were and what we have become,” Byleth explained. “Once, we were filled with His holy virtue, on a mission to wipe away evil—but we were tainted by the violence and a self-righteousness that said we were acting in His name.”

“Everything I do, I do for Him,” Verchiel replied, his fiery blade burning brighter and radiating an intense heat.

“That is what you believe to be true,” Byleth said. “But there is another way—a way without death, a way that brings the end of our exile and the begi

Verchiel shook his head. “No, it is blasphemy.” He raised a hand to his soldiers behind him. “Remove them from the altar,” he commanded.

The Powers leaped into the air, their wings stirring choking clouds of fine, radioactive debris.

“We will fight you, Verchiel!” Byleth cried. A weapon of fire grew in his grip, and others blazed up in the hands of his fellow believers, yet they seemed pitiful by comparison to the swords of the Powers. Feeble wings grew from their backs.

“Look at you,” Verchiel said as he strode toward them and their sacred shrine. “Belief in this heresy has reduced you to mere shadows of your former glory. How sad.”

“Our past sins have made us thus,” Byleth bellowed in anger as he leaped at Verchiel, his sword held high.

But he was intercepted by the savagery of Verchiel’s elite guard and forced to the ground beneath their weight. Verchiel watched with great amusement as the priests were hauled away from their shrine.

“This is the future, you say?” he asked as he looked from them to the burning candles and crude artwork.

They struggled against their captors, but the Powers’ soldiers held them fast. “It won’t end with us,” Byleth hissed. “That which has been foretold now walks among us.”

Verchiel looked to the altar, fiery indignation burning in his breast. “I see no future here,” he said as he flapped his powerful wings. The mighty gusts of air extinguished the candles and toppled the offensive painting. “All I see is the end.”

Verchiel gri

“It’s far from over, Verchiel,” Byleth said. “Look for yourself,” he added with a tilt of his head toward the altar.

The Powers’ leader turned and watched with horror as the candles, one by one, began to re-ignite. In a burst of fury, he spread his wings and launched himself toward the gri

Byleth’s fellow priests gasped in unison. “Please,” one of his fellow believers plaintively whispered.

Verchiel leaned in close, watching the flesh of the renegade angel’s face bubble and blacken as he burned from within. “They beg for mercy, but alas, their words fall upon deaf ears.”

Byleth slid to the floor, Verchiel’s blade still within him, his heavy robes begi

Verchiel pulled his sword from the priest’s chest. “The Almighty and I…we do not need to converse.”

Byleth smiled hideously, his teeth nothing more than charred nubs protruding from oozing black gums. “As I imagined.”

Verchiel felt his ire rise. “That amuses you, Byleth? My lack of communication with the Heavenly Father makes you smile in the face of your imminent death?”

His body awash in flames, the priest slowly raised his charred, skeletal hands to the sides of his face—to where his ears used to be. “Deaf…ears,” Byleth whispered. “Deaf ears.” And then he began to laugh.

The sound enraged Verchiel. He pulled back his arm and brought the heavenly blade down upon the burning priest once, twice, three times, reducing his offender to ash. Then he turned from the smoking remains to face his prisoners. “This is what the profanity of your beliefs has brought you,” he said, directing their attention to the ruin of their master.

The sword of flame receded to nothing, and Verchiel strode away toward the doors that would take him from the poisonous chamber.

“Kill them,” he said, void of emotion, his back to them. “I want to forget they ever existed.”

And he left the room, the screams of the dying priests escorting him on his journey, the malignant words of an ancient prophecy feverishly swirling around in his mind.