Fallen Shades - Chapter 1 - Alru and Derith

[Azurel]

[[After much butt-kicking by K-Chan and Antinua, I finally got back into writing on a world concept I came up with a few days ago. Here's chapter one of the result]]


A white blur flew past Alru with such speed that it almost knocked him full-circle in the air. Turned around, Alru saw another coming. He recognized this blur, however. Alru flapped his wings and hovered in the next blur's path. He held out his hands at it.

"Sera! Wait! What's going on?" he called out to it.

"They're breaking through, Alru," she said, twisting and flying under him, "the demons are breaking through!"

He didn't need to think about it. Alru had been through the drill three times now. He folded his wings against his back as he arced backwards. He fell for a while, head first, picking up speed. He threw his wings open and pulled up to see his friend as a speck against the backdrop of Heaven; a ceiling and a floor of clouds with nothing but empty sky in between. He flapped hard, trying to catch up to Sera. She was much faster, and her lead was gaining.

Save your energy, he thought.

He began to glide between flaps, holding his enormous, white wings still and letting them carry him on windless air. It gave him the peace to think and look. He could see the tell-tale sign of a demon break through on the ceiling of Heaven; the white, silver-lined clouds had veins of black creeping through them.

Humans resided on earth, below the floor of Heaven. Demons resided in the void, above the ceiling of Heaven. In order for the demons to get to earth, they had to drop through the skies of Heaven. This did little to directly affect Heaven and its angelic inhabitants. However, the demons were dropping through for a reason. The angels knew they were doing something evil, but they didn’t know what. So, it became an angel’s duty to stop the drop through.

Alru was close enough to see it now, the area the demons were trying to break through at. The demons were like drops of black food coloring, dropping and dispersing black taint into the skies of Heaven. The ceiling was almost pitch-black. From a distance, he could see black masses dropping from the ceiling, leaving a trail of scattered darkness. He could see them clashing with masses of light–angels colliding with the demons in the air.

He hovered there, remembering the first time he witnessed the sight. Back then, he did nothing but watch as his friends clashed with the demons and lost. Five demons broke through that day, and he swore never again. He would never let another demon through the floors of Heaven.

Alru flew closer and closer. The clashes became more clear. Demons would latch onto a clashing angel as it tried to stop the demon, and it would tear into its ethereal flesh. As an angel would die, its skin would fade, leaving a translucent, blue soul that floated in the skies. The angels, however, would not kill the demons. They would purify them of their evils; it was an ability all angels carried. The result of a purification resulted in the demon’s blue soul drifting in the skies of Heaven as well. All souls, be it from an angel or demon, collapsed in on itself. A glowing crystal would form, carrying the essence of the soul. Most of the time, the crystals would just fade as they fell.

He searched for Sera as soon as he got close enough to the battle. She was easy to find, she moved twice as fast as any angel in the sky. A demon was descending on her.

“Sera, above you,” he shouted.

She spun quickly, throwing her arm across the air as she turned to face the falling demon. Her hand left a ribbon of white light floating in front of her. She took her other hand and swiped vertically in the middle of the ribbon. Another ribbon formed, creating a glowing cross. It launched itself at the demon that was just feet from falling onto her. It hit the demon, keeping it frozen in the air. The demons hands were pulled against the horizontal strips, and its head and feet against the vertical. It began roaring as the cross burned into the demon, melting the evil away. Black steam rose off of the decrepit form as its shell was disintegrated. A blue soul was left on the cross. The cross faded. Sera turned back to Alru as the soul collapsed to form its crystal. Sera wasn’t interested in them.

“Watch the skies above your own head,” she said both as a jest and warning.

Alru was her slower companion, both mentally and physically. It took him a few seconds to look up, only to be shocked by the impact of a falling demon. It sniffed Alru for a second while he was still in shock and dug its claw into the back of his shoulder, roaring at him wildly. Alru regained his composure as he screamed in pain. He grabbed the demon’s free hand and twisted his own body. With the help of momentum, Alru was able to throw the demon off of his shoulder, towards the floor of Heaven. The claw ripped through his skin during the maneuver, leaving gashes that displayed Alru’s glowing, blue soul underneath. He stretched out his arm at the falling demon and flinched a little. A white ring of energy launched from Alru’s arm, hitting the falling demon. The black shell of the demon simply burst into mist, leaving the soul to return to its pure state.

Alru watched it turn into its crystal. Those crystals contained the powers and memories of the souls. They were neither good nor evil. Furthermore, they could be absorbed. Alru had two of them in him already, from battles past.

A demon roared past him. Another angel clashed with it before it reached the fluffy, white floor. Alru shook his head at the fading crystal. There was still a fight going on, he needed to concentrate. He turned to face the ceiling and spotted his next target. Alru stretched his arm out to the side, holding his palm open towards the floor. A rod of light appeared, floating just under his hand. It was almost twice his height. Alru dropped his hand quickly and gripped the rod. The light eroded from both sides of his hand, revealing a metal pole with a mirror-like sheen. As the light eroded from the far tip, the metal molded into a blade. The blade resembled the shape of an egg, round and wide at the base, narrowing to a point. It was the weapon of the angels. The blade shape often varied with the angel that wielded it.

He closed in on his falling target, calculating the distance and speed between them. He jutted his halberd out at the demon at the last second, impaling the berserk creature in the gut. Two tendrils of white energy spawned from Alru’s hand. They snaked up the shaft of the lance, twisting and running into the other. The demon, fighting the agony of the halberd-tip, clawed at the tendrils. As if they had minds of their own, one rose off of the weapon like a cobra about to strike its prey, distracting the demon enough to let the other seep into the wound. The demon’s eyes went wide with a feeling he had never felt before, both painful and pure. The distracting tendril used the demon’s shock as an opportunity to curve backwards and also seep into the wound. The demon froze with the same shocked look on his face. As if someone were squeezing a hard-boiled egg, fractures of white light began to form on the demon, separating its body into jagged segments. One by one, the segments would break away and fade into nothingness, revealing a portion of the blue soul underneath.

Through the holes in his foe, Alru could see Sera. He discarded the fading body, knowing the process would continue without him. Sera was darting around her falling enemies, purifying two in the time it took a normal angel to purify one. Alru was flustered watching her. While angels had no physical gender, some preferred to be called she over he. And even then, feelings formed regardless. His feelings were something he hadn’t ever expressed to her, and for good reason; they lived happily the way they were, and he didn’t want to risk ruining that.

Alru’s attention was shifted up. Two angels were flying to one demon, one behind the other. Most demons could be taken on by one angel at a time. The angels had quite a few advantages in Heaven. The first angel collided with the demon. The demon was quick to take control of the twisting free fall, and threw the angel into the oncoming backup. The demon pulled his body tight onto himself, building up energy. He threw his arms and legs out. Black lines of energy quickly ran between each of his extremities. Head to hand, hand to foot, foot to foot, foot to hand, and hand to head. The anti-radiant pentagram formed in front of him. It launched, spinning, at the two still-struggling angels. The pentagram wrapped around them when it hit, like a black fishing net. The force of launching the pentagram pushed the demon back to another part of the sky. The net got tighter and tighter on the angels, and burned through their souls’ shells. The two blue souls escaped their shells, but the net continued to eat away at the shells. Alru prayed for the souls as they turned to crystals, but it was a hurried prayer. That demon was not something he wanted to look away from for too long.

The new part of the sky the demon had been put into was right in the path of Sera. Alru didn’t even have time to shout a warning before the dark creature landed on her back. It was quick and ruthless; it grabbed a hold of one of her wings and slashed the base. Alru watched in horror as Sera, the demon, and one of her wings all began to fall towards the floor of Heaven in separate paths.

He dropped the halberd, which glowed white and faded back to nothingness. Alru turned to her falling body, stretching out both arms. She returned the gesture, reaching out to her friend while one wing and her legs frantically tried to find some kind of hold on the emptiness of Heaven.

“Alru! Help me,” she cried out.

He could see the fear in her eyes. It mirrored in his.

“Sera, hold on I-“

The wind was knocked out of Alru before he could finish his sentence. A demon had landed on him while he was flying to his companion. His wings went limp, not able to hold the weight of the two bodies. He struggled against the insane demon. It was laughing maniacally and drooling onto Alru. He didn’t even bother to purify it, he simply punched the demon off of him.

Alru regained the composure of flight and dove for his friend. She was too far down now. Alru watched, for what seemed like longer than his entire eternal existence in Heaven, as the angel he loved fell through the clouds of Heaven. He had been only yards from her when she fell through. Alru had almost flown through the clouds himself, trying to catch her. He jolted to a stop before the sparkling clouds. He was still trying to fly through, but simply hovered oddly in front of the clouds.

“Let me through! I need to save her! God,” he cried out as tears began to roll down his cheeks.

He kicked and swiped at the clouds that were mere feet from him. It was a rule that angels were, under no circumstance, to travel to earth willingly. By God’s force, and God’s force only, Alru was still in Heaven. He still had a job to do, but that was not on his mind at all. He kept screaming and kicking at the fluffy barrier between him and his friend.

Something caught Alru’s eye. Something black. He looked over, vision blurred through wet eyes. It was the demon that killed Sera. Alru knew because, while everything else was blurry, he could see the demon’s face. He was grinning. Alru’s body went hot, something he had never experienced as an angel. He almost turned to chase the demon when he was shocked to see the demon disappear into a silvery puff. It hit Alru then, the demon had just passed through the barrier. Alru had let a demon escape. He had failed twice now, with the two largest responsibilities he had. The heat hit his head. There was only one way to fix everything.

He turned to the sky above, released by God’s will and flying on his own now. He found one, a demon dropping near him. He ascended furiously, putting fear in the falling demon. Alru’s hands were encompassed in white light. He roared, throwing one of his hands forward as the contrasting bodies collided. He had grabbed the demon’s face with the one hand. He released the energy in his hand, destroying the head of the demon as if he had used a shotgun instead of his energy. In his now normal hand was the head of the demon’s blue soul. The rest of the demon’s shell was still wrapped around the soul. Alru roared again, new tears forming. The other hand, still charged with energy, had formed into a brilliant claw, radiating white light. It was bred from one of the two crystals within him. As well as carrying the memories, those crystals carried one attribute of the shell that they had resided within. This claw was from a demon he had purified once. It glowed white because the attribute, like the crystals themselves, carried no alignment to good or evil. It is dependent on who uses the attribute whether it comes out good or evil.

One hand grasping the faceless head of the blue soul, he dug his glowing claw into the muscled shell of the disgusting demon. With one last roar, he pulled his hands in opposite directions. The shell of the demon, the skin of the soul, stretched. It began to tear as Alru’s muscles shook in effort. He ripped off the skin as if it were nothing but a shirt. The skin faded in one hand, his muscles shaking with more than just effort now.

Now, the full, purified soul was being held by its head in Alru’s one hand. It collapsed in on itself, forming a crystal in Alru’s hand. He could feel the energy pouring from the crystal and remembered it from twice before. He squeezed the crystal until there was nothing left to squeeze anymore. He looked at the palm that had held the crystal. It was sparkling blue light. Alru had absorbed a third crystal into his body.

The memories pounded Alru’s head, flashing every moment of the soul’s life. It was enough to nearly knock out any being, blessed or not. He was breathing hard after the memory dump. It took him a while to realize, but he was struggling to keep flight. He flapped harder and harder, but he was getting heavier by the second. He clawed at the empty skies of Heaven, trying to keep flight. He watched the battle waging above get further and further away from him. It was what he wanted, but he hadn’t prepared himself for it.

There was another property of the soul crystals that all angels knew about. The burden of three souls on the already existent one made their soul too heavy. In an angel’s case, their souls became too heavy to maintain flight. He fell through the barrier as few angels have before. He was falling through the clouds. White, pure clouds, sparkling with silver energy seemed to fade. The clouds became darker, duller. They had no energy. It seemed like forever that he was falling through nothing but clouds. He had given up aimlessly clawing at the sky.

The clouds got thinner. He could see blue through the voids of the clouds. Alru was in Heaven no longer; he was falling through the skies of earth. He hadn’t realized, in his shock, that his wings had been fading as he fell. Now, even the clouds were drifting further away from him.

He twisted. Alru knew what was below him, but he hadn’t seen it anywhere but memories. From how high up he was, he could see several cities, mountain ranges, roads, and forests. He could make out where he was going to land as he got closer–next to a river that feeds into the city.

The ground was coming up on Alru fast. He hadn’t thought about this part. He was going to die when he landed. He pulled his body in on itself, trying his best to brace for the impact. Though, in his heart, he knew it was pointless. The impact he knew was coming never did. He felt the rushing wind stop. He thought he had hit so hard, he didn’t even feel it. He opened his eyes and found the sight of grass only a foot from him. Alru was hovering above the ground, curled up in his little ball. He quickly stood up on the ground.

“He must have a reason,” Alru said to himself.

Alru collapsed to the ground. His entire body burned with pain. Alru was changing, and it hurt so bad that he ever derived pain when his clothes changed. The entire shell of a being is connected, and his clothes were part of it. He screamed up into the sky before blacking out from the pain.

When he woke, Alru was sore, but no longer in excruciating pain. He sat up on his knees and looked about himself, physically aware of the changes. Alru was more toned and bigger than he was in Heaven. His generic robe had turned into a pair of white cotton pants with a matching shirt that hugged him tighter than a mother on her child’s first day of school. His forearms were covered in short, but wide strips of white cloth. They were no wrapped, but rather held on as if someone had glued them there. There was writing, in silver-lined black ink, on the strips. All of the strips on his right arm read “bound,” and all the strips on his left arm read “banished.” They were written in an ancient language that both demons and angels could read. His hair, which had been short and blond, now grew to the middle of his back. Alru’s hair was also now as white as the clouds of Heaven. His hair was parted in two places by two, straight horns. They were spiraled, and outlined in the same silver as everything else. The horns were slicked back, giving Alru an almost aerodynamic look. His halo hung crooked on one of the horns, as if someone was playing horseshoe with it.

His glowing, azure eyes stared down at his open palms. In Heaven, light shined down on every being and object filling its skies. Here, Alru could see, the light was coming from inside. He could feel it fading slowly and it scared him. He did not know what would become of an angel without the blessings of Heaven.

“For an angel, you make one striking beast,” came a low voice from the woods.

Alru’s eyes darted around, mindlessly trying to see where the voice came from. They stopped on one spot, a random spot. It wasn’t anything that caught his attention, but in that spot, it felt like the shadows of the forest were alive. Soon after, a figure emerged. At first glance, he was no different from a human. His blood red hair was short, but long enough to get in his face. Long, twitching ears emerged from the sides of his hair. Alru could see the tell-tale slit in the demon’s amber eyes. Eyes that only animals could admire. A wide, black strap of cloth was bound around his neck as if someone had painted a collar directly onto his skin. A charm hung from the collar; it was a small chain, on the lower part was half of a cross, cut ragged and horizontally. The rest of the metallic cross hung at the bottom of the charm, separated by a few centimeters of chain. Alru could see that he hadn’t faired the descent as well as he had; his normal clothes were torn and he was bleeding quite profusely from his right shoulder. Blood poured down his arm. He was toned, but had little muscle to speak of visibly.

Alru’s eyes shot up to his mouth, almost drawn in, knowing he was about to begin speaking.

“Do you miss them,” the black-clad demon asked.

Alru narrowed his eyes questionably; not giving a response, nor knowing what he was talking about. The demon began to walk out into the open. He raised his unharmed hand a little, waving it across the air as he spoke.

“Your wings, of course. I find that most angels get quite distressed without them.”

He grinned that stupid grin. It almost made Alru sick. He burned it into his memory. He wanted to rip the mouth right off of the demon. Yet, he was curious. The demon was too far away to get in an attack if Alru got distracted. Angels could recede and call upon their wings when they needed to; he assumed that’s what had happened when he fell from Heaven. He called upon them. Normally, the process was quick and without hesitation. This time, this time it felt like Alru had to push through a thin, rubber wall. His wings felt heavy, and they hadn’t even emerged yet. The back of his radiant, white shirt, began to seep with a black tar. Two spots grew into a back-encompassing stain. It was as if his shirt and back had turned to this thick, disgusting liquid. He pushed and pushed, only to have a bubble begin to form out of the liquid. His face was going red. He kept pushing, not even able to scream. The bubble got bigger, larger than Alru’s whole body. His face had turned plum. His whole body shook. The bubble popped, throwing the tar-like liquid everywhere. Alru screamed out in pain, sending birds from the forest into the day sky. From the bubble emerged two wings, drenched in tar. His once-radiant wings reduced thin, wet mockeries of their former glory. The tar was dripping, slowly, onto the ground. Alru could barely move them. He was nearly in shock.

He raised his hand backwards, hesitant to touch the viscous liquid. He pressed his hand into what would have been his wing. His hand went through the liquid, as if there was no bone structure holding up the black wings. As he pulled his hand out, it was covered in tar. He looked down at his shaky, tainted hand. The tar was matte; it reflected no light. He could feel his stomach turning. Any more of this and he was going to throw up. The stench didn’t help either; it was as if someone had stuffed a cadaver with rotten eggs. Alru shook off the tar from his hand. To his surprise, it came off quite easily and left no trace. He swung his arm across the air in front of him, dismissing his wings. As if his theory about there being no bones in his wings was confirmed, the liquid wings merely dropped to the ground, making a disgusting splat. The darkness of the liquid seeped into the ground and back into his body, leaving nothing.

“Here, let me show you what real wings look like,” the demon said.

Alru was dizzy, the pent-up blood flowing back into his body. Blood, he realized, was something he now had. Appearance was not the only thing that changed on his trip to earth.

The demon turned so that his back was facing Alru; he wanted him to watch every step. He immediately started screaming wildly. The black shirt began to get even darker on his back; it was being soaked with blood. Through his screaming, he ripped off his shirt, revealing to Alru the twisted wings about to emerge. His back had been cut, six large rectangles getting smaller the further down his back they were. They were arranged in a vertical fashion, three to each side of his back. The sides of the rectangles that were closest to his spine were not cut. Soon, blood from the cuts covered all visible traces of them. Then, Alru watched as the large slips of skin began to rise off of the demon’s back, pivoted by the uncut sides near his spine. They stood like fins on a fish. Sickly portions of viscous blood still connected the raised skin to the exposed insides of his back. Before the wounds were pooled with blood, Alru could see the back of the demon’s spine.

By now, the screaming had turned the demon’s voice high and shaky. The slivers of skin began to expand, stretching out into the air. Before long, the largest sliver was as long as the demon was tall, and the smallest was about the length of his arm. There was a pause in the screaming. The demon just stood there panting. He turned fully to face Alru. The grin was back on his face like nothing had happened. Raised veins in his neck said otherwise. The strips of skin held rigid on his back. Soon, from seemingly nowhere behind his back, ribbons began to rise and weave between the strips like the target tree of a Halloween prank. The ribbons were similar to the ones that Alru bore on his arms, except these were black with white characters, lined in blue. The ribbons read “unchained.” They were like nothing Alru had ever seen before. They didn’t even look like wings. The flaps of skin were all moving slowly and independent of one another like a spider’s legs before it attacks its prey.

“These,” he chuckled, “these are wings!”

“They’re disgusting,” Alru retorted.

“No more than yours, angel.”
“The name is Alru.”
“Derith.”
“I don’t care what your name is, demon.”
“My, and I thought angels were supposed to be more pleasant than this.”
“I am in no mood to play nice!”
“Then go ahead and call your weapon. I swear, such violent creatures. You angels have really let yourselves go.”

Furious, Alru whipped his hand to his side, opened to call his weapon. He noticed as he had done it, there was something missing. There was no energy. There was nothing to call upon. He was reaching for nothing. Derith was laughing.

“Oh that’s right, your soul is too heavy to wield such a thing isn’t it? I had almost forgot. Here, if you miss it that much, let me remind you what they look like.”

The blood dripping from his right arm no longer seemed to drip from his hand to the ground. It continued to travel past his fingers, as if his hand had continued invisibly into the space under it. The stream of blood seemed to wrap around an invisible cylinder. The blood would finally hit a point where they would start to drip. Derith raised his hand and the stream of blood that seemed to be floating in the air rose with it. A black halberd simply appeared in Derith’s hand, revealing that it was that which the blood was traveling on. The blade, the shaft, they looked as if they had been covered in coal dust. There was no shine, no reflection. The blade was shaped like half of a “U”, curving down before widening out into the blade, which came to a fine point. This dark halberd’s shaft was almost half the size of most.

“How are you able to wield that!?”
“I had to swat a few bugs on my descent to earth.”

Derith had killed angels, and absorbed their crystals. Though he only had two in him, demons were not bound by any consequence to the amount of soul crystals they absorb.

Alru couldn’t control his rage towards this creature. Not only had he slain his brethren, slain Sera, but he was acting as if it was no big deal to Alru’s face. Alru began to shake, his body not able to contain his emotions. He arched back and screamed into the sky.

“Yes! That’s it, ang-oh, Alru. That’s it! Get furious! Come to me!”

The scream became a furious roar. Derith raised an eyebrow; angels don’t roar. The roar subsided into a low growl that was eventually snuffed out. Alru dropped back to a normal stance, arching forward slowly. His body was no longer shaking. He wasn’t even looking at Derith. His familiar, glowing claws emerged as if they had always been there. Alru’s voice was quiet, but powerful.

“No. Come to me, demon. I shall show you your place in this world. You belong below us angels–under our feet.”

Derith grunted. The ancient text of the ribbons that were strung began to glow. The blue outline of the text emitted blue light. Derith started to rise, his feet dragging off the ground. His dark halberd still aimed at Alru, Derith tried to save his pride.

“Hah! Us belong under you!? You can’t even fly!”

Alru simply raised his arms to his sides, creating a cross with his body. He was inviting Derith to come at him. Arrogance was something that made most beings mad, Derith was no exception. With a cry of effort, Derith flew at Alru, halberd forward. Alru stood still, holding his position rigid. Derith had planned to simply run through Alru with his halberd, and Alru knew this. Most rookie angels try the same tactic when they first fight with the holy weapon.

When Derith got close enough, Alru side-stepped and raised his arm slightly. He didn’t move to dodge Derith completely, instead, Alru was only dodging the halberd. The dark weapon went under Alru’s arm, leaving Derith’s face to come into contact with Alru’s rigid forearm. Alru had clotheslined Derith, sending him into a backwards spin. He landed face-down onto the ground with the sound of his air being forced from his chest.

“Who needs to fly when we can defeat you on the ground,” Alru asked.

Alru had to jump back; Derith swung the halberd at his feet when Alru opened his mouth. They both ended on all fours. Derith raised the halberd behind him, now on one hand and his feet propping his body up like a runner at the starting line of a race. Alru had assumed this position as well. His claw, digging into the ground, caused the flora to grow, the grass near him gaining a few inches height. It was a silent standoff. Not a thing made a sound, not a thing moved. It was only the cue of a small breeze that caused the two creatures to launch themselves at one another. Derith swiped his halberd at the last second, but Alru ducked. It trimmed a few white hairs from the tip of Alru’s trailing hair. He ducked enough so that he slammed into Derith’s chest. They fell back onto the ground. Derith roared and raised his feet to Alru’s torso, kicking him off. Alru landed on all fours, sliding like a dog on hardwood floor. Derith was slower to right himself. Alru launched himself again. But this time, Derith’s ribbons glowed again. He kicked off and back. He lifted off the ground slightly. He threw his arm across the air. A black, rigid crescent of energy shot out at Alru. He missed, but his point was to stop Alru from getting to him before he could rise high enough into the sky. It worked too. Alru chased Derith on the ground, jumping every once and a while like a kitten futilely jumping at the reflection of light on a ceiling.

Derith wasn’t strong enough to win the fight, he knew it. Alru chased the airborne demon, panting as he was trying to keep speed. Derith had led his pursuer to a cliff. Alru slid to a stop, nearly falling over the edge. Derith turned around midair in relief. He gave Alru the grin he knew infuriated him.

“I’ll see ya around, Alru. Be good, you-know-who is watching.”

Alru couldn’t formulate words. Exhaustion and anger took over. He roared one last time at the fleeting demon, the echo traveling back from the forest below. He let himself settle; there was nothing more he can do but vow to hunt down Derith. The claws receded into Alru as he looked over the cliff. He watched where Derith was heading. It was a cloud of darkness surrounding a city. Many demons resided there, Alru feared. Just how many had descended through Heaven? Or was it just the evil of man? Either way, that was where Alru was heading next.

[[critique is strongly encouraged due to the fact that I haven't written in a while. I would appreciate a little more explanation than "that was good" or "that was bad" details, people :p ]]

[K-chan]

Poor thing, I hope you don't think we're gonna stop harassing you now. ^-^ mwhahaha
I loved the concepts you came up with, so happy you are doing something with them. And as always I repeat, I love how you write combat. Its good to see you using a few metaphors, just make sure they work for the story.

[Akanari]

Hmm.
Allthough I do like the metaphors, they seem so out of place that it disrupts the reading of the story. Instead of a hardboiled egg, for instance, compare it to pottery shattering. It rather odd to see metaphors from this world in, well, Heaven.

Anyways, I love the story. I also particularly like the strips of fabric around his forearms with "bound" and "banished." It just strikes a chord with me. :] And the horns...remind me of unicorn horns. ^^
I'll be waiting for the next chapters.

[Azurel]

-nodnod- I'll be sure to work on the metaphors. I was also waiting for someone else to see this. While Antinua and K-Chan are a great fan base :p it's kinda weird continuing a whole project for just those two.

[Silver Adept]

It's an interesting start. I think I'm waiting to see more before I start evaluating.

[Antinua]