World on Angelfire

Sachiel had always been of the belief that God must have been on one hell of a roll when he created mankind. Yes, Adam and Eve had their flaws. But the legacy they would gift the earth, those very imperfections, were in her opinion the very thing that made humanity so perfect. She would never dare voice this to the others, to do so would be near treason. But it was a viewpoint that never wavered in its strength and conviction.

For centuries she watched from her perch in the heavens above. She couldn't help admiring them for their ingenuity, their creativity. Sachiel knew her genius was miles ahead of anything the humans were currently capable of. But she also knew they were still growing, still changing. Only God knew if, given the time, humanity could rise to angelic levels.

At first she looked down on the wars they waged on one another, in the early days of their history. Petty, insignificant in-fighting moved to greater wars, for towns, cities, countries. In battle, she realised, humanity showed both its greatest heights and its most heinous lows. When this got too much she moved on to the people behind these skirmishes. Watched as they governed their kingdoms, talked politics, shaped and moulded societies into their ridiculous ideals of perfection. Saw how those at the top played their same games over and over again as they had done for millennia.

After a while she'd had enough. Sachiel became bored. She'd learnt all she could from them. So she turned her focus onto those with more familiar pursuits. She began to watch the scientists, the geniuses, the creators. And that was where her interest truly peaked.

It lingered, even now, after so long. The memory of a man, painting the portrait of a girl, the smile on her face possibly the most intriguing thing about her. Sachiel had still never figured out why such an incredible man was immortalising on canvas such an unremarkable woman. But she had lost many months to the one they called Leonardo. Sachiel simply watched from afar, silently consoling the man for his losses and cheering him for his wins. She often caught herself muttering quiet objections and improvements to the creations the man was making, the initial contempt soon giving way to begrudging respect. In Da Vinci, Sachiel had seen an unquenchable curiosity, a beyond-his-time intellect, and in that human found a creature not unlike herself.

Which may have been why she'd found herself fixated on one Danielle Novak, over two hundred years later. The woman had been clever from birth, that much was clear. She watched as the human grew from wide-eyed infant to curious toddler to ingenious young woman. Sachiel watched as she shone despite constant dismissal from the father. She saw how the mother tried to deal with Danielle's brilliance but could never quite connect to the complex child, and she saw how the youngster thrived under the care and watchful eye of the household butler and his wife.

Sachiel was shocked to find that years later, when Danielle suffered the loss of the butler and his wife not long after the death of her parents, she felt a tinge of grief for the young human. Not for the people themselves but for the effect that their passing had on the woman. For a period, the spark in Danielle died, and Sachiel mourned the fact.

No longer did she ferociously protest her full name, after years of preferring Dani to the formal alternative.

No longer did she create with the vigour and vibrancy of an inquisitive mind, instead succumbing to a self-destructive haze of parties, alcohol, long workshop binges.

Sachiel came to find that it hurt, in a way, to see such a bright spark willingly and consciously destroy itself. She found herself concerned that it would not last, that the darkness in the woman would become so large that it would overwhelm and consume her entirely.

But she was wrong.

The human kept going.

The never-ending parties and alcohol-fuelled binges slowed, though they never fully ceased. And as the years passed, from her perch above Sachiel saw that spark slowly return, somehow burning even stronger than before.

She tried to turn away, focus on more important things, lest her fascination for a mere human be mistaken for something else entirely. But for some inexplicable reason her attention always returned. She watched as Danielle shaped humankind's history. Watched as she made weapons of immense power, created artificial systems that nearly rivalled her own.

And then she saw her do the one thing that she envied most about humanity.

Danielle changed.

No longer was she the world's most skilled technology manufacturer, the deadly and brilliant being Sachiel had been fascinated with. No, she was now a different woman, taking the reins on her own terms, no longer willing to play by any other's rules but her own. And Sachiel was even more intrigued.

Because this was, above all, what she admired most about the humans.

Their freewill, the choice they had in playing out their destiny as they saw fit. The ability to shape life as they wanted, to make mistakes, to live and to learn just as Danielle had.

Although Sachiel had more freedom than most she, like every other angel, lived and was guided by the rules and limitations set out by their heavenly Father. Sachiel hadn't realised just how much those rules governed the angels' lives until she had seen her brothers and sisters mercilessly hunt down and kill the very race that their father had so lovingly created. It was brutal, and swift, and Sachiel no longer wanted any part of it.

*

“If he finds you, he'll have your wings.” A red headed angel paced back and forth in front of the door to the lower workshop, blood red wings tucked tightly into her side. Agitation was written all over her features, her pursed lips the only sign of worry for the angel in front of her.

“He can try. I can't do this any more. I won't. It's not right.” Sachiel’s hands were flying, red and gold wings flicking about in matching anger.

“We all have our orders. So does he. He's only doing-”

“Enough Raziel!" she barked. "You know as well as I those orders don't come from the man upstairs. You can't tell me that he would condone that sort of... of demented experimentation! No, God's definitely not running this show.”

A sudden movement caught their eyes. The duo froze, worried they had been caught before they had even started.

Two figures slunk out of the shadows of the hallway. The shorter of the two had deep blue and white speckled wings and was done up in a slick black suit. The other was clad in the dark copper armour of the elite soldiers, sporting sparkling blue eyes and wings of metallic grey.

“Careful Sachiel, that's blasphemy that is. You never know who could be listening.”

The two relaxed at the familiar voice. Sachiel couldn't help the pang that shot though her at the soft drawl of the blue-eyed angel in front of her. She was going to miss them.

“What, you mean peasants like you Barachiel? I'm quivering in my boots.” An answering snort and accompanying shove by grey wings was all she got as a bag was held out by the angel in the suit.

“Here, thought you might need this where you're going.”

“Aw Cas, you shouldn't have.”

“I can always take it back?” The man held it out of reach, toying with her.

“No, gimme.” At the grabbing motions Sachiel made with her hands, Cassiel tried hard to suppress his eye roll. The other two angels did no such thing, not bothering to hide their amusement.

Upon further inspection the bag proved to be full of new clothes, ones that appeared to be more suited to life amongst humans than the present garb she found herself in. A royal blue jacket sat atop the pile. Sachiel had to resist the urge to put it on there and then.

“I'm really going to look the part, aren't I?” Sachiel grinned at them all, trying to suppress the quiver in her voice. Raziel stared, the mirth in her eyes quickly giving way to unhappiness.

“I will have to report this you know.” The soft statement quieted them all. Sachiel met her eyes, understanding written across her features. Her resolve strengthened as a hand was placed on her shoulder, a quiet show of support.

“I would expect nothing less.”

*

The Eyrie stood towering above the rest of the city, a pillar of near perfection amongst the ruinous chaos around it. In all their righteous arrogance, Sachiel's brothers and sisters had chosen the Empire State Building as their base of operations, leaving it intact while they razed the rest of the city to the ground. It was in the bottom levels of this building that Sachiel found herself, hurriedly gathering what little she dared take with her. Raziel had given her a day’s grace, time to gather what she needed and get out of the city before she raised the alarm. Really, she needed to get out of the state entirely, but she would take what she could get.

It was eerily quiet, the low thrumming of music from levels far above the only thing filtering down into his section of the building. The labs that had been Sachiel's home for the past four weeks were usually buzzing with activity. The lesser angels that Sachiel usually had around her were off at the party, schmoozing and greasing up to whatever higher up they could in hopes of a promotion or a position outside.

Not that Sachiel wasn't important. On the contrary. But there had been more than a few complaints of her not 'playing well with others' and being 'difficult' to work with. One particular red-headed angel had said to her face that he had a strong case of what the humans called 'textbook narcissism'. Sachiel had laughingly agreed to that one and invited her back the next day. She’d been surprised to see her return, food in hand and blue-eyed friend in tow.

Sachiel was a genius, and she knew it. There was no-one else in the entire garrison who could do what she could. Who else could have designed their swords, those brilliant pieces of weaponry that her brethren relied so heavily upon? They had taken a good couple decades of solid work to get right, and even then she had only come out with one perfect specimen out of the entire lot. Of course, she kept that one for herself. And their armour. What a year that had been. Or had it been two? She couldn't remember. Often when she was deep in her work she would be lost for weeks, months at a time.

She also knew that her creations not only kept the angels safe from creatures like demons and cherubim, but also helped protect the human race. Or at least they had, until the order had been given to turn their instruments of protection into weapons of mass destruction.

That hadn't been the order at first, Sachiel was sure of that much.

In the beginning the plan was only to reveal themselves to mankind, be the benevolent guides leading humanity into a new era. But when the unknown assailant had gunned Gabriel down in a shower of burning metal, the orders changed, igniting a war that was swift in its execution and devastating in its outcome.

It didn't sit well with her. Seven hundred years go by with no word from the man upstairs and suddenly they get an order to first protect, then destroy the human race? There was something not right going on. But with the scarily powerful Samael running the West Coast and Uriel here in the East, and with Raphael missing, no-one dared question what they were told.

And Gabriel had believed too. Golden Gabriel, who was the embodiment of everything an angel ought to be. Loyal, brilliant, strong, a perfect specimen. If Gabriel had believed, was there any doubt that these were the true orders of God?

Still, something had gnawed away at the back of her mind until it was too large to ignore. And with that had come the little revelations. The merciless killings, the whispers of fallen angels. The way she wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, kept on an ever-tightening leash. Sachiel had been lurking in one of the upper floors one evening and come across a group of lower angels discussing a recent demon sighting. They clammed up when Sachiel came into view but she had heard enough.

Sachiel's entire viewpoint had changed. No longer did she believe that she, that they, were doing the right thing. So blinded was she by the pleasures and the ease of the life she was used to that she had never stopped to question things. In her comfort she had become arrogant, so sure of herself, so sure that everything was as it was supposed to be that she never stopped to think that things were not right. It was a shock to her system, like a bolt of lightening straight through. And one morning she found herself stunned by a revelation that had come so fast it had left her breathless. She knew what she had to do.

When she couldn't take it any longer, she had confided in the three people she was closest to. Raziel, the fiery red-head, Barachiel, the towering brunette with blue eyes, and the one all three reported to, Cassiel. Luckily, he had chosen well. With only minimal protest they had heard her claims. And if they hadn't fully believed, well, at least they understood. They knew Sachiel, knew that despite her outer appearance she was not skittish nor prone to fleeting flights of fancy. She had thought this through. They could clearly see that.

And they also knew that once their friend had something in mind, she was determined to follow it through. No matter what. They went through the motions, trying to talk her out of it, trying to make him see reason. But Sachiel would not budge. And so they did what they could. Raziel clearing a way, Barachiel and Cassiel giving her the gear she needed. The final part of her plan was in the labs.

Which was where Sachiel found herself, quickly gathering together the tools she would need and clearing away anything else. A last sweep of the labs and she was done. A mixture of emotions swept through her. Happiness, fear, sorrow. But the overall feeling was rightness, like this was what she was destined to do. With one final glance back he slammed the door shut, closing off her old life and ready to begin anew.

And so she fled the Eyrie with little more than the clothes on her back and a name stolen from a dead human woman. She also took with her the goodwill of the friends she was leaving behind, a treasure she kept close to her heart.

She hesitated little, spurred on by a single thought. It was the true reason for her flight, for the denial of her kind. It bred a fear that churned away in her very soul and made Sachiel challenge everything she knew to be right.

'If this is what God has done so readily to mankind, to the ones that he created with such love and care, then what is he willing to do to us?’