No Heaven of Mine - A Fallen Angel Quest

1.2

There is a malign strain to your thoughts. You would be a fool to not recognize the alien whisper in your ear, soft and pervasive. Months of motionless recuperation accustomed you to it, and had you been less careful, less focused, it could had blended itself into your own notions so closely that it would impossible to separate them from the will of the Silence. But you were a warrior, and the long vigil against the enemies of Heaven had made you as wary of foes from within as without.

The thoughts you had about Heaven, about life and stillness, about what is right and what is wrong – they do not have their source within your mind and within your soul. They flow from somewhere else. By the time your body is almost done with its mending, you are clearly aware of that. You section those thoughts, keep them apart, take good care not to let them mingle with what makes you you.

There comes a day when you feel you can finally stand. Shake off the dirt and dust of your long stillness and march out into the foulness of the base earth. It makes you consider vengeance. It hasn't occupied your mind that much over past months. While the Silence whispered into your mind, you were less concerned with the slight done to you and more with the stain on Creation that the Celestial Host had become. Now, however, indignation returns.

It is a different sort of anger. Not like the rage that made you scream promises of retribution as Heaven cast you out. There is no hot passion to it. Such feelings, however potent, no longer seem to suit the landscape of your soul. The mending was a lesson in temperance and patience, virtues that you now think of putting to use.

There are many paths vengeance can take. Some of them are straight, a fiery trail blazed straight into the heart of the sun. Such are the paths of those who scream "liberty or death", but in truth want both. Others are crooked. They have many turns and meanders and take years to traverse. They are taken by conspirers and plotters, and their ultimate aim is equivalence. They seek to respond to treachery with treachery, as if that was to restore balance in the world. And then, there is also the sort of vendetta that is like an underground river. It flows hidden and concealed, unseen by all until it bursts through the surface and sweeps all in a single devastating wave. This is the path of those who would have retribution rather than justice. When they finally rise against, they are decisive, destructive and leave no future for anyone. Not even themselves.

You smile at that thought, viciously. Yes, it is retribution that you want, more than anything. Break them like they broke you. Or perhaps – and there is glee when you consider that which you know to be yours and yours alone – break them harder. They rendered you impotent – you will return the favour. You will make them like insects drowned in amber. Worthless on their own. Valuable only as ornaments in something infinitely greater than they could ever be. And you know that you have an eager ally in that quest.

You allow the Silence in, and it rewards you.

For a second, there is a ringing absence of sound around your still body, as if you were suddenly put in a void. It passes, and when it is gone, you are oppressed by quiet. No water drips. No insects skitter. Not even wind, not even air. Everything is perfectly still.

You stand up from the pool you were submerged in, and the water does not flow back into space emptied by your body. It remains as it was, motionless and inert. A small, white frog watches this from the edge and you know that it will sit there waiting for the motion to return until the world breaks, and perhaps longer still.

You make a few steps into the shadows around and find, without surprise, that the entirety of the Intruder's carcass is now this perfect diorama. You touch a moth, stilled mid-flight; it is cold under your fingers, like a splinter of ice. Lifeless. But now eternalized. There is irresistible beauty to both the fact and the notion. You can't help yourself and for a moment – maybe an hour – you lose yourself in this perfection. And there is so much more of it!

It is only after you finish marveling at the unyielding moss, unbreakable stalactites and all the little wonders of life preserved for all time to come that you finally take stock of yourself. Alas, the perfection of the Silence is not yet something to accept, and so your flesh, with its beating heart and flowing blood, is still malleable and perishable. But you are past desiring to shed this temporality. You have a Heaven to deal with, first.

Your clothes – a simple penitent's robe – are a mess, half-rotten and fraying. From beneath them, your porcelain-white skin peeks, all color drained from it so that it looks like the fine, bleached sand of the Hadean Plains. But you look to your sides and notice that the tips of your feathers are still tinted gold. The proof of service is still there; there must be more color to you, you concur. Perhaps in your lips and your eyes? You would need a mirror for that, and the still water refuses to reflect anything that is temporal.

For a moment, you wonder how will you be able to free yourself from within the carapace-dome; you could probably punch through its walls, but that would disturb the perfection you have created, and that is a deeply disturbing notion. But an opening soon presents itself to you, as if the Silence had anticipated and planned for this.

There are droplets of water dripping from the opening you punched in above you. A remnant of a rain. They went down from above, one after another, until whatever reservoir was there drained fully. But now, it will not be facing such depletion. Instead, the small points of water are frozen along with the rest, motionless and steady. You can close your fist around them and hang your body from them and they will not budge. They are a ladder out. You take it gladly.


The base earth reveals itself to you as an endless expanse of green and white. The Intruder's corpse is just one of many – dozens, maybe hundreds – smashed into the landscape of a rolling, ever-green forest. Even half-buried into the soil, the mighty carapace-hulks tower above the tallest trees. This stretches as far as you can see. Only on the horizon's edge, you can see something else – a massive, grey shadow, barely cutting itself against the pale-blue sky. Mountains?

You sit on the carapace's edge. The Intruder you were locked inside was small compared to others, and so the branches of nearby pines are almost within grasp. When the time comes for you to descend, they will provide a secure, if unpleasant way all the way down. For now, however, you observe the vast woods and ponder where to go next.

In time, you pick out more details from among the pine sea. There is a place where columns of smoke rise towards the sky; at first you took them for a mist, but quickly enough you realized that they must come from a settlement of sorts. One of the simple mortal races. Humans or something similar. Weak, unremarkable and plentiful. Easily awed by a celestial being such as you, but not very useful in the long run as anything but the simplest, most basic minions. On the other hand, unlikely to pose a threat of any sorts.

There is also one of the larger Intruder corpses, which appears weirdly-pock marked. As you focus your attention on it, you notice that there is a lattice of constructions – scaffoldings and terraces – woven around it, and multiple large openings pierced through its surface. A number of creatures circles it from the sky, as if nesting inside. One of the winged mortal races, perhaps? You envy them the flight taken from you. But the fact that they can fly – something which is not yet possible for you – would make them very useful, to say the least. However, such creatures, as far as you can remember, tended to be of more savage nature, not to mention that reaching them would not be nearly as easy as finding the human settlement.

Between the trees, you also find a wide strip of white – a road, leading somewhere far, beyond the horizon's line. What lies at the end of it, you can't tell, but such a magnificent, paved tract must have been built by a powerful force. Perhaps a mortal kingdom of renown? Or some other power? You don't know, and it could be nothing. A relic of an empire long-gone, or just a result of someone's mad fancy. Still, it looks promising enough, if you are interested in taking the unknown path.

And finally, there are the distant mountains. As you watch them more closely, you noticed that ever so often a surge – like a far-away lightning – seems to occur between the peaks. That it is visible from such a distance away is in itself a proof that there must be some great power contained there. One which would provide you with a great start for your quest for vengeance. But the nature of it is unknown to you, and the trials and tribulations on the road there could be many. Besides, such might is rarely left unclaimed, and whoever holds dominion over it must be at least a minor figure of might and leadership that would loathe to share it or part with it. All in all, there is a great risk in going there straight away – especially since you have nothing on your name and you are not even sure how mighty you are anymore. But on the other hand, if you can just claim it... You watch another surge arc from summit to summit and smile. Such power is anything but base.

You spend some more time on the carapace's edge, and then finally decide that your first steps will take you to…

[ ] To the human settlement.
[ ] To the winged creatures settlement.
[ ] To whatever lies at the end of the road.
[ ] To the mountains.