Aestrangel the Chosen, page 1
Table of Contents
Prologue
Part I The Training
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Part II The Calling
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Part III The Fallout
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Book Club Questions
Author Bio
Aestrangel the Chosen
Copyright © 2023 Maria DeVivo. All rights reserved.
4 Horsemen Publications, Inc.
1497 Main St. Suite 169
Dunedin, FL 34698
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info@4horsemenpublications.com
Cover & Typesetting by Niki Tantillo
Edited by Laura Mita
All rights to the work within are reserved to the author and publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please contact either the Publisher or Author to gain permission.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023934356
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-64450-932-6
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-64450-933-3
Audiobook ISBN-13: 978-1-64450-935-7
Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-64450-934-0
Dedication
For JD—thank you for always
planting seeds in my brain.
For SD—thank you for always
encouraging those seeds to grow.
For MD—it’s always for you, and
always will be for you.
Prologue
Since the dawn of humans, people have created the concept of time. The rise and descent of the sun, the cyclical phases of the moon, and the change from one season to the next all serve as natural markers of time, but with the invention of the first sundial in Ancient Egypt, humankind now had a way to keep time daily.
And it was never enough, until she took over.
In the beginning, there were never enough hours in the day, not enough days in the week, never enough weeks in the year. Humans invented the notion of time, invented related words—timeliness, timely manner, timely fashion—and held themselves to standards of time, relations of time, all organized by time. It became a thing of dread and fear simply because the people forced themselves into the bubble of not having enough. The elderly lost track of time, along with their memories of it, and essentially diminished their perception of the actual length of their existence on this planet. When a person died, loved ones lamented, “It wasn’t his time!” or “We didn’t have enough time with her!” It was quite the pathetic corner they had painted themselves into.
To Aestrangel, the Evening Star, there was no time—no beginning, no end. She knew not the concept, was not bound by its rules, and never felt pressured by its restraints. For what is time for a demon who has crossed over all planes of existence, jumped through the very fabric of time at will, inserted herself into human memories, and caused havoc for centuries?
And that is why it is said she alone has changed the human idea of time. The terror she has unleashed into the hearts of humankind warped their thinking, made them squirm and squeal, made them praise a short life so as to avoid the pain and suffering she could—and would—potentially inflict upon them. Little girls wore headbands made from morning glories and prayed to Aestrangel to quickly take their parents to the Underworld. And by the age of thirty, most people chose to take their own life in order to avoid the tortures of her wrath. For if she has the power to destroy the purest of angels, the horrors she can shape for the mortals is beyond comprehension.
The brutality of her existence has reigned for over 2,000 years. She has been both feared and revered by people the world over. She is The Dark One, The Enlightened One, The Dark Star, The Morning Glory. She is the one who can ravage, and warp, and bend time at will, confusing and tormenting humans in the most ugly and horrific ways. She is the all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful almighty. To speak even her name is to conjure a most terrifying fate.
She is Aestrangel…
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Part I-
The Training
angel—one of the classes of spiritual beings; a celestial attendant of God. The lowest of the nine celestial orders (seraphim, cherubim, ophanim, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels/guardian angels, angels). An attendant or guardian spirit.
Chapter One
Time
I’m in and out of consciousness as I descend. My body hurtles in a downward, spiral motion, and I have lost all control. There is nothing but a vast space of darkness, and occasionally bright lights flash before my eyes even when my eyes are closed. Do I even have eyes? When I open and close my eyelids, everything looks the same from the outside in. I don’t know why I’m falling, how long I’ve been falling, where I am, or how I even got here, but when I’m able to catch a breath, or have some sort of concrete thought, I try to gather up some of the pieces, and there’s one thing I am certain of…
I’m falling through time. Actual time.
My angelic senses can’t even begin to perceive, or put into words, the actual construct of time, but I do know this much, it is horrible and beautiful all at once as I charge through the past, the present, and the future.
My body is pulled in all sorts of directions—up, sideways, and the most notable sensation—down. At times, I am sucked into a vortex-like maelstrom and spin uncontrollably. That’s when I black out. Sometimes, I feel my essence being squeezed down to the size of a pea and shoved through the head of a sewing needle. Sometimes, my being is gigantic, and my entire essence blankets over moons and stars and planets of thousands of galaxies. The motion is often violent and disorienting, and I sometimes have trouble even remembering who I am. I must repeat it to myself many, many times:
I am Aestra. I am an angel in the court of the Almighty Lord and Creator. I am a child of God in the purest ways. And He will be the one to save me from this.
But no one hears my plea … because no one has come to help me. I am alone. I am in constant motion. And I am afraid. I am afraid I have been forsaken for some ungodly reason.
There are times as I’m descending that I see images—glimpses of terrifying scenes. The bright flashing lights bombard my mind with gruesome and gory sights. I see blood. Dark, red, human blood splattered on white canvasses. I see human body parts strewn across green fields. I think I even hear humans screaming in agony. When those visions come to me, I close my eyes even tighter in hopes of blocking them out. Confusion sets into my soul even deeper than before when those scenes present themselves. Why do they appear to me? What is happening?
I struggle to maintain some semblance of sanity—some semblance of myself—but sometimes, the harder I try, the more I can feel my memories rise from my aura and disperse into the vacuum of time, lost to me forever.
I feel a weakness where my stomach should be. There’s a hollow pit gnawing its way through my essence, and the feeling of falling is shifting, changing. I’m being pulled forward, but my head is bobbing up and down in a wheelbarrow motion. My wings are heavy. My eyes are heavy. Time is speeding up and slowing down all at once. The lights flash quickly and brightly until there is nothing but a twinkling white light all around me. It overtakes me. Lulls me. I close my eyes, but it’s still there. Maybe the Lord has heard me. I can’t fight it anymore…
…I finally open my eyes and survey what is before me. I have made my way through the annals of time and am now lying on solid ground, but everything is strange. I feel strange. It takes me a while to get my bearings, but when I finally do, when I finally adjust to being stable, I sit up and look at this foggy world I have fallen to. There’s a gray haze everywhere—a foggy gloom blankets this realm. It resembles the world of the humans, the human Earth in which I was preparing to arrive, but there is an acrid odor all around me, like something perpetually burning in the sky. I’m sitting in a field of green-gray grass, and there are dozens of small purple flowers outlining my shape where I must have landed. The flowers are humming. It’s such a muffled sound that only my angel senses could pick up on it.
Angel senses.
I rotate my shoulders forward in a panic-stricken whirl. My wings are there, but they feel different. Heavier. Like something is weighing them down. It’s possible they are still feeling the after-effects of my journey through time. I close my eyes and breathe in the ashy air, and panic starts to kick in… I am not
I bring my knees to my chest, wrap my arms around my legs, and rub the silky flesh of my upper arms. Human flesh—soft and supple just how I thought it would feel when I was to be transformed. But this is strange because I still have my wings—those heavy appendages connected to human bone. Did I disengage? Am I starting my Calling now? Didn’t Camael say I would be fully human, though? Then why do I have heightened senses? Why do I still have my wings?
My body starts to rock back and forth uncontrollably, and I try to wrap my mind around what’s happening. Where am I? How did I get here? Where are Camael and Revalia and…?
Lozhure.
The last thing I remember is Revalia and Lozhure taking me to The Observatory, and…
A low, growling noise reverberates through the gray valley interrupting my thoughts. At once the purple flowers stop humming and their petals shrink inward. I freeze for a moment, cocking my head to the side, tuning in to see if the noise will happen again. And it does. But this time it sounds louder, closer. It vibrates the ground below me, shaking the flowers at their stems. I don’t want to stick around to see if the growl will get any closer, so I will myself to stand and move. Go. Now. Walk.
Unsteady, shaky legs take me across the green-gray field and up to a city street—a human city street—one that seems so familiar to me, but I can’t place my finger on how or why I would know this place.
I come to the corner of a street and sit on the concrete sidewalk. I put my face in my hands and inhale. The scent of the grass fills my nostrils, and I try once again to make sense of everything. I fumble through the fuzziness that is now my memories and try to dig around to the last thing I remember. It always goes back to the night at The Observatory. I had been preparing for my Calling, setting myself up for advancement in the Angelic Order. I was given this body—this female form—had multiple trainings with my guide, Camael, and the other Powers That Be. We were all waiting for me to have a human dream before I would be able to disengage from the temple and go down to Earth to help my human Calling. Revalia and Lozhure had both failed their first missions. Both were despondent and apathetic. I remember Revalia, my sweetest angel friend, and her companion Lozhure took me to that sacred temple in Ilarium. I remember I didn’t want to go, but Revalia dragged me there. And I let her. There was a curious part of me that wanted to see what they were up to, but the obedient side of me fought. I remember feeling the heat of the energy source in the middle of the room and being entranced with it. I remember fighting against Lozhure as he pinned my arms to my back and pushed me in front of the Window—the place where angels observed and saw the faces of their Callings. I remember closing my eyes tight as Revalia said, “There he is! He’s so beautiful!” And that’s where it ends. I have no memory of anything after that.
Okay. This is starting to make sense. Maybe we got in trouble for trespassing in The Observatory? Maybe this is a punishment for breaking the rules? Maybe if I’m here, then Revalia and Lozhure are here, too?
I stand quickly, but the weight of my wings jerks me backward to the point where I almost fall over. I rotate my shoulders forward to straighten myself out and start walking down the streets of this odd world, searching for my angel friends. I have no clue as to where I’m going, or which direction I’m headed in. Everything looks relatively the same around here, but I can’t give up. I need to find someone… anyone.
I’m unsettled as I make my way through back alleys of buildings and brick-faced houses. No matter what corner I turn, or what avenue I go down, I can’t escape the fog, or the smell, or the fact that I’m alone. From the corner of my eye, I see a figure across the street, and instinctively, I call out, “Lia!” I run across the street to where the shadowy shape has gone and scream, “Lia!” again, but the figure disintegrates before I get a chance to make out exactly what it was. It vanishes like a ghost de-materializing into the thin, smoky air.
“Revalia!” I scream into the fog. “Where are you? Lozhure? Are you here? Is there anybody here?”
My voice echoes off the city buildings as tears start to swell in my eyes. “Camael? Lord? Anyone? Can anyone hear me? Is anyone there?”
I can barely see through the blurriness of the tears. The buildings look jagged and distorted behind the fog and my human eyes mist. I am crying. Tears. Angels don’t cry, yet here I am—locked in this half-human, half-angelic form. Alone. This must be my punishment! This must be my sentence for trespassing that night! There’s no other explanation for all this.
All I wanted was to do good for the Lord. My love for him is endless and boundless and knows no wrong, and if I have offended the Creator with my actions, I am truly and wholeheartedly sorry for my transgressions. I can make this right! I can make this right!
“I only wish to serve you!” I scream to the gray sky. “Forgive me, oh Lord! Forgive me and I will amend my wrongdoings, but please! Please do not forsake me! Do not abandon me in this wretched and lonely world! I will not survive without your presence! I will not be able to go on without your Eternal Light!”
I bend forward, exhausted and scared, and I put my hands on my knees. Through my tear-filled eyes, I see blood on the ground. Trails of blood in front of me, behind me, to the right and to the left, like a bleeding animal had been dragged through the streets. Fear strikes at my chest again when I realize the trail seems to be following me, and at that very moment of realization, the growling sound fills the air, paralyzing me where I stand.
I extend my wings out at full length in hopes that I will be able to use them to fly, but they are powerless here, impotent. I tuck them back in, folded at an angle so that I will be able to better ground myself to run.
And I run.
Because a giant looming presence has materialized a short distance from me, and I sense it is getting closer—gaining on me, stalking me, bringing with it a guttural snarl and a blood-stained trail.
I run through the streets, through the alleys, across the ashy landscape of desolation, back to the open field where I woke, back to the purple flowers who have now switched their humming to a deep and somber song—constantly looking over my shoulder, gauging the distance I have from the monster. But the shape in the misty fog gets closer, gains on me, and I stumble backward onto the green-gray grass as it approaches—an outline at first—a dark, hazy silhouette moves and shifts like clouds in the Earth’s sky. The growls of the beast ring louder in the air, louder in my head. I cover my ears to block out the sound, but it’s no use.
I am half-paralyzed, half-ready for confrontation as I lift myself on one knee. A part of me wants to curl into an invisible ball, while another part of me is ready to face down this beast in any way I can.
It is a thing of nightmares—like a giant on two legs with gnarled horns atop its head. It’s huge, with a stony exterior, like a monolith of ancient times come to life. Its eyes are cold, like gray ice, and it scratches at the ground with its cloven hooves. The purple flowers quiver in its presence, and I right myself up slowly and crack my wings out at full length.
“Leave me alone in this place!” I yell at it.
It moves a step forward, ignoring my plea. As it moves its leg, it seems to shift in shape again. It seems to shrink a little and shed its black-rock façade.
I stand my ground with a courage I didn’t even know existed within me. “I said to leave me alone or I will call upon the heavenly host of angels to usher you to your ultimate salvation!” The words come out of my mouth without hesitation, but now a part of me fears my holy invocation would be useless. If I truly am being punished in this foggy world, then the legion of my brethren probably won’t swoop down and save me from this damnation. Before I even realize I am doing it, my right foot takes a step backward, and I hear a chuckling growl from the shape.
It does not stop its steady, deliberate steps toward me, and as it gets closer, it changes even more—whittling down from the massive, cloven-hoofed beast who stalks me in the streets, to a shape much more different and serene. I see the shape of a man—a human man—with short black hair, stormy gray eyes, and a silver medallion swinging from his neck. He is smiling and stops a few feet in front of me. It’s a charming smile, a cunning smile, a smile that could trick the most naïve of maidens to fall for his every word.
