The Wrath Of The Forgotten, page 5
part #4 of The Fallen Angels Series
It was the thorn in everyone’s side, the Demonic presence in the world was getting stronger as the Demons adjusted to their power. Some were carving new niches for themselves in the image of the Gods and Angels, empire building or joining the pantheons of far stronger Divine. Others had been permanently warped by their time in Hell.
They would have to deal with them soon, but for the moment, the Egyptian Gods were the most pressing concern. Everything was going their way, which meant surely something was going to go wrong. Oh, the other Elder were very confident and joyful of their continued success within Egypt, but she was far wiser than them. She had seen what could happen to overconfident armies, it was how they had won the first war.
She turned to look at Uriel, Raphael, and Jophiel. Ariel and Azrael were still occupied with issues arising within the UCSA. They nodded their agreement to her. They and all their Angels were ready, as were the Human, Jinn, and Monster contingents. Today Egypt would re-join the Caliphate, and much of the Middle East would belong to the Angels. If one ignored the slowly growing borders of Great Babylon.
A slight smile curved up on her lips while Michael was the great warrior she had come to enjoy the thrill of battle, particularly as a commander. It was very rare for her to get involved in the actual fighting, but when she did the Divine died.
Attack. Her voice thundered through the ranks of mortals and immortals, and with that one command, Alexandria came under assault as it had never experienced before.
“There is something wrong, very wrong. I swear someone is fucking with me.”
“Calm yourself, Ariel, I have yet to finish my analysis.” It was rare for Azrael to have to silence anyone. Usually his mere presence was enough to still the tongues of nearly all. Today was not one such day, for Ariel was in a rage, and her wrath was second only to Gabriel’s. In many ways hers was to be feared more, Ariel was less predictable and more instinctual in her anger. Gabriel was certainly to be feared for she had power that no Angel could match, except perhaps for her own brother or Sariel, the Fallen gained power in ways the Angels of Heaven could not comprehend. Yet while she was dangerous beyond compare she could control her rage, she could channel it into a purer wrath that remained more targeted than Ariel’s. Though that wasn’t saying much, when enraged Ariel could lash out at anything and everything. Gabriel was more controlled than that, but when enraged all were wise to fear her because she was without mercy and nothing could turn her from her chosen path. Ariel could be directed or deflected occasionally, but Gabriel was absolute in her decisions, for better or worse.
Ariel was right in her estimation. Something was very wrong. For the last several months more virulent strains of existing diseases had been appearing throughout the UCSA, the Heradmantium Empire and the various nations of Latin and South America yet to be ensnared in the fighting raging across North America. Then polio had resurfaced, a disease that had been firmly eradicated, with terrifying new symptoms, but this new disease was something else entirely.
He had recognised the expanse of poxes easily, it was the most noticeable symptom of the disease that had been eradicated more than a century ago, but its behaviour had changed. He was not looking at a Human but at the Sorcerer-Priests Ariel had created, and the Jinn Gabriel had gifted her. Both were Divine, to different degrees, and should have been completely immune to all mortal diseases. Indeed, they were unaffected by the plagues of polio, cholera and Ebola that was raging through the region, and yet here they were infected with a fatal disease.
Smallpox had returned to the world.
Possibly Humanity’s greatest non-Divine enemy, perhaps its greatest threat even including all that the Divine had done to them. Smallpox was not a disease to play down, it had massacred the Human population for millennia before it was successfully eradicated in what might be one of Humanity’s greatest triumphs. Now it had reappeared and had somehow managed to infect the Divine.
Such a thing should not have been possible, it wasn’t even a conceivable danger for it had never occurred in the known history of the world. He had seen every disease to have raged its way through Human and animal populations, and never once had one of those so much as shown the smallest sign on any with Divine blood, even if it was but a small trace. The mortals before him held more than a trace of Divinity, the Jinn were a Divine race in their own right, the only one to have survived the ruthless and highly successful extermination programs of Heaven. The other races had diluted their bloodlines dramatically in order to survive as a species, the Jinn had retained their strong bloodlines. They should be completely immune to all diseases.
As for the Sorcerer-Priests, well they had once had no Divinity or a negligible amount but Ariel, against Michael’s protests, had empowered them to become lethal weapons against the variety of Divine horrors that formed Hera’s Army of Nightmares. They had the power to kill Divine, one of the reason’s Michael had protested, and as such held more than enough Divinity to protect them from disease.
What he was observing surprised and confused him in ways he had never been before.
Azrael ignored the terrified eyes of the man he laid his hands on. He was well used to such looks even from his Angelic brethren. Nearly all feared death in some way or another. His looks probably didn’t do much to alleviate the fear. Black wings and a thick black shroud that hid all his features, he was the embodiment of death to many, but then he was Death’s son. Even his pale hands that reached out from his deep sleeves seemed out of place. One only had to look at the sun-kissed and bronzed skin of the other Angels to see that he was different. The fact that his fingertips were black with long shifting tendrils reaching up his arm only intensified people’s fear of him. He was long used to the fear, it had been the same all his life.
There were very few who had looked past the death powers to see the person beneath. His father, Death, had never forsaken him for his powers, who better than he to understand? Except perhaps his brother Samael, the first Angel of Death, one of the most feared Angels in Heaven’s long history. He had somehow walked a lonelier path than him and yet had found a mate. It was his brother’s offspring that had made him see the world differently. His father’s family had never feared him, for they had not usually feared Thanatos but it was different from the love and acceptance he had once had from his brother. His nephew was a strange one, but he had always respected Azrael, and then there was his niece Sariel, a mystery of unfathomable proportions. She had loved him growing up and had failed to understand why the other Angels feared him. To her he was simply her uncle, no more, no less.
The man’s eyes rolled backwards as Azrael’s black magic flowed through him. He sent his senses into the Divine body trying to grasp the sudden vulnerability to a disease that had only ever affected mortal Humans. Ariel paced back and forth angrily in the hospital ward, she didn’t like surprises, and disease were something outside her expertise. She was a warrior and general, not a physician.
She turned to face Azrael as he straightened, studying his face with her Angelic eyes. There was no shadow too deep for an Elder Angel to see into. His face was grim and surprised, confusion creased his brows. All in all not what she had hoped at all.
“It is as I suspected, a strain of smallpox but one that the world has never seen before for it can infect the partially Divine.”
She was horrified, “are we at risk? How can this be?” No disease had ever affected the Divine, it wasn’t possible.
“Fortunately, we are not. There seems to be a limit to the amount of Divinity the disease can deal with. My powers alone were enough to scour out the disease. I can feel it in the air, but it dies as soon as it comes into contact with any of the living Angels. My initial hypothesis is that the disease can only affect the weakly Divine, those that still have enough mortal weaknesses to die by mortal hands.
As for how it can be, this is not a natural disease. It bears the strong feeling of Hell, whether it was released from Hell and is only now being noticed or was created by one of its denizens is something I have yet to find out.”
Ariel stood silent for a moment “the others must be made aware of this, this could seriously affect all we are striving towards.”
“Indeed, this could dramatically affect the world.” It could wipe the surface clean of all Mortal Races, it was an incredible threat to the world, one that cared not for sides. It would affect all if something were not done to stem its passage.
He was about to add more when they received a distress signal from Michael. He glanced at Ariel and the other Angels that were now looking up at Heaven. This was the signal of an Arch Angel, Heaven was under assault.
Chapter 7
“Is this the end?”
Isis considered the question as she stared out at the army surrounding Alexandria. “It may be.” She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen an army of such size. The mortals did not concern her, they were nothing to a God, a single God could hold off the entire world’s population of mortals and not even show any strain. Though it would certainly require a great deal of energy to do it. Destroying all of Humanity at once was something very few Gods had the power to do. They could, however, empty a city within a moment
No, what disturbed her the most was the sheer amount of Divine Monsters arrayed against them. It was far more than all their Divine Anubites and Priestesses. There were so many of them, Griffins darkened the sky while Basilisks burned toxic paths through the desert.
That was the least of their problems. Even from here she could sense the newly Divine Sorcerer-Priests that the Angels had been making. They even had some Daemons on their side, how strange. No, their greatest threat was the sheer number of Angels that were arranged against them. Surely Heaven didn’t have this many Elder Angels, hadn’t the Fall decimated their numbers?
With this many Elder here it meant that most of the Arch Angels would be here too. She wondered if the Usurper was here, the one that somehow shared her blood. What might happen when they fought? She didn’t care, so long as Gabriel was killed in the process.
For she had already accepted in these brief moments that she was going to die. She didn’t need the Fates or Norns to tell her when the future was so evident. She and her family were going to die before the Angels, but they were going to take as many with them as they could.
She turned to face her husband, they had been inseparable since their marriage with the only exception of his murder by his brother, but she had brought him back. Theirs was a marriage rare for the Gods, it had never turned bitter or sour, there was not hatred on either side. In all things, they had always been amicable to each other.
She reached up with her hand to cup his face, it was still so strange to see it no longer green but the brown of his youth. It would seem his healing had been in vain, but at least they had had this time together. “I have always loved you.”
“As I have always loved you, Isis” he pulled her close to him, breathing in her scents before he kissed her slow and deep.
She glanced around as Thoth kissed his wife, Ma’at, and Anubis embraced his mother, Nephthys. The six of them were all that remained of their once great pantheon. How far they had fallen, how small their numbers were now. They needed Sekhmet for her fighting ability, Bast and Ra for their power. She would even have Set back in their fold to help them fight, he was many things, but he was an able and dangerous fighter.
What did they have? She was powerful as was Osiris but he was not much of a fighter, he had expanded his borders by diplomacy, magic, and economics. It was the others that had expanded Egypt’s borders through conquest. Anubis had developed into a fighter, nothing compared to Sekhmet but he was the best they had. Thoth was more powerful than he had initially been, he gained great power from the Underworld, but against so much of Heaven’s might how effective would it really be?
They had power, but not a great deal, paired with very little fighting ability. It was one of the reasons why their lands had been absorbed into the more powerful Roman Empire. The Angels, on the other hand, were more than able fighters, trained by the War Gods. The Arch Angels were frightfully powerful, the reach of their religions was almost worldwide and granted them so much faith power.
“We face an enemy stronger than ourselves, an enemy that we have fought before. We know what they are like, we know how ruthless that they are. There will be no mercy granted, nor will we seek it. We are few, a shadow of what we once were, but let it be remembered that we took a toll on the Angels. We will not go down without a fight.” By the end she was yelling, she needed to inspire her family as much as she could. The reality was that they would die this day, but they would not lie down and take it, they would make them pay.
The ground shook violently as the shields started flaring. Isis turned to look at the shields. “It has begun.”
The Arch Angels advanced unerringly towards the Montaza Palace, the Divine were very consistent in their behaviour. It didn’t matter if they were Gods, Angels or one of the other races, during any invasion the defenders would be at their chosen seat of power, usually a palace, square or fortress. The invaders would always try to make their way there, for that was where the real battle would take place.
The invasion would be for nought if the Gods were not destroyed. Cities changed hands all the time, one only had to look at the borders between the Heradmantium Empire and the UCSA to know how true that was. The local populace could always be brought to heel in a variety of ways, once their Gods were dead. If the Egyptian Pantheon were not stopped, they would continue to undermine control of Egypt.
Fortunately, the battle was going very much in their favour. The streets were littered with thousands of dead Anubites and Priestesses. Killing them should have been easier, but the Gods had been overly generous in elevating them above their stations. They had wrecked a heavy toll on the Lesser Angels, had managed to slay some of the weaker Ascended. Fortunately, none of the Elder had been lost, then again Heaven knew just how furious she would be if any of the Elder were stupid enough to get killed before the conflict with the Gods.
Her creations littered the streets amongst mountains of rubble. Alexandria was crumbling to the ground. It was no wonder with the violent clashes between Divine magic lashing throughout the city and the continual assault between the Human armies. Explosions erupted through the entire city on a continual basis as the armies shelled key Human buildings, fired their tanks or tried to fend off her creations. Bombs were surprisingly lethal to the weaker Divine.
It would seem that Humans had managed to harvest and concentrate energy, the key principle behind magic control. It wasn’t magic, but it was still energy, and uncontrolled energy was dangerous. Pakistan and America had taught the world that with their nuclear warheads. They could wipe out whole armies of Divine because of the terrible power released, but a God could manipulate and even control the release of energy. Brigid had done that to disturbing effect, all but ending the Angels’ assaults into the Indian Subcontinent. Still its time would come again.
Currently, there was a no shelling zone around Montaza Palace. They didn’t want the Gods gaining more power when she could feel them getting weaker as their followers were slaughtered.
As she floated through the city, she destroyed great swaths with her power. She could continue to batter against the Gods’ shield and assist her army at the same time.
Fire ran through the streets consuming her mortal enemies, and often some of her own people, but what were the lives of mortals worth? Nothing in the grand scheme of things. All but the truly Divine were pawns to be used, and even then many of them were still pawns just simply more powerful.
She stopped to assist one of her Cockatrice. It was surrounded by Anubites, many of which had already been turned to stone. Such a fighter deserved her assistance from the far greater numbers it was fighting. Lightning rent the air as their burning bodies were exploded all over the street. She smiled at the creature before continuing.
Her eyes focussed on the ring of Griffin circling a low plateau to the east. Griffins were falling from the sky like rain as they were assaulted with magic far greater than their own. There were huge flashes of white light tinged with different colours. Some lesser Divine was claiming the power of other Divine to increase their strength. She wondered if they were the Angels’ or the Gods’ minion. It didn’t really matter.
She eyed the Nile as she approached it, it was a danger all into itself. It would seem the Egyptian Gods had done something to it that none of the Angels could undo. She might be able to given time, but time was something she did not have a lot of currently.
The Nile was blood red, a mockery perhaps of the plague of blood the Angels had once brought on Egypt? Its waters seethed with pure magical currents, and all of the Angels’ followers were killed on getting too close to it. Water had always been a powerful conduit of magic, something forgotten in the Modern Age. Still where there was a will, there was a way.
A collection of large portals stood far back from the river’s edge, whether the Angels who had initially created them had had the foresight to plan that or if they had had to recreate them after they had been destroyed by the Nile was something she would like to find out. It always paid to reward intelligence, for competent people could always turn the tide of battle.
She paid no heed to the portals, for her to use them would be to admit that the Gods had greater power than her. She would never do that somewhere so publically, and she knew that she was more powerful than the Egyptian Gods.
Magic surged up around her as she glided across the river, but she paid no heed to it. Her own powers were more than capable of defending herself.
Blood splattered her face as she drove the spear into yet another pig of a man. They saw her clothes and instantly thought they could have her. She could sense their thoughts, mortals were so weak compared to the Divine. What must it be like to be a God, if this was how she saw mortals on the bottom rungs of Divinity?
