Kaia the Argent Wing

The back of the house was utterly wrecked. First, the earthquake had torn huge cracks through the drywall, then the explosion smashed all the windows and threw dirt and debris at everything like buckshot. The kitchen, which used to have a window looking out onto the back yard, was missing its entire external wall. The cupboards that still survived hung from their hinges with a tired determination, despite the fact that their contents were now all over the floor.

It wasn't really a surprise that the back of the house was more fucked than the front by the earthquake either. Theprin was built on gentle rolling hills, with most of the commercial, industrial, and financial usages taking up the floors of the valleys while the housing climbed the rises. My house was technically two and a half floors, because the backyard was lower than the roadside by five or so feet. Evidently that little extra height gave the house all the leeway it needed to shimmy like a belly dancer when the quake hit.

When I peeked my head out to get a look at the yard, I was met with devastation. Our tall privacy fencing was shattered and strewn across everyone else's yards, and our nice green lawn, mown twice a week by yours truly, had a brand new crater fifteen feet wide, which was still releasing steam and smoke.

Cautiously, I approached the edge of where the kitchen windows used to be and peered out and down at the crater. Nothing moved for several seconds, and then another scream shook the air. My gut twisted with fear, but… it wasn't because of the scream.

The voice was obviously feminine, and damned powerful too. It felt like it had an underlying force behind it, like the being that was crying out in pain was some sort of goddess.

Without really examining why, I jumped out of the hole in the wall and rushed down the gentle slope to the edge of the crater. When I reached it, I froze.

Holy… holy… oh my…

There, laying at the bottom of the concave hole, was what I could only describe as an angel. She wore battered steel plate armour with golden inlay scrollwork that caught the light of the afternoon sun. All six of her radiant white wings were under her, their feathers broken, singed, and outright missing in places. Gosh, and her body. It was strong, powerful, exquisitely beautiful, and tall. She looked like she could pick up a car and throw it through a brick wall, and do it with more elegance and grace than the most artful dancer in all of america.

As for the screams… piercing her torso was a long, scythe-shaped claw of black chitin. If the section I could actually see was anything to go by, it had to be as tall as she was, which at an estimate was seven feet or more.

She moved, twitching with pain, then lifted shaking gauntleted hands and pushed at the claw. It moved, but only slightly, and when she lost her strength it fell back, cutting deeper through her gut. She screamed again, tears rolling down her alabaster cheeks.

Oh, shit. I had to help her!

Scrambling, I rushed down the loose dirt to her side and stopped, uncertain where to even begin to help.

"Young one," she gasped, the act of speaking obviously hurting a fuckload. "I am… I am so sorry…"

"Why are you sorry?" I asked, confused. Ah, fuck. The claw was dripping black ichor. Even as I watched, some of it dropped to the skin of her arm, where the armour was missing entirely. The drop of black liquid splashed over her and sizzled, staining the skin.

Reaching out, I grasped the claw carefully around the base, where none of the strange acid could be found, and looked into the angel's eyes. She reached up again and together, we pulled the length out of her. She just whimpered this time, and her hands rushed to press down on the wound while I dropped the claw a few feet away.

"You are most kind, young one," she coughed, spitting up black-tainted blood. "I am sorry, because my sisters and I, we failed in our mission to shield your world from the horrors of the storm. It has arrived, and all of your protectors, save myself, are dead."

I gulped. Oh shit… I wasn't crazy… "What is the storm?"

"It is change, and it is structure, and it is suffering," she said, her voice quieter now. She was fading… dying. "Monsters will come, your native wildlife will mutate beyond all recognition, the skin of the earth will split, and its mirror will come to take its place. Nothing you have known will remain unchanged, and all that you hold dear will be threatened…"

She faltered, and I felt so helpless. This incredible being was dying, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do to save her.

With an effort of will, she continued to speak, "You must learn the new rules that govern your reality. You must use them, you must bend them to your will and bring down righteous carnage on all who would do evil. You must also use the new storm order to carve out a zone of safety. Band together with any fellow survivors you find, and together you might stave off a true apocalypse."

My heart sank. "But… I'm just a Tinker, ma'am. I didn't even get the option of choosing to be some sort of warrior."

Beneath the crossbar of her winged helmet, her artful brows furrowed. "One with your kindness, your good and eager heart? No… you will not ride out the stormfall with no means to protect yourself…"

She paused again, deep in thought while her eyes fell to stare at the claw whose poison was killing her. "It is tarnished, but… perhaps the storm order will make of it something new, something different. It has that tendency, that is certain. Yes, I can still help, I can still light a small spark of hope within you, child."

"What?" I asked, confused and beginning to feel more than a little apprehensive. This angel was talking about… about apocalypses and shit!

"I will pass my power on to you, diminished and tarnished as it is," she said, her voice growing in intensity once more. "Take it, I beg of you, and use it to save as many lives as you can from the stormfall. I know not what the tainted essence of an angel will do to you, but I am sure that the storm order will twist it until it is of use to you."

"Your… essence?" My head was spinning. She was struggling with what little time she had left to give me and everyone around me the chance to survive, but I didn't even understand what we were meant to fight.

She nodded. "Yes. Say you will take it, young one. Say you will bear the burden of my grace, and I will gift it unto you."

"I will… I will bear the burden of your grace," I whispered. I understood just enough of what was happening to be in awe of the events unfolding.

She closed her eyes, smiling for the first time since I'd met her. "Thank you…"

After a deep breath to steady herself, she pushed up and stumbled into a kneeling position. Blood flowed out of both ends of her wound, but she ignored it as she cupped her hands over her heart.

"Oh sacred goddess of dawn and dusk, whose radiant glow holds the gluttony of hate from consuming worlds, hear my plea," she called, opening her hands out to the sky. "I am spent! My mortal vessel is tainted with imperialist poison, but there is still one final act I may take to aid our war. Allow me to pass my grace onwards, to this young heart, whose actions during my dusk have shown the purity of their soul. I beseech thee, oh dawning light!"

Gold and silver light radiated out from the angel as she shouted the last of her prayer, and I stood breathless before her, waiting…

I was expecting some sort of divine bolt of lightning, or maybe a glowing orb to pop out of the angel and fly over to implant in my chest.

Instead, the angel disintegrated into sparkling dust, which rode the wind right into me. I was knocked back onto my ass once again while a white-hot surge of energy lit me on fire from the inside out. All over my body, I felt an overwhelming tingle of energy as the dust that used to be the angel coated my skin.

“You will not be able to hold the form of a divine for long, good-heart, but with time you will gain the skill and power needed to maintain it,” the angel’s voice whispered gently in my mind. “This first time will be longer as your soul acclimates to the new power. Do not tarry, fly far, save all those you can, bring them together. There is safety in numbers within the new reality into which your world has been plunged. Oh, and choose your god wisely. Not all of the celestial pantheon are to be trusted like my queen is.”

“O-okay,” I managed to say, before I was pulled bodily to my feet by the sheer power of what was happening inside me. At this point, I was expecting whatever crazy transformation she had in store for me to hurt like hell, but it didn’t.

My blood began to quicken in my veins, and each pump of my heart seemed to brighten its hue. I could feel it inside me, the touch of something powerful, something divine… but another presence made itself known. Everywhere the golden light touched my limbs, my skin, my bones, a second, darker thread tarnished the work of the first. Resplendent silver was corrupted, its edges blackening with oxidation, and I felt the euphoric emotions welling within me turn to arrogance.

No! No way! I wouldn't let the gross ichor stuff change me into something hideous or evil. I wouldn't, but how could I, weak little nerdy Kai, stop this?

The arrogance recoiled from my thoughts, stunned. Wait, it didn’t like that? If I could, I would’ve laughed.

Ever since I was able to understand the world around me as more than just mum, dad, and my brother, I knew I was… worthless. I could spend all day explaining in detail why that was the case, but the reasons are honestly not important. I was a mediocre boy, another dull grey cog in the machine of society, destined to grind my way into a career that I would come to hate despite any entry-level excitement I held for it. Then, I would toil away, earning pointless money to prolong my existence until reality got sick of me and cancelled the whole sorry affair. Sure, there’d be some bright spots in my life, a husband or wife, I honestly didn’t mind which, and maybe some children of my own, but nothing I did would be worth a damn in the end.

That was just the pressures of society too. There was so much about me that was just boring, average… grey. Others liked to go on about how nice I was, but that was just my baseline. It wasn’t special. Then there were my looks, god I hated how I looked. I was an inch under six feet tall and thin, but with way too much hair in some pretty gross places. Plus, my face was so… average. I had a strong jawline, but it was undercut by a soft and squishy baby face that the other guys in my year group had grown out of five years ago. I know that I definitely didn’t think of myself as attractive. Not like, say, Oliver, one of my other friends. He was cute with his big goofy grin and his slightly floppy dark hair that grew too fast for the infrequent visits he made to the hairdresser.

Anyway. Point is, I’m a nothingburger nobody and deep down, I would probably always think that. Nobody was going to be able to change that, not even Marc and the way he constantly talked me up.

Now, what is the antithesis of arrogance? A cold, hard, truthful self loathing. So I picked that comforting icicle up from where it usually sat sheathed in my heart, and I rammed it deep into the poison that was threatening to corrupt my transformation. The scream it made… oh, it was so damned sweet.