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It was a subtle tingle down his spine, a lifting of the hairs on the back of his neck. Nothing overt, nothing he could point to and say ‘this is wrong.’ But the feeling of nameless dread was almost shocking after years of despair and anger worn down, at last, to boredom.
Sandalphon called his wings for the first time in who knew how long, spreading them wide in a gesture of high alert. He rippled his feathers to feel the still, stale air of the prison Lucifer had made for him, searching for any difference in the magical currents that bound him. Buried instincts surfaced from their shallow graves: Sandalphon, whatever else he might have been once, was a child of Pandemonium now. He kicked off of the earth of the dream orchard and labored upwards towards the false sky overhead.
The skies inside Pandemonium looked the same as the strange, cloud-torn expanses of the Crimson Horizon. They lacked a sun, a moon, stars, even a real firmament—they were unreachable sections of warped space that confined Pandemonium’s inhabitants. Flying inside was reckless endangerment, though that didn’t stop those that were confined there. If you survived the fall, the broken body and wings, you would always take to the air again eventually. Because that was where you could feel the elaborate seals that locked its doors closed, the thrum of the tetra-elemental power and ether braided together until they were one.
It was the same here, pressing against the borders of his confinement. Lucifer had copied parts of those ancient locks—what had worked once would work again, after all. But the keys to these seals were shockingly simple, now that he actually bothered to look and not assume that Lucifer had constructed his prison with typical perfection. It would take a determined effort, something like opening one of the doors between lab areas back in Lucilius’ domain, pushing the heavy spell- reinforced steel with all of his weight. But it was so straightforward it was almost an invitation.
It didn’t make any sense. Had Lucifer counted on Sandalphon’s apathy to keep him confined? That wasn’t like the Supreme Primarch at all. Lucifer covered all contingencies, it was what he was for.
Wings spread, balanced on a thread of his own magic, Sandalphon shook his head. Motivation, implementation—neither mattered right now. What mattered was the sick, cold feeling pooling at the base of his spine. Something was very wrong, he was sure of it, and instinct told him it was outside of the shroud of Lucifer’s power that now held him.
Still, he hesitated for a moment longer before he made himself focus. What, was he afraid of getting thrown back in Pandemonium again? The worst thing that could happen to him was Lucifer deciding that he was unworthy of any further patience or mercy, and even this traitor angel had to admit that it wasn’t a likely outcome. The Supreme Primarch had gone out of his way not to kill him. Twice.
A wingbeat, two, gathering his body and his power for the wrenching effort of pulling himself free. Then Sandalphon pushed upwards with all of his strength, reaching out towards the painted emptiness of the blue sky above. He bridged the seals with a sharp burst of power, cutting the deceptively simple lines of the key deep into layers and layers of spellwork straight from Lucifer’s hands. For a moment he half-expected there to be something more, a hidden safeguard that would slam him back down. Then the imprisoning, protective shell that enclosed him broke with the sound of shattering glass and the crack of lightning, and darkness as heavy as the drag of the Crimson Horizon took its place.
War-born habits kicked in: his body had been damaged beyond repair and he needed to make a new one before someone tried to rip out his core and take it back to the labs. He grabbed what power he had remaining and visualized his wings, the complex net of aethereal channels running through them. Then he forced that template, the one that was stored in his core as his base status, to take priority over everything else.
It was fast, Sandalphon had enough practice to make it so. And it cost, just like he remembered.
This kind of reset was an in-built function of a primal’s core, but it wasn’t intended for field use. He caught himself on arms already shaking, the world a bright blear of sensation that didn’t want to stabilize. Rock dust coated his palms, settled into his lungs as he gasped in his first breath.
He forced himself up, vaguely registering the different weight of his armor now, sleeker and closer-fitting, thinner across his chest and shoulders but heavier on his legs. He discarded the observation a second later- it would move with him as it always did. Lucifer’s power hung heavy in the air, which didn’t surprise him, but there was something Otherworld-born and ugly that knifed through the shimmering veils.
Blood streaked the white floor, outlining footprints and splattering in patterns that marked combat. Sandalphon could almost see the glitter of crystallized light in it.
Lucifer was fighting, fighting seriously, somewhere close.
Sandalphon ran towards where the red marks pointed, catching himself on the white pillars of Canaan’s sanctuary when he stumbled due to weakness or rubble, senses wide open for more information.
Despite his snap identification of Otherworldly power, it was a thin and elusive taste of leaded glass and malice, not the harsh coldfire and acid of most of its creatures that Sandalphon had fought. There was no real counterpoint to the overwhelming upflow of Lucifer’s light, no fallen’s darkness or other primal power raised in defiance. Who could Lucifer be fighting?
Sandalphon caught himself on the doorframe before he careened into the fight, then almost immediately threw himself forward again. Lucifer’s guiding light guttered terrifyingly.
“Stop!” The shout tore itself free from Sandalphon’s throat, hoarse and raw and unplanned. But it did what Sandalphon wanted it to, which was pull the attention of Lucifer’s attacker to him.
The man—no, the Astral—was holding Lucifer like a toy, his dawn-white wings limp and bloody. Sandalphon could only see a lush, sensuous mouth and a wheat-blond braid underneath the dark, gold-adorned cloak. There was something vaguely familiar about him nevertheless, meaning he was probably of some relation to Lucilius or Southern-Cross or one of the other primal beast researchers of Sandalphon’s early days.
Beelzebub, that was it. Some Council lackey that Lucilius held in contempt. Sandalphon could recall the disgusted downturn of his lips when he spoke the name. Normally, Sandalphon wouldn’t take Lucilius’ opinion as a guidepost for anything, but he was prepared to make an exception in this particular case.
“Oh, so the traitor awakes,” Beelzebub drawled. “What fortuitous timing for you,” he said idly to the unconscious and bleeding Supreme Primarch. His stance was unconcerned, open; it was clear he thought Sandalphon was no credible threat.
Sandalphon might be a backup copy of a primarch, a primal without a purpose, but that didn’t mean he was without power. He wasvan archangel, a veteran of the first of the primal uprisings, had survived two millennia in Pandemonium and ripped the wings off of the Elemental Lords. Underestimating him had cost quite a few people their lives, Astral and primal alike. And just because he’d specialized in assassination during that time didn’t mean he couldn’t hold his ground and fight face-to-face.
He ached from head to toe, his core a strained burn in his breast from the forcible recast of his body. He had no more than a trickle of power at his disposal, no stolen wings, no backup, no plan. And none of it mattered, not in the least, because Lucifer, his most bitter enemy and the center of his heart’s world, was going to die in front of him.
Pain stabbed through his chest, but his broadsword came at his call anyway. “Sterling,” he gritted out, flicking the tip as if to cast off water, “Sea!”
He was no angel of twilight, but the explosion of silver veils still cut languor into Beelzebub’s veins. Sandalphon lunged, letting the Astral choose between dropping his burden to defend himself and getting a sword through his lung.
Beelzebub solved the dilemma by throwing Lucifer at Sandalphon. Sandalphon’s body shrieked a protest as he aborted the motion as best he could before he ended up running the angel of light through, Lucifer’s weight hampering his sword arm and his stance thoroughly ruined.
“How kind of you to make an appearance,” the Astral said, the precise patterns of Astral sorcery beginning to take shape at his fingertips. Sandalphon spent a horrible split second in debate before he lowered Lucifer’s limp form to the floor with as much gentleness as he could manage working one-handed (not a lot, but he was sure Lucifer would rather be bruised than dead). He took a step forward to shield the prone angel with his own body.
Beelzebub was saying something else, something that would no doubt make Sandalphon angry if he listened, so he didn’t. Insteadhe tuned all of his specialized senses to interpreting what spell the Astral was building. Sandalphon’s range of motion was limited by the unconscious Supreme Primarch behind him, and he would have to counter precisely if he wanted to survive. The only thing he had going for him was that he was inured to any compulsion the Astral could manage- the rebels had solved that problem comprehensively a long time ago. In fact...
The Astral threw a spell of control at Sandalphon, something that would take a primal’s instinctive, inbuilt submission to their former masters and twist. It was a very sophisticated piece of spellcraft, something that might even have subverted Lucilius’ hard-coded countermeasures against other Astrals getting ahold of his prized projects. It slid over him like water.
Sandalphon let his hands relax, his blade dip to the floor, his eyes go unfocused. All he needed was for Beelzebub to be overconfident and get in striking distance...
“I suppose another product of Lucilius’ labs might prove useful,” Beelzebub mused, looking him over like a piece of meat. “If only to take apart.” The Astral actually walked up to him, arrogant to the last. Sandalphon could hardly believe it. “I might even be able to figure out what you were supposed to be a prototype for—”
He jerked to a halt, Sandalphon’s hand through his chest.
“Failsafe, not prototype,” Sandalphon corrected coldly, then squeezed. The Astral’s heart juddered within the cage of his fingers and he dug his nails in cruelly. Then he jerked back with all of his strength, and kicked out with one booted foot to yank the organ free.
Astrals weren’t mortal, but they were still flesh and blood. And flesh and blood had to yield to an archangel’s strength, no matter how weak Sandalphon was right now.
Beelzebub landed on the floor, the gaping hole in his chest artfully accented by his heavy golden jewelry. Sandalphon threw the lump of flesh in his hand away with a wet splat, shaking the blood off of his fingerless glove. The half-obscured face had an expression of blank surprise. Like most of the other Astrals Sandalphon had killed, come to think of it.
The primal sneered disdainfully down at the body and turned in a flutter of trailing white to the unconscious Lucifer.
*****
To his surprise, Lucifer woke. His last memory was of Beelzebub binding him with diamond threads of Astral sorcery, a forced stillness that he had been too weak to resist. He had been sure that his opponent intended his death, to weaken the seals on Lucilius’ legacy that he had laid over the sanctuary and old laboratories. His own life was the keystone that held that darkness in uneasy slumber, and so to have survived was against all expectation.
“Lucifer.” A sword-calloused hand touched his face, and another slipped to cushion his head, bringing with them the familiar-not-familiar sense of an archangel of his own design, touched by the ruinous powers that mingled within the convergence of the upper sky and the lower. “Are you awake?”
“Yes...” He opened his eyes, which was more difficult than it should be, and had to blink before the world settled into recognizability.
“Sandalphon...”
Eyes the same shade as the Crimson Horizon surveyed him- untainted by madness now, at least, though the visible evidence of the undersky’s effect on the younger primal was unsettling. He’d hoped, at least a little, that the changes Pandemonium had wrought would be cast off when Sandalphon emerged from the Cradle. But it seemed that Sandalphon would be marked by his time there forever.
“I need you to put your wings away,” Sandalphon said brusquely. “And your armor, if you can manage it.”
Michael would probably scold him for how quickly he acceded to the command. But if Sandalphon truly wished to hurt him, he could have easily started with Lucifer’s wings while he was unconscious, even taken them as he had taken the other primarchs’. And Lucifer had never really managed to believe that Sandalphon meant him harm, no matter what he said or did.
The shift in his position from his wings’ disappearance made him wince even with the support of the hand underneath his neck.
“There we are.” The tone was grim. Sandalphon shifted, setting Lucifer back carefully on the stone of the sanctuary floor. He touched the wound in Lucifer’s side, just below his ribcage, with careful fingers, laying the other on his chest to monitor Lucifer’s core. “Beelzebub did this?”
“Yes. He had a blade, something from the undersky or—”
“The Otherworld,” Sandalphon finished with certainty. “Well, he’s dead now so it doesn’t matter.”
Despite his words, he was frowning, the set of his lips going grimmer as he examined the freely bleeding injury.
Common knowledge held that primal beasts were immortal, unkillable by skydwellers. It was even, to a certain extent, true. A primal’s core could regenerate any amount of damage, even damage that cost them their physical form. It took time and magical energy, sometimes centuries’ worth, but ‘immortal’ was not an inappropriate description.
On the flip side of the coin, creating undying sentient tools that could also betray you was foolish. So it was perfectly possible to truly kill a primal, as long as you knew the methods. The simplest was absorption, a merging of primal cores of similar types. More complicated was elemental dissolution, basically taking a core forced into dormancy and unraveling all the programming inside. Lesser methods- breaking the core while it was still present in the primal’s body- were often ineffective because even a sliver of the object surviving meant that the primal could be resurrected.
The weapon used against Lucifer hadn’t just done physical damage. It had cut into his core repair programming, stopping his natural regeneration. Until his core rejected and rewrote the damaged sections,he could only heal as mortals healed—slowly.
It wasn’t going to be fast enough.
Lucifer saw the recognition of the fact in Sandalphon’s face.
Sandalphon was a moderate healer on his best days, good enough to close light wounds. Like this, just out of stasis and drained further from injury and combat, there wasn’t even a chance. The hand on his chest clenched, fingers going white-knuckled.
Sandalphon drew a deep breath, exhaled, and that deliberate, focused calm settled over his features. His dark brows drew down in a frown of fierce thought. Then, the sharp v relaxed.
“Sandalphon?”
“Hush.” The archangel unclasped his belt and tore a broad strip of white cloth from his own clothes. He bundled it up with swift efficiency and pressed it hard to the wound, where it immediately began to turn red. Lucifer hissed in a breath- that hurt. The pain worsened as Sandalphon used his belt to hold it in place, tightening until it pinched and knotting it in place with bloody fingers.
Then the archangel set his back against the white stone wall and touched his own armor. It burst into spangles of tarnished gold, leaving him in the white, hooded robe that frayed into tatters below his thighs.He lifted Lucifer with an exhalation of effort, settling the elder primal’s back against his chest and wrapping an arm about his waist, careful of the makeshift bandages. His free hand came to rest again on Lucifer’s breast, just above his core.
Sandalphon breathed deeply, lungs expanding at his back, then exhaled and lowered the boundaries of his self, the protective shielding layer that any primal maintained without thinking. Light marred by the echoes of Pandemonium threaded into Lucifer’s veins, bringing warmth in its wake.
At a cost. “Sandalphon, stop,” Lucifer commanded, pushing down alarm. “You are not strong enough to keep me alive long enough for this to heal.”
“I said hush,” Sandalphon replied, fingers tightening in Lucifer’s undershirt. “Besides, I’m a traitor. I don’t have to listen to you.”
This was unfortunately true. Sandalphon hadn’t listened to him for millennia. In his youth it had been incomprehensible, but the Lucifer who had killed his own creator for his crimes had far more of an understanding of rebellion than his younger self.
“This will kill you,” Lucifer said as urgently as his weakness would let him. He considered turning what little strength he had left to fighting, but ripping their entangled systems apart now would just bleed them both out- the younger angel had bound their aethereal channels together to try and share his own undamaged core repair programming and give it enough power to work. He needed for Sandalphon to unbind them willingly.
“Or one of your lackeys could figure out what’s going on and come to the rescue,” Sandalphon countered. “The odds on them doing it in time are a little low, but it’s a better chance than just leaving you alone.”
He clearly knew what the consequences would be if they weren’t rescued. Which made sense, this was a rebel technique born from their lack of infrastructure and Lucifer doubted Sandalphon had performed it off the cuff. He spent a useless moment wishing Raziel hadn’t been quite so skilled at teaching angels how to disable perfectly sensible safeguards in their own core programming.
Lucifer inhaled, hissed the breath out as his wound protested, and said, “If I am going to die, you need to live. I sealed away the last of Lucilius’ creations here in Canaan, and without a Supreme Primarch as a keystone to those seals...not to mention those on Pandemonium. Even if you still wish to throw open its gates, surely you don’t wish for the world to end entirely, and Lucilius’ legacy is more than capable of bringing that tragedy to fruition.” The opening of Pandemonium would likely throw the balance of the skies off entirely, but the skydwellers had triumphed over the Astrals since it was closed. There would be war, but he had come to have faith in the tenacity of mortals. And without him or the Astrals to rebel against, the more moderate factions among the fallen might even fight with the skydwellers instead of against them. Olivia, Azazel, and Raziel were more interested in pursuing the interests of their own kind than destruction for its own sake, or at least had been in the past. “I know to place the Supreme Primarch’s mantle on your shoulders is a heavy burden, but—”
“Oh, you’re an idiot!” Sandalphon snarled. “I spent the last who-the- hell-knows-how-long in Pandemonium! Exactly what do you think would have happened if you had died while I was in there? Because I sincerely doubt that it would stand up to the Supreme Primarch’s power from the inside!”
“Your point is taken,” Lucifer conceded. “However, I have been guiding the world to the point where the tetra-elements and ether can be separated from their ruling primarchs. Which would eliminate many of the problems my death would cause. As for the seals on Pandemonium and Lucilius’ aberration...” he leaned his head back onto Sandalphon’s shoulder. “I have not been planning on dying, and I had to trust that you, or Michael, or the singularity, would rise to the occasion.” He paused and said wryly, “In my defense, the seal here in Canaan would likely hold unless an outside force tampered with it. I have reinforced it to the best of my ability over the years.”
Sandalphon sighed against his neck. “You mean like the outside force that stabbed you?”
“If you would like to make suggestions, I would be happy to take them under advisement.”
“Not let Lucilius make the stupid thing in the first place,” Sandalphon muttered.
Oh. No, Sandalphon wouldn’t know... “I killed him before he finished, at least.”
The archangel sat bolt upright, dislodging Lucifer’s head from his shoulder and waking another twinge in his chest. “You what.”
“I killed him,” Lucifer repeated, aching all over. He didn’t regret it, exactly. What he truly regretted was that the Lucilius he had thought he knew existed only in his own mind. If he had only seen his creator’s truenature earlier, he might have prevented the rebellion, prevented a great many crimes and tragedies across the breadth of the skies. But he had been young and naïve, thinking that Lucilius knew best. It had cost him dearly. “Belial was his pawn all along, to bypass Astral oversight of his work and acquire the raw materials to create monstrosities. The fallen angels were a project he proposed so that he could requisition what he needed without question, and when their cores were returned to his lab for dissolution he incorporated them into...” Lucifer trailed off. There was no need to clarify what Lucilius had made in the end.
A long moment of silence. Lucifer could tell that Sandalphonwas considering telling him something along the lines of ‘I told youso.’ He fully deserved it- the Astrals had served their creations and the skydwellers very poorly, and Lucifer was complicit in some of the worst of their excesses.
“He betrayed you,” Sandalphon said at last.
“I...yes.” He’d never truly thought about it like that, but Lucilius had made him to oversee the skydoms, a guide and a guardian. Lucilius’ actions, his intent to destroy everything that he’d made Lucifer warden to, were a crime against everything that Lucifer was. Everything he’d made Lucifer to be. Lucilius had taken Belial from him, had discarded him and wished him gone. What had he said? ‘I knew we wouldn’t see eye to eye.’ He’d known what Lucifer would think, and had done it anyway. Yes, that was betrayal.
“I betrayed you.”
Lucifer refrained from reminding him that he’d proclaimed his affiliation just a few minutes ago, and was currently sacrificing his chance at living in direct contravention of Lucifer’s stated desires.
“Southern-Cross told me once that admiration is the emotion furthest from understanding. I believe he meant it about Lucilius, though I didn’t grasp it at the time. But I have spent a long time thinking about it.
“I wanted you to remain an innocent. Your curiosity, your wonder...I treated you like a charming pet, content to leave you in that garden. I ignored the difference in power between us, the difference in our experiences. Just because my intentions were not malicious doesn’t mean that I didn’t use you. Nor did I protect you from those who did have malice in mind.” He’d spent such a long time contemplating these words that they came easily off his tongue. “I’ve made...such mistakes, Sandalphon.”
Sandalphon rested his forehead in the crook of Lucifer’s neck. “We were so young.”
And now they were coarsened by war, by time, by pain and sorrow and doubt. By the blood they had shed. Sandalphon was not the eager adolescent waiting for him where the silver laurels and morning glory bloomed, and he was not the barely older primarch hanging on Lucilius’ words. They were different. The world was different.
Hesitantly, he brought his hand to touch the brown-haired head. The heavy chestnut waves slid smoothly between his fingers.
Sandalphon’s hair had always been lovely.
“I could be content with this,” Sandalphon confessed. The drain was beginning to tell on him; his words were slow and soft. “I never could figure out what I would do with myself if the fallen won. The best outcome I could imagine was always death at your hands. If you could live for me, I—” He stopped himself.
“And what makes you think I don’t feel the same?” Lucifer asked him. He couldn’t feel the wound in his side anymore. It wasn’t a good sign. “I want you to live...to choose your purpose for yourself...”
Sandalphon said, low, “Turning traitor all those years ago was worth it, for me to be able to disobey you here and now.” Darkness nipped at the edges of Lucifer’s vision. He’d lost too much blood, he was sure it had puddled beneath them. He wouldn’t wake a second time.
Sandalphon’s power was a thin thing, the only warmth left in the world, fading away like the last of sunset.
He gave in and let his cheek press against the softness of Sandalphon’s hair. I could be content with this, at the last.
*****
Sleep lightened very, very gradually to a shallow doze. A comfortable, clean-smelling pillow was tucked under Sandalphon’s head, and the ever-present weight of his armor was gone. There was something else missing too, something that was pushing him further towards wakefulness. He examined the feeling of lack, then realized that there was no presence of a primal healer he knew nearby, no crescent-moon- and-night-sky or mist-on-the-dark-sea or black-lilies-blooming.
The realization spurred him to actual wakefulness. If he wasn’t recovering in a rebel base, he wasn’t safe. At best he had been picked up by skydwellers who had no idea what he was, and at worst he was in a cell waiting for Astral torture and interrogation. He needed to be alert and ready to move as soon as possible.
It took willpower and effort to force his eyes open and his first sight was white touched with silver. Lucifer, was his automatic thought even after all this time, then shock cut jaggedly as he took in that it was, in fact, the Supreme Primarch, angel of light and star of the morning, deeply asleep next to him. Time and memory reasserted themselves and Sandalphon realized that his half-facetious prediction of rescue must have been accurate after all.
Now that he didn’t have his head back in the war, he could feel a slightly cool hand in his. Someone had undone most of his work stitching their channels together, but enough had been left to act as a stabilizer, the in-the-field version of primal life support. One of the other primarchs had probably done it while they were unconscious, likely Raphael or Gabriel. He was a little surprised that they hadn’t cut them free entirely, but Sandalphon was a light-aspected archangel with good core compatibility to Lucifer in the first place, so they might have decided that it was safer just to let it be.
The sleeping angel looked...well, not as awful as he had on the floor of the shrine at Canaan, but worse than anything besides that Sandalphon had seen- even that time when Shemhazai had shield- smashed him across the face so hard he’d bruised black. His fair skin was tinged faintly with gray, lines of exhaustion marked on his face. A thin, scabbed-over cut traced over his cheek. Sandalphon wondered if it might scar- extremely rare in their kind, but the wounds Lucifer had taken weren’t any kind of normal.
Still, he was alive. They were both alive. Sandalphon, despite his glib words, had not expected anything other than death.
Now to answer the question of where they were. Sandalphon propped himself up on the elbow opposite Lucifer and received a fresh shock when he saw that they weren’t alone in the room.
A skydweller girl in Astral livery blinked from her chair at him, then smiled sunnily. She set aside a thin book and pushed to her feet, crossing the distance in a few steps to beam down at him. “Oh, you’ve woken up! That’s wonderful. How are you feeling?”
Sandalphon spent a long, long moment staring at her. She was mortal, which was why he hadn’t sensed her until he opened up his senses a little further. Some kind of magic-user: a healer, by the evanescent dewdrop glimmer. But why in Pandemonium’s name was she dressed in the gold-edged overrobe and cap of an Astral’s favored herald?
“What are you wearing?” he asked incredulously.
She looked down at herself in puzzlement, powder blue pigtails falling over her red-and-white clad shoulders. “I’m a Zeyen priestess on pilgrimage, so I need to wear my traveling robes,” she informed him.
Okay, apparently it was just a weird skydweller thing. That was a relief.
“I’m Sophia. I’ve been helping Cagliostro and Primarch Raphael take care of you!” This was proclaimed with a small clap and another bright smile. She sobered a little and told him, “You’ve been unconscious for a week, so I’m very glad to see you awake. We weren’t sure you were going to make it.”
He didn’t regret anything. He squeezed Lucifer’s hand in his. “And Lucifer?” he asked.
“He hasn’t woken up yet, but we think he’s stabilized.” The girl’s voice was filled with optimism. “That was a very nasty injury. It didn’t want to close, but Cagliostro was able to use alchemy to make a temporary patch so the bleeding stopped. Primarch Raphael says that his core should be back to normal in a few days, so it should finish healing then.”
Sandalphon had never heard of a primal down for recovery for more than a couple of days, unless they were forced to recover in core form. Nine or ten days for the Supreme Primarch was ridiculous. Lucifer had come really close to dying, hadn’t he?
The healer patted his shoulder reassuringly. He mustered up a scowl for her, but she wasn’t intimidated. “He must be really precious to you. We couldn’t separate you, you’ve been helping stabilize him this whole time.”
“That was the point.” She just treated him to another smile. She reminded him a little of Gabriel with her shining cheer, though Gabriel would wear her same serene grin even when she frosted your wings to drop you down to the Crimson Horizon. He doubted this girl was the same way.
“Well, let me just do a quick check-up-” She held her fingers an inch or two above him and ran them down his body with swift skill. Her dewdrop glimmer sharpened for a moment, then subsided back into the vaguely focused patterns of a mortal when she finished. “I’d say bed rest for a few more days, but everything seems fine. I’ll just go and let people know. Everyone’s been dying to know what happened!” Before he could say anything, she waltzed out like she didn’t have a care in the world.
Sandalphon huffed and dropped his head back to the pillow.
After a moment, he looked at Lucifer again. Alive. That was truly what he had wanted, and he’d managed, against all odds, to achieve it.
His mouth crooked ironically. Two thousand years and he’d only managed to get one thing really right in all that time. What nonsense.
Somewhere much too close for comfort, the sense of red flame on a bed of white ash intruded onto his perceptions. He forcibly smoothed his hackles down- Michael hadn’t particularly frightened him even before he’d worn her wings, and he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of thinking she did. She’d want to do something with him, doubtless, but he was hardly afraid of that either. Her shoving him back in Pandemonium would be unpleasant, but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t survived it the first time.
Nevertheless, he forced himself upright, swaying slightly at the effort, and hid his and Lucifer’s entwined hands under the white sheets. He wasn’t going to let her catch him laying down like an invalid, even if he felt terrible.
She strode into the room like the spread of crownfire, her presence bearing down on him sullenly. Oh, she was not happy. It made him want to smirk a bit, though his more reasonable side reminded him that this was no time to prick her pride. “Sandalphon,” she said, voice heavy with disapproval.
“Michael,” he greeted, shearing off any respectful titles that an archangel of his former rank should use with one of the elemental primarchs. Her pale lips tightened, flame orange eyes gaining a flecking of bright sparks at her temper. Michael always was a stickler for formality, so of anyone she would be most bothered by his disrespect.
A smaller, pink-clad form slipped in through the doorway, closing it behind herself. The singularity, wonderful. Michael must have recruited her, probably because unreasonably talented people seemed to fall into her orbit and if you were trying to keep the Supreme Primarch alive you wanted the best.
The girl took up a place behind and somewhat to the side of Michael, far enough to be an observer rather than a participant- or to give Michael clearance enough for blade and wings. Her brandy brown eyes were cool and assessing.
He turned his gaze from her back to Michael and asked, “I assume you want to know what happened?”
“By my last knowledge, the Supreme Primarch had returned you to core form and rest in the Seraphim’s Cradle, in the hopes that you could be salvaged,” Michael said cuttingly. “So yes, I do wish to know why you awakened.” He could hear the clear undertone of suspicion, tempered by her innate sensibility- if Sandalphon had possessed the means to compass Lucifer’s death, he would have done so long since.
“Fine.” Sandalphon brusquely gave her a scout’s field report: the black dread that had struck him in the Cradle and his escape, Beelzebub’s death, his efforts to save Lucifer’s life. He omitted their conversations, saying only that Lucifer had tried to convince him that his attempts were futile and that he had not been dissuaded. “And then I passed out from the strain and woke up here,” he finished.
“Beelzebub, you say,” Michael said, baffled. “He was banished to the Crimson Horizon by the Supreme Primarch. You are certain?”
“No,” Sandalphon said bluntly. He was excellent at what he did, but he’d seen the Astral in passing a few times millennia ago, and never bare-faced. “Mere archangels were hardly introduced to Lucilius’ patrons, after all. But time in the undersky would tally with whatever power of the Otherworld he was using, and I imagine there are few Astrals who remain at large.”
“True enough,” Michael conceded. Disquiet crossed her face. “But while we found blood enough to support your report, there were no bodies besides yours,” she indicated the bed with a dip of her head, “in the sanctuary.”
“I ripped his heart out!” Sandalphon protested. “Exactly how do you get up and walk away from that?!”
Michael, well-acquainted with his history, didn’t turn a hair, but the skydweller looked fairly nauseated. “He is an Astral,” she said succinctly, which he supposed he couldn’t argue with. He huffed.
“Disturbing. There has been too much traffic from the Crimson Horizon and the Otherworld of late,” Michael said softly, eyes cast down to look into some memory. Her pale brows crimped under her golden fillet. Then her eyes cut across in the singularity’s direction, and she raised her chin.
“For your intervention, I am grateful,” Michael said formally- and grudgingly, as if the words were sour.
“I hardly did it for you.” Part of Sandalphon told him not to antagonize the fire primarch while an unarmed mess, but it was true.
The two of them exchanged hostile looks, then Michael told him, “I am told you still need recovery time. The Supreme Primarch may decide what to do with you when he wakes.” Hands proverbially washed of him, she exited. Sandalphon blew out a breath.
The singularity straightened, and his gaze snapped back to her. “Cagliostro will be here soon to check on the stuff she’s using to keep his wound closed,” she indicated the sleeping Lucifer, “and if you mess with her, I’ll leave you at her mercy. Same thing goes for Sophia.” She smiled, all teeth. “Just to be clear, you don’t want to be at Cagliostro’s mercy. She’s mean.”
Sandalphon privately thought that he’d probably met meaner, but told her, “I hardly went to all that trouble to screw with the healers now.”
The singularity’s eyes went to where his hand was under the blankets. “Now that I can believe,” she said, then followed Michael’s path to the door, closing it behind herself once again.
...he should probably apologize for throwing her off of an island.
At some point.
He looked down at Lucifer, still soundly asleep even after they had talked over his head. His right cheek was pressed into the pillow, white hair falling into his eyes. Sandalphon leaned over and brushed it away, then touched a finger to the cut marring the fine cheekbone.
“I could be content with this,” he told Lucifer again. Then, slowly,remembering Lucifer saying ‘And what makes you think I don’t feel the same?’
“But maybe I should ask for more.”