Chapter (The Riders)
Two torches approached bouncing with the steps of what looked like a horse. The riders remained obscured by shadow, and Angelo lie in wait, silent and still, the perfect hunter. They were almost directly beneath him and neither one had noticed anything. Perhaps he’d not have to fight alone, just yet after all.
They had passed underneath Angelo and were now downwind of him. One of the ghastly steeds stopped dead in its tracks, and raised its snout. An armor clad hand reach down to steady the beast, but the horse reared slightly, trotting out a tight circle. The actions of the first spooked the second, prompting it to do the same. It too reared.
Both riders dismounted and drew their swords. Whoever they were they were well armed and ready for an attack. But not form above, and not at the speed with which Angelo launched himself into the vicious technique.
In a single movement Angelo went from a prone position into a staggering jump, opening himself to the flow of the current as he did so. Form ten meters above he descended down upon them. Twisting as he went, his feet found ground again in between the two armor clad scouts.
The closest rider was cleaved from above with no idea of where the attack he even came from. The more distant horseman staggered back, splashed with the warm trickle of his partner’s inner workings. But well trained, it didn’t take him long to recover.
In the time it took Angelo to rise and turn, the second rider was on him. Angelo quickly blocked a raised vertical shot sending his assailant’s arm ricocheting backwards. Turning on his heels in the same motion he planted the Tears of Eden through the lightly armored chest of his enemy, the rider's striking arm still raised in backlash.
Angelo turned again, this time slowly and with distinction. With both hands firmly gripping the hilt of his luminous sword, he brought a foot up to the chest of the former soldier and as the life left his eyes Angelo retrieved what was rightfully his from the rider's chest.
As the blood burned off the blade and the dead man fell, Angelo turned and cut the rider's sword clean in two, shattering the steel just above the hilt and symbolically sending a message to himself if no one else.
It was all over in an instant.
The dead rider landed in a heap. He fell with no scream louder than the crumpling of his lifeless armor, and the clang of a broken sword. Angelo panted. His shoulders heaving and his chest pounding as his body worked to dispose of the excess adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream.
Searching the bodies of the dead scouts proved less useful then he had hoped. Each carried little more than an unknown key and some foul looking jerky Angelo would not have fed to a dog. Taking one of the keys he went about the task of disposing of the bodies.
The horses, if that’s what they were, were uneasy around him but didn’t try and run, which gave him and idea. He wrapped the first rider, the one that he had virtually filleted, in the loose Vicari robe that he was wearing and tossed him atop his horse. The second rider had been only slightly dismantled, and could still prove useful.
Angelo stripped him of his cloak, which in design was not all that different from the one he himself had worn. The armor beneath was strange, similar in appearance to chain mail but rough and sticky to the touch, not something Angelo ever wanted to wear.
Embossed over the center of the chest plate was the form of a man from the shoulders up, screaming with his own hands clenched around his throat, the universal symbol for choking…and Famine's person insignia.
Angelo worked to replace his own cloak with the one he had taken. When he tipped off the hood however; a hideous site he hadn't braced for awaited him. The face staring back at him was a man that had been ripped apart and put back together, twisted and blacked with hate.
It was the first time he'd ever seen a Chiral up close. Angelo leaned in closer, looking past what the twisting of the Shadow had done to this poor horrid thing. Taking in the face as a whole it struck him. He knew this man; back when he was a man. Though he could not place the where or when he knew he had seen that depraved grin before, that sick and twisted smile that looked up at him even now.
He needed the cloak and the horse, so he was left with little choice. Lifting the body he tossed it too onto the first horse's back, adding it to the pile. The head of the second rider wobbled lifelessly from side to side before settling upside down, its lifeless gaze fixed firmly on Angelo.
It was then he placed the memory of his first encounter with this thing. This was the man that had assaulted Kileana, the pizza parlor. Revolted he glared at the corpse, shifting his eyes to the gaping hole in the man's chest several times before relaxing his posture.
In a way he was thankful to the thing. If it had never come into his life he would have never been blessed with meeting Kileana. The nostalgia took him and he was hard pressed to hold back tears. He missed those he'd left behind. Standing hands at his sides, for just a second he wondered if he would ever see those people who had saved him again.
In that moment Angelo had a revelation, one Gabriel and the others had been waiting for him to have since his conception. It was something he could never be taught, but like other lessons it must be learned on your own.
The existence of all things, the flow between them, their energy, and their life. The key to unlocking his true potential had been in his hands all these years and only now with the death of a creature as disgusting as this was it realized.
In that instant the world made so much sense. All Gabriel’s talks about touching the Grace of God. The current was everywhere it would be impossible not to touch it.
“Like water it flows and takes the shape of all we see,” he said, repeating the lesson with a smile.
