Nephilim of Sky
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She remembered that he had once told her (though who he was she knew not; she knew she did once, though long ago or not she could not recall) that her wings were things of great beauty and wonder. She did not agree, not in the slightest (was that why? had she hated him so much? did he even know?), for they were terrible, terrible and painful, even after so long. But she did not hate them, and did not regret them (though she remembered that she had once hated them, not why she had, and she wished that she did) for they were essential and important and she needed them.
She stood and wrapped them around herself, all six of them, six sheets of dancing orange flame crafted in a poor image of a faint, dying memory of a dead bird's wing (where it came from or why it had stayed with her she did not know, but it was in that image she had crafted her wings of flame, for a reason she could not recall but was in some way very important). Looking closely, one could see in the shifting seas of fire vague shadows of feathers, perhaps the outline of a hollow bone if one were lucky and patient enough. But then she finished drawing them around her and the wings, the feathers, the bones that gave shape to the wings all merged now, could not be told apart, became one gigantic blanket of crude shifting feathers in crimson and yellow and everything in between. They looked now, more than anything, like a pillar of flame, her near body invisible in their embrace. Perhaps if one were to spend enough time staring into the flames, spend too much time, then one might be able to see the vaguest outline of a figure standing in the center of the raging inferno (none had before, at least that she could remember), but the time was never given and never would be. She wondered if there were anybody alive who had seen her body still. Not in its entirety, she guessed (but again she knew not), and for a reason she could not tell she was saddened by the fact.
It had been different, long ago (or perhaps not so long ago, though it felt to be very long ago) when she had only had two wings (two wings which were transparent, than later incandescent with all the colors of the sky, land and sea, which she missed very much), three wings, five wings. She had probably had four wings sometime along the progression, too. He (another he, different in some undefined but extremely important way from the first) had told her that it meant that she was becoming more powerful when he had talked of her wings. Fit, he had told her, to serve the Lord of Fire (but then again she could not recall why she had begun serving the Lord in the first place). For this tourney, she wondered? Was that what he had wanted to tell her, that she was becoming more powerful for this? Or something else altogether?
Well, it mattered little now. She opened her eyes. Around her, illuminated only by the glow of her power, she saw walls, smooth walls of ancient stone, brown and gray and black mixed together in strange disharmony. This tunnel was her sanctum, at least for now, her home, for now, and though she knew that soon it would be nothing to her, it did not stop her trying to fix it in her mind, as if by force of will she could remember it for all time.
Yet memory, she knew, does not work in such a way, and so she started forward.
It was an hour, or perhaps two, or maybe even three, before she had reached far enough to see the moonlight pushing its way into the entrance of the cave. She stepped out into her valley. It was hers and hers alone. When she left it would cease to be; when she needed it, it would then again be. It was magic, but not of any kind she knew, nor even any kind she knew of.
She stepped upwards, into the sky, and then launched herself towards her destination. She did not know what, exactly, her destination was, or what it was called, but that was where she was headed, and for her that was enough. Across the sky she streaked, as a falling star, and she flew, and she flew, and she flew.
She arrived two days later, some few hours after the sun had risen, closer to noon than dawn. It was a city, she found, that she was heading for, not a large city, but a city nonetheless. More specifically, she realized, it was an arena, one of four. The one she was headed for was not the grandest. That honor was given to a truly gigantic sandlot which appeared to be out of use at the moment. It was not the prettiest, either. That honor was given to a beautiful garden, already frantic with activity as she approached. Nor was it the most interesting. The floating rocks made a much more curious and intriguing battlefield than the one she was headed to. No, she was headed to a distinctly grim and unceremonious arena, one which seemed to be plagued by smoke or clouds of some sort which pushed up against the magical ceiling as if to escape it. It looked almost like there were storm clouds. The arena displeased her, for some reason, but it was where she was headed.
She entered the huge, dark gates without once touching the ground, having simply dived down towards them and pulled up at the last minute, only to find herself flying straight into what seemed to be a blizzard. Not a storm, but a blizzard. Neither the cold nor snow concerned her unduly, though they did remind her of...something. Something cold, but...
She pulled back, almost having impaled herself on a spike in her absent flight, and landed smoothly on a thin layer of snow, not yet thicker than dust atop an old table. She felt the white melt away beneath her. It was a warming feeling, but a saddening one at the same time.
Still, she did not come to remember, much as she would like to.
Seraphim turned, taking stock of the arena, of the foes in the arena, of the strange weather and irritatingly metal floor and walls, the seemingly gratuitous spikes, the darkness now that the sun was forced away. She spied a man, standing in a seemingly constricting crevice of the arena, a man with a crossbow, with blood on his clothes and face. He was not more than thirty feet away from her, not less than twenty five.
A thin tendril of solid flame pushed its way through the falling snow and deathly chill, headed for her new foe. Its path was erratic, heading to the left, then right, then down or up or left again, as if to make it more difficult to dodge, and its speed was blinding.
She was here to fight, and fight she would.
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