In a pristine white polished kitchen, shards of a shattered coffee cup lay soiled in the sink, leaking a slow trickle of coffee grounds and water into the black abyss of the sinkhole. Around the kitchen it is possible, after some effort of investigation, to find evidence of recent occupation. A depression on a seat, shapely and curved, only recently created by the weight of a body, a female body, as it drank coffee. Scuff marks on the floor, created by shoes; finger prints on the kettle; a single black feather on the floor, but even more strangely, paw-prints from a cat on the kitchen bench! This apartment was untenanted, only recently completed construction and, being on the 18th floor, extremely inaccessible to unwanted feline visitors! Most strange of all was perhaps the fact that if one looked close enough, and paid enough attention, the paw-prints seemed to both start and end on the same small portion of the kitchen bench's space, seeming to suggest that said feline invader might have simply evaporated after a brief stroll.
The white and black chequered kitchen floor tiles sparkled in the light of the overhead fluorescent lighting which was tastefully hidden behind an artistic curve of frosted glass, and the whole scene seemed paused, paused in perfection. But paused for what?
Something stirred the still air of the room, like a heat-haze shimmering the surrounding atmosphere, disturbing it into baroque curlicues of contrasting densities, a faint sound as of great wings beating at a distance crept into the edges of hearing, breaking the silence of the unoccupied kitchen. The zone of heat-haze, strangely coherent and unmoving, began to expand, then suddenly detonated into a explosive gust of wind, exposing what looked for all the world like a giant feathery clam, standing oddly upright in the kitchen. The anomalous feathery object rent open and revealed itself to be a pair of great, black, wings; wings wrapped about a single, no, a pair of human shapes. One shape was revealed to be a woman, a very dark-skinned woman, supremely lovely and curvaceous, dressed in a white fluffy bathrobe that rather than detracting from her beauty, simply added to it in an almost unsettling and alluring way. Around her neck hung a brilliant silver necklace from which swung an ankh pendant, startling against her skin in its brightness. The other figure, a starkly male figure, stood upright, and unfolded it's pale and smooth arms from around the first's tender figure. As his arms dropped back to his sides, he was revealed to have exceptionally white, marble-like skin and a bare chest, with small pale nipples above a lean, almost fragile physique that terminated in jet-black low slung jeans on narrow hips. The wings folded up and back, their action combined with the displacement of air caused by such a sudden arrival, sent a gust of wind through the apartment, setting curtains to swaying, and knocking one potted plant completely off its pedestal so it fell to shatter on the tiles, roots akimbo in the broken shards of terracotta. The two stepped apart, and the dark wings folded down and back until they almost vanished from view, as improbable as that seemed, and then he wore only a loose, soft black suede jacket that exposed only a thin line of white flesh and a similar pendant on a silver chain.
Katrona looked over at the fallen plant, "Well done March, well done!"
Marchiesis leant over, his pendant swinging forward, and placed his forefinger on the plant. Starting at the point of contact, a dark stain spread through the plant until it was saturated with the new pigment, it's leaves turned brown and fell off, and with an almost audible sigh, it relaxed into death.
"What are you doing !?" exclaimed Kate, reaching for the plant, "You had no need to do that!"
"Putting it out of its misery", he replied while straightening his jacket, "which is precisely what you were sent down here to do to Him! He'd read a large portion of the book, and you knew what needed to be done. I was sent to watch, and stay at a safe distance, while you, the more skilled and closer to the Divine, were to take care of it. We had feared he might have developed some skill from his readings, which is why you were selected."
Marchiesis relaxed against the kitchen bench as he continued, "Perhaps I would have been a better choice, none of this up-close and personal stuff for me, give me the archetypical thunderbolt from the sky and none of this mess would have occurred!"
"Yes, " she retorted, turning to face him, "and Simeon would have taken the book before you'd been close enough to snare it! It's not that poor student we need to look out for, it's Simeon! You too were briefed on the risk that man poses, but we are forbidden to deal with him directly."
Shrugging, Kate pressed past him into the kitchen where she filled the kettle, "Besides, He has shown remarkable skill in evading Simeon, and this does not surprise me! Coffee? I need to think..."
Marchiesis raised an eyebrow, "Yes, I'll try this 'coffee', but what is that supposed to mean, how can you show sympathy for Him when he stole your wings, directly or indirectly!?"
Kate shrugged for the second time, then noted the fact that she no longer felt pain from the site of her barbaric amputation. She placed the kettle back on the bench, plugged it in and switched it on. As the gentle susurrus of the slowly boiling water filled the room, she massaged her left shoulder and turned back to Marchiesis.
"Well, my healing ability isn't impeded. I feel almost normal again, well, normal for a human!"
"I sensed something in Him, March, something I've sensed in no other human. Oh, I'm not talking about the potential for good, I've felt that in many humans over the millennia and never had a qualm about quashing them when it served the Divine Will. He has a taint, an aura, something different. It felt to me as if her were animated by a Spark of the Divine as well, only a shadow, admittedly, of the Spark that You and I carry, but you know the old rules against fratricide amongst us. Ever since Shaitan and his rebellion we've been physically and psychically unable to harm those animated by the Spark. He carries it too."
"When I felt that within Him, I couldn't destroy Him. I could let Him die, but before I moved, He had snared me, and I was lost."
Marchiesis started from his slouch and took a step forward, "What! You mean ... You mean He is descended from ... From The Son? That cannot be! We've watched through the two intervening millennia, and seen the Divine Blood die, that line is extinct, and has been for centuries!"
"No, Marchiesis. No, I do not think he is descended from The Son, that is not the Spark I felt. It is inherited though, that's the only way it can be passed on, in humans at least. But what does that mean?"
"Kate, you might not know this, but there is another way. The Spark is in the blood. These humans have begun to move it, willingly, between themselves. A blood transfusion might do it. Although the result of that in a human would be .... unstable. But where would the Divine Blood have come from?"
With a burp of steam and a click, the kettle turned itself off. Kate retrieved the coffee grinds from the bench-top, retrieved two new mugs from the cupboard while pausing only briefly to look at the shattered mug in the sink, and began preparing the coffee.
"White or black?" She enquired, "Sugar or none?"
Marchiesis sniffed the scent of the coffee in the air, and although it seemed alien to him, inhaled deeply of the velvet aroma.
"Black," he said, smiling, "unsweetened ... I think."
Simeon walked along the dark hall, alone, just as he always did, inspecting the hallway for any sign of intrusion as he walked, finding none. Behind him, the tracks of his footfalls in the dust crowded over and through each other, this path he had walked many times. If he had turned to look at those footfalls, he would have noticed with grim satisfaction that they all emanated from the same two footprints, and they all faced the same way. The accuracy with which he landed, the precision of his final placement, was a testament to the skill he employed with his teleport cantrip and an indication of the razor sharp focus of his mind, and his attention to detail. The walk served to settle his nerves, re-seat his consciousness back in his rapidly relocated body, but it was necessitated by another need. The room to which he walked, the Assembly Hall, was protected by a geas that had been set in place by ALL the members of the Assembly, so strong was it that it was impossible to project oneself inside, and deadly to attempt materialisation there. The Assembly still never spoke the name of the first member to attempt to breach the protection of that room. His remains, if remains they could be called, had been spread over a good six metres of hallway.
His boots beat a slow and rhythmic pulse against the floor, becoming a hollow and echoing retort as the carpet gave way to the raw concrete. As he stepped over the first of several almost invisible lines inscribed into the concrete he stopped.
"Myridan Temperatu Nokilic Vadethme" muttered Simeon under his breath while with his left hand he scribed a quick symbol in the void before him. A brief gust of wind blasted the hair back from his face and a soft glow illuminated his countenance, providing just enough light to pick out his features. A thickness in the air gathered like a heat haze near the floor and slowly crept up to hang before Simeon's face.
A soft, barely audible, sibilant voice seemed to emanate from the haze.
"Whhhho comesssss? Ahhhhhhhhh..... Ssssssimeonnnnnnn."
The thickness took on an indistinct form, something akin to a face, something akin to Simeon's face.
"Yes spirit, I have come. Now let me pass!" said Simeon with a tone of impatience, "I don't have tim to banter with you!"
"Ahhhhhh ... But what issss timmmmmmme to mmmmmeeeeee Ssssimeonnnnnnnn? I have waited here for yearssssss ..... Annnnnd I holllld the keyyyyyyy to passsssage ...."
The indistinct face became more solid and increased in clarity until a smile could be detected on its countenance. It continued, "Ssssinccce you imprissssoned me heeeeere I have serrrrrved you wellllllllll. Your commandssss I have folllllowed. Yet stilllll I hoverrrrr, betweeeeennnnn life and deathhhhhhhh, suspended frommmm my fate by you and your peerssssssss ... Timmmmme is somethinnnng I have in excessssssssss..."
The face danced backwards as Simeon raised his hand towards it, as if to strike.
"Raisssse not your hannnnnd to meeeeeee ... I guard thisssss passssage and heeere by yourrrr ownnnn authhhhority do I rule .... Do you ssssubject yourssself to the tessssst ?"
"Spirit, you exist at our sufference, it would serve you well to recall that whenever you feel impertinent! I will subject myself to your test, as always, but I remind you that my time is not to be wasted Spirit! I can remove you from existance as easily as we bound you here!"
"Yourrrr threatsss are no usssse againssst meeeee Simeonnnnnnn! The releassse you threatennnn me with isss what I cravvvvve, thisssss you knowwwww. But while I am bounnnd here I ssserve yourrrr commannnnd. The tesssssst beginsssss!"
Simeon braced himself as the Spirit swept towards him and the reality of the hallway faded around him into darkness.