Chapter 8

“When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical”, Logical Song, Supertramp

The Abbey, March 1^st

“They’re getting closer...” Delphine tried to hiss the whisper to the Abbess, but despite the sounds of the water the words carried easily.

“Both sides.” Gabriel noted, looking back and forth. “Sounds as though there are more of them out there...”

Caerys closed her eyes, trying to see if she could focus on which was the more pressing concern, but she couldn’t seem to get anything to clarify. When she opened her eyes Nazgul was trying to shepherd the two nuns back towards the waters, as Gabriel came back from the darkened corridor that led into the Abbey.

“Can we get by them?” Caerys asked as he passed her, but he just shook his head. “I can’t see anything, something’s blocking me.”

“Them?” he asked, peering through the ornamental bars towards the breech in the wall.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “I can’t even tell that.”

“It’s the Abbey,” Delphine interjected, as the Abbess tried to hush her.

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter,” the Abbess interrupted as Delphine started to answer, but Caerys waved her away and focussed on the younger woman.

“The Abbey? But not the whole compound, I could see outside, and when we were in that waiting room.”

“Delphine,” the Abbess tried to call the younger woman to heel, but she steeled herself and turned away.

“The Abbey, the older parts at least, was built to suppress seers abilities.”

“Not just to hide from scrying,” Caerys clarified, “but to suppress the ability.” Delphine nodded.

“So it’s not hiding from us, it’s ... it’s a hideway for us?”

“It’s a ... store? A vault.” Delphine tried to explain.

“Sound like a prison.” Gabriel commented.

“No, it’s not like that.” Delphine appeared shocked.

“Are there seers here now?” Caerys wondered, then thought back. “Say, down in the cellar where you were trying to encourage us to go?”

“Yes, that’s where we keep them, for safety.” Delphine admitted.

“Safe from who?” Delphine just shrugged, turning to the Abbess. “Safe from who?” Caerys asked again, turning her attention to the older Nun as well.

“I don’t...”

“Too late!” Gabriel interrupted. “They’re closing in on the breach.” Caerys and the Nuns turned to look past the waters to where shadows could be seen approaching, talking amongst themselves.

“Who is it?” The Abbess whispered, and Caerys strained to pick out the voices; most of them were indecipherable, muttering quietly, but one stood out.

“Just find me the Norns!” Her Father. Cold sweat broke out across her shoulders, and she clamped her jaw shut tight to keep in a scream. She knew she should be past this, she’d beaten him before - well, Gabriel had beaten him, but she’d helped. She’d been free. No, she was free.

Nazgul moved towards the breach, but Gabriel called her back, leaping through the waterfall with a green, acrid hiss and puff of steam, open sores and burns appearing on his arms, the heat burning away parts of his shirt from his back.

“Guard the back!” he hissed at Nazgul, obviously pained. The first, unfamiliar figures appeared into the gap in the wall, and Delphine let loose with a three-round burst from a rifle that sputtered against some unseen shield without achieving anything.

Gabriel held himself upright, although the burns were obviously painful. Whilst she couldn’t use her seer vision, Caerys couldn’t stand by and do nothing, and it was a simple enough bit of elemancy to dry out his hair and shirt - she couldn’t do anything about the burns already there, but she could stop it getting worse.

“Help him,” Giselle hissed at Sophie, grasping her elbow. Sophie gestured towards him as well, and the burns quickly healed over, although the new skin appeared red and mottled, tufts of coarse hair and short spines erupting.

“Soph?” Caerys asked as the Doctor blanched and gestured again, pulling her arm out of Giselle’s grip. The spines and hairs retracted and Gabriel’s usual skin returned. “What was that?”

“Je ne sais pas... ” she whispered, obviously shocked. Before Caerys could probe any further, her father emerged. Music started from somewhere, Gabriel presumably, the clown song from the circus.

“How droll, Galahad.” he sneered. Delphine fired again, to no more effect, and Caerys had to grab her and drag her down as some of her father’s followers returned fire. Once the gunfire stopped, her father stepped forward a little, eyeing Gabriel - Caerys could see that he was wary, although she guessed it might not be obvious to the others.

“I don’t have a quarrel with you, Galahad. I don’t even want my wretch-child back, at least not today.”

“Oh, not today?” Gabriel rested Light’s shaft on his foot, “That’s OK then. How magnanimous of you.”

“I have come for the Norns, nothing more.”

“Atheists, agnostics and the non-religious?”

“Not nones, you cretin. Norns. Moirai, the Rozhanitsy...”

“Seers.” Caerys clarified, raising her head slightly to get a better view. Her father hadn’t brought as many men as she’d expected, barely half a dozen, none of whom she recognised. “You’re still looking for something, then.”

“Everything, Caerys,” he admitted, gesturing for his men to spread out. Gabriel held his position close to the waterfall, ignoring the occasional drip that splashed the back of his arms. “I seek everything. If you weren’t locked up like a Sultan’s harem you’d feel it yourself. Camael has them locked up, here, I’ve come to set them free.

“Take them for yourself, more like.” Caerys snapped back. There were Seers here! Trapped, perhaps they were as unable to use their powers as she was?

“Well, why don’t you wait here,” Gabriel suggested, “and we’ll send someone to see if they want to take you up on your invitation?”

“It wasn’t an invitation.”

There was a brief scuffle off to Caerys’ right, and one of her father’s men dropped to the floor next to the bars dividing the room, blood flowing freely from a stab-wound in his chest. Nazgul slowly walked along the other side of the fence, rattling her spear against the bars as she walked.

“A Styganor!” Her father seemed, if anything, excited at the prospect. “It’s already begun!” Nazgul appeared a little less confident, briefly, but carried on her slow approach to the centre of the room. Styganor? Caerys tried to place the reference. Amazons... Before she could focus any further the sounds of approaching figures from within the Abbey started to increase, and Nazgul stepped away from the bars towards the dark corridor.

“More inbound,” the Abbess declared, pointing for Delphine to aim behind them instead. With Sophie’s magic possibly misbehaving and Nazgul focussed on protecting their backs, she realised it was down to her to try to help Gabriel. Nothing she’d learnt recently would either be strong enough or quick enough to help. Desperate for ideas she dipped into her bag, settling her hands on her Tarot deck without needing to look.

Where am I? She pictured the question clearly, drawing out an image of a red-headed woman tied and blindfolded, penned in by a row of blades laid out like a fence - the eight of swords - inverted. Self-limiting thoughts, but also continuing struggle...

So how do I move forward? A man with a staff, weary and injured, but with more staffs behind him to use, a look of hope and determination on his face - the nine of wands. Perseverance, staying the course, staying true to your nature...

Slipping the cards back into their protective case, Caerys closed her eyes and focussed on the charms built into the walls around her which were suppressing her natural abilities.

The Abbey, March 1^st

As the ring tightened on Gabriel he turned a slow, wary circle Light held loosely in one hand, he pointed briefly at each of the five figures before settling back to point at Gilgamesh lurking behind his allies.

“Caerys,” Sophie whispered, looking for guidance, but the redhead wasn’t paying attention, golden light seeping out from her tightly closed eyes. Looking for alternatives, she glanced over her shoulder to where Nazgul was lunging with her own spear into the darkness of the corridor leading into the Abbey, with Delphine and the Abbess peering over her shoulder.

“Zut!” she whispered, casting about looking for Giselle, unable to find her. Her instinct was to go to where Christophe hunched against the bars, eyes wide as he stared at Gabriel’s motionless form in the middle of the circle, but she pushed it down and moved in the opposite direction - if she was going to do something she didn’t want to attract attention his way.

“Go the other side!” Giselle hissed, and Sophe spotted her hunched in the shadows at the edge of the fence, somehow disappearing into the stripes cast by the bars. “Make them split their attention...”

“Christophe,” she began, but Giselle cut her off.

“Exactly, go to him.”

“I’m not putting a target near him,” Sophie explained, bluntly. It appeared the other woman might argue for a moment, but a flash of movement had them both turn to see Gabriel return to his motionless stance as two of Gilgamesh’ henchmen crumpled to the floor, with one of the others clutching at a heavily bleeding wound on his shoulder.

For his part, Gilgamesh merely smiled, making some intricate gestures similar to what Caerys did sometimes, and the two fallen figures started to stir, rising to their feet as the flowing blood on the injured man slowed.

“As I believe the saying goes, these days,” Gilgamesh chuckled, “I can do this all day.”

“This is not good...” Giselle muttered, and Sophie edged closer.

“Why? He can beat them, right?”

“As many times as he wants,” Giselle nodded, “but they know that too. They’ve spread out enough that he can’t get all of them in one pass, so there’s always a few to keep Gilgamesh safe while he brings the fallen back.” Two of them darted in, and Gabriel flashed into motion again, two sharp clashes of metal and Gabriel returned to the centre, eyeing the five figures again. Sophie realised they were all identical, and wondered if perhaps they were some magical creation.

“So he needs to get Gilgamesh?”

“Except that they’re guarding him - if Gabriel presses the attack to get to him they’ll be able to come at his back, and he can’t take enough of them down in one go to clear a path...”

“So what can you help?”

“Me?” Giselle stared at her.

“You’ve admitted that you have magic, use it.”

“I don’t have anything that could go up against Gilgamesh,” Giselle sighed. “It would be like throwing twigs at a hurricane. What about yours?”

“It’s... ça sal comporte mal.”

“It ... includes wrong?” Sophie growled in frustration, taking a breath to calm herself.

“It is ... misbehaving.”

“If nothing happens we’re no worse off.” Giselle pointed out.

“It’s not that it doesn’t come, it... tortille ... it does other things.”

“He’s going to lose if you don’t do something!” Giselle snapped. “If that’s what your magic does, just accept it. Own it. But do something.” Gabriel spun again, this time stepping out from the centre, taking two steps along the wall as he tried to move around the side of the group towards Gilgamesh, but the formation shifted as Gilgamesh fell back away from him, and when Gabriel stepped over three fallen figure this time he was trailing blood of his own from a shallow gash on his shoulder. To Sophie’s eyes it seemed to blur and shift slightly; she focused closer, and could see something purple and writhing nestling in the wound, fighting against Gabriel’s own healing ability. The purple mist snaked away, linking to the spiked metal knuckles the five identical soldiers were wearing, and from those back to Gilgamesh.

“Excellent,” Gilgamesh growled, flexing his knuckles as the three fallen figures got back to their feet. “A few more of those and I won’t have to feed them at all, they’ll just keep on stealing life away from you until you’re a withered husk.”

“What is that?” Sophie asked Giselle, pointing to the purple trail, but Giselle shook her head.

“What’s what?”

“The magic, those purple contrails?”

“I can’t see anything, what do they look like.”

“Smoke, clouds ... from Gabriel’s shoulder to the coup de poing Américain.”

“What is it doing?”

“I think it’s stopping him healing.”

“Then why are you asking me what it’s doing if you already know that?”

“I don’t know that ... I’m...”

“Guessing?” Sophie nodded. “No, you aren’t. It’s magic, it’s natural, it’s intrinsic, it’s alive - trust it, let it flow.”

Sophie felt herself reaching out with the power, not trying to do anything, just trying to ‘feel’ the tendrils; she could feel something, energy, pulsing along the clouds, sucking life out of Gabriel through his wounded shoulder. After her last effort she didn’t trust herself to try healing him, so instead she tried to stop the flow; she tried to ‘squeeze’ the flow shut, but there was nothing substantial there to grasp at, and she tried to ‘push’ the energy back with no better effect.

Gabriel burst into motion again, a flash of lightning sparking out in one direction hitting a figure in the chest as he lashed out the other way, cleaving straight down through one of the soldiers’ heads as far his heart. The lightning, though, grounded through the mist to no effect, and he barely dodged beneath a swinging fist aimed at the back of his head before slowly returning to the centre of the circle again.

Still not wanting to risk doing anything to Gabriel directly, Sophie instead reached for the nearest of the soldiers, ignoring the mist and instead seeing what she could do, but the soldiers were blank to her; where she’d become used to ‘feeling’ organs and tissue, blood-flow and body fluids, instead there was ... a hole. Nothing, no life, no biology.

“What are they?”

“Maybe your Seer knows,” Giselle sneered. Sophie gave her a withering look. “Sorry,” Giselle muttered, obviously anything but, “what do you think they are?”

“They’re ... nothing?”

“This magic, your magic, it heals, right?”

“Sometimes,” Sophie whispered, with a flush as she remembered Gabriel’s skin sprouting tufts of spikes and hair. “I can see how things work with it.”

“Like the guns? Or magical things, like those knuckle-dusters?”

“The what?”

“The ... brass knuckles.”

“Oh ... no ... people, animals.”

“So it’s linked to life energy ... so those are constructs of some sort. Makes sense, that’s why they don’t seem too upset every time Gabriel kills one of them.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re ... they’re tools, they aren’t alive, your magic probably can’t affect them.”

“But ... so why can I see the mist?”

“Because ... because they’re being powered by life energy...”

Sophie reached out, again, feeling the pulsing along the five tendril leading from Gabriel’s shoulder. They pulsed in sequence; one, then the next, through the five and back to the first. Gabriel was keeping up with the drain, for now, it seemed. Following the trail, Sophie ignored the mist and instead followed the flow of the energy to the soldiers, followed the flow inside them to where it settled in some square block set into their chests, where she would have expected to find a heart and lungs. Focussing on the nearest, she tried to interrupt the flow, but it simply seeped around whatever block she’d tried to put in place.

But I made it change. she realised, ignoring the beads of sweat forming across her shoulders as she focussed. Reaching out again she instead ignored the soldier and followed the other arm of the tendril to Gilgamesh, trying to tug it away from him, with an idea of perhaps rerouting it back to Gabriel.

“NO!” Gilgamesh yelled, hurling something in her direction. Sophie didn’t have time to see what it was as Giselle yanked on her arm to drag her down out of the way, but as she panicked she felt the magic erupt from her, breaking away and warping from her. It lanced into Gabriel, then flowed to where the energy seeped out of his shoulder. Spearing along the pathway of the mist it lanced into the five figures, wrapping around the stone tablets in their chests and then starting up the flow again towards Gilgamesh, pulling the energy back as it went.

She felt Gilgamesh’ suddenly wary attempts to reassert authority over the flow as the sandy floor hit her shoulder, but the magic wouldn’t be denied and she heard him give a dry gasp as the energy started to suck out of him. He cut the connection out of desperation, but she felt the shift in him as, out of her line of sight, he lengthened and slimmed, reverting to a winged, clawed form she realised was his natural shape.

Deprived of the magical connection, the five figures slowed in their movements, abruptly, blackening and shrivelling before turning to ash-like dust. The five stone tablets dropped to the floor, shattering on impact, and with nowhere else to go the energy rushed back down the dissipating purple mist to crash back into Gabriel.

Sophie rose to her knees to peer over the fence, slipping out of Giselle’s grasp, in time to see both Gabriel and Gilgamesh facing off, the elongated, distorted humanoid figure lashing out with claws as Gabriel spun Light in a tight circle to ward him off. The blade slashed out a few times, but bounced off with a dull noise, and Gabriel slapped at an encroaching claw with the butt of the spear to better effect to gain a yard of space.

Suddenly, everything went black. Beside her, on the floor, Giselle groaned in pain, and Caerys voice came from behind them.

“Fuck’s sake, Gabriel, give a girl a warning...” The darkness disappeared, and the two figure were gone. Sophie hurriedly looked around, then a flash of movement above her drew her sightline up. Gilgamesh, wings beating, hung in the space above the centre of the circle, looking about for Gabriel.

Gabriel dropped from the darkness of the domed ceiling, lashing out with the butt of Light twice with an audible crack as the base of Gilgamesh’ wings snapped. Still falling, Gabriel grasped him by the neck as he passed by, spinning them both and casting the demon into the waterfall.

Gilgamesh let out a scream of pain, crawling out with horrendous burns hissing and smoking across his back, one leathery, bat-like wing burnt through in places, and the other gone entirely. One foot dragged pitifully, the ankle apparently broken, and the other was stripped of flesh, leaving a narrow, bloody set of furrows like some macabre plough.

Gabriel had disappeared from mid-air, and reappeared stood over the spout of the waterfall, straining as he held a fridge-sized block of fallen masonry above his head. Veins pulsing in his shoulders through the torn shirt, his face red with the exertion, he launched the stonework down at the crawling demon below.

Seeing the peril, Gilgamesh cast about desperately, reaching out in Caerys’ direction with a dark lash that tried to wrap around the redhead, but instead scattered against a mass of golden threads that appeared, spreading out to the darkness around them. The dark lash thickened, the golden threads started to bend and flex, and as the stone landed with a wet noise everything flashed white.

Helmand Province, 29th June, 13 years previously

Gabriel turned the emerald grey beret in slow circles, vaguely aware when the sword and Corinthian helmet badge came into view, but focussed elsewhere. Despite the laboured noises coming from the fan in the corner, the air was still and cold beads of sweat trickled down his sides to his waistband inside the dirt-stained training rig. Noise outside the door of the stifling room caught his attention, and he was rising to his feet as his squadmates pushed the door open.

“Sir,” Harpic nodded, forcing a smile, tossing Gabriel’s Half-Lovats uniform on the worn table. “The Admiral wants to see you.”

“What happened?” Bleach half-whispered, checking over his shoulder as he stood in the half-open doorway. “This was supposed to be a cake-walk?” Gabriel was already stripping off the combat fatigues as the question came, which gave him a moment’s respite to hide his hesitation.

“Bad intel,” he shrugged, tossing the dirty shirt onto the table.

“Mission creep?” Dinger asked, pushing past Bleach.

“I don’t know about creep, but I had to adapt.”

“The Admiral doesn’t like deviations from the mission,” Bleach sympathised. Gabriel knew better than most.

“Could you get those back to my room?” he pointed to the pile of dirty uniform. “Did you bring the boots?

“‘Course!” Bleach dug into a canvas bag and pulled them out, placing them down by the chair. “This seems more than just a debrief.”

“Who knows?” Gabriel shrugged. “But I’m not going to find out sat here.”

“Good luck.” Dinger offered, quietly, and Gabriel tried a reassuring nod as he slipped past them into the corridor. Without any windows it was, if anything, marginally cooler than the room he’d been in, but the heat hit like a hammer as he stepped out into the sunlight, squinting as he fit the beret in its familiar place on his head and turned across the old barracks towards the modern command centre.

The metal staircase up to the second floor of the temporary facility still rocked under his feet, but he comfortably hustled up two steps at a time - usually it was seeking the relief of the air-conditioned interior, but this time it was just to get it over with.

“Lieutenant Donner.” The guard inside the door greeted him with a nod, calling the name loud enough to prep those further inside the centre.

“Sergeant,” he acknowledged, removing his beret again and raising an eyebrow questioningly as he looked up and down the single corridor.

“Main Briefing Room, sir.” The corridor was empty, the quiet disturbed only by the creak of the decking under the thin carpet tiles as he strode past the comms-centre and the Administrative offices to the plain door at the end. He raised his arm to knock, but paused as a familiar perfume wafted from nearby.

“I presume this is not going to be pleasant?” Giselle half-whispered, stepping from one of the nearby offices. “He’s not happy. Really not happy.”

“You’re not going to ask what happened?”

“You can’t tell me anyway,” she pointed out.

“That doesn’t usually stop you.”

“True,” she smiled, but he could see it was a tight smile. “Be careful in there, this is more than his usual reaction to mission gone bad.”

“It didn’t go badly,” Gabriel shrugged. “That’s what’s so strange here.”

“Well, you can tell me what you can tell me later, but he’ll have seen you crossing the courtyard, you need to get in.” She glanced up the corridor, then rose on her toes to kiss his cheek gently. “Good luck.”

Gabriel watched her retreat down the corridor, not taking his eyes off her as he reached up and rapped once, firmly, on the door.

“Come.” came the curt, sharp response. Inside the Admiral stood facing away, out the window, while his aide and one of the locals sat either side of the long table.

“Admiral?” Gabriel closed the door and stood at ease, folded beret clasped behind his back.

“Do you realise what you’ve done?” Gabriel knew what the Admiral was going to say before he said it; not a prediction, not even the vague sense of deja vu, but a firm memory. This had happened before, this...

“Do realise what you’ve done?” The Admiral turned to face him, his face carefully schooled to a neutral expression but the tension around his eyes clear to anyone that knew the signs.

“In what regard, Sir?”

He’s not going to like that.

“In what regard?” He stalked to the broad desk and lifted a file, tossing it along the table to where Gabriel stood. “How many ‘regards’ are there, here, Lieutenant.”

I didn’t go off-mission, Gabriel reminded himself, even as he felt himself reaching for the file as he’d done originally.

He turned the file to read the front cover, confirming it was the mission he’d just returned from.

“Where, in there, was there an instruction to wander off on a jolly of your own design?”

“Sir, the brief was incomplete, when...”

“So this is our fault?”

Why is there a blame at all? It was what had confused him the first time, what he’d not been able to understand.

“Sir, I was the officer on the ground, I had to respond to the situation in front of me.”

“You were tasked with collecting information from a computer, documents if they were present. Did you return with either of those?”

“It was not a military...”

Even now he could picture the children playing in the dusty yard, dust clinging to their white, sleeveless vests, baggy trousers cinched tight at the ankle above shoeless feet as they jumped from rock to rock over the debris from the fallen wall of one of the buildings. Behind them, the women hung carpets and rugs over makeshift lines, beating the dust from them without enthusiasm, their shawls lowered around their necks to air their faces as the spoke quietly to one another.

“The brief clearly indicated that there might not be a military presence.” The Aide - Calvinson? - interjected.

“It wasn’t merely that the military presence wasn’t there,” Gabriel pointed out, “it was that it wasn’t a military site. There was no militia based there, the residents were too relaxed.

The Admiral turned, anger clear in his tightly pursed lips, glinting in his flinty eyes. “Did you retrieve the information?” he stabbed the table with a broad, flat-tipped finger to punctuate each word.

The Aide laid his folder on the table with a sigh; the Admiral glanced down at it and waved for the Aide to put it away. The first time around Gabriel had been focussed on the Admiral, but he took a moment to glance down at the grainy camera stills that sat on the top.

“No, Sir, as per standing orders, I did not enter a civilian area.” He heard his own voice responding, the events continuing as they had before without his input.

“For fuck’s sake, Gabriel,” the Admiral spat, “if standing orders was what was needed, they wouldn’t have called for the SRR.”

Gabriel recalled his surprise at the use of his name, the personalising, especially in front of the silent local. At the time he’d thought it was anger, frustration, and the Admiral had been genuinely angry. But as he recognised the layout of the compound in the images, he realised it had been calculated, something different to capture his attention so he wouldn’t recognise the scene. Wouldn’t link the prone bodies, the wind-blown rugs, the new debris in the yard. Gabriel had pulled out, so he’d sent someone else in, someone heavy-handed. He’d have recognised the yard and addressed it, and Gilgamesh hadn’t wanted that.

“We’re all bound by the standing orders, Adm...” he half-heard himself saying, but he wasn’t interested in the Admiral’s assurance that all Gabriel needed to worry about were his orders. He was realising that, even then, his father had been playing his own game with military pieces...

Omak Airport, Washington, 26th November, 15 years previously

A vision.

Caerys knew, instantly, that although it was real, she wasn’t there; the familiar peripheral haze of a vision, the slightly muted sense of smell and touch, the ever so minor muffling of the sounds.

It took her a few moments to recognise the setting, the vast, cold expanse of the vinyl seat, cracked from two decades of use, the smoke-yellowed fabric of the ceiling and the slow, wallowing bounce that was one of her father’s cars from her childhood. Square lines, square panels, square dials, even the lines of the seats seemed to try to be avoiding any curved edges, dented into compliance by twenty years of use by round-bodied men. She turned, catching a flash of an autumnal, russet dress from the far side of the car. Despite the soft, spongy ride of the car, each change in motion aggravated the unfamiliar pain across her lower back; the heavier bumps sent slight stabbing pains through her lower abdomen.

That day.

Unwilling to experience it again from inside, she drew back with some effort, moving outside of her own memories, feeling the events trying to hold her in place. She couldn’t change anything, couldn’t do anything differently, but she knew she didn’t have to go through the emotions first-hand.

Mr Kessel drove calmly, fully focussed on the road, squinting into the low, early-morning sun struggling to break through the cloud. The air was clear and crisp, bitingly cold, the first really cold snap of the season, a surprise she remembered after the warmth of the previous day. The car pitched heavily, as it always did, as they turned on to the airfield, the grey-bodied plane waiting. If the car was old - ancient, to Caerys’ young eyes - the plane was glisteningly new, a wonder that she wanted to appreciate.