Leoran origin story! Yay! It is weird and present-tense and gives Bianca some desperately needed character development and I had to do all sorts of interesting research into the year 2546 BC! Also it contains many long sentences.
Leoran, Bianca, and Kaos, 2,311 words, G.
Leoran is alone. Finally. It’s been a hell of a day. Maybe two days. His watch is broken and he definitely can’t see the sun from here.
He’s in a library, heavy with the weight of thousands of years of knowledge. It’s dark wood and heavy velvet, row upon row of leather-bound novels and encyclopedias and journals. The windows are stained-glass. It’s much, much more spiritual than a church.
He is curled up in an overstuffed brocaded armchair with the oldest book. It’s small, unassuming. It’s written in cuneiform on metal pages. He can read it with next to no effort. He isn’t, though.
He’s thinking about the fact that he wrote this. Not him, personally – the boy who wrote this wasn’t called Leoran, he was called Jayvern, and he didn’t have black hair and he wasn’t born in England and he couldn’t play the sax – but in all the ways that mattered, they were the same. Leoran runs his hands along the spine of the book and remembers making it, even though he’s never held it before in his life.
The script is neat, precise, aligned perfectly from left to right, just like his Roman-alphabet handwriting. It is a record of his life starting in the year two thousand five hundred and forty-six before Christ, though of course it isn’t marked 2546 BC. At the time, it was the third year of the reign of Enhengal.
The journal seems much more real than anything Leoran has ever seen before. More real than any novel or schoolbook he’s ever held. More real than anything else that’s happened on this surreal, impossible day.
The first entry begins, “I, Jayvern, the sixteenth to hold the title of Infinity, hereby set out to chronicle my efforts…”
Leoran spreads his hand out over the book, the metal cold under his fingers, and leans back against the chair. His wings intrude on his field of vision, black as night and twice as mysterious.
He has wings now. That happened first. Well, what happened first was, he’d been approached by the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life and called a name he’d previously heard only in math class.
He’d been waiting for his turn at bat in fifth-period gym. She’d walked right up to him, through the field and right in front of the coach and the other students, and no one had noticed her at all. It was like a dream, except dreams never smelled like fresh-cut grass and sweat, and his imagination never could have come up with her scent of incense and snow.
She stood in front of him. “Infinity,” she said. “Take my hand.” And he did, without even a moment of hesitation. It was like he knew her already. And once he touched her, he did.
Her name was Bianca, and she was the Angel of Aries, and her title was Fury, and her blood-red wings meant death.
And he knew himself, suddenly, much better than he ever had before. Because his title was Infinity, and his black wings meant eternity. And he remembered how to use them.
He spreads them out now, trying to find a comfortable position for them. They’re awkward, the feathers make his back itch, and they make him overbalance half the time. They’re big, strong things, and though the bones are hollow – as are all his bones now, he hears, though the magic makes that not matter so much – he’s sure he could hit someone with his wing as hard as he could with his fist.
He ends up with them draped over the arms of the chair, trying to ignore the broken feather stabbing him in the shoulder blade.
So then they’d gone flying. He can’t quite remember where they’d gone – places all over Earth, places he’d never seen before that at any other time would have taken his full attention, but at the time they all blurred together, joined by the pure rush of flight.
He can fly now. He may never get over this. It’s like he’d always dreamed of. He can put up with itchy feathers and awkward steps for the joy of flight.
He wonders if everyone dreams of flying, or if it was just him, from the memories he has of his past. He hopes that it was just him, because he can remember the longing, looking out his window at the sky. Some days it felt like his heart would fly out of his chest, he wanted it so bad. He hopes no one has to go through that and not, someday, get wings.
When they’d landed, it was not on Earth. It was a barren, desert landscape, reddish dust and no wind – Mars. He had stopped breathing at some unnoticed point before they’d broken atmosphere. He hadn’t noticed.
Her castle was old and reddish-brown and perfect, a conflation of Gothic flying buttresses and turrets with geometric garnet-and-gold tiles, tessellating endlessly through the hallways. He’d been taken into the main hall and the front room, and both had been large, but he is sure that there are far more and grander places there.
He’d asked her to clear a few things up, and she’d obliged. It hadn’t taken long. The memories had all been there for him to access, when he’d tried.
He looks around the library – his library – again. “Infinity Angel Capricorn,” he says, his lips barely moving. “Whose power is in knowledge and whose wings are black as space.” That’s what she’d said. And, “Whose life is devoted to order and learning, whose magic deals in boundaries and limits,” he repeats. Words he knows he’s never said before, but that he wrote, a long time ago. In the journal he’s holding, in fact.
His fingers run across the embossed script, reading each word out loud in a language his tongue finds unfamiliar and his mind finds like coming home.
He’d asked, “Where is the Lioness?”, because that was important. The ruler of Leo, the oldest of all of them, she should have been the one to find him.
He remembers, from lives past, her golden wings being the first thing he knows, like waking up to the morning sun.
“She’s not here,” Bianca had said, facing him across a marble table older than Stonehenge. “She’s not with me.”
“You’re her sister,” he’d said.
Her amber eyes had gone flat. “Families fall out.”
“Where are the others?” he’d wanted to know.
She’d said nothing, for some time, staring at her short, red-lacquered fingernails. “They’re with her.”
“Why am I with you?” he’d asked.
She’d given him a long, cool stare, and then said, “Because you are the last one, and I needed you.”
He’d stood up then, turning away from her, and clenched his fists. “I’m not a game piece,” he’d said, all but growling.
She’d remained sitting, as composed then as when he’d met her. “I didn’t say you were. I said I needed you.”
He remembers being angry, and confused, because Bianca is supposed to be a weapon – not a leader. Miya is the leader. Leoran is the researcher. Bianca is the killer. They all have roles. This new aspect of Bianca was strange, unfamiliar, a strain of wrong against this day of right.
“What’s changed? This isn’t right. I can’t remember…” he’d said, turning back to her in the red and honey light pouring through her windows. The sun’s rays set fire to her wings and her eyes, a holy vision.
Gabriel, he thinks now. No, Michael, a warrior. Or maybe Lucifer, fallen from grace. But even if any of those names are real, she is none of them. She is only Fury, of Aries, wishing she could lead.
He turns a sheet in his journal, and another, until he comes to a passage he knew would be there. He reads aloud words in a wild and dead language that translate themselves, in his mind, to: “Upon the fourth day of the harvest month, the angel Destiny of Pisces spoke thus: that in a time farther from now than now is from the beginning of our lines, the angel Fury of Aries will grow resentful, and overthrow the angel Lioness of Leo. And it may come to pass that our lines will end.”
He wrote that ages ago, and he remembers hearing it: how Destiny had looked terrified, the words of prophecy tumbling out of his lips in a language that hadn’t been invented yet. How shocked Fury had been, and how the Lioness had simply fainted, gone white as sand.
He runs his hand down the edge of the metal page and cuts himself. On instinct, he sticks his finger in his mouth; when he takes it out again there’s no evidence he was ever injured. Much faster healing times. He’ll get used to it, sometime. His blood tastes different, but he can’t say why.
She’d said, “If humans can change, so can we. I can’t live the same way anymore.”
He’d said, “We’re not human. We gave that up for this.” He’d thrown his arm out in a circle, encompassing her castle, her wings, the auras he’d felt clashing around them.
“She killed you. She put you in danger, where you weren’t supposed to be, and you died. Does that not bother you?” she’d asked, finally standing up. She’d flapped her wings, her skirt swirling in the disturbed half-pressure atmosphere.
He’d shaken his head. “No. I came back. I’m standing here now, and I’m supposed to be with her.”
For a moment, he’d seen her aura, black and red and terrifying, the shape of a raven as she glared at him. He’d glared right back and stood his ground, because though he hadn’t known much he’d known that she was against the Lioness, and that was enough to sign her death warrant.
But she is older than he; the last time she died was nigh on fifty years ago, and he is new to his powers again. He is glad it didn’t come to a fight, because if it had, he would have died again. And he might not have come back the same.
It hadn’t come to a fight. She’d backed down first, turning away from him with her eyes closed. “Then go to her. Go to your precious Lioness. And when she betrays you again, don’t come back to me,” she’d said.
He’d left. He’d known where he was going, of course. Saturn was home. That had led him here.
And here he sits, hands on a journal older than some species, in a room that speaks of ages. Ancient, just like him. Or some part of him, anyway.
He hears the click of boot heels on hardwood, and the door opens to reveal a young woman. She’s small, with black hair, white wings, and green eyes. She wears combat boots, green fatigues, and a blank expression. There is a small red fox by her feet.
“You’re Infinity?” she asks. “The Lioness sent me.”
“Kaos,” he says. It’s not a question – he knows her well, or did. “She did? Miya? Is she – where is she? Why didn’t she…” He stops. Come for me, he wants to add, but doesn’t.
“Bianca got there first. I only found you – I’m sorry. I didn’t find your aura until yesterday, and her raven…” she says. Her voice is rough, like she doesn’t use it much, and lower than he would have expected. She keeps her wing-tips well clear of the floor, bouncing slightly on her toes. She moves constantly. She does not fit in this library where nothing has changed in thousands of years.
“It’s not your fault,” he says, and it isn’t. Kaos sees auras. He knows this. He also knows that she follows orders, and that she wouldn’t have looked for him until the Lioness told her to. When she betrays you again, he remembers.
“I should not have let the location slip. It is my fault.” She bows, her long braid falling over her shoulder to pool on the ground in front of her. “Forgive me, Infinity.” She is frozen still and it worries him in a way he can’t define.
“Forgiven, then,” he says. She straightens, returns to motion. Much better. Her fox scrabbles up her fatigues to sit on her shoulder and stare at him. Its eyes match hers.
“The Lioness says that you'll be formally introduced tomorrow, and that you should try to rest,” Kaos tells him. “Meet her when dawn comes on Venus,” she adds.
“How will I know when dawn comes on Venus?” he asks. There’s something he’s missing, someone…
And then a flood of light comes from behind him, casting long sharp shadows from their feet to the bookshelves; Kaos does not even blink as she looks into the light, her wings so bright as to be almost invisible. He turns around, a hand held up to block the light, and finds it unnecessary. The room returns to its former state as the source comes into view.
It – she – is an elegant, long-necked bird with feathers of red and gold, her eyes glittering like black glass as she spreads her wings. He holds out his arm, on instinct, and she lands.
“Ildri,” he says. The phoenix nods, confirming her name.
“She knows. Tomorrow, Infinity,” Kaos says, and turns to leave.
“Wait. Fury – How long was I down there? What did I miss?” he asks.
She doesn’t turn back, but answers with a tinge of regret in her voice. “Eighteen years,” she says. “Things change. Tomorrow. Goodbye.” She walks out of his library. He runs after her, but she’s disappeared. Teleported.
Ildri comments that he shouldn’t worry, that the two of them will find out later.
“Yeah. You’re right.”
Before he goes back to the armchair, he finds the bookshelf labeled ‘Aries’ and pulls out the latest journal.
