It's pouring rain on this dead-end server and Sarandiel's wings look Wrong.
"I don't think anyone's here," Impulse says. His elytra's too close to breaking for comfort and his quick scout had shown only empty, griefed builds a couple hundred blocks away. "Abandoned. Sarandiel-"
It's choked, harsh, said through gritted teeth. The angel hauls himself to his feet from the boulder he'd been leaning against. His left smallest wing is cocked funny. There's red veining its feathers. All of his eyes are still glowing faintly.
"Hey," Impulse says gently, "we're not in danger. You don't have to move-"
"Sarandiel. Sarandiel, Sarandiel, Sarandiel go here, Sarandiel broaden your area, Sarandiel can you take out three villages instead of two? It'll be fine, Sarandiel's here, he'll just kill everything and I DID and I DO and-!"
The angel's fingers claw against his face and Impulse yells, grabbing his arms. "Dude knock it off!"
"I CAN STILL HEAR HER SCREAMING FOR ME!" Sarandiel shrieks at Impulse, wings flaring, shining bright. "Like she didn't ask him to kill us! Like it was a MISTAKE! Like I ever mattered like ANY of us mattered! I can't take it I can't-"
He collapses against Impulse, sobbing, halo flickering over his head in a bluegold blur.
"Sarandiel?! They said all the Thirds were dead how did you- Scar? JOEL-!"
"Touching as this reunion is we don't have time," Etho says gruffly, guarding the hallway with Impulse as Sarandiel ushers the Queen of Leaf and Shadow out of her cell, her husband's arm tight around her. "Sarandiel do we go back the way we came?"
He shakes his head. "They're already coming on strong. Home troops, so they're rested. Even if Scott keeps his promise She knows I'm here."
"Okay so what's plan B?" Scar demands.
"Also interested in plan B," Tango says as he finishes blocking up the other end of the hallway, three blaze rods down on his head and burning hot enough that his companions are all sweating.
Sarandiel looks down at the floor. "Everyone without wings got those slow falling potions?"
The angel reels back one fist, which begins to glow with a familiar, deadly white light.
"Going down," he says, and punches through the iron floor like it's just dirt.
Impulse rubs Sarandiel's back, making confused, soothing noises.
"She wanted me to stay," Sarandiel whispers. "She kept saying you could all go if I stayed."
"She never would have allowed it," Impulse says.
"You all need to get out of here."
"Bloody how? These STUPID beacons are all locked to blummin' angels!"
"Etho," Sarandiel says, "do it."
And before Impulse can protest, the redstone demon steps forward, wraps one massive clawed hand around Sarandiel's lowest left wing, and tears.
Sarandiel yells as the blood spatters across the quartz but he nods, looking pale. Etho nods back, holding his severed wing tightly.
"What the fuck?" Tango asks.
"Seconded!" Scar says, already notching another arrow to fire past their barricade. A fourth circle angel makes the mistake of sticking her head out and she goes down. The few ninth and eighth circles still in the beacon hall have fled to the far end, and that's good.
Impulse has had just about enough of killing angels.
"As long as someone's holding it it'll activate a beacon," Sarandiel says, swapping his sword to his other hand and pulling out a shield. "Just long enough for you to leave. Now go, I'll cover you."
"Did I fucking stutter?" Sarandiel snarls, Etho and the others already having turned to run for the nearest active beacon. "get out of here, Dippledop!"
His right bottommost wing flaps uselessly against his side, an automatic movement without its companion.
Impulse holds his sword steady and feels acid bubble under his tongue.
"No," he says as their barricade breaks and furious angels come pouring into the beacon hall.
"I can't go back." Sarandiel whispers. "She'll find me. She knows I lived. It's only a matter of time. Leave me here."
"NO." Impulse barks. "I am not leaving you here, I am not letting her have you back."
"She made me. I'm hers. It's only a matter of time."
"Bullshit. You're no more hers than that guy Scott was." Impulse is angry, he realizes, furious. "You're not. You're not even Sarandiel."
The angel looks at him, lost. "but if I'm not Sarandiel who am I?"
"We don't have time to calibrate it-"
"Doesn't matter we're going!"
"Impulse if we don't know where we're going-"
"I don't listen to idiot angels bleeding out on beacons! Hey you!"
The angel is blonde, scrawny, with nine pairs of wings. He gazes up at Impulse, terrified.
The blonde slowly reaches over, wide-eyed. "She's gonna kill me for this," he whispers.
"Better to die free than chained," Sarandiel whispers, sagging against Impulse.
The light engulfs them just as the next wave of angels breaks through the acid-melted doors.
Impulse cups his face. The angel's taller than him. The rain is coming hard and fast but there are no natural mobs spawning; perhaps there was switch built somewhere that's still active.
He closes his eyes and breathes.
It is not the ancestors of his server who whisper to him in the rain. If anything it's that inexorable debt, that ever-evening sensation that we're almost there, it's almost right. You have started to save one another.
You have begun to realize you are worth saving.
The rain continues to pelt. It drips off of his armor, lays thick on Sarandiel's feathers, makes a soft noise as it hits his flickering halo and disappates in puffs of steam quickly swallowed up by the chilled air.
Impulse says it and he Knows it to be true, the way he Knows every syllable of his own Royal Name, the way he Knows when a redstone tic needs to be set higher.
"You are Skizz," he says to the muiltiverse, to that balancing ledger, to his angel. "You are Skizz, who loves drums and calcite and didn't want to die. You're Skizz, and I'm Impulse, and we need to get the hell out of this rain so we can figure out how to get home."
Skizz looks down at him. One hand comes up to gently squeeze his own.
"Skizz?" He says out loud, tasting the syllable. "I- why? Why does it.."
"Why does anything?" Impulse asks. "Come on, Skizz. It's cold."
"My wing. I can't- I don't know if I can.."
"It's fine. We both have feet."
"We're not gonna walk back to Hermitcraft, Impulse!"
"Well not with that attitude."
"Oh my void fine. You're right, let's go."
Impulse and Skizz make their way across the barren plain, the rain swallowing their footsteps until there's no evidence either demon or angel was there at all.
