Time under the light of day felt rare these days, the clouds were too thick most often from the smog coming off the industries established by the Great Old Ones, and if that wasn't the case then there were too many demons, lithids, or serpents patrolling the skies to be outside. Perched on a roof overlooking a dilapidated city, overgrown by nature and vines, Ezekiel muttered indistinctly to Rhiannon. Seemingly having an argument with himself as the ravenskull necklace hung on his chest.

"I know- I know-" Ezekiel muttered before he heard the footsteps and felt the seraphim's familiar presence. Adatiel was a welcome face, death on vacation again, wasn't that neat? "Oh, hey. Here for the view?"

Good and evil. Viktor hadn't taken it seriously when Adatiel had said that to him, but then again he'd never seen a real battle. He'd fought, he'd trained, and he'd hurt his fairshare of people but this warzone had dissolved into anarchy and chaos. Harellan had shown him his mother, but by the time Viktor had broken away it was too late, everything was coming undone and there was nothing but panic and fear in the place of where certainty had once been.

A ripple of lightning, a flash of blonde, and then Viktor was running. "Mom!" Came the nephilim's shout as he forgot about the fighting entirely and pushed his way through the crowds and forced his way towards Adatiel. "Mom!" He shouted again- he'd feared- he'd thought- tears streamed as Viktor stumbled and lost his balance mid run, only to regain it and keep going.

As far as Dumah was concerned, Adatiel was the only one among the Blessed that was worth a damn. Death followed Pestilence, they were younger than the others, and their proximity made it so he understood the burden that she carried best of all. Uriel charged in, Azrael swept the field, Dumah whispered over the remains, and then Adatiel carried them away. He hadn't been able to believe that something as common as a drow had managed to capture her, but the call of her Grace wasn't something that was easily stilled. What drow he'd found and tortured had spilled the rest, a seraphim hidden in the bowels of the former Fairy Court, his sister attacked after she'd aided in a birth. All the pieces were there.

The great bulk of the drow's forces were elsewhere, in Rome where they'd been battling endless. In a great flex of power, and a flourishing display of the might of a Blessed, he bore through the drow's boundaries and landed amidst the laboratory that fell to pieces around him. Death was rejecting everything, but his seraph blades embedded the things that he came across, pinned them to the ground before he broke apart Adatiel's cell.

"Oh Ada-" Dumah breathed, the others needed them, perhaps now more than ever. The final battle had begun, and their forces had been diminished long enough. No other Blessed had come to Rome, Ganymede had arrived but was as useless as ever. Ulthar was not here: it was just them, alone. "can you stand?" Can you fight?

Viktor didn't go home as often as he should have, maybe he was a bit of a disappointment in that regard, but he still went home. Rather, called his mom who was never far away by virtue of her own telepathy. By moral standards he wouldn't have called himself good, from everything that Adatiel had begrudgingly told him about her siblings it didn't sound like any of them were particularly good. Maybe she was the exception, pallor and death, her candour made a great deal of sense when you took that into consideration.

A blade in hand, Viktor moved and turned it with practiced grace and ease. He remembered the face that she had made when he'd conjured his first seraph blade, proud in a motherly way, but sad in the sense that she'd have to watch him potentially follow in her family's footsteps. "Mom," the blade blade dissipated, "I wasn't expecting you." He smiled and moved towards the seraphim to embrace her.

“Ulthar sent us here to put a stop to everything.” Dumah commented, truthfully it didn’t feel like they’d done much of anything, Michael wouldn’t lead them, and the others were more distracted than Pestilence had seen them before. He wasn’t complaining, it more or less meant that Dumah could do whatever he wanted, but they’d all seen apocalypses before, it should have been clear to anyone paying attention what was going to happen. Conquest and War were violence incarnate, reverent in their attempts to gain their father’s favour and fulfill his missive - Pallor and Pestilence came after. They knew that things did not end with a bang, but a whisper. “How do you think this is going to turn out?”

Death wore a violent mask, so many feared the other side - and to some that fear was justified. Divine creations had forged prisons like the Inferno and Elysia, but even these had fates that were written in the stars. Adatiel was a seraphim, the pale rider that came at the end of war and famine. An old friend, even she was not without her fate. “It’s a shame you’re forced to hide your true face,” Thanatos commented, though he had no problem perceiving the creature that lived beneath mortal bones. “but I can appreciate this one too.” People died everyday in the hospital, all over the world really, fate was never fair. It didn’t care if you were good, or if you tried. It didn’t care who wanted and who hated. The wheel didn’t want for anything, it couldn’t, no more than the river wanted or the mountain. 

The little sister who wore death like a cloak, gentle and kind. One of the last of their kind to be created, it was Adatiel’s fate to stand at the edge of creation and close the curtain when all was said and done. Michael, eternal as he was, did not envy the fate that rest upon her shoulders. “When last I spoke to Uriel he was resigned to burn this reduce this realm to ash as we did in the past, rip out mortality root and stem and start again. Or start something new.” Michael thought of Nathaniel, he’d never thought that things would become so dire in the nephilim’s lifetime but a choice was barrelling towards him: to choose between one family or another. He’d failed Lucifer once, the sibling who’d refused to kneel was struck down for it. If Michael had done more... if he’d convinced them to see the light, maybe things would have been different. He needed to do better this time, somehow. “Where do you stand on things? I am not yet convinced that this world is beyond our saving.”