#inferna writes

Skizz wasn’t sure how far he’d gone. His sight still hadn’t returned from his Fall. All he was doing was stumbling, occasionally crawling, across the ground of the Material Plane. Chasing that sense of a great power on the horizon that could maybe give him his vision again.

His toes got caught on something stubbornly unyielding and he crashed back down onto his hands and knees in a mockery of supplication.

A rock? A root? Didn’t matter. His bare feet hurt all the same.

He shifted his hands to try and stand. His fingers touched paving stones — not laid like a road, but like a path.

The power felt like it was coming up from the path. Skizz stumbled back to his feet, and forced himself to ignore the feeling of the sharper edges of the stones digging into his skin as he made his way up the path.

Still blind, still guided by his senses.

His toes hit another raised stone edge and he couldn’t get his balance back fast enough. Flapping his wings just made the nerve endings shriek and made him ‘feel’ how crispy his feathers had become.

His body hit uneven stones and planks and he groaned in complaint at the impact.

There was a sound of a door opening and then closing ahead of him. The sound of boot heels on wooden planks, carefully advancing towards him.

The source of the power he’d been chasing glowed in front of him.

Skizz reached out weakly. “I can’t see,” he rasped, hating how shaky his voice was. “Please …”

Whoever was there, they knelt and muttered something in Common. Skizz felt their fingertips trace a pattern on his forehead, and then pain tore through him, but in comparison to his Fall it didn’t hurt as bad.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and then cautiously opened them.

Shapes began to blur into focus, and he wanted to cry with joy as he regained his vision, letting him see who he had stumbled across the Material Plane to find —

Skizz’s ichor ran cold.

The last time he’d seen that face, the Archdemon had been clad in Infernal Steel armor painted black and gold, wielding a sword with a blade sharp enough to cut the sky. 15 feet tall, with massive leathery wings and a cadre of warriors at his back.

Even shrunken down to be the size of a human, his old nemesis’ face hadn’t changed even over centuries.

His ichor went from freezing to boiling in the space of a heartbeat, the long-dormant hatred flaring up in his heart and mind; all higher thoughts replaced with the primal desire to finally see his enemy broken before him.

Skizz pulled his hand back as a snarl twisted his mouth, calling on the magic innate within him — he was Fallen but still an archangel —

His grasp came up empty, a pitiful sparkler burst of light being the only result instead of the holy fireball he was going for.

His actions did not go unnoticed.

The Archdemon grasped his throat and hoisted him up, and Skizz’s vision swam, from abruptly going from lying horizontal to being vertical. His enemy’s mouth was twisted in a nasty mirror of his own, glowing yellow eyes narrowed at Skizz and sharp canines bared; all the old grudges painted plainly on his face.

Skizz tried to take a swing. If he was about to die to his old enemy, he refused to let himself die without landing a blow first.

The strike connected, but not strong enough to bruise. He doubted the Archdemon even felt it.

The Archdemon tilted his head at his feeble attempt at fighting back.

Darkness welled up in the corners of his vision, and Skizz felt alarm at the idea of losing his sight again — an absurd notion, when he was about to die.

A short sentence chased him into darkness. Blunt and biting.