Page 64 of Angel in Absentia (Light Locked #2)
The Beast of Ages
yson moved the instant the creature struck.
His blade flashed, carving a line of light through the air, meeting the creature’s bladed arms with a clash that rang through the hollow bones of the city.
Darkness poured from the creature’s wounds—not blood, but a black mist that twisted and clawed at the broken stones.
Clea stumbled back against the far wall, heart hammering, as the battle exploded before her.
The ground shuddered underfoot. Around them, the ruined ceiling cracked, ancient stones crumbling as vines writhed and tore free from their moorings.
Ryson fought like a man possessed—every movement precise, brutal, and beautiful. He twisted past the creature’s strikes, each blow faster than the last, carving deeper into the writhing mass that tried to consume him.
The creature screamed—a sound that wasn’t human, wasn’t beast—a raw, tearing sound.
The darkness spread with every strike, seeping into the broken city like rot. Buildings collapsed in the distance. The sky itself seemed to blacken, clouds spinning in a great whirlpool above the ruins.
And still Ryson fought. Pushing the creature back, blow by blow, toward the shattered heart of Salanes.
But it wasn’t enough.
The darkness kept coming. More tendrils sprouted from the creature’s back, the ground splitting open under their weight, new limbs forming and lashing out.
Clea felt the sickening pull of cien flooding the world around her, felt the city dying under the weight of it. The dead citizens of Salanes grew from the earth, coming back to haunt their hero.
Ryson staggered, a blow catching his shoulder—a spray of blood arced through the air.
The creature howled, sensing weakness.
It lunged, all claws and teeth and bone.
And Ryson caught it, grappled it, twisted it, and slammed it down onto the shattered stones with a roar that shook the ruins. He pinned it, blade against the writhing mass of its throat.
“Now!” Ryson bellowed, voice raw.
His silver eyes locked onto Clea’s across the collapsing world.
Pleading. Commanding. Trusting.
“Heal him!” he shouted.
Clea staggered forward, the world tilting around her. The ruins cracked and groaned, the sky blackened to near-night. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but Ryson was holding the darkness at bay.
Clea reached deep, deeper than she ever had—past fear, past doubt, into the place inside her where light still lived. She crossed the broken stones, knees buckling under the weight of the darkness. The creature shrieked and writhed, but Ryson held it fast, snarling through gritted teeth.
Clea dropped to her knees beside them.
The creature turned toward her, and for the first time, she saw not rage but terror in its face.
Its form exploded out around them in a blasting wave of darkness. Ryson transformed, and he was a beast swallowed in an ocean. The ocean called to them, a million voices with a million temptations, and Clea stood at the center of it.
Looking across her world, she saw it eclipsed in waves, and the beast of Ryson’s form kept it all back from her. Suddenly, the torrent of noise came to a complete stop.
Silence. There was only darkness, a thin layer of water at her feet, and the quiet chiding of another world.
Let me have your heart. Give me your soul.
Like a pulling and pushing tide, she recognized that she waited atop an ocean, boiling softly in red and black, each cresting wave commanding:
Let me have your mind. Give me your body.
Never satisfied. It was hunger. It was cien. It was madness, and it had found a home in them all.
Those voices quieted to a whisper, and she stood slowly, searching the world around her and seeing vague forms of wings and claws and shapes, knowing that in this moment, Ryson protected her from the violence of it all.
He had become powerful for this moment, his power only equally matched to this moment, where he would give her a glimpse of time to do the thing he could not do, to pass the fight along, the burden he had carried.
She walked forward, pulled deeper into the darkness, knowing that without Ryson’s strength, she would have no path to walk, and without her healing, he would have only an empty path.
You heal for me; I’ll kill for you. The promise echoed in balance, for from the very beginning, it was his heart’s yearning, and her own, to be free from a world trapped in such violent shades of light and shadow.
As she walked, she approached the dark linings of a long, mangled corpse, in some ways resembling a human.
She settled down beside it, the intent of healing in her hands.
Translated through the souls of them both, she sensed that it was a creature of another realm, a creature that had been immortal.
Its corpse cracked toward her as she placed her hands upon the blackened rot. She received an impression from it beyond language, something translated into words that might say:
I don’t want to die.
A witness and student of death, Clea kept her hands upon this creature and whispered, “You are already dead. It’s okay.”
The waters around her stirred, and she prepared her healing, light spilling into the cavity of this creature, aiming to unravel its twisted ties to this world.
At first, it grabbed her, violently synching itself through her soul.
Filled with every temptation and hatred it had witnessed, she was comforted with all of the light from healing her people over so many years. She carried their resilience with her.
The wind whipped around her. It was loud and painful. Her soul cut through with thoughts so horrendous she could hardly contain them, and then she stopped.
She let them pass through her. At one moment, she was convinced she would fail, and even that she released back into the wind.
Eventually, the darkness carried that thought off too, until her mind was empty, and she’d challenged all of this creature’s illness.
She understood then that this god or devil had been felled by a cosmic force beyond itself and was never meant to die. It hadn’t known how to.
She ushered the last of the light through her, and the waters calmed. The corpse faded silently into the water, and she knew at last as the sky seemed to break through the darkness above that after all these years, the Eating Ocean, by every other name, had at last been satisfied.
Light exploded from the creature’s chest. Blinding. Burning. Beautiful.
For a moment, everything was silence and brightness—a new sun born from the ruins. And then the world went still.
It had come into their plane, suffered, wanted, and now returned again to rest.
In a way, it had accomplished its goal. It had become human by at last accepting death.