Broken Angels
Aika

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Prologue
"She had to go back."

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The scream wrenched the air. Wings fluttered with empathy and the judgmental righteousness of the on-looking crowd. A single small figure pushed her way out, wings pressed against her back as she elbowed the strangers and forged a path. The screams – and then the wretched sobs – followed her, echoing through the hall. The door swung open and the woman retched just outside the boundaries of the building. It didn’t matter who watched, she didn’t care. She shivered, remembering the pained shrieks, and wiped her mouth on the back of her sleeve. Her fingers absently stroked her own white wings.

She had to go back. She had to be there. She glanced up at the rubble around her, this lone building seemed to be the only thing left standing, and even then just barely. It was complete destruction. Refugees clung to each other and the few possessions that they could save from the devastation. Figures climbed through the debris. Her perfect white dress stood in stark contrast with the ruin. She had to go back.

Reluctantly, she gathered herself and returned to the sanctity of the building, leaving one horror behind in exchange for another. It seemed that no matter where she went, there was screaming. The eerie wail reached out to her and dragged her back to the crowd. The most horrible punishment awaited the perpetrator. The young woman tucked her wings ever tighter and pushed her hair out of her eyes to stare at the sun, visible through the open ceiling. The screams echoed against the wall. But it was the crying….

The crying tore at her heart and a hand covered the woman’s mouth as she fought the urge to cry as well. This was the worst punishment, and this was the punishment deserved. She glanced up, the wailing was moving away. She needed to follow. She needed to be there, no matter what. White-clad feet stumbled through the crowd, she was moving upstream. The strangers pushed her away, ignorant of her intent. Sharp, slender elbows pushed back and finally, a breath of fresh air; she had made it through.

Wretched sobs replaced the screams and hung in the air. The young woman followed, trying to ignore the sound. Her heels clicked against the white floor, a trail of red staining the marble. She tried not to think of what it was, of who it belonged to. Where, she wondered, where had it all gone wrong? It hadn’t always been like this. It should never have been like this. She didn’t notice the wetness on her cheek or the blurring at the edges of her vision. She focused only on the clicking of her heels as she followed the incarnadine trail.

Heavy doors creaked open. Only a select few remained, the main show was over. Here was the last punishment, the true torture and the true damnation. This was it; this was what she had to see. A semi-circle of figures stood around the edge of the cliff, feathers ruffling in anticipation. She didn’t have to see to know what stood in the middle: it was the nightmare that haunted them all as children. She ran to meet it, she ran to stop it, though she couldn’t think how.

She broke through the circle. Golden eyes met hers. Electricity ran through her. Golden eyes, once so strong, were now so weak. This was the nightmare. This was an angel without wings. Small, ragged, pathetic, it clung to its naked form, stripped even of the white robes and gleaming armor of which it had once been so proud. Hoarse sobs wracked its blood-stained frame. “You have violated our laws,” the man held the pitiful creature’s hair between his fingers and jerked up. “You, who were once so great, have fallen farther than any other. You, who was the best of us, must now face the despair of your brothers.” Golden eyes glanced around at unpitying faces.

“Iliel…!” hands reached out, eyes were pleading, the cry was hoarse and piteous. The creature was flung from the cliff, once one of the greatest angels it now fell from the city in the sky. A cry escaped the young woman’s lips as she reached out to watch the creature fall.

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Shadow
Aika

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Prologue
"It was coming."

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They say that some children are born with a red stone in their hands. These stones are their inner hearts and they glow with unlimited possibility….

The young boy cradled the small stone pendant. Ragged clothes hung loosely off his too-thin frame as he hid in the corner of the room, away from view of the sole window. The walls were falling apart, the floorboards creaked and cracked. It was coming. It was called the Shadow. No one knew what it was. People were disappearing one by one, people like him. It would come for him soon, too.

His head snapped up and his eyes widened. He had heard something that didn’t belong to the regular creaking of a long-abandoned home. A footstep, perhaps? He jumped through the window, leaving the glass perfectly intact. As his feet hit the ground, he ran. The footsteps followed.

It was coming for him, just as it had come for all the others. No one would miss him, no one missed his kind. He skittered down unlit alleys, through narrow spaces, and still the footsteps followed. The red stone bounced against his chest and gleamed in the light as spiders erupted from the broken streets. Shivers ran through him as the creatures chased his heels, a moving mass of darkness in the shadows.

The shadows were coming for him.

Stone walls loomed before him and spiders crawled through the cracks between the stones to greet him. There was nowhere to go as the shadows crept ever closer, threatening to engulf him. The footsteps followed. He reached out to the darkness before the moving shadow swallowed him whole.

((Reviews/thoughts/ideas/questions also accepted and much appreciated.))[/color]

I really liked Broken Angels, probably because I'm so in love with the "Fallen" book series. The set up reminded me of favorite games such as Dante's Inferno and Darksiders so I was able to clearly picture the rubble, the screams the crying. I was also left to imagine more horrors you oonly hinted at, streams of blood and god knows what other human peices flowing down along the broken floor.

I love the very first part:

"The scream wrenched the air. Wings fluttered with empathy and the judgmental righteousness of the on-looking crowd."

And as you go on, I wasn't able to decide if she really was an angel until you continued.

And at the end I was immediately thinking of Lucifer, who reminds me in these kind of stories a lot of Dracula, a romantic character, that "tragic hero" even if he is the religious root of all evil. Having the other female angel seeming to care about him as he's thrown from "somewhere" which im guessing must be either a torn heaven with all the tortured souls after some kind of war, or maybe hell.

Figururing out where they actually "are" is a bit hard, but to me it's all part of the fun! I'd love to know more about the girl and Iliel.

Note: I only refer to Iliel as a "he" because well...you didn't say a gender so my mind filled in the blank...seeing this is posted in the yuri section I just realized Iliel might be a her, even though you said the golden eyed angel is an "it" if it turns out to be an it with no gender or a female after all, that just makes this all the more interesting!

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The other one reminds me of Devil May Cry, it seemed interesting and has potential, but for me there wasn't as much of a hook. We don't really become emotionally attached to the boy, like we did with the angel girl. The darkness and shadow and spiders may have seemed for frightening for me, if I felt something for the boy. The stones are interesting, but we aren't told more about them. I'd say continue this one as well, if only to start to tell the rest of the story. If there ws more of a hook, I'd have more to say.


But all this is just my opinion. I feel emotionally attached to the angel girl, and Iliel because she cared about him. I want to know what happens next!

They are both well written anyway, thank you for sharing. :3

Thanks for taking the time to respond, Rin! I really appreciate it. I'll probably get to work on Broken Angels, then. I'll do Shadow another time. The thing with the Shadow prologue is that it actually has very little to do with the story's main characters. The boy plays absolutely no role and never shows up again. If I do work on this story later, though, I'll try to change some things around so that there's more emotional attachment to him, so thank you for bringing that to my attention. I wouldn't have realized it at all if you hadn't mentioned it, just because I know all of my characters so well and am therefore attached to them in a way that no one else is. I should probably also include more of the important characters, since the only introduction their given is footsteps.

I tried to make everything ambiguous in the first one. I tried to avoid using names or sex or any real identifying terms. I want things to be a bit of a surprise when the chapters come out and we find out who the fallen angel is. I actually got the idea for her and the story from an RP character who was sort of associated with Lucifer. I'm happy that the ambiguity came across, because that was one of the most important things for me when writing this. And I'm really happy that you had a good idea of the images I was trying to compose. I didn't want to say there were body parts and dead people lying around. Ambiguity and subtlety is supposed to be a big part of this, although I've never been very good at writing that so we'll see if I can manage for the rest of the story. It was hard to write but a lot of fun and I liked what turned out, so thank you so much for taking the time to read and respond to it. =)

(I'm watching one of my favorite TV shows right now so I have no idea what I'm writing or if it makes any sense.)

In my opinion, you should continue both stories... and it doesn't matter if you are not an expert in writing you will gain experience trough time.

P.S. For Rin-sama i like the "Fallen" book series also, but I'm barely at the 2 nd book sadly, because they haven't finished translating the other parts in to my native language...