I.

All I wanted was to swim away.  

The sea of my life had become a wave crashing down on me, breaking me.  The tender, sunflower scented kiss of my wife, the sound of my son’s laughter as he played outside our whitewashed house, the tepid pool of filth my life had become – I hated it all.

But I had been a fool to think that what I needed was to run – it was my father’s solution, and his father’s before him.  The wanderlust hit me as if a spell was upon me, every irksome movement in my placid life infuriated me, and I swam away from it all, and towards the arms of temptation.  But it was a hard, long swim, and my soul was exhausted from struggling so long against the voice that sung in the back of my mind: run, run, run away from it all.

Temptation had opened her arms to me, and I was happy to drown in that place.

My legs had grown tired of kicking, my arms became leaden, and the will I had sustained to keep treading had given out before I knew it.  I stopped moving.  My fingertips no longer touched sky when I reached up.  My lungs no longer drank in air. I sank into those billowy, black depths, and lost my soul.

But oh lucky me, I found my long-lost soul again twenty-one years later.   

II.

I think those of you reading this know, when I say I lost my soul, I abandon the flowery path of poetry and mean that I quite literally lost my soul.   I found it – or, I suppose it would be more accurate to say it found me – over two decades later.  I often find myself wondering, if I had the chance, would I do it all again?  Would I willingly hand over my spiritual core, the epicenter of my personality and moral focus, the glue that binds my spirit to my experiences, if asked?

Would I…give it up to save someone?  Would I give it up to save myself, or keep it, even if it meant the world would be left in peril?  You must understand, dear readers, I’m willing to give it up, throw away everything I’ve become, everything I’ve been working for since I’ve fallen.

I don’t expect you to condone my decision.  But I do expect you, throughout the duration of this little travel diary, to walk with me the footsteps that have led me here.

But first, allow me to introduce myself.   

For a long time, I had no name.  I was simply, the General.  And I was a monster.  I’d seen my Queen’s war rise to fruition in my time as her Servant, and my last battle in her demonic army was three years ago, inland from the great bay, where the foothills touch the western edge of the mountains.

Of course, we were winning.  My father had told me about battles – he fought in the Civil War himself, but my experiences were nothing like those tales of blood, grit, and steel.  I suppose there is a difference when you’re on the winning side, flying above the fleeing opposition like an angel of death.

It was a red dawn on a burning battlefield, and I was almost ready to call back my lieutenants, who were no doubt eager to return to our Queen full of human souls.  I was cocky and sure of myself, I was a god above human kind, after all; when the bullet whizzed past my cheek, missing me by naught but a breath, I hung in the air looking down.

A few determined shouts issued from the remaining soldiers below; and my eyes widened when I recognized them.  They were an unusual breed, elite soldiers of the king’s army, standing in a clump, the fiery passion of battle burning in their red eyes.  Red uniforms, blazing flames and pistols; but I wasn’t the only one who knew the horrible truth, that they were doomed to try to oppose a General.

“How rare,” I said, I had not seen a magic user in a very, very long time, so I felt, for dark angels don't think so much as feel.


They were fire witches; the men and women born with a little bit of the governing spirit of fire inside of their souls, who can control the element to a degree.   Some of the best ones could even produce a flame out of thin air.   I scoffed at the fire witches, the proud property of the good King's empire of California, making what?  A heroic last stand?

Theirs’ was a losing battle; did they want a noble death?  Sure. I could give them that.   Nobility had no place on the battlefield.  Dark angels were destined to triumph, casting aside such idiotic emotions such as honor.

"Monster!  Soul-stealing bastard!" one shouted.   

I curved my wings, and dived, separating the group with a feint.  Singling out the fire witch who had dared to shout at a General, I caught his eyes, and could almost see his dead, gray body lying in the charred grass already.  Soon, human, soon, you’ll be with your brothers.  He knew it too; I could read his soul like an open book.

I gave him a small, glaring smile from above.  Unnerved, the man's dirt and sweat-covered face contorted into rage, tears streaming.  He was so desperate, so sad, and I saw in his soul's color the heart of a man who has given up.  But still he fought on, chanting words to a fire spell; he mesmerized me with the beauty of his desperation.  He shouted his final words, calling on the spirit of fire, and a little spark in me shouted in my mind that I had only seconds to flee.  

A ball of fire blossomed in his palm, growing into a dragon-like coil, and struck out at me as I began to dodge.  

The hot ball of fire glanced by my arm as I twisted in the air, neck straining.  I took the only refuge I could: skyward I flew, cursing myself.   

Gritting my teeth and slapping my arm to put out the fire, I gave an angry nod to one of my lieutenants who had come to my aid.  I wanted them all dead and right now, who cared about taking their souls back to the queen.  Fire witch souls are rebellious and hot.

My winged subordinate fell on the small group of fire witches; the Servants’ signature tactic, a strike from above, breaking necks and spines, ripping souls with no care for consumption.

Magic users as they were, burning and furious, the lieutenant killed them, snuffing them out like candle flames; the man that could conjure fire from nothing looked at me one last time before his eyes went blank, neck twisted in a fatal knot by the pale hands of the lieutenant.  Something from him seemed to linger, even after his red clad body crumpled to the grass.  Something…

I patted my arm, attempting to extinguish the flame.  It wouldn't go out easily, and I felt a small jolt of panic as it burned through my thick sleeve, and into my skin.  His rage was immortalized as the skin of my arm boiled, and I gritted my teeth.  

The screams of the men below were dying out.  The silence was coming.

Pat-pat-pat.  

‘Fight now,’ I thought, ‘fight for your lives!’

Spirit of fire, dance, spirit of fire, dance, dance.  The words spilled from their mouths with anger, with panic, then desperation, and finally, defeat.   After the soldiers below had gone silent, I felt my lips moving still to their beat.

"Spirit of fire, dance...” the whisper escaped my lips.

Dark angels were landing all around, awaiting my orders.  Pair after pair of bleached eyes fell upon me.  Motionless winged men and women with pale faces, pale eyes, clad in battle blacks, and stared up at me perplexed at my outburst.  

I blinked a few times, trying to escape the lull of my reverie.  The flame on my arm was gone.

Finding my voice, I called for abandonment of the battlefield, glaring commandingly.  The sever burn on my arm stung, and I put the injury out of my mind as best as I could.  I looked forward to a lot of praise coming from the Queen, after all.  Our victory had been swift and fruitful.  But the wound still burned, and the enchanted words hung mysteriously on my lips.

III.

The world I live in is a fractured one.  The angels have blown their horns; the sky has torn open, down is up and up is down, and feudalist factions have moved in to piece the post-apocalyptic nation back together.

The civil war of the mid 19th century ended in genocide; all too many struggled to hold on to the idea that the states could be unified, but their forces were too weak, and their magical aid lacked any kind of power at all.  Science was what beat them.  The Traditionalist party was no match for the guns and canons of the rebels.  Humans were killing humans, relentlessly until they were huddled shivering and naked in their holes and houses, weak and separated.

California fell under the rule of the Jackson Monarchy in 1866.

They thought magic was dead, killed away by bullets, internal combustion, the wireless, and the light bulb.  That’s when the Queens emerged from the hills and canyons they’d been hiding in for hundreds of years, the soul-stealing forces of hundreds of Queens spread out among the land, breaking the treaties with nearby villages and consuming far more souls than was in the traditional tithe.  They’d be kept at bay no longer; the next war was already on the heels of humanity.

The weakened government tried to fight back – and still tries to this day – but they’re ice skating uphill.  Like I said, it felt different to be on the winning side.  A domineering villain I was, impassive and ruthless, dressed all in black, with a pair of black wraith-like wings shooting from my back.

But the pain I caused, the panic my very presence could incite in others, all of us rallying entire nations across America into a panic – this is my reality, and this is my curse.

Any human who looked into our silver eyes, no matter how ballsy they thought they were, was stricken with sickening, the kind found in the deepest parts of the nightmare.  The feeling, ‘is this a dream at all, or will I never wake up?’  For us – our victims were never asleep to being with.

That terror was our legacy, and our wings and vicious physiognomies were the vehicle for it.  Servants are bleached; our eyes are silver, metallic white, and our skins are pale.  Our hair is black like our clothing.  And our wings: black, chaotic, surrounded by supernatural darkness that lifts us up and helps us fly.  

To say I'm haunted by two decades of being something so repulsive would be an understatement.  There are no words that bear the full weight of my shame, mostly for the year leading up to my enslavement.  My self-loathing knows no depths, I fear myself.  It’s the fear of monsters that’s innate in every human.

But I was a slave – I was enslaved.  The term ‘Servant’ is a bloody euphemism, so why do I constantly feel that it’s my fault, anyways?

It wasn’t my fault.  It was the Queen’s, my little raven-haired Queen.

The queens I speak of are not preening monarchs sitting on thrones.  They’re more like queens of a hive, unquestioned masters whose drones bring them food.

There are a few theories about where the queens, the water witches, come from.  The first is, like fire witches, they have a bit of the gods in them, and the ancient blood running through their veins allows them to have their hand in nature's workings.  But water witches can’t control water to any degree; it’s a misnomer of some kind.

The next theory, and the more widely accepted is that they, or their mythical founder, stole some forbidden power from the Death himself (if there is such a being), and used it to escape the final fate, self-made vampires of souls.

But here’s what I think.

They’re just magic addicts, megalomaniacal connoisseurs of the very basic elements of the palpable natural forces that exist in the world.  Each queen is independent of one another, their own hives working like clockwork for one purpose.  Like a disease, we spread; killing, stealing, and making ourselves stronger.  A select few victims, after their souls are yanked from their bodies, are kept around as soldiers.

They governed us, the Servants, with the power they stole from the souls.  I was a just another little worker bee, brainless and vicious as my Queen ordered me to be.  I shouldn’t feel guilty, right?  So why has this feeling plagued me every day since I found my soul?

They took my soul in 1916.  My twenty-one years of servitude came to an end in the summer of 1937.


IV.

On the edge of a vast and unlivable desert, a great, stone fortress lay carved into the sides of a stratified cliff.  A hundred thousand years ago, this dead land was an ocean teeming with life; the colors of the era of water still were painted in lines on the cliff faces.  Old magic had turned the immovable stone into an intricately carved hive for dark angels.  If the presence of monsters wasn’t enough; the fortress was nigh impenetrable, sharp cliffs and rocky dry river beds formed a natural border around the castle.

Dawn had broken when I returned to my queen’s stronghold; my injury and those strange words still occupied my thoughts.  A Queen has the power to almost instantly heal any of her servants; I told myself to go there, to seek her help, but, feeling a pang of nervousness in my gut, I hid myself to tend to the burn in my own quarters.  I didn’t want her knowing that one of her higher command had been stricken with a moment of almost human weakness.  

I pealed the charred cloth from my arm, cringing as it sucked bubbles of seared flesh with it.  Gritting my teeth, I wrapped the wound lazily in a clean cloth, and pitched my torn gear over the side of the stone balcony.  The remnants of my charred battle blacks fluttered like snowflakes to the river below.  

I placed my hands gently on the edge of the precipice and watched the clothes disappear into darkness in the canyon below.  The light, I found myself thinking, the light from the fire witches was so familiar.  The feeling bothered me until I caved, and experimentally, I held out my hand.  There was nothing but empty space between five fingers and my palm.   I stared into the space, picturing the enraged face of the man who'd launched a fireball out of his own palm at me.  I imagined that same fire between my own fingers, and squinted my eyes for good measure.

Nothing.

Of course nothing, idiot.

Shaking my head free of the foolishness, I leisurely tossed myself over the balcony, caught a current, and drifted towards the castle’s peak, to deposit my payload from the battle, and meet with the witch.

V.

You humans, full of emotions, imagination, opinions, you’re lucky.  The power of free-thought and creativity is not a power given easily to Servants.

From the water witch, nothing was taken, nothing at all.

We’re akin to walking corpses.  Flying corpses, really, but dead none the less.  Though our hearts pumped and our lungs inhaled, we were dead to the world, living only to kill and submit to our queen the souls of our enemies.   For our servitude, however, we were indeed rewarded.  The power to speak, to think, to fly long distances, to command others, they were all given.  As a Servant grows older and more accustomed to being soulless, we’re trusted with more of the freedoms that humans take for granted.

That we survived at all is worthy of being given such gifts; the dark angels who can get past the first few years without killing themselves are destined to move quickly up the ranks.  I was such a dark angel.

At year one, I was given the ability to cope.  I stopped crying when alone, like a lost banshee.  At year four, I was given the ability to talk.  At ten, I was given the ability to use the power of darkness to give my wings the power of prolonged flight.  At fifteen, I was given a position of power of others.  At nineteen, I became a general.  One of four, leaders of the four clouds in the Queen’s army of death.


The term ‘cloud’ has a most appropriate origin; if you ever see a group of us moving in the sky, you might appreciate the literalness of the term.  We were, after all, no masters of creativity.  Unfettered by emotions, we lived for war.  

Caring nothing for love and death, blessed with the simplicity of a child, can you imagine the strangeness of it, when a twinge of nervousness crept into my heart the night after the battle with the fire witches?

‘You betrayed your queen,’ a voice in my mind said, to which I said aloud and alone, “No!”