The Longest Fall - Prologue (First Draft)
The Longest Fall
Prologue
(c) Cederwyn Whitefurr (aka: Anthony Wain)
May, 2010
All Rights Reserved
After a millennium of watching and hoping, finally, the Gods could watch no more; seeing their wondrous creations turn on each other with war, pestilence and violence. They gathered together in their heavenly council, and it was unanimously agreed, to send six of their servants, with orders to stand true to the light - for its teeming masses of mortals had defied the Gods - they had they had destroyed the God's creations - polluting the sky, the earth and the water, and as resources of food and water become more and more scarce with each passing year - their ways grew to unimagined depths of depravity and cruelty.
Six were sent, these Guardians of the Light - with hopes that they would be able to restore the balance - and were never heard from again - finally, the seventh was sent for, for she was to be the last - sent to the realm of mortals.
Not to save them - but to herald the end of days...
Her mission was clear, the earth could not be saved - Kendra was summoned - and given the instructions which were to guide her - for there was nothing that could be done to save them now - they had tried, six others had been sent, and failed in their quest - and now, Kendra was to bring the Apocalypse - the end of days - the destruction - of the Earth.
*
Falling...it is the first thing Kendra felt, her emerald green eyes closed, wings folded tight against her striped back, and tail tail streaming behind her as she fell. Her resolve adamant, her mission clear - she would find what happened to her celestial brothers and sisters, who had gone before her - and from which, had been heard nothing...
Streaking down through the black, boiling clouds, Kendra opened her eyes, then her gaze narrowed, before she sighted the rain-swept ground, that rushed towards her with a terrifying speed, but just it seemed this Zebra anthromorph would surely smash into the ground, her ebony wings snapped out and cupped at the air, the wind screaming through the primaries of her feathers - and she thudded onto the ground, the concrete cracking under her impact, one knee on the ground, the other pressed up close to her chest.
Kendra knelt there for several minutes, breathing heavily and crouching in the pouring rain, her body hunched over and wings unfurled, the acidic rain sizzling against the concrete upon which she had landed.
Throwing back her head, Kendra screamed up at the black, boiling clouds - that roared with cracks of thunder, and bolts of jagged lightning that split the sky. Again Kendra screamed, feeling the terrible pain that tore into her body - as she come to recall, just what it was like - once again - to be mortal...
Kendra dropped to her knees and clawed at the cold concrete, her powerful hooflets gouging at the stone, tearing the nails to pieces and drawing blood, but that agony was nothing, nothing compared to the pain of being cast from down from the heavens. Raising her tear streaked muzzle to the dark, tortured sky, Kendra screamed with a blood-curdling cry, every nerve in her body shrieking its agony.
"Why...why have you forsaken me!" Kendra shrieked, her voice cracking at the end, before she collapsed and lay convulsing - as weak as a newborn foal - and the black, boiling clouds overhead, seemingly unconcerned for the plight of this fallen Angel.
Nothing the Arch-Angel had said to her, before he sent her to this...this purgatory...had prepared Kendra for this unending agony. Acid rain burned her naked fur and flesh, and she writhed in the unending pain, rolling from one puddle to the next, as she fought to gain the strength to rise - her muscles weak and unused. Dragging herself across the dark concrete, with her torn and ragged hooflets, she cried out and bucked again and again, her body contracting its musculature in excruciating contractions.
As an Angel, Kendra had no need for such, for she existed as a creature of pure thought and spirit, not...not this...beast - of fur, flesh and blood. Inch by agonising inch, she dragged her body across the sizzling concrete, the palms of her paws soon torn and bleeding, her hooflets barely recognised - as they had nearly been splintered and cracked back to the very bedding.
Lightning cracked overhead, and she cried out in agony, willing herself to move, but the body, so weak and so vulnerable, gave up its last vestiges of strength. With a choking wail, Kendra's body shuddered - then went limp...
Some hours later - Kendra awoke and shook herself off, then blinked and looked back over her broad, striped shoulders, then blinked her emerald green eyes - for her once beautiful black feathered wings - we now broken and splintered, the feathers in disarray and many of them were missing. As she experimentally tried to stretch her wings, agony beyond anything she had experienced - tore through her shoulders and she dropped to her knees and then lifted her head and screamed, with such a shriek of pure, soul-destroying agony - yet the only answer was her echoing, mournful cries off the shattered windows and ruined buildings that were nearby.
"No..." Kendra wailed, as she looked back over her shoulder, at the broken and useless wings.
Again, as if not believing herself the first time, Kendra tried to unfold them - and the sickening grating and snapping of fragile bones, made her scream again and again, before she ceased and crumpled to the ground.
"Master - why have you forsake me..." Kendra wailed, rolling her eyes up towards the heavens.
There was no answer, for this fallen Angel....
*
Summoning what strength she could, Kendra knew she could not retain her wings, such useless, broken things they now were - and she resolved herself to a decision - that she knew, would bring more pain and suffering - than she had yet known, since she retook mortal form. Staggering into a derelict building, Kendra's eyes quickly adjusted to the dark confines, and she searched from floor to floor, before finally finding what she had been looking for. The mirror was shattered and cracked, but enough of it remained - she hoped - to let her do what she had to do....
Picking up a large sliver, Kendra turned her back towards the mirror, and biting down on a filthy piece of rag - she gritted her teeth - then used the broken mirror shard to start cutting into the black feathers and flesh, as close to her back as she could reach. Agony piled upon agony tore into her body and soul, as blood spurted from the wound and spattered the mirror, then slid down the black, filthy wall. Kendra screamed, but her agonised cries were muffled by the rag in her muzzle, as she kept cutting through flesh, muscle and tendons - finally reaching the hollow bones that bound her once beautiful ebony wings, to her back. With a moan, almost beyond her resolve - Kendra snapped the wing bones, then tore the wings from her back and dropped to the ground, feeling the hot blood sluicing down her striped back and rump.
"Forgive me father, for I have sinned - " Kendra prayed as she dropped the severed wings to the ground, then her eyes rolled back in her head and she crumpled unconscious onto the blood spattered floor.
To Be Continued...