Chapter 28 - Distraction

Iris

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Raguel.
Valkyre knew it even before he'd fully opened his eyes, before he'd fully realized that he'd been listening to the voice, before he'd seen the ruby red and the pale yellow looking back at him, slight smile to the lips.
"Valkyre."
Behind the inky black hair, a bare room gaped back hollowly at him, cracks in the ceiling and stains along the walls. Glassless windows and a thin film of dust settled down with a sigh. Outside, it was light, gray-dusky daytime.
He sighed, trying not to groan at the same time. His body still ached, but it was something that was settling, easing back. Healing.
"How are you feeling?"
Raguel, crouched before him, slight smile in his eyes. Valkyre sighed again, slowly pulling up his legs, which ached before settling into a dulled burn. "...Where..."
The angel glanced around him, and immediately saw the boy, a crumpled form leaning a distance away from him against the wall, head buried in his arms. The tearstone was back around his neck, dangling over a forearm. He couldn't tell if the boy was awake or still unconscious.
Valkyre let out a sigh of relief, closing his eyes.
"Valkyre."
The angel blinked, staring back at Raguel again. The half-blood tilted his head slightly to one side but remained wordless.
"...What happened back there?"
The other chuckled. "You tell me."
Valkyre stared back, pointedly pressing his lips together, waiting for a response. Raguel sighed and rose to his feet, crossing his arms.
"...I have to say, what you did wasn't exactly the smartest thing to do."
"Humor me."
Raguel arched an eyebrow, watching as the angel rose shakily to his feet. He offered no more help.
Valkyre sighed and touched his neck gently, but there was nothing more than a small bruise left. He glanced at the other, eyes wary.
"...Those two... Where are they now? What happened?"
Raguel shrugged. "They were both greatly stunned, but you did not kill them. I would not dare try to destroy them myself. I took you both and fled."
Valkyre blinked. "...What happened back there, though? When I..."
The half-blood smiled slightly. "You ruined their circuits, disconnected them. It was rather shocking for both of them, I suppose. No one else has ever done something like that to them, not since... Well, it was stunning, to say the least."
The angel stared back blankly, leaning back against the wall, momentarily breathless. "Then... those two, they're not..."
Raguel nodded, curtly. "You're right, Valkyre. They're not natural beings. They were formed in the lab."
The angel nodded, slowly, then paused.
"But... They're just experiments. ...Why?"
"Why what?"
Valkyre stared at his hands, which were already mostly healed and cleansed of blood. "...Why are they after Iris?" He looked back up at Raguel.
"...The labs are after Iris, I know that. ...But why are they using experimental beings...?"
The other snorted, scowling.
"Using? They aren't using them at all. The labs have all been destroyed."
Valkyre stared back blankly, frowning. "...What? But then, why..."
Raguel stepped backwards, watching him, expression serious and taut. "The labs were dissolved by order from the state. They no longer exist." A pause.
"...Unfortunately, those two weren't destroyed along with the rest of the specimens, and now they seek Iris..."
Valkyre stared back at the other, slowly absorbing the information. He pushed himself away from the wall, and his fingers found the seal around his neck. Raguel had placed it there.
"Raguel."
The other blinked back, calm and quiet. He could see the tenseness in his unmatched eyes, the masked, guarded expression.
"When you were fighting... I saw..." A pause, cautious judging. "...On the back of your neck. You"-
"Valkyre!"
A hoarse, whispered cry from behind. Iris, the boy rising to his feet, pained and terrified expression in his pale gray eyes.
Eyes that stared at the half-blood before him, in recognition and fear and warning. Too late.
Valkyre whirled around on Raguel, blade flicking out into his hand. Too slow.
The other had drawn something out, something like an amulet dangling from a chain, and the angel saw too late the blow of pale magic through the core of the stone, turned to crackled blue and reflected, expanded through the piece, ice sweeping and freezing like shattered glass over the angel's half of the room, crystalline and sharp, petrified.
Raguel lowered his hand slowly, gently tapping the stone hanging by the end of the string with a thin fingernail.
"Frostbite."
Valkyre stood immobile, mind racing and furious but body frozen, unable to move, caught in the middle of an action, blade hilt still clenched in his hands. Frost glittered like opalescent scales on his skin, turned pale blue and cold, freezing cold.
Raguel sighed as he tucked the spell amulet away, stepping forward and almost delicately removing the small dagger in his hand. "I'm sorry about this, Valkyre. I had hoped that you could trust me."
Valkyre could barely move his lips, straining to see out of the corner of his eye. Iris stared back, eyes desperate, scared. The boy sat crumpled on the ground, unmoving, edges of the frostbite crystallized along his leg and hands.
Raguel sighed again, stepping away.
"You were right, Valkyre."
The half-blood fingered the collar of his black shirt, then slowly pulled it down, turning around so the angel could clearly see what lay at the nape of his neck, almost out of sight.
Blue-black lettering, stark and bold on his skin, like the tattoos that crawled over the angel's arms. Numbers and letters, a series with a hidden meaning, a code.
"...I am from the labs as well."
Raguel turned around suddenly, hand dropping to his side. "Can you hear me out? You don't know what's happened, Valkyre. Let me explain."
He seemed almost pleading, almost asking, imploring. Almost weak and soft and kind, human.
But he wasn't.
"I seek Iris as well. I am like the other two for that reason, but I am different. Can't you see?" He held out his hands, as if to emphasize a point, as if he were reaching out.
Valkyre kept his eyes steadily on the other, glowering. He refused to give in now, refused to compromise and make amends. He should've known, he had known it all along.
Raguel hissed under his breath, drawing back, then turning about and pacing the room. He walked to one of the open windows, staring out at nothing, filtered air making his pale skin almost warm, almost alive.
When he spoke again, his voice was reined back, calm.
"...Do you see the world, Valkyre? It's a wasteland. Everything's dead. Humans have destroyed and corrupted everything. They regret and they try to make amends, but all the trees have been cut and all of the lakes have all been drained. The soil has been washed away and the oceans are thick with oil. The skies are black as the earth, and all of the creatures are dead. There is nothing left."
He looked back, imploring again. "Can you see? Do you ever feel sorrow, feel pity for this broken world? It used to be so beautiful."
Valkyre managed to open his mouth, ice crackling down his throat. "How would you know??"
His voice came out harsh, rough and hoarse. He couldn't quite speak right, but he felt no true shift in his emotions or feeling for what the other was saying. Anger still filled him, rage like waves pounding the beach.
Raguel's mouth drew down, tight. "You're right," he murmured at length. "I don't know. But I feel for the ruined earth.
"Humans think pettily, and we've learned to think like them. They think of only their personal goals, of what they can achieve for themselves and their race. They continue to destroy, pretending and deluding themselves into thinking they're doing something good, that what they do will be worthwhile."
Raguel stared back at the angel, stepping towards him. "But they are all afraid of true sacrifice in the end, Valkyre. They're selfish creatures attached to themselves, obsessed with their mortality.
"Don't you see??"
Raguel was smiling, pacing the floor again, eyes never leaving Valkyre, boring into him. "That's where I differ. I have suffered. I know sacrifice. I'm willing to sacrifice everything I have, though I have nothing. Don't you see??"
Again. Desperate, trying to make him understand.
Raguel stepped away fom him, suddenly. Focusing on something else.
Iris.
The boy drew closer to himself as the half-blood moved towards him, unmatching eyes staring down at his small form. They flickered back to Valkyre, testing, judging.
"He's the key, Valkyre. Iris." A smile on his lips. "Can't you see? He, the impossible. Created to restore the world. He will save us all. His blood, his..."
The angel stared back, startled by the idea. Saving the world?? Iris?
"...Wait."
Raguel blinked, watching him, waiting, almost patiently. Slowly leading him to the point, to the truth.
...No. It wasn't true.
"...How can that be?" The words hurt his throat, forced out. Ice crackled along his veins, numbing him. Valkyre felt tinges of drowsiness on the edges of his mind, drawn down by the cold, pushing in on him. No. He had to stay awake. He needed to know.
"What do you mean?"
Valkyre shook his head. "Iris couldn't have been created in the labs to save the world... Humans aren't capable of that..."
He saw the crimson red and the pale yellow eyes widen, surprised by something.
"Labs? You think"-
Something screeched suddenly, a high-pitched, keening wail, sharp, slicing through the stifled, silent air. Raguel jerked his head away, eyes widening further, cut off. He was across the room in moments, staring out the window in the general direction of the scream.
"...No..." Whispered words out of his lips. "How did... Already...?"
The half-blood jerked back suddenly, hissing.
The windowsill.
Valkyre tried to twist his neck around, barely able to glimpse it.
Spiders. From the corner of the windowsill, crawling in.
Raguel's face was drawn, eyes dark. "Not now," he hissed, glaring at the small creatures that clung to the walls, skirted away effortlessly on their multiple sets of legs, a black trickle from the corner.
"No, not yet..."
Another cry. It was different this time, an indescriminate screech that could've been of anguish, joyousness, or hysteria. From the other side of the room, echoing around them.
Raguel hissed, darting over, eyes flashing, frantic and desperate. Afraid of something? Anger.
A softer sound, like mumbling, insistent, unintelligible chatter.
The half-blood snarled in fury, then suddenly lept to the windowsill, crouched, looking around, looking up. A flash of movement, another cry, and Raguel had vanished, chasing something Valkyre couldn't detect, couldn't see.
But he knew what it'd just been.
The jails flashed back to him, the underground cells.
It was all just a distraction.
The angel struggled, building up the magic inside of himself and trying to break free, but the spell was still strong and held him in place, frozen. He craned his neck, trying to keep Iris in his vision.
Any moment now, he knew. Something was here for them. Distracting Raguel, stealing them both away. The other two again? No, it couldn't be...
The spiders along the windowsill.
It was sudden and abrupt, a wave of heat washing over his body from somewhere behind, releasing him from the ice and the cold, thawing out his frozen body.
Something tickled his neck, something crawling over his skin. His fingers twitched, regaining feeling, but he was too late, too slow to turn around, to react.
Nothing more than pinpricks in his skin, and then darkness.

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AN: Very long chappie with some explaining and some other randomness stuffos!
...I have to admit, I kind of used Raguel as a partial outlet. I think the way he does about the world... ...and how it's kinda too late... But that's just me. ::mutters: baka ninjens...::
So. Lotsa stuff happening, and lots of blackouts. -_-; Those are getting kind of annoying, and poor Valkie's probably going to be scarred for life or suffer a concussion... ehehe.
But I need it to happen. X3
...By the way, no one minds a few bugs, right? ...I personally think spiders are sexy. XDDDD [..uhrm, don't ask]
Well, anyway. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to write this story without using the word 'insect', since technically spiders are arachnids and not insects; 2 not 3 body parts and 8 legs... ...Yeah. ::coughs:: Only someone like me sticks to details like that, eheheh. ^^; OCD...
Well, thanks a ton for reading, and see you next! ^__^- [Can you believe? Ch. 26-29, only 4 chaps, and I just barely fit them into the same notepad file! XD Such long chapters! So, if my updates are a bit slow, I hope you can understand.]
...My god. I think I'll actually freakin' reach the end of this story. o_o
THANK YOU ALL~! [Sorry, it's a friday and all...]

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