pleasant to drink. Somehow it tastes better than lizard blood.
But why is it? All living creatures on earth are the same. They came here a long time after her angels had fallen in the wilderness. Why should there be any difference between all these creatures? Why does the blood of any of them taste sweeter?
Sickle of Blood
Alais found a sickle in the sand. Apparently it was formed from a shard of sunbeam, curved in a strange shape. The sickle was still hot. And yet it was nighttime. The sand is not red-hot.
Black letters stretched across the golden blade, as if drawn in darkness.
“I’m still with you.”
What could that mean? Who was still with her? All around are her fallen legions, mutilated and burned. There is no one extra in them. Perhaps the inscription is a message from someone she counted among the dead? Hardly a message from God, but there is power in the words, as if someone stronger than the Almighty were present.
An aura of darkness enveloped the golden sickle, and suddenly the black letters on the blade were golden, too. You couldn’t read them now. The reliefs were barely visible.
Alais weighed the sickle in her hands. As long as it touched her skin, she had the magical feeling that there was someone she couldn’t do without.
“You’re just like a friend to me,” Alais whispered to the sickle, and the sickle glowed brighter. It resembled a month in the sky. And that was the month she held in her hands.
“We are like night and day. We are one! As day does not exist without night, so you do not exist without me.”
The mysterious voice sounded only in her head. It enveloped her consciousness in a black mist. Alais grew wary. There was definitely someone nearby, but she didn’t see him, and her armies didn’t see him either. Otherwise they would have panicked. There was as much danger from the invisible creature as there was magnetism. she wanted to see it.
Perhaps someone’s soul was hiding inside the sickle. Alais examined the sickle more closely. Wasn’t the face of one of the dead angels shining through on the blade? Only the writing was visible. The letters of the angelic hieroglyphs echoed the words of the invisible being: “We are night and day, merged together. Without each other we do not exist. We are the pillar of creation and the ruin of the universe.”
And where is her name? She puffed on the sickle, and the letters of her new name stuck out at the tip. That’s better. Only her name is here; the name of the invisible being is not nearby. She set her seal and hammered the sickle to herself. The voice of the invisible creature fell silent. In time, however, the sickle proved useful.
It was easier to kill with a sickle than even with a claw. In one fell swoop, you could cut the heads off a whole troop of men. Alais was harvesting bloody crops when she barely saw the travelers arriving in the wilderness.
Someone had spread rumors that there were gold mines hidden beneath the dunes. Greedy people rushed to check it out and fall into the claws of the fallen legion.
The sand was increasingly sprinkled with blood. Alais was chopping away. The sickle had become her favorite weapon. It was like part of her arm or wing. It was so comfortable and easy to use. The sickle is her faithful helper and protector. No sword or shield is needed with it. Too bad she didn’t have the sickle before, or she would have won.
The desert greedily absorbed the spilled blood. The dunes vibrated as if they were alive. They made the desert look like a humpbacked giant with an angelic legion treading on its back.
It didn’t need a legion at all, as long as it had a sickle. One sickle could easily harvest the blood of a whole army. One day an army of men marched past the deserts. Alais swooped in and mowed them all down like bloody ears in a field. She made the raid out of inertia. She didn’t like the people. They were trespassing on angelic territory and rushing to do things her way. Humanity is an anthill that should be destroyed. But the more time passed, the more civilized this anthill became.
And one day a man appeared, worthy of the angel’s respect. It was a pharaoh who had lost a battle.
The first pharaoh
This man was special. He was tired, exhausted. He was desperate. But there was a sense of greatness about him. Almost like her.
“He is a warlord!” Alais realized, watching him from the dunes.
The traveler was dragging across the sand, barely, leaving a trail of blood. He was wounded. The luxurious robes were tattered and stained with mud.
She could have jumped down gracefully, spread her wings, and block his path. The traveler was barely able to walk, stumbling and hunched over. Alais clawed at his chin and forced him to lift his face. There was something lurking in his eyes that hurt her. Alais recoiled. Looking at this man was like looking in a mirror.
Instantly the painful cries of her fallen army and the all-consuming pain of defeat came to mind.
“You’re like me!” Alais whispered in the ancient angelic language. The traveler, of course, did not understand. He was speaking in an entirely different dialect. Remy seemed to call it Egyptian, and the country beyond the desert was Egypt. This wretch had come from there. He was the local ruler, but now the corpses of his army were being eaten by vultures. Disfigured bodies were also lying in the sands. He had suffered a crushing defeat, and the enemy was advancing.
“You came here to die!” She stated. “Well, just like the ones I missed after the fall. Maybe it’s too soon to die. I, for one, cannot die at all.”
The man was stunned. For some reason, the sight of her always brought people to a standstill. Yes, in heaven she was considered the most beautiful creature, but here on earth she was considered a deity.
Well, it’s nice to fall where there is no other god. In a place like this, and without winning the war, there’s a chance to be the one and only. She’s lucky to have fallen here. Who would have thought it!
“Don’t be afraid of me!” Alais made an effort over herself and began to mimic the wayfarer’s speech. Speaking Egyptian was not difficult for an angel. The language was akin to that of an angel. Probably some of the wandering legionnaires of Alais had taught people to speak it. Not long ago, she remembered, humans had been voiceless creatures. And suddenly they spoke, imitating the speech of angels! Nothing could explain it but the intervention of demons. She wondered which of her warriors had taken it upon themselves to teach the human race languages and crafts. The light armor on the wayfarer was also modeled on that of the celestials.
“Trust me!” Alais demanded. “Tell me what happened!”
A flood of spontaneous images flooded into her head. There was a battle! Here on earth. People were fighting! But it was no less bloody than in heaven.
“The upper kingdom… The lower kingdom… You had to combine the two to be a full-fledged king… I wanted to be.”
“So you’re a king?” Alais didn’t understand what the stranger was saying, but the familiar title interested her. “A king defeated? Just like me…”
“Deja vu” caused a sharp pain. How many thousand years ago
