the spirits yet, though he probably didn’t care. The defeated do not choose with whom to ally or into which realm to fall. Alais knew this from her own experience.
A huge army marched through the desert and waited beyond the desert. The warriors who had risen from death were countless. Menes will surely win.
“You will not participate in this battle?” Remy hovered beside Alais. His black wings cast shadows over her radiant form.
“Let them fight. They will fill the country, and we will come later. It will be easy to follow them on the path they have cleared.”
“The path is clear enough for you,” Remy’s voice became hushed.
“People are building temples. I can feel it.”
“Are there temples to you?”
“They don’t know yet themselves. We must occupy these temples before the god we have fought against does. There must be no room for him here, fly and tell them to chase all his servants from the earthly temples before they wander there. Let the people worship only me and my warriors. The God on whom we raised our swords remains far away in the heavens, and the earth belongs only to us from now on.”
Remy understood her. A club of black tornado swirled in the place where he hovered. Its speed could only be envied. It would arrive in the country before the armies reached there.
“It is civilization!” Alais watched the red tornadoes in the desert, from which the dead armies rose. – Who had thought of building it on a land on which only animals had roamed before?
Men were but animals, and now, suddenly, they had become intelligent. Did the angels bring intelligence to earth and infect these creatures with it? Without intelligence, they were easier prey, and now you have to make deals with them. Wouldn’t it be easier to just squash them all at once?
Alais sprinkled the bloody sand on her palm, and it turned into a huge ruby that was shaped like a tear.
“Take it!” She called to the king, who still could not believe that his armies were rising from the dead. Even his horse, killed by enemy arrows, rose from the sand and run back to his master surrounded by a sandstorm. Once white, now black as night. The horse’s eyes shone an ominous red light. The snake he had crushed froze something like a bracelet on its leg just above the horseshoe.
“Urey!” The king couldn’t believe he was seeing his favorite again, but the ruby pleased him even more. The face of one of Alais’ lost standard-bearers was clearly visible in the stone. It began to resemble something of a woman’s face. Instead of many pairs of wings it was surrounded by many arms and legs. The former cherub had become like a monster within a stone. Souls change, and so do bodies. This standard-bearer’s name was once Kali. She recognized the face, no matter how monstrously it had changed. So lost spirits sleep in the sands, and somehow they could be brought back.
Alais placed the ruby in the king’s hand.
“When I come, it will bleed. Then you will know I am close.”
Menes bowed to her. Unlike Remy, he was not taken aback that she was not coming to fight with him. He expected her to come as soon as he established himself on the throne, and their separation would not be long. The sands in the desert are like time. They flow, folding into sandstorms. They breed demons. Alais was engrossed in looking at the swirling bloody grains of sand even before the armies rising from death rushed into the decisive battle.
Times of Sand
Remy flew over the battlefield and brought the news of Menes’s victory.
“Upper and Lower Kingdoms are united,” he announced with a bow.
“I wish we could have won as easily!” Alais smashed the miniature palace she had built of sand with her hand. It would have cost her nothing to enlarge it to a grandiose size and dwell in it. They would be surprised by a palace made of sand in the desert. It would be easy for an angel to fly into such a palace, but the crumbling arches and ceilings would most likely bury the man who walked in.
The sandy palaces were nothing compared to the heavenly palaces. Alais felt homesick. It was always bright in heaven, but evening and night often fell on earth. Before the angels had fallen to earth, it had always been night. The light brought into the deserts of Alais was only enough for part of the day.
“The sun has followed me fickle ever since we fell here. Do you think it has given up on me?”
“It’s more likely that its rays can’t reach you here,” Remy concluded. “You were too far away.”
Part of the sun has fallen on land that was once in perpetual darkness. Oh, my! Alais laughed, and her wings trembled. A chill ran through her body.
“The sun is where I am!”
Remy nodded in agreement. Alais’ body shone in the night in a way that dispelled the gloom.
Gemstones crunched in the sand beneath her feet. You could pick them up with your hands. Some people found out that the desert was full of jewels and came to get them. That’s when they fell into the claws of the monster armies.
Somehow it so happened that the blood and tears of the angels that fell in the sand turned into precious stones. The angels, having fallen to earth, became known as demons.
Were they demons? Alais frowned. The word was unfamiliar. It seemed to be what Mikhail had called them all when they were tortured after their defeat. Not long ago there had been a sea of stakes and red-hot blades, but now there was only sand.
The light of the sun was reaching the ground, overcoming the distance. The sun’s rays reached out to Alais. They touched her face, slid across her skin, and solidified something like a golden plate.
“It’s a mask!” Remy explained. “I heard Michael call our cut-off faces masks. He flew around the stakes on which your armies were crucified and cut off the faces of the defeated angels. He made masks of the cut-off faces for some reason.”
“I don’t remember that,” Alais peeled the gold plate from her skin. “So you’re called a mask!”
The mask completely copied her facial features. Looking at it was the same as looking in a mirror. The only difference was the color. The white changed to gold.
“Michael wants to talk to you,” the mask sang, its lips rounded.
“It’s the first living mask I’ve ever seen,” Remy marveled and touched the golden face with the tip of his claw. “The masks Michael had taken off all of us and carried to heaven were dead.”
The golden mask wriggled and squirmed in Alais’s hands.
“Tell him I don’t want to see him, and I don’t want to talk to him.”
“I can’t tell him anything,” the mask hissed, moving its ears like wings. “My function is only to relay reports to you. He wants you back. Everyone wants you back.”
Alais tosses the mask back into the sand. Let it lie there. The mask tried to crawl after her for a while, but then fell behind.
Soon the discarded
