was trying to come alive. The statue copied Alais’ winged figure and her curly head.
Alais looked at it as if in a mirror. Golden curls snaked down her shoulders and folded into a halo-like shape at the back of her head, her facial features strikingly beautiful. The wings were the largest organ of her body, towering over her head and casting a shadow over her shoulders.
“I should fight again!” Alais lovingly stroked the hilt of her sword. “But it is not yet the time. We are too exhausted.”
“Shall I gather the masks?” Remy asked.
“No, let them crawl wherever they want.”
“But they can take some of your power.”
“They’re useless,” Alais said, tossing the last of the masks into the dune. The mask moved as if it were a lizard.
The masks could crawl and even fly, moving notches in the form of wing-like ears, spikes, or horns. But Alais didn’t care about them. They’re just masks. They have no personality. They’re just a mold of her.
“I wish I could take away the masks Michael had cut off the faces of my legionnaires,” Alaïs closed her eyelids. She was reminded of the heartbreaking screams. The armies that had followed her into battle were doomed. They had been tortured, they had been destroyed. They were worse than dead.
Alais lifted one golden mask and scrutinized the flawless features.
“I was the most beautiful angel in heaven, and I still am. Who would have thought my entourage would be monsters!”
The abandoned mask flew into the sand, managing to sing something. These masks were too talkative. Her head ached with their suggestions and prophecies.
How was Menes? Was he happy that he got his kingdom with the help of demons? Of this the masks did not know. It was useless to even ask them.
They could have paid Menes a visit on their own, but it wasn’t time yet. He had only recently won. He would have to settle into his role as ruler before an angel from the deserts would appear to him. There is no hurry. Alais had grown accustomed to the fact that time flowed incredibly slowly.
A slight envy of Menes tormented her. He’d achieved victory all too quickly. She, on the other hand, had to wait and save her strength.
Alaïs sat on the white horse that had come from the darkness with the rays of dawn. It was her former friend and comrade-in-arms! She recognized him by his eyes and his posture. Strange that he had become a horse. But the horse, as it turned out, could turn into a burnt creature with black sagging wings. He’d just been with mortals and noticed that it was in fashion for their chiefs to have horses, so he became a horse for his mistress. Mistress, not lord! It still sounded unfamiliar. Alais clenched her incredibly strong hands into fists and unclenched them again. The strength was not gone, but her appearance had changed slightly. She was even more beautiful than she had been. But it was the sex… It felt like something was missing. Masculinity, darkness… Her stronger part seemed to be slumbering somewhere, turned into animated darkness. And to live without it was somehow a misery. Alais was ready to run through the desert all day to find what was missing, but how to find something that you only assume exists and it might not really exist? But she could feel it. It was there. The golden desert breathed darkness. A part of her, drained entirely of darkness, rested here somewhere. It must be found. Only by uniting with her can the war in heaven be fought again.
The shield behind her back retained, like a picture, the image of the head of an angel who died in battle. Her standard – bearer became the shield that protected her to this day. Orvelyn! His reflection in the shield seemed to see her. He had serpentine curls, a cold, beautiful face, and golden spikes on his wings and claws. It was a pity he was only a shield now. His company had always pleased her.
The desert had become a living creature, like a monster. And that monster now served her. Alais looked around the expanse of her new kingdom in the sands. She could lay here for centuries, accumulate strength, and rush off to war with the heavens again. But Remy had said it was time to conquer the human realm, so she decided to give it a try.
Mirror of the Universe
The first mirror that Dennitsa looked into after he fell and saw his transformed maiden face there was only a puddle on the sand. The puddle solidified into mica and then turned into amalgamated glass. A ligature of golden symbols stretched along the edges of the glass. The gems in the ornament flashed like watching eyes. Eyes they were. There was a special power and a special mystery in the mirror.
“There is not even ash left on you,” Remy murmured beside him. “Truly, God loves you, because even when you have fallen, you are as beautiful as you were. Or is he powerless to harm you? Then you are truly our commander, for there is no one stronger than you.”
“What is about the darkness?” Alais sensed something stronger in the wilderness, but separated from herself. “It is my shadow!”
“It is yours! Then it’s yours to lead,” Remy hovered around her, bloody meat blotches and blackened gold ornaments on his ash-burned elbows. It was as if he had pulled them out of the earth, where they had been forged by fiery dwarves. Alais didn’t recognize them at first as soldiers in her army. Too stunted, but then she recognized their voices coming from the depths of the earth. How had they shrunk so much?
“Only you can control your own shadow,” Remy insisted, though he, too, had sensed the darkening power thickening over the desert like a black cloud.
“There’s something wrong here!”
They couldn’t see the source of the power yet, but it was felt as something shattering, ready to sweep away the world they were in with a single blow. Her desire to do this, too, could be felt. So why wasn’t the job done yet? What is holding back the darkness?
“It is your unwillingness to reunite with it!”
“Is that what you said?” Alais turned around, but Remy was no longer there.
“It is your unwillingness to share its burns and its pain,” the voice murmured again over her ear, dark as night. “It is your fear of getting burned by what people call passion and what you don’t know at all. It is your fear of going back to heaven and finding the all-consuming fire there again. Your reluctance to lose your independence, but together we would be better off. After all, we are still one.”
So says the genie of the lamp in people’s tales. That’s how her spirits work when they see mortal travelers. And in the lamp they may well come to live. One such lamp, made of gold by an underground dwarf, Alais took for her. Many spirits had taken up residence in it, gushing out in a silvery mist. They were twelve or thirteen. All of them served her faithfully. Even while in the lamp, they could easily observe events around the world and could find out about everything to report to her. But from where and more importantly from whom the dark voice emanates, even they did not know.
“We are made one, like sun and shadow. Like fire and the ash it creates. Like beauty and ugliness united in your army. Our army! We must be together again.”
The voice began to drive her mad. It must be God’s attacks. He wants her back, leaving her burnt servants on the ground.
“Don’t compare me to them and to him. To overthrow him would make me a better man. We simply
