The light started out faint, a mere suggestion of daylight on the floor of the cave. Raziel saw the faint beam of sun from atop the cliff he’d scaled to reach the seraph who was doggedly following him despite obvious exhaustion.  It had been a torture test to lead the seraph back through the tunnels, which were mercifully quiet now.  Progress was slow, since his charge was so tired, but Jehoel had borne the long walk without complaint.

        A quick glide to the floor brought them both into the entryway to the cave.  Bright feathers trailed in the dust as the seraph trudged along, stumbling.  Raziel bit down on his impatience and waited, his emotions betrayed only in one twitching claw.  The sunlight became stronger as they walked on, and finally they passed from the sheltering overhang into the dim light of Nosgoth’s sun.

        The sun cast a wavery light over the mountains.  Unused to such strong illumination, Jehoel shaded his eyes from the light and hunched under his wings for shelter.  Raziel looked up at the wan orb; from its position, he guessed that he had been more than half a day in the ancient volcano.  Time was wasting. It was time to claim his reward.

        He climbed up the scarp, scanning the basin for Yahriel.  A freshening breeze played with his useless wingtips, further deepening his anxiety. The seraph was nowhere to be seen.  Anxiety grew quickly into anger, and Raziel slammed the head of his borrowed spear into the rock in fury.  The Soul Reaver flared in response, and his eyes blazed pale fire as he howled out, "Yahriel!"

        A section of the caldera's wall rippled like a sheet caught in the wind and faded out.  When the glamourie faded, Yahriel stood before him, utterly composed.  Power rolled from her in waves that seemed to thicken the mountain air.  She shook her wings out, as if she had been sitting still for a long time, then fixed him with a level gray gaze.

        "There is no need to shout, Raziel.  I knew you were coming back.  Watch-wards cannot be dismissed immediately."  She smiled, suddenly.  "You have brought my brother with you, beaten down though he is at the moment.  For this, there is no gratitude deep enough, but one hopes that my efforts will suffice."

        "You took your time in revealing yourself."  Raziel's eyes narrowed; he was still cross.

        "The end is the same, is it not?" the seraph replied, archly.  Turning away, she picked her way through the rocks to her brother, who was sitting down with his wings awkwardly pitched over his head.  She knelt next to him and began speaking softly.  In a few moments, Jehoel retracted his wings and sat in the sun while his eyes teared and his body shook.

        With her brother's wings out of the way, Yahriel moved to face her brother.  She threw her arms around him in a swift, fierce embrace, then shadowed him with her own wings.  She reached out and clasped her brother's shoulders, then bowed her head.  Raziel felt the currents of energy shift as the power he had felt coming from Yahriel came to focus itself upon her irin.

        Jehoel let out a shaky breath as the bruises and gashes he had sustained in his fight closed.  The stream of healing energy from his sister slowed as the last remnants of the vampiric nature Turel had forced upon him were washed away.  When it was over, Yahriel stood and helped her brother to his feet.  He looked to the open skies with longing, and his desire to be free in the air was evident.

        His voice a whisper, Jehoel breathed, "No walls, and no boundaries… freedom, at last…"

        "Are you well enough to reach the Hold?" asked Yahriel, her voice warm.

        "Well enough. Thank you, sister mine."  Jehoel faced Raziel then, and bowed deeply.  "Thanks also to you, reaver-of-souls. Fair winds to you."

        Raziel nodded in acknowledgement.  Only a single claw tapping on his forearm belied his impatience.

        "Will you fly with me back to the Hold?"  Jehoel had directed his attention again to his sister.

        "Not yet. There is the matter of a promise to keep.  I will be following you in time.  Tell the Archon that I bring Lord Raziel with me."

        "I will."  Jehoel's face brightened at the thought of home. "Farewell, Yahri."

        Jehoel spread massive golden wings and caught the air beneath them.  Eddies of wind scattered sand as he became airborne.  Yahriel watched her brother fly off, his wingbeats steadily strengthening as he winged his way westward.

        Raziel's voice, tightly controlled and richly modulated, cut into her thoughts.  "What now, Yahriel? Your story has a happy ending -" here his voice bore the faintest tone of derision - "but mine is not yet finished."

        "Your patience is greatly appreciated."  She raised an eyebrow, but forbore to rise to Raziel's bait.  "I will keep my word.  You will again gain the skies, my word on it.  You must trust me, however.  Reconstructing your wings will take some thought."  The seraph walked towards him, her power only slightly diminished by the healing she had wrought.  "It is no small thing to remake flesh and bone."

        Suddenly nervous, Raziel backed up slightly, then cursed himself for it.  "What are you going to do?"

        "Easier to do than to say, though I will try to show you."  Yahriel eyed his tattered wings, and hesitated. "Your wings - I must see how the bone and ligament was attached.  It may not be comfortable, but it is necessary. May I?"

        Tersely, Raziel replied, "You may."  He forced himself to stand quietly while the seraph carefully lifted the remnants of his once-proud heritage.  The gentle probing of her fingers reminded him all too clearly of the motion of Kain's claws as they ripped the bone from his wings.  Memory of the searing pain and the aching sense of loss caused him to shudder slightly from mixed sorrow and fierce rage.

        "Hold still," she admonished, softly.  The seraph lightly traced the shriveled patches of skin that had once stretched tightly over bone.  He nearly jerked away from her, but managed to suppress the instinct to turn and rend the phantom Kain who had so cruelly torn his evolution from his back.  It was not Kain now, it was the  angel Yahriel, but Raziel dared not trust her any more than was necessary.

        She broke into his reverie with a warning.  "Prepare yourself. Be calm, and all will be well."

        Tendrils of energy wound about his legs and arms, forcing Raziel to stillness.  He struggled, fruitlessly, as he was slowly bathed in the same golden glow he had seen Yahriel draw from the felled nephil.  His mind screamed out, but his voice remained silent, and the torrent of power continued its inexorable winding about his chest and wings.

        :Do not fear.:  The seraph's voice coiled its way into his mind as his vision faded into a blackness that was somehow comforting.  :I will show you what needs to be done, mind-to-mind. It is easier this way, is it not?:

        :Can you hear me?: asked Raziel, wondering.

        :Yes,: she replied. :Now watch.:

        He felt the seraph draw on blasted Nosgoth to pull from the earth the components of his new wings.  Limestone was drawn from layers of sediment and ripped apart, and its components recombined in otherspace to create the lattice of bone.  Fascinated, Raziel saw the slender ivory spears coalesce bit by bit, recreating the framework of his wings.  Yahriel's magic looped and wove among the fragments, binding them together in a nimbus of light.

        As the fragments became more substantial, new flesh began to form between the angles of bone.  Raziel "looked" more closely, and was spun out along the pathway of Yahriel's creation to see where the networks of proteins were spinning themselves into sinew and leathery membrane.  New nerves branched out, twining into his spinal cord and reconnecting severed pathways.  Through the whole process beat the incessant pulse of her magic, a torrent of silver, so much that he felt suffused with it.  It was not an entirely uncomfortable feeling, but it was so alien that it left him clawing for the familiar blackness of his reality.

        :Enough!: he screamed, silently.  :What are you doing to me?:

        :It is almost done, Raziel.: Yahriel's mind-voice pressed down on him, reassuring.  :Soon.:

        Raziel turned his awareness back into himself, unwilling to watch any more.  He closed his mind as best he could, and waited in the comforting black for the cessation of magic.

        All at once, it was ended.  Light and sensation rushed back into him with such alacrity that he staggered, instinctively reaching out with a claw to steady himself.  A new motion came, instinctual, as Raziel dazedly felt his new wings extend just a little to afford him more balance.  My wings… he thought, almost delerious. My wings!

        "Newly fledged, you are."  Yahriel solicitously extended a hand in support, and he grabbed for it, quite forgetting his dignity.  She neatly evaded the wicked talons and helped him up.  The aura of power she had carried with her had faded almost completely, spent in one massive effort.  "Careful, now - the binding energies are settling in.  They will weave themselves into your spectral form in time."

        The seraph stood back, gravely surveying her work.  "Try them. They are sound enough." She smiled slightly, encouraging.

        Unaccustomed to the feeling, Raziel extended one wing.  Something was very different about these new wings - they were heavier and stronger than the ones he remembered.  Uneasy, he spread the wing out, and gaped at the result.

        Where before his wingtips had just reached past his elbows, they now extended fully down past his calves, nearly to his ankles.  The apex was slightly higher as well, and the claws at the top gleamed.  The trailing edge swept elegantly from the newly-made tiers of bone to anchor lower on his back than before.  Caught between fear and amazement, he rounded on Yahriel with such force that she stumbled back from him, her wings riffling the air.

        "What did you do to me?" he roared, unconsciously opening his wings to their fullest extent in an instinctive gesture of intimidation.  "What is this, seraph? Did you seek to improve on the original design? Was it inferior enough that you dare to deform the remnants of my heritage?"

        Yahriel's own wings mantled, and her face darkened.  "Your original wings were not large enough to provide you with the lift to fly from the ground. Look here, doubter."  She spread her own pinions, showing a wingspan of over eleven feet.  A powerful sweep launched her into the air, just out of reach of the Soul Reaver, which had manifested itself again in response to Raziel's emotion.  "From a height, you could well have kept yourself aloft for some time.  Did you ever test your wings, Raziel?  Did you start from the ground - or did you leap from a height?  Think well on it!"

        The memory of his first flight flooded back.  He remembered the need to climb, to slip the bounds of Nosgoth's gravity and feel the air under his wings.  Remembered teetering precariously from the brink of his balcony, then falling off into the depth of sky, lifted by his new evolution into the dizzying expanse.  A cruel jest on the behalf of evolution, to provide him with substandard wings - or just the first step towards his new ones?

        Yahriel swooped above him, hovering over his head. "Well, then, will you come?"  She dove at him, pulling up short to skim over his head.  "Do you think I would repay you with false promises?"

        She snarled at him from her superior altitude, furious.  "You speak of deformity while you mock my talents. Try them, Raziel!  Try your wings and prove me wrong, if you dare!"

        Finally stirred to action, Raziel worked his new wings and let instinct guide him.  He worked the framework of bone and membrane forward and backward, feeling the wind curl and pull against it.  The vampire closed his eyes for a moment, then gathered himself.  Unfurling his wings, he sprang into the air, and his wings caught the skies as naturally as if he had never been earthbound, had never had this glory ripped from his back for reasons still unknown.

        Disbelieving, he watched the ground recede as each wingbeat carried him higher.  Raziel looked up to see Yahriel a few wingspans away, her face still hard.  He swallowed his pride - a bitter pill, indeed - and spoke.

    "My apologies, lady."  He bowed his head, momentarily repentant.  "Your work is truly magnificent."  And it was. His wings were works of art, aerodynamically sound and aesthetically lovely, painted with subtle shadings of brown, black, and yellow.  Exactly like his old wings - but better.

        Mollified, she swung away from him.  "We will fly west, where the Archon and my brother await us." The seraph turned back to him, her anger dissipated.  "There, I can fill the remainder of my bargain with you - and you can decide whether you wish to aid us.  I hope, along with the rest of my kindred, that the terms are sufficient.  We need you sorely."

        She rapidly gained altitude, and Raziel followed her.  The sensation of flight was so overpowering that it nearly drowned out the corner of his mind that asked about the rest of the bargain.

        It didn’t matter.  What did matter were the rush of air and the freedom of no longer being earthbound, and the satisfaction of a heritage no longer denied.  For the first time since his rebirth at the whim of the Elder, his mind cleared of the thoughts of betrayal and revenge that spurred him.  In the unfamiliar absence of hate and rage, another emotion stole into his consciousness, almost unrecognizable.

        It was joy.
 
 

Author’s note: This chapter touches on events that took place in Fire Ceremony’s excellent fic "Metamorphosis." If you haven’t already read it, I encourage you to do so!