A "Fallen" Angel's Quest to the Coast

Somewhere in the depths of the luscious Great Forest, a black-winged angel crouched with both of her hands clinging tightly onto her weapon as she panted heavily from fatigue. Her wings were fanned out and the fibers of the feathers were aligned haphazardly reflecting the roughness of her trip from Skeila to Lunae Tritium.
“Lose some of my divinity huh?” The angelic woman uttered as she tried to calm her breathing rate. Smiling a little, she slid her sleeve across her face wiping a streak of blood away from her mouth. “I seemed to have lost it all….”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Earlier~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Miss Valderin,” began her superior Seryth as he stood in front of her at the Gateway of Heaven. “SERAPHIM has discovered some new suspicious activity in the Coastal Desert of Avalon. We suspect that an avaricious man by the name of Akmard holds onto a forbidden blade cursed with black magic. You are to go down to Lunae Tritium and get rid of this man, bringing the blade back as proof of completion of your mission. Please remember to be careful. You will lose some of your divinity, meaning that fatigue will be more common after long flight, and you will feel the need to eat in order to live.”
“I understand, Master,” Trinity replied as she clenched her fist and placed it against her chest. “I won’t disappoint you!”
Seryth smirked at her enthusiasm. He loved the naivety of his underlings; they did whatever he asked of them no matter how ridiculous it seemed. Did she even realize how dangerous this potential task might be? By the look of Trinity’s blank stare he concluded that either such worrying was beyond her or that blindness was the reason for her to stare blankly out into space.

“Miss Valderin, one last thing…. Before you depart, please wear this accessory.” He pulled out a purple visor from his black robe and placed it over Trinity’s eyes. “You don’t want any enemies to know that you’re blind. It could be a disadvantage to SERAPHIM’s current objectives.”
Trinity’s smile faded. “Master, this is not very comfortable,” she stated, tugging at the two tufts of white feathers -one on each side of the visor.
Seryth smirked again. “Ah, but, Miss Valderin,” he started as he placed his hand on her shoulder. “It really boosts your appeal. All women will look upon you with jealousy, especially since you have those adorable white winglets protruding from behind your ears. It will make them think of Archangel Isis,” he stated in an overly sweet and mocking tone, trying to conceal his laughter as he watched Trinity’s smile return.

“Oh, you really think so?” Trinity giggled playfully, leaning closer to Seryth until her hands were pressed up against his chest.
“Yes, yes, yes, of course, of course!” Seryth exclaimed in annoyance, pushing her away as he turned his head in disgust. “You’ve stalled long enough, Miss Valderin. Now, go, go, go!” He took the palm of his hand and held it up in the air for a moment until it glowed a brilliant white and then pushed it forcefully against Trinity’s back. Seconds later a crackle echoed and the female angel was nowhere to be seen.

“YESSS, MAAAAAASTERRR!!!!” Trinity wailed gripping tightly onto her spear as she rocketed through the clouds toward the earth. She could feel her speed building up and she had no clue how close she was to the earth. All she knew was that she had to regain control of her motion or else she would perish when she struck the ground. Come on wings! Come on wings! Trinity thought as she threw her head back and gritted her teeth. Her wings could move, but the resistance from the oncoming air made her wings feel as if they were being ripped away from her body. “Eeep! A skyland!” the angel wailed as the sounds of birds and insects became increasingly louder on her right side. Come on! Just move a bit to the left! The angel twisted her body just in time to avoid the rigid edge of a floating mass of land. Hey! That worked!

She thought about the skylands for a moment. She must have looked like a shooting star streaking across the sky to all of the people living on them, but such a thought was not important at the moment. Trinity quickly realized this and resumed her previous session of panicking. That’s nice, Trini, But…how far to the ground!? she thought to herself in annoyance, still using her wings to resist the initial force applied by Seryth’s spell. When she had thought that she finally slowed down enough, her spear’s tip struck the ground first; the recoiling bend of the spear in response to the collision sent Trinity face first into the trunk of a wide tree. Stunned and in severe pain, the angel fell onto her back. As she laid there moaning about her sore body, the green spear continued to reverberate violently.
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Sighing in relief that her rough experience was now twenty minutes in the past, Trinity used what strength she had left to pull herself all the way to her feet. “I must have really upset Master because he used all of his energy just to shove me down here. Now he probably won’t be able to use any magic for the rest of the day.… I’m just lucky that the ground wasn’t any closer!” She remarked to herself, “But anyway, I gotta figure out how I’m going to coax Arani out of the ground.” Trinity tugged on the spear a few times in frustration, but it did not seem to budge. “And I also gotta fix up my feathers. I probably look like a fledgling that was just booted from its nest!” she grumbled.

"Some Broc flowers, Blackgrass, and Amanita mushrooms. I think that will be enough." Said a high elf as he added the ingredients into a side bag. "Now to making mage potions now." Then the large crash startled him, making him dump all his mushrooms and plants out. As they fell he cursed, picking them up again and muttering to himself. After pocketing all the ingredients, he stormed off to the direction of the noise. When he got to Trinity's crash site, he crossed his arms and scowled at the blind angel. "Do you mind? I am in the middle of an important session." He angerly scolded the angel.

Trinity jumped a little at the sound of the angry voice, but she was more startled by the fact that she hadn't heard him arrive to the scene. "Sir," she said without looking up at him, "I am sorry, but I cannot control how I am attacked. Please return to your tasks and I shall cause you no more trouble." She grabbed onto her spear with one hand and used her other hand to wipe away more blood from her mouth--blood that she thought was merely drool.

"Attacked? By what?" Maglor looked around. "From the looks of it, it seems that you flew haphazardly."
He noticed the spear and the wings. "So, you must be an angel then. What brings an angel to Elytr?" He asked with increasing suspicion. Maglor put no effort to hide the contempt inside his voice. He despised angels.

"Elytr?" Trinity paused for a moment, ignoring Maglor's question about her attacker. "...So that's where I am...." She sighed in disappointment. How would she travel to Sentinel in a decent amount of time now? She couldn't just fly there--no, she wouldn't even dare fly to the desert because she would be more vulnerable to an aerial ambush. Besides, the bones in her wings ached from the rough trip down to the heartland. "I want to go to Sentinel, but it looks like I'll have to put that off for now," she remarked, "And, if you don't mind, I was kinda in the middle of something, so I'd appreciate it if you would continue your tasks elsewhere. You can ask me questions in about an hour or so." She placed both of her hands on the spear and yanked at it until she fell back onto her butt with her wings fanned out and bent awkwardly. "Ugh.... I thought I wouldn't have to do this...." After standing up and dusting herself off, Trinity stamped her left foot on the ground in front of the spear. The spear leapt away from the newly formed crack right into her left hand. "...Hm...Well?" She sort of looked in Maglor's direction hoping that he would just leave her alone, at least until after she preened her feathers.

"I have my eye on you." Maglor warned, before walking off for a moment and setting up a small alchemy lab.

Finally….
Now that Maglor was gone, Trinity decided to walk off her pain by taking a short stroll in the northward direction. She was not sure if Maglor had taken this route, but that thought soon vanished when she realized that the trees seemed to be thinning out. A few yards back, the angel had to literally duck and twist around several obstacles at the last minute to avoid planting her face into the bark of yet another tree, but now it seemed as if the trees were fading behind her. Perhaps she had entered a meadow? No, she hadn’t entered a meadow. The angel stood there for a moment tasting the crispness of the air and listening carefully to her surroundings. She perked up a little when she heard a slight trickling noise not too far from her. “A stream?” Trinity exclaimed as she trotted toward it using Arani as her guide. She stopped running when lukewarm stream water filled her shoes. “Ahh… so refreshing. I think I can clean up nicely here, especially since it sounds like nobody’s around,” she remarked as she pulled her cape away from her wings and undid the zippers of the wing holes in her blouse. She carefully laid her skirt, blouse, cape, and assorted undergarments next to Arani and her satchel on the bank; she did not remove her visor because Seryth had told her not to. Then, she eased her sore body into the cool stream water. She thought a moment about unbraiding her hair, but then decided that she should worry more about her feathers since they were a noticeable feature of her body. Sighing, the angel slathered mud across her chest and worked the remaining handful into the feathers of her right wing.

The grass rustled as a small child with a dirty burlap bucket emerged from the wind-blown grass. What he saw shocked him. An angel? In the stream? What was she doing there? The child dropped his bucket, fixated on the angel. He wanted to get closer, but at the same time, he was scared of the alien sight. Remembering his chore for the day, he picked back the bucket with both hands, using it to cover his eyes from the angel. Creeping slowly away from the angel and to another part of the stream, he slowly stepped to make sure that the angel wouldn't notice him. Until he stepped on a twig.

“This mud seems to be of a nice consistency,” Trinity remarked, feeling it between her fingers. “Master doesn’t like when I do this, but he isn’t here to tell me not to so I might as well put as much of it on my wings as I can.”
She let the mud on her wings harden a little before submerging herself into the water. Then she swam over to a boulder, the perfect place for her to rest and dry off. Climbing onto the boulder was a bit of a challenge though. The first two trials resulted in many loud splashes and moaning, but the angel was finally able to pull her body past the slimy algae on the lower half of the boulder and up onto the warm dry surface. That was when she heard the twig snap. “!!?!?!” She whipped an arm over her chest a little too fast, causing her to lose her balance. “KYAAAAAAAAAH!” With both arms flailing wildly in the air, the angel fell off the boulder, causing yet another huge splash. Why Trinity did not use her wings, even she did not really know. It must have been from shock. When she resurfaced, her face turned a deep red and her visor fell off, revealing her dull purple eyes. “Oh, no! The visor!” she exclaimed, swimming after it. “Gotcha~” She snatched it out of the water and tossed it onto the bank. “Now where did that noise come from?” she mumbled to herself as she listened carefully to the background noises.

The kid was immediately down on the ground with the burlap bucket on his head. He stayed still and quiet until the silence would be broken by the angel. He shivered a bit, scared of what she would do to him if he was caught.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Maglor continued to brew his potions, crushing the mushrooms and flowers and gently adding them to the pot. He took out his water canteen to fill the pot...and just one drop fell in. "Dammit." Was the word that slid out his mouth. He dumped the concoction out to the ground and started repicking the flowers and mushrooms again.

"Huh, it must have been an animal," Trinity remarked in relief climbing up the boulder again. This time she was determined to start preening her feathers without any interruptions.
“Ah…. So warm,” Trinity sighed blissfully as she reached for her feathers. Preening them was time consuming because it required her to pay special attention to her feathers individually, but it was not difficult. The angel carefully slid feathers in between her index and middle finger, squeezing the water out of them and realigning the fibers into a more beautiful arrangement. She repeated this process until she straightened out every feather within her reach.
“Well, it looks like that’s the best I can do at the moment,” she uttered under her breath as she stood up from the boulder to absorb the warmth of the sun with her black feathers.

The child shivered a bit, until he took his sack off. He sighed in relief and got up. He continued his silent trek to the river, a bit away from the angel. He sighed a huge relief when he finally reached the river. He was about to scoop a sack full of water until a long shadow caught his attention. What he saw when his eyes followed the shadow was an elf. He was struck with amazement and absolute fear. He couldn't even scream out in terror.

Maglor let his finger reach his lips. He shushed the child and dunked the canteen into the river. After it dripped and the opening runneth over, he satisfyingly smiled and closed it. He left as he came. Silently and quickly.

"...What was that splash?" Trinity wondered flapping her wings twice to gently glide over to the bank. She stood there for a moment listening carefully to all of the chattering insects before realizing that a fish must have jumped out of the water. “I better find that guy again, so that I can figure out which direction to travel,” she said as she redressed herself. As she was reaching back to adjust her zippers, she realized something. How the heck was she going to get her blouse zipped back up? She had always had help getting it on and now there was nobody around. “Well, if I put my cape on, nobody will notice, right? Eheheheh….” Feeling very much embarrassed, Trinity snatched her belongings off the ground and scurried along the stream hoping to run into Maglor again. --But instead of Maglor, she found somebody else --the little boy. She must have scared the poor child, almost tripping over him and screaming when her body came in contact with the warmth of his body. "Monst--er, child!" she remarked, patting the boy on the head and recognizing that he was merely a child.

The boy couldn't scream. He was too scared to. All he did was shiver and whimper. For some reason, he buried his face inside Trinity's wings and calmed down. He finally realized she wasn't going to harm him. He calmed down immensely and breathed normally.

~~~~~~~~~~

"Now then, back to work." Maglor remixed the mushrooms and plants, and added water at a precise volume and application. The potion brewed and bubbled, and became blue. "Thank goodness." Was Maglor's response, finally making a magic-regeneration potion.

Trinity stood there stiff as a board. "What is a little boy like you doing out here alone?" she asked the child. Then an idea crossed her mind. A child was easy to manipulate, especially a timid one like the boy before her. He seemed frightened by her for some reason that she did not quite understand, (since she was unaware of his presence during her bathing break) and this she could use to her advantage. "Do you think you could help me with a few things?" she asked, pointing to the two zippers below her wings. "This angel wouldn't hurt a boy who can help make her feathers look pretty." Trinity said with a wink, even though she wasn't looking directly at the boy. "Boys who don't help angels on the other hand......"

"O...okay..." The boy peeped only a smidge above total silence. He pinched the zipper with shaking hands and forced his hands to zip them up. He finished the other and sniffled a bit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maglor opened the potion and dripped a swig into his mouth. He felt the energy rushing through him, but only for a brief moment. This energy allowed him to conjure a small flame in his hand. He grinned, satisfied with the potion.

"Eh?" Trinity felt a bit guilty for making the boy even more scared. "What's wrong?" she asked him curiously after thanking him for fixing her zippers........Here, hold on a minute." Lowering her body to the ground, the angel slowly folded her legs inward to sit on her knees. "You can reach my feathers better if I sit down," she said in a gentle voice. "Now to preen feathers--er, make them look pretty," she corrected herself, assuming the boy only knew simple words, "you just have to do this....." She proceeded to showing him how she used her fingers to straighten out the feathers.

The boy slowly reached for the wings, but stopped. "Ms. Angel...? I want to go home...Mommy and daddy will be missing me now..." He stuttered, not wanting to invoke Trinity's wrath.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Speaking of which, where am I going to sleep? I might as well sleep at one of the ragged inns here..." Maglor sighed, walking on the path to a nearby village.

Trinity got really silent for a moment. Did she dare scare him anymore? Her wings were one of the things she put the most pride into and she felt extremely uncomfortable with the idea of passing through a village or city with poorly arranged feathers. Surely she'd be called a pigeon by the townsfolk and she would be able to do nothing about it except hold in her anger. She couldn't just let the boy leave without helping her. "Your mommy and daddy are fine," she remarked in a rushed fashion. "Please just help me. You wouldn't want an angel to put a plague--er scary spell on your land now would you?"

The boy shed a small tear. "Okay...just...please don't hurt me!!" He closed his eyes and started brushing the feathers.
"My parents will get me, My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me,My parents will get me...My parents will get me..." He muttered to himself as he preened the feathers.

Trinity sighed blissfully. To her it always felt nice to let another person finger through her feathers and her hair. Whenever she groomed herself, she always ended up ripping out half her hair, but when her mother helped her, it was a different experience. "You're doing a good job," Trinity said to the boy. "Ms. Angel is very happy!" She then wondered how her master would react if he saw her making a child help her with her feathers. She laughed a little to herself.

The child tried to stand up and get the bucket he dropped. He looked at Trinity with eyes that begged to go home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maglor slung a bag of coins on the counter at the inn he was staying at.
"What a shoddy building." He grumbled to himself as he fell on the straw bed. "Can this village get any more poorer?" He literally looked at his only candle as a light source and a bucket of water with a metal cup to drink out of.
"My god, this place is shabby." He sighed.

Being blind, Trinity didn't notice the child's facial expression, but she did realize that he had fallen silent again. "Hmmm? What's wrong now?" She asked as she stood up and turned around to face the child. She extended her arms outward until her hands met the child's face. She gently moved her hands down his cheeks until they met the corners his mouth. "Aw, now why are you frowning?" she asked in a disappointed tone. "You did such a good job." She figured he still wanted to see his parents and she assumed he must live in a nearby village. "Could you do this angel one last favor?" she asked the child, placing her hands on his shoulders. "Could you please take me to the nearest village?"

The boy shivered a bit and nodded his head. He started to walk to the general direction of the village Maglor was staying at. He tredded through the dirt, grass and earth until he got to a gravel path. He pointed at the direction of the village, not knowing that the angel was blind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maglor laid on his bed and just grumbled. An elf. Staying at a dump of a inn. He couldn't believe his luck. He was never visiting Eltyr again.

"Um, why are we stopping?" Trinity asked in confusion. "Are we lost?" She tilted her head to the side, wondering where they were. She figured the boy did not know that she was blind, since her eyes did function normally as her blindness was a result of magic. Of course she did not blink or flinch when objects were brought close to her eyes, but she could still wink and smile with her eyes. "...Um? Is there a monster? If there is...I can scare it away for us," she pointed out as she tapped the butt of her spear on the ground twice.