I hunched deeper into the shelter of the heavy leather coat, it's weight made even more noticable by the drizzling rain that misted through the darkened streets.
Faint light from the distant streelights, and the faded neon of a cigarette advertisment, gave the misty skies above the boulevard an illusionary warmth, an illusion that triggered memories I had long thought suppressed, scenes of a time and a place now lost to a future long forgotten, and a past not yet to be.
I leaned against the wall and took a steadying breath, the hard reality of the stone conflicting with my memories of pain and suffering, as friends were cut down in their multitudes, while the Heavens themselves were consumed in flames.
I was once a spirit of Light, an angel who stood at the forefront of Jehovahs Hosts and laughed as the Shining Ones' armies were cast down into the Pit.
We had celebrated our victory, and cheered the prophesies that told of the Apocalypse, confident in our ability to repel the hordes in the Name of God, to claim the victory once and for all over Lucifers' arrogance. We were to learn to our dismay that his hubris was exceeded only by our own ...
As he led his armies forward, we laughed at how feeble it appeared next to our own.
Our legions numbered fully twice that which he fielded, and we had beaten him before without even the stalwart hearts of our mortal bretheren standing beside us, How could we lose?
A trickle of cold water ran down my neck, startling me back to awareness, and I moved out of the alleyway, and proceeded along the cobbled street scanning for the presence I knew to be there.
I passed by a storefront, a bookstore of sorts, filled with all manner of written records.
In amongst the shabbily bound 'classics' and faded Science Fiction paperbacks there rested a bible, lying upon a newpaper dated only 3 weeks ago.
The front page featured a hastily snapped photograph showing some costumed Hero dueling with the the creature known as 'Legion', a face I knew well, for it had been he that brought Uriel low and laughed maddeningly as he danced through my brothers lifeblood, while I could only watch with horror as the light in his eyes faded away.
Oh yes, Lucifer had understood the rules of this cosmic game far better than had we.
He had eaten away at the moral convictions of many of the Earth's heroes ,corroded their beliefs in anything beyond science and 'proof' ..., not enough to make them 'evil' per se, but enough to leave them ...lost, and to have them bound in purgatory when the time was right.
And all along, he was binding the souls of some of the most powerful beings not born of Heaven to his cause ...
Legion..., Doom..., Onslaught...,
The names are seared in memory like the images of them smashing through the serried ranks of defenders ...
Apocalypse..., Cyclops..., Juggernaught..., the list goes on.
The shattered corpses lay in the wake of monsters born as men, trampled like the hopes of our Lord as even his Angelic host were tested against such as these and found wanting.
I had fled from my body mere seconds before the searing power of an optic blast shattered my physical remains, along with the mighty portals that protected His sanctum, and my final memory
was the sound of Lucifers melodic laughter, and the anguished cry of a father betrayed by his favoured son.
I had died in that place, and was cast down into this Hell of mortality and futile endevour, awaking to find myself in this body, yet cognizant of all that went 'before'.
It can not happen that way ..., it _must_ not happen that way. Again I find my reverie broken by an intrusion from this reality, as a set of headlights move slowly toward where I stand.
Searching the memories that belong to the form I now wear, I relive the mugging that left a broken and bleeding body lying in an alley not far away, as well as the vehicle that brought me to this place.
Merric, my chauffer, would be worried if he saw the condition I am in, so I gesture and repair the structural damage I have accrued, and then move to the rear of the car, climbing in out of the rain.
"Home please", I say, realising only then how tired I feel, both physically and spiritually.
I cast my mind out to the soul of the person I have now become, and sense a security and solace that they were missing when amongst the living. As I lay back against the seat, I can also sense another watching me..., a familiar fatherly presence that I had thought lost forever ...
It is then that I realise the full irony of my situation.
This is not my God, but he knows full well what is to occur, as mine surely did before the fall.
My reality was sacrificed so that this one could be saved, because Jehovah will not act to save us ...
I am a mortal without a future, and an Angel without a God.
And I am alone ...