Mistress of Pharaohs. Daughter of Dawn. Natalie Yacobson

the sands the howling voices of the dead called out, and some new desire, hitherto unknown, awoke inside.

      “Crawl over here!” She beckoned a black creature toward her. It hissed and crawled over. Alaïs leaned toward the scarlet wound in its forearm beneath the lacerated wing and clawed at it with her teeth. A red liquid filled her mouth. It had a peppery salty taste, but how sweet to take each sip. Alais broke away from the drink with difficulty and pushed her whimpering legionnaire away with her foot.

      “I’m thirsty! There was no such desire before,” Remy confirmed her thoughts.

      There used to be no desire at all. Except one! The desire for power! It has partially come true. The plains of sand have been given to her to rule there. It was her new kingdom! To have it was already a victory. Only with it came a lingering thirst that couldn’t be quenched.

      “Look for anything alive besides our soldiers,” she commanded Remy.

      “What do you mean, mistress?”

      “It is anything at all.”

      “I have flown over the sands and mountains beyond the deserts. There is nothing there.”

      “Are we’re the only ones here? Look for an alternative.”

      Remy bowed. His once beautiful head was now crowned with spiraling horns. The spikes, protruding from his spine and forehead, seemed sharp enough to cut through sheet iron.

      “Remy!” she called out a moment before all that was left was a black vortex where he’d been hovering. “Do you regret following me now?”

      The answer was no. Neither did the monsters slumbering in the sands. And you should be sorry. Until recently they had been so beautiful that it was painful to look at them. Now the sight of them made her sick. Creepy and stripped, they crawled on the dunes and hissed curses at the indifferent and already distant heavens. What had they lost, though? One beauty!

      Alais looked around the desert. Everywhere she looked, yellow sand was everywhere. Where Angel’s blood had been spilled, there were brown patches.

      Here was the spot where it had fallen, with the inscriptions scorched into the sand. Alais drew the tip of her sword over them. The handle twitched oddly, gripping her fingers. It was because the dragon on the hilt had come to life and moved. Before, there was no dragon on it. Now it hissed with a copper mouth. Where had it come from?

      Where did they come from? Armies of monsters in the desert! With them, the matter was clear. The beautiful white-winged angels had burned, shrunken, and turned into vile creatures. And it’s all her fault!

      Do they blame her? Alais looked around at the crawling rabble. They were expressing indignation toward the heavens, but they weren’t hissing at her, on the contrary, they were respectfully crawling away from her.

      The whole point was that she remained beautiful and they did not. Does her appearance still command their respect?

      It was pleasant to walk across the desert, not fly. You couldn’t do that in heaven, but here you could just tread, moving your feet. The wings rustled behind her, like unnecessary jewelry.

      Somewhere deep inside, a wild hunger was awakening. There was nothing to satisfy it.

      Remy returned disappointed. He found nothing alive.

      “It felt as if everything died here as soon as it touched this surface,” Alais kicked the sand with her foot, and it suddenly seemed like one huge living breathing creature that they were treading on. It was definitely breathing. The desert was breathing! How had she not noticed it before?

      “But somehow we survived,” Remy’s sigh was still fiery. His black mouth resembled the mouth of a furnace. The former angel still hadn’t noticed that the desert was alive.

      Alais did not enlighten him. Let him see for himself.

      “God couldn’t destroy us, or didn’t dare. Or maybe he decided that staying here would be the worst punishment for us. It was worse than destruction. For that is total destruction. To fall! To be left without your own face,” she looked dejectedly at the armies of freaks that swarmed the desert.

      “But your face is still there,” Remy nodded at her reflection in the puddle in the sand. It was still there, beautiful and golden. It glowed. Was it an illusion? But her hands were smooth, too, not burnt. Alais stared at them in amazement. The golden lace of the webbing between her fingers was gone. There were only five fingers themselves, which used to be seven. Seven fingers made it easier to grip a sword than five. But she still had her wings.

      “We’ll build up our strength, and then we’ll go to Heaven again,” she promised.

      That promise was the only thing worth living for. And surviving in this place would be difficult. Every moment of being here is maddening. And most likely centuries would pass before another battle would be fought. How quickly can you build up your strength again if there’s nothing left of you but burnt remains?

      Her recent majestic comrades-in-arms looked as if they had just been taken out of the furnace. They are black relics, not warriors! They are embittered in a way that makes you afraid to look at them, but will their embitterment be enough to start a new war.

      Most likely they will be crushed again if they rush into battle again. Spontaneous rebellion is not the answer. We need to be smarter from now on. Alais pondered. She needs a different strategy and complete indifference to Michael’s shining appearance.

      “Can we deal with them all in the meantime, Mistress?” Remy asked as if she had already managed to appoint him as her new commander to replace all the dead. He pointed his frayed wing at the monsters crawling in the desert.

      “Let them settle in for now.”

      Unlike Remy, it pained her to look at them. She saw the blackened bodies, but thought of the statuesque angels. But she couldn’t turn away. Everywhere she saw, there was a sandy plain, where the remains of her great army crawled.

      “Does it hurt that you’re burned?” Alaïs asked Remy. She herself no longer felt the burns. Her body remained white, though she remembered that she too had burned with the others. Maybe they too, despite all their burns, would recover. Time passed, but there was no regeneration.

      “I felt as if I were still burning in the fire, and the flames hurt more and more, almost biting. The pain is unbearable, and it cuts through all my dicks. Isn’t it like that with you?”

      Alais shook her head negatively.

      “I feel free! For the first time since the moment of my creation,” she breathed in the desert air full of smoke. The sand smelled like the wings of her fallen angels.

      “This is my new kingdom. And it is mine alone! There is no god here! There is no one else’s rules and regulations. No one tells us anything else. We have fallen, but we are free. This kingdom may be ugly, but it’s ours. At last we have something of our own. Let’s celebrate!”

      Instead of cheering, the monstrous Remy knelt before her. The other monsters in the desert howled with anguish and hunger.

      In the beginning there was lizard blood.

      Then, centuries later, the first humans wandered into the desert. Creatures without wings! Weak creatures! But the smell of their blood stirred the memory of war. Her army satiated for the first time since the fall. They felt better. The feast had begun. Who would have thought the desert could be a feast?

      Demons were eating people alive, and Alais flew aimlessly between the revelers. She’d taken a few mouthfuls to quench a thirst that had been building up over the centuries. The monsters, on the other hand, were more voracious. Just now they had devoured an entire human army. Alien coats of arms and banners lay under the clutches of fallen angels. Alais crushed bones and filigree jewelry indifferently. Everything the humans had made with their hands she didn’t like for some reason.

      Suddenly one dying man caught her attention. He was white, dark-haired, and blue-eyed.