THE APPOINTED HOUR

[fatecrash]

It wasn't long ago that the sun finally dropped out of sight, and the clouded sky overhead is still streaked with pink. The street is quiet, the lights of the buildings overlooking it not yet lit. A slight breeze ruffles the grass by the pavement. It's a peaceful scene.

That is, until a greyish shape about three foot tall and roughly as wide cannonballs out through the second-storey window of the library in a hail of noisily shattering glass.

Only half a second before he can make his own bloody stain on the sidewalk does Anghel remember to flutter. It takes some logistical rejiggering, since he insists on clutching his pen in one wing and his small notepad in the other. But he manages, touching down at the base of a streetlamp after only a little bouncing and hardly any grazes at all.

"The Hour of Judgement is nigh!" he cries. "The radiant gates of Heaven call to me! If I can endure this final bitter ordeal, never again shall the world succumb to -"

He trails off into a shiver, his fluffy chest puffing out in the cool air. "No, wait," he breathes, his voice quivering at least as much as his feathers. "Could I have been mistaken? The unholy winds of Niflheim howl, a harbinger of the End Times... Their maddening symphony weaves a Prison of Ages as I speak. I fear it is... too late. The night encroaches..."

Comments

[drinkbrewfight]

"That is a story I have heard before," said a pandaren who had noticed this whole spectacle. Chen squatted down, quite an impressive feat considering how much girth he had to support on his legs, and folded his arms on his knees to get a better look at the fellow. "But the world has yet to come to an end. Why the uproar?"

[fatecrash]

Anghel jumped at the voice, almost dropping his mapping pen in the scattered debris from the window. "Hellbeast Render of Earth and Sky!" he stammered. "You would emerge from the Abyss to seek a pact with one such as myself, after everything I've done? The conspiracies of the forces of darkness are thick indeed."

[drinkbrewfight]

"I am not a hellbeast." Chen had no idea what about him could give such an impression, but -- well, considering who he was talking to, who was he to judge? "I am a Pandaren from the Wandering Isle. My name is Chen Stormstout."

[fatecrash]

"Agh, to think you too would wake from your slumber unbound on such a night..." Anghel looked crestfallen even as he shivered again, crossing his wings over his faux-bloodstained chest. Gosh, it really did get cold quickly here once the sun set. "Do you not remember the rituals of old, Render of Earth and Sky...?"

[drinkbrewfight]

"Most pandaren rituals tend to involve going to a tavern and getting drunk," Chen mused. "Including ones for meeting new friends, if that has any interest for you."

[fatecrash]

Anghel goggled up at the taller creature for a few seconds, his beak hanging open. Drinking? That would be an adult thing to do, and yet...

Eventually, he regained his composure, again fluffing up his little pigeon breast - this time in order to point a wingtip and strike a dramatic pose. "D... Devilish temptations abound on the path I am fated to walk!" he squeaked, although an obviously teenage squeak wasn't quite the forceful declaration he was hoping for. "Guardian Peregrinus, in a happier time, we could yet fulfil the destinies bequeathed on us in the times of ancients... But my doom swift approaches. Should I fail to honour the Crimson Blood that runs in my veins, the demons of the End Times will surely overcome my very soul. I beg you... for the sake of this land..."

With a flourish, he brandished his mapping pen up at the smashed window overhead, fixing Chen with a pleading look all the while.

[drinkbrewfight]

"Well, you certainly do not have to." Chen had picked up that much from the tone, having long ago decided to not worry about the actual words involved. "It is a tradition, not a requirement. Actually, I think it is mostly an excuse just to drink more," he added with a chuckle.

[fatecrash]

"Gah... I sense the Grand Seal of Hypnos passing under the waves, forever eluding the grasp of mortal ken..." Giving up, Anghel clutched his pen-gripping wing tightly to his chest and shook his head. If there was a joke here, he wasn't in on it. Which was pretty standard, really. "In those uninitiated acolytes, fools who see only 'apartment keys' in the accursed twilight, I have met my match. Edel Blau, pray forgive me. Perhaps this is as things should -"

He sneezed. At last, his notepad landed page-down amid the fragmented glass on the ground with a surprisingly loud crunch.

[drinkbrewfight]

Chen winced at the noise. That didn't sound good, but he hesitated to ask what those were about. Not out of respect for boundaries so much as a conviction that he would never understand the answer.

"Oh, you are missing something? If you need help, I will be happy to provide!"

[fatecrash]

Anghel gasped, forgetting in a flash to be distraught about dropping his sketches in the jagged-edged dirt. "You... you would do this for me, Render of Earth and Sky!?" he said. Wasting no time, he swept his notepad up, tucking it back under his wing. "Then come, let us depart before the Arrayed Forces of Baal...?"

He dropped the notebook again as if stung, which wasn't too far off. From under his wing, just visible in the dim light to a human eye if not to Anghel's, a thin rivulet of something deeper red than the feathers on his front trickled down.

"Curses," he mumbled. "My Crimson Blood roils... Were I to wreathe myself in Cleansing Flame, the strain on this plane of reality would hasten the Final Collapse!"

[drinkbrewfight]

"Mind the papercuts." Without much ceremony, Chen reached down to swoop Anghel up in one paw and his notebook up in the other. No time for dignity in this! He transferred the bird to the top of his hat, a fairly comfortable perch, then passed up his notebook.

"Lead the way, my feathered friend!"

[fatecrash]

"- bwuh?!"

Anghel, somewhat lighter than his round toddler-sized build might have suggested, was powerless to flap out of his apparent newfound friend's grip. He wobbled for a moment on top of the wide-brimmed hat, almost too disoriented to catch his proffered sketchpad. The strength of a coiled spring, the chains of Sisyphus... Yes, he could see it, a glittering spiral tearing the oncoming night asunder. That was a decent image. He'd use that in the next chapter. It could go on the cover.

But first, he really needed to do something about the sizeable shard of muddy glass embedded in the top page. Losing a whole afternoon's work to little things like a flesh wound would be too much to bear. "Indignity..." he hissed, despairing at the very thought. "Villainy..."

Holding the pad at feather's length for now, he flung out his other wing as if to assault the library doors with nothing but sheer force of personality. "Very well!" he yelled. "We ride, Render of Earth and Sky! Shore up this frail mortal heart with the blessing of the Titans across the Sea of Eternity, and bear witness to the Last March of a Fallen Angel of God!"

When that didn't work, he promptly leapt down and cannoned into them with sheer force of body weight instead. As much body weight as a mutant pigeon can bring to bear, anyway.

[drinkbrewfight]

Chen chuckled, as he reached out to push the doors open in a much more conventional manner, and with much more body weight than Anghel could ever, ever hope to wield. "Patience, little friend," he rumbled. "If you run too fast to find something, you might run right past it in your eagerness. Or fly, as the case may be."

[fatecrash]

"...Bah!" Anghel contrived to scowl through his beak as he hopped upright, although his half-hearted huffing indicated someone who wasn't particularly upset trying very hard to sound like they were. "Have you forgotten, Render of Earth and Sky? I am Anghel Higure, Bloodstained Angel of Judecca! And the time for idleness is long past. See you not the tendrils of obscuring blight that threaten to choke us as we stand?!"

He took off again, his grey wings clattering, and this time barrelled straight into the elevator panel up ahead.

[drinkbrewfight]

"I did not forget. After all, I did not know." Chen held the door open long enough for Anghel to get through, then casually looked around the library without any particular regard for haste. Bearings gotten, he followed after the bird, shaking his head a little at Anghel's destructive recklessness. "Now, where is it we are going in here?"

[fatecrash]

"We must ascend through the sphere of Purgatorial flame," Anghel said matter-of-factly, "into the long-lost hallowed reaches of the Primum Mobile. ...Second floor."

Behind him, one of the elevators opened its doors with a muted ding.

[drinkbrewfight]

"Ah, I see. These are not the kind of elevators I am used to..."

Still, Chen had a working brain. When he stepped inside and saw the row of buttons, '2' jumped out as an obvious choice. He pressed it with one large paw. "Safer, though."

[fatecrash]

Anghel nodded almost as sagely as someone who had any idea what the enormous panda man was referring to. "Yet even within these sacred grounds, the Lords of Hell may work their corruption in mysterious ways," he said. "Patience and vigilance, o Blessed Guardian of the Sundered Cloud."

He was serious about that, too. He would not attempt to hurl himself at any of the scenery until he felt the telltale wobble of the floor beneath them, at which point he of course rocketed straight into the door.

[drinkbrewfight]

"I see no way to fall off of it or run into its shaft when it isn't there, so I think it is much improved."

Chen patiently picked the bird up yet again, and stepped through the doors as they opened. "You might want to consider waiting for doors to open. I am not certain you are doing much beyond rattling your ribs with your charges!"

[fatecrash]

Undeterred, Anghel shot out of his would-be saviour's arms as soon as the lift doors slid open. If they'd been a second earlier, he would have been fine! And now that they were open, he could hit the ground... not quite running, because running indoors is bad, but at an appreciably speedy walk, his head bobbing back and forth in a blur. "Onward!" he cried. "Our time runs short, and the shadows grow long!"

On this floor his proclamation seemed to be more or less accurate. While a few library assistants could be seen scuttling between shelves, pinkish-grey doves somewhat larger than Anghel with nametags pinned to their collars, every table in sight was clear and every comfortable chair obviously unoccupied. But there was still a tie-wearing bird sitting at the counter out front for now, and as Anghel bounded past him he slumped, wordlessly burying his face in his wing.

[drinkbrewfight]

One bird was strange, but now he was surrounded by them and not entirely certain how it had happened. But one advantage of being as round as Chen was the ability to roll with it, so that is exactly what the pandaren did.

"Where did you last see them?" He peered around curiously as he followed Anghel, keeping a close eye out especially on the floor. Who knows where bird feet could kick an object?

[fatecrash]

Anghel, meanwhile, had his beady grey-violet sights set in one direction only, hurtling towards the light novel collection in the back of the library like a one-pigeon landslide. "Do not be mistaken, my friend. The Prison of Ages cleaves no longer to the prayers of mortals," he said, apparently oblivious to the fact that his newfound companion was taking much more care with this search than he was. "In my folly, I thought it sealed beyond this realm forevermore. Yet the prophecy of -"

Thunk.

"- aaghh."

The bookcase rocked back and forth rather alarmingly. So did Anghel. Only after a moment or two did he regain enough of his composure to fluff his feathers out again and give his head a little shake. Still, at least the impact seemed to have slowed him down.

It was at this point that one of the library doves reached up with her wingtip to tap Chen on - not quite his shoulder, more like the small of his back, but an effort was being made. "Excuse me, sir... Are you a friend of Yoshio here?"