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like a thunderclap into its sternum. The blow landed with
such force that some of the creature’s straps and manacles
snapped like twine. The momentum sent us flying over the
heads of the lesser creatures, my father and I drenched in
Deleriael’s blood as the three of us sailed through the air,
connected at the spurting chest wound. The angel landed on
its back with a crash, despite the mattress. I stood towering
over Deleriael, dripping blood and panting with rage.
Suddenly, I understood. As my family and I committed
ourselves to the madness of killing, so too did we sever the
bonds that imprisoned the angel. A clever creature, indeed.
“You’ll sup no more madness from us, angel!” I yelled.
The creature’s faux caterwauling turned to laughter as it
brought its bloody hands away from its ruined eyes. “You
can’t blame me for trying, can you, Family Man?” Deleriael
lifted its head from the bed, proffering the gory pits my
sisters had made of its eyes. I plucked my now frowning
siblings from their wet burrows. Crouching down, I placed
my father’s pommel on my shoulder and ground my boot into
the angel’s midsection. Pushing up and forward, I wrenched
my father free of Deleriael’s chest, the creature unperturbed
by the sickly sounds of sucking meat and cracking bones.
Stepping down from its chest and placing my father upon
my back, I waited for the creature to right itself upon the
bed.
After settling cross-legged upon the filthy mattress, its
legions of lunatics gibbering madly from all directions, the
angel chastised me anew. “You continue to make the wrong
choices, little artist. You endeavor to fight in a contest you
might lose for only the slightest chance at ruining reality.
Yet all I ask is that you sever a few straps!
“Think of it, Vincent—thoughts would cast chartreuse
shadows, gophers could sneeze out the sun, the stars of
space would glitter like ice chips from a fish’s scale. I would
erase the laws of physics and replace them all with show
tunes! Could you imagine her wretched face, that shambling
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