The last memento of a loved one.
The symbol of a lifetime of service.
Flesh pregnant with metaphor.
Twisted metal tainted by decades of self-deception.
Two freely given, two forcibly taken; all the sacrificial essence of human life.

It was enough. The pieces all lay assembled in its mind’s eye: free will, blood, emotion, movement, and now the last, the experience that only a life spent living could give. Tragedy and triumph, memories and meaning, placed into the hole where a heart should be; turning cold marble to malleable mortal flesh. The vessel stood complete.

Complete but unattainable.

Turiel pulled itself slowly to its feet. It knew what was needed last. The final piece that angels lack; that which truly differentiated them from the divine. It concentrated.

Darius, who answered the call of the Grimoire without realizing exactly what he hoped to find, fighting for survival and justice. A powerful will, one who doggedly pursued that elusive absolute of Right, and one who Turiel could feel a certain kinship with. The angel had once been as certain and determined in its mission. It shook its head sadly. This is where the soldier would have to learn that there were never any happy endings.

Elin the magical, Elin the endangered. She fought with the greatest determination Turiel had ever seen in a mortal, her mission driving her brutally onward. It watched her shake off her latest atrocity with amused tolerance. She was exactly the type of mortal it had hoped to draw to its realm, and she had been fulfilling her purpose beautifully.

Alan Murrow, freshly freed from the cage of his own mind. Perhaps he was the most lost among the Seekers, a man who lived a caricature of a life up to this very minute. Where could he go, now that he’d had the blinds so forcefully ripped open? Onward, of course, ever onward over the latest dead body and followed by skeins of memories.

Rene, a child lost in a dream turned nightmare, haunted by an entity that Turiel might have regarded as a distant cousin. Turiel touched minds briefly with the spirit and shied away. Powerful, ancient, a tinkle of childlike laughter that conveyed a thin veneer of enigmatic playfulness and a sense of immense cold distance. An Old One, akin to the Serpent or the Gatekeeper, if Turiel likened it to something of its own world. Not to be dealt with directly, as further contact might allow it to learn of Turiel’s plans. Setting aside the matter of Rene’s enigmatic guardian, the angel exerted its will on the scenery.

With a sound like wind rustling leaves, the devastated scenery of the glass cathedral melted away into familiar gray mist. Grass rippled and then puffed into nothingness, the fog becoming almost thick enough to taste. With a jolt, each of the contestants was shifted to a new location – Rene and Darius to the Northwest and Southwest corners of the realm’s innermost circle, and Elin and Alan to the Northeast and Southeast. As suddenly as it welled up, the fog cleared away, revealing the realm of Turiel for what it really was.

Extending in every direction, all the way to the horizon, the cold grey sand of Turiel’s prison plane mirrored an equally bleak grey sky. Grainy, non-directional light filtered thinly through thick, constantly shifting clouds. The only feature to be seen for all the remaining contestants was a tall obsidian tower, perfectly cylindrical, standing off in the distance. It stood stark against the sand, like a skeletal finger emerging from the earth. At the base of the tower spread a patch of living green, and oasis in the lifeless desert. Willows and hawthorns overhung sparse grass and hardy shrubs, the majority of the foliage planted around the northernmost side of the stone tower. Shaded in the greenery, it was barely possible to make out a simple stone structure – a stone marker of some sort, preceded by a statue of a human female. More importantly, standing at the base of the tower was a figure in white, arms and wings outstretched, holding in each hand the hilt of a flaming sword. The scene remained clear just long enough for the competitors to get a good look before an ominous hissing filled the air. The wind picked up quickly, from a quiet murmur to a harsh, incessant whispering, and in a matter of seconds the air was filled with billows of blowing sand. The abrading wind obscured everything except the dark tower looming in the distance, which stood hazy and forbidding, a single landmark in a world of shifting grey.

The angel’s voice swept across the sand like a sun cresting the horizon of a night-bound world. “It is time. Advance to the statue, mortals. Each of you carries on your back the weight of thirty-two souls, the crushed dreams of every limp body you’ve stepped over to reach this place. That is what I need to complete the vessel. Take the swords and cleave the soul from your adversary. Do this and you shall have your wish.”

Pacing quickly, Turiel tried to quell its racing thoughts. The soul energy of the near three-dozen lives contained in the mortals now trekking toward his prison would be enough to allow him to enter his new body. After these four had fought, two would remain. Of two, one more was needed to gain what he sought.  The final conflict approached, and then it could be reu-

Like a knife to the gut, the sudden intrusion of Turiel’s pocket dimension crashed against its consciousness and left it slumped against the wall of its prison. One- no, two distinct sources of power, flavored divine and demonic, thrust themselves through the barriers previously thought unbreakable. To the north, the air shimmered and rent asunder, glorious light pouring through the rift as Raziel’s voice echoed the last words of his summoning. “–for glory and power unending, go forth and halt those who would free the prisoner. I task thee, Shechinah, by the power vested in me by our Lord, Amen!” Out of the portal burst a quartet of light and thunder, vague man-shaped figures cloaked in cloud and brightness. The Shechinah sped towards the tower, ignoring the buffeting of the winds and the stinging sands.

To the south, the sand glowed red for a split second and then exploded outward in a giant fountain as a clawed hand burst through the surface. Grabbing the edge of the hole, the pit fiend heaved itself up, mouth vomiting forth fire and dripping molten saliva. Etched in blazing Abyssal runes across its torso were the terms of its servitude, including its instructions to kill any and all divine beings and ensure that Turiel made the proper decisions. With a roar the demon flexed its powerful wings and threw itself into the air, flying clumsily but quickly north as another identical hand reached up from the blackness of the pit.