[FN] Cassandra

Light sheened off the knight's sharp silver sword as he stepped onto the jagged mountain peak, thousands of miles above the ground. He fell to his knees in terror and watched watched shining chromatic feathers became visible over the vast isle of rock. The stones glowed a strange, multicolor light as the gleaming angel scaled the rock cliff in seconds. Suddenly the knight's whole field of view was obstructed by the power-mad glowing abomination known to all as Cassandra. Her eyes set the sky ablaze and her claws tore at the very threads of existence. She was coming for him.

The young knight trembled, knowing that his fate would be the same as the others before him. Yet, he stood his ground with his sword held high. Suddenly the angel was upon him, her radiant wings blinding his delicate, mortal eyes. Her massive claw, three times the size of the knight himself, slammed down at blinding speeds. The knight made a futile attempt to roll away but his leg was pinned down into Cassandra's tormenting grasp. He could feel his energy slowly draining away from his body. With his last dregs of energy, the knight slashed upwards with his sword. The threads of reality tore asunder and the angel's wing split in two, rapidly filling the sky with extraordinary streaks of gleaming chromatic energy. Cassandra helplessly dropped from the sky like a bullet, a straight beam of pure white energy trailing behind her. Her feathers dissolved into thin air, leaving behind only a thin skeleton of her once miraculous wings. Her magic peeled off her glowing skin, releasing into the winds, until all that was left was a young girl falling at thousands of miles an hour.

The young girl's eyes creaked open and flickered to life. The beaming light from the sun burned on her delicate skin as she sat up and examined her surroundings. She picked up her hand to find soft sand sifting through her fingers. She couldn't remember anything that happened before waking up on this secluded island. Her ears perked and she flipped her head around to find a man in a dark cloak, feet planted in the bright sand, only a few meters away.

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen" the man proclaimed, his face still obstructed in darkness by his hood.

"I'm not quite sure I know what you mean," the girl stepped back.

"To understand your true identity, you must find the altar of true self. Until then your power is still hidden in this weak, frail form." With that, the man thrust his palms into the ground, launching up a cloud of sand, and disappeared. The girl stood there in shock, the man's words echoing through her head- "You must find the altar of true self." On her right spanned only miles of sand, and her left a vast ocean. There was no altar to be found. Suddenly, a gleam caught her eye. The altar wasn't above ground in these dunes of sand. It was underwater. She closed her eyes with her hands back to back and concentrated. She began to slowly move her hands away from each other, feeling the pressure of 3 oceans pulling them together. She opened her eyes to find the ocean parted and a path leading to a shining altar. She looked down at her hands in awe then looked ahead into the swirling passage of air, with water defying all known physics on either side. With a newfound sense of courage, the girl started to walk down the path. With every step towards the altar, a new memory from her past life began to flow towards her. Angels were once the guardians of humans, protecting them from creatures of unimaginable power. The war between angels and these demons waged for millennia upon millennia. Yet one heroic angel ended the seemingly timeless war by sealing all the demons underground, where they couldn't terrorize humans. With no opponent to face, the angel's unity shattered and they turned to each other and to the humans. What were once beautiful, divine beings became power hungry, flesh craving machines. The young girl touched the altar and it burst out in multicolor light.

"I am Cassandra, guardian angel. I will not let my people down!" she spoke, her voice amplified by the tunnel of water around her. She began to rise up as she entered her purest form. Her wings grew out like leaves and her hands morphed into claws. Her eyes blazed every color imaginable and her hair flowed sideways like there was a strong wind. "This time I will make things right. Our race are the protectors of humans, not their most feared enemy!" With that, Cassandra took to the air, the wind blowing in her face. She was finally free from her frail human form. She soared up to her fellow angels in the isles of the sky, only to find the temples ransacked and abandoned. Where there was once peace and civilization among races, there is now malice and destruction. Cassandra thrust her palm and blasted a hole in the floor in anger.

"There is only one way to return the world to harmony," a voice crackled from the corner of the temple. Cassandra whirled around and looked down to find the same cloaked man as she had met back on the island.

"And what is that, young man?" spat Cassandra distastefully.

"You must release the demons from the underworld to restore balance between good and evil. As you have seen for yourself, without the balance of good and evil, whole races of beings can fall to the hands of madness." The man turned and dove off the temple, falling at insane speeds. As much as Cassandra didn't want to believe it, she knew she must release the demons from the underworld to restore balance and save the human race. She dove after the man, streamlining her wings behind her for maximum speed. Cassandra grasped the falling, cloaked man and flew over to Mount Deserus- the entrance to the spiritual prison that holds the demon race.

"Hello sister. Pleasure seeing you here," said a voice atop the mountain.

"Azrael. What are you doing here?" replied Cassandra, her voice taking an angry tone. The silence was broken by Azrael launching himself off the mountain and flying up to Cassandra's level.

"You plan to release the demons, don't you?" Azrael asked, raising his claws into a fighting stance. Azrael's grey, draining aura filled the air around him as Cassandra's chromatic aura radiated from her skin.

"And I don't plan to let you get in my way," Cassandra responded bitterly. She launched herself straight at Azrael, but Azrael was prepared. He parried her attack with a swift strike to the leg. Cassandra quickly conjured a beam of energy through her claw and focused it straight at Azrael, weakening his aura. Suddenly, Cassandra saw a spec of black soaring through the sky and immediately set into action to distract Azrael. Within seconds the black spec came into vision, and the cloaked man descended upon Azrael and stabbed his jet black enchanted sword into Azrael's heart. Azrael's luminous grey aura exploded out of his lethal wound, filling the sky with draining grey energy.

"It had to be done," proclaimed the cloaked man as he jumped off Azrael's dissolving body and disappeared into midair. Cassandra flew down and put her claw to the shrine at the top of the mountain. She began the ritual to release the demons from their spiritual prison. And with the final word, Cassandra slammed her blackened claw into the peak of the mountain, pouring all her energy into it.

"Fly, demons, fly!" Cassandra projected into the air as the mountain split in two and demons flocked out by the hundreds. The once empty sky filled with demons looking for their first feast in centuries. They all focused their beady eyes on Cassandra, the massive angel, just waiting to be devoured. Cassandra realized her tragic mistake and attempted to escape but her energy was drained and the demons were too fast. She had restored balance to humans and angels but not without sacrifice. Hopefully, she thought, this time I'll remember. Contented with her actions, she slit her feathered wing with her outstretched claw and began her fall again. Her fall back to humanity, a race now at peace.