Now the air in the abandoned subway station tasted of rust and forgotten rain. Elias Vance's and professor Alistair Croft's breath plumed in the frigid air, Elias knuckles white around the cold iron of the railway track he used as a handhold. Below him, the darkness churned.
"It's not a question of belief, Alistair," Elias growled, his voice barely a whisper yet carrying through the cavernous space. "It's a question of blood. Theirs and how much of it we need to spill."
On the opposite side of the gaping maintenance shaft, Alistair Croft adjusted his spectacles, his face pale in the gloom. The leather-bound journal in his hand trembled slightly. "The text is clear, Elias. The confluence is tonight. But the ritual… it speaks of a vessel. A conduit. It doesn't specify violence."
"They don't leave us pamphlets on how to politely ask them to stop unraveling time, professor," Elias shot back, his eyes never leaving the shifting shadows at the bottom of the shaft. "They only understand one language. The one I've spent five resets learning to speak."
A low, guttural sound echoed from the depths, a vibration that seemed to crawl up from the tracks and into their bones. It was the sound of reality grating against something that did not belong. Alistair flinched, his academic curiosity swiftly drowned by primal fear. Elias however only smiled, a cold sharp thing devoid of warmth. He had heard it before, too many times not to remember.
"It's here," Elias murmured, pushing off from the wall. "Remember the plan. You read the binding verse the moment I have its attention. Not a second before."
"And if it doesn't work?" Alistair's voice was thin and reedy.
"Then I reset," Elias said, his tone flat and final. "And we do this again tomorrow. And the next day. Until we get it right."
He dropped into the shaft without another word landing with a soft practiced roll on the gravel below. The air was thicker here and was humming with a static charge that made the hair on his arms stand on end. This was a thin place, a scar in the world where the Veil between the mundane and the supernatural had been worn to a thread. And the things on the other side were always drawn to the scars.
It emerged from the tunnel mouth not as a solid form but as a distortion. The darkness there coalesced, pulling the scant light from the emergency bulbs above into a vortex of impossible angles and shifting limbs.
It was a Fallen, one of the myriad lesser beings that had slipped through the cracks and left by their masters. It had the shape of a man but elongated.
Its movements were a series of jerkybinsectile twitches that defied the eye, its skin was the colour of a day-old bruise and where it's face should have been there was only a smooth and featureless plane save for a single vertical mouth that dripped a viscous black fluid.
Elias didn't wait for it to speak. Its words were lies anyways, psychic poison meant to unmake resolve. He moved, a blur of worn denim and leather, the silvered edge of his combat knife catching the light. He'd had it forged in a reset three cycles ago, quenched in his own blood and water from a blessed spring that no longer existed in this timeline and soon none of the other timelines.
The creature shrieked a sound that was less heard and more felt, a pressure against the mind and soul. It lashed out with a limb that telescoped from its torso, ending in razor-sharp talons. Elias ducked, the wind of the blow ruffling his hair. He'd seen this move in a reset two years ago, it had taken his eye. Elias pivoted on his heel driving the knife deep into the joint of the appendage.
Black ichor spurted, sizzling where it hit the gravel. The fallen recoiled, its shriek escalating into a frequency that made Elias's teeth ache. He pressed to the advantage his movements was economical brutality. This was a dance he knew too well, every single step. He knew it would feint left before striking right. He knew it would try to disorient him with a psychic blast the moment it thought it had an opening. He knew its every tactic because he had died to them, over and over until its patterns were etched into his soul more deeply than any memory of a peaceful life.
"Alistair!" he roared, parrying a blow that would have sheared through steel. "Now!"
High above, Alistair fumbled with the journal, his voice trembling as he began to chant the words he had painstakingly translated from a dead language. The syllables were awkward on his tongue, but they held power. The air in the shaft began to glow with faint, golden lines, a geometric net of energy descending from the words themselves.
The Fallen sensed the trap. It abandoned its attack on Elias and turned its featureless gaze upward, its whole body tensing to spring towards the source of the binding magic.
This Elias had not seen. In every previous attempt, Alistair had been too slow, or the creature had ignored him entirely. This was new, a variable. A flicker of true fear sharp and bright that cut through the cold numbness in Elias's heart. He couldn't reset if Alistair died. The knowledge, the key to the final ritual would be lost with him.
With a raw shout, Elias abandoned all defense. He lunged, not with the knife but with his body he tackled the creature around its midsection, it was like grappling with a statue made of ice and wire.
The cold burned his skin, and the unnatural strength of it was immense. Talons raked across his back tearing through his jacket and into the flesh beneath. He gritted his teeth against the pain, a familiar old friend, and held on.
"Finish it!" he screamed, his voice ragged.
Alistair's chant grew stronger, more confident. The golden net solidified, wrapping around the struggling forms of man and monster. The Fallen thrashed, its psychic screams becoming desperate. Elias felt its form beginning to destabilize, to unravel under the pressure of the ancient words.
Its single mouth twisted towards his face. "We see you, little clockmaker," it hissed, its voice the sound of grinding glass. "We see the cracks in you, he sees you. The First Fallen remembers your scent. He is coming for the key. He is coming for your blood…"
The words were a weapon, sharper than any talon. They carried the weight of a truth Elias feared above all else. His concentration faltered for a split second.
It was enough.
With a final, convulsive heave, the creature threw him off. But as it did its talon in a last minute of destabilizing, with a spasmodic jerk caught Elias across his forearm slicing deep. Blood dark red in colour and shockingly human, welled from the cut.
The binding net flared with incandescent light, and with a sound like a shattering mirror, then the Fallen angel was gone.