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Beware the Serpent, they warn. Beware the hungering beast that lurks the forests of Odin, sowing discourse in the tongue of Man. The great leviathan that prowls the deep pools, midnight scales shimmering like a slick of pitch torn from star-barren sky. His colossal maw brims with ivory fangs sharper than ox-bone spears, coiling body bent and crooked, bowed beneath black hole wings.
Travellers spin tales of glimpsing their raven feathers mantled above the water’s edge, repelling the sheen of bleeding moonlight until the very air around the creature seems to darken, and all that remains to be seen are its eyes. Twin suns eclipsed by a sliver of pupil, the gleam of fractured gold captivating the imaginations of thieves and their lusting desires.
The ancients warn of straying too close. Pay heed, they say, men of damselfly minds, with crude tools meant to maim, and gouge, and sever, as the serpent is cunning. It lays very still in the way all great beasts do when approached by insects. Waits for them to take that which is his birth-right: a shard of scale, or feather, or fang. Such tempting prizes he offers, begging to be claimed as he drinks by the shallows or curls in the leaflitter, meek as a summer calf.
It is but a devious ruse, for when blades are unsheathed the night is filled with the cracking of bones, the snap of teeth that gives birth to a gargled wail.
The people of the village cower in their beds and wait for their silent reverie. It is not a gentle death, they know. They have seen the evidence of what remains. The shredded corpses of would-be thieves that have left the world with eyes wide open, mouths gaping in twisted screams for a mother that never came.
Beware the Serpent, they seem to sing, the sentiment echoing with each dip of blood.
Beware. Beware. Beware…
***
There is a rustle in the undergrowth, the agonised snap of branches as they compress and splinter beneath a slowly dragging weight. The night is otherwise calm and moonless, the usual clamour of the village replaced by the gentle hiss of bonfires lit in the courtyard and fields.
None dare stir tonight. Even the forest, once melodious with lark song, stands eerily, unnaturally quiet.
Silent, but for the movement of the Serpent.
Threading between the roots of an ancient sycamore, Crowley plunges into the bracken. He is a beast birthed in darkness, knows the familiarity to be had on paths untrodden. Light holds no place in him, only a squirming, fiendish nature to snuff out all that glows. To tear it apart and feast upon the tattered dregs of what remains.
It is why he hunts now.
Kill the Burning Bright! The voices of Hell trill in their hypnotic whispers, until his reptile mind fathoms only the taste of brimstone mingled with the perfumed scent of prey. It hangs thick on his lolling tongue, and soon, the world is reduced to nothing more than a narrow warren that leads beyond the treeline, to a figure nestled amid the wind-swept tussocks cradling the bourn.
Aziraphale.
He had detected the angel several days prior, frequenting the outskirts of the village and tainting the soil of sordid wheat with his blessings. He had flitted amongst the locals, sheltered in their numbers as a lamb amongst the flock.
Not anymore. He has strayed too far alone.
Crowley sees him then, tending to a small, stuttering fire beside the swaying reeds that fence the riverbank. The angel’s head is crooked peaceably to one side, glacial eyes reflecting the light of the flames.
The demon knows those oceans of fathomless blue. He had kept their company on the chalk cliffs of Eden’s walls; found kinship in the subtle hiraeth of their presence. But that had been another time, another life. He had been young and freshly fallen. Baby-teethed. Now, his fangs are long and sharp.
He will not let the angel slip away again.
“I thought I could sense you here,” Aziraphale mutters, clapping bark dust from his palms as the embers catch and flare golden like sunspots, a thin, fond smile tugging at his tulip mouth. “Although, I began to fear you were purposefully avoiding me.”
When the statement is met with silence, Aziraphale glances up. “Crowley?”
But Crowley cannot hear him. Cannot grasp the gentle coos and chirps that resonate from his prey’s bleating mouth. All he understands is the Hellfire in his chest. The excruciating inferno that demands to desecrate all that is holy.
He lets his jaws unhinge, a frenzied hiss rattling from the supernova core of him, and, for a fleeting moment, a look of something like fear washes through those familiar, blue eyes.
So, he understands! The voices chitter in excitement as Crowley trembles under the euphoric thrill of their eulogise. Venom bubbles behind his teeth, splattering onto the coals with the pop of splintered bone. He yearns to bite down, to let the moonshine toxins sanctify Aziraphale’s corporation in a baptism of sin, until the golden sheen of ethereal ichor runs black with the potency of him. The eclipse with which to blot out the sun!
A forked tongue darts to sample the sweat-beaded skin of the angel’s throat, and Crowley delights in the tiny pulse of life that thrums beneath the surface like the fluttering of a caged sparrow’s wings. So captivated by the ambrosia of his catch, he does not notice the trap before it is too late.
The embers flare with a splintered roar, the flames engulfing his face and scorching his eyes. Crowley yowls into white-hot darkness, the agony inescapable as a light pierces the murk.
A gathering tumult swells to envelope Aziraphale. In a cataclysm of burning lustre, he is little more defined than the heart of a star, ignited with the reckless ire of scorned gods and prodigal kings. Chaos incarnate.
“I am NOT your enemy, Crowley!” the angel bellows, the words a lament of some ancient tongue that had existed long before the infinite, birthed beside the blare of colliding galaxies. “But if you wish that of me, then so be it!”
There is a sudden change in gravity, a subtle weightlessness as Aziraphale’s pearlite skin tears at the threadbare fringes of him, releasing wings bejewelled with a pastiche of sharp, glittering eyes, giving rise to the impression of a pale white phoenix.
Crowley cannot help but avert his gaze. He knows the tables have turned. Feels the ghostly incision of the stag’s horn impaling his wolf-skin flank. He is no longer the one who hunts.
The angel’s face continues to leer up at him, a token familiarity in the calamity of his true form, but there is movement there, like the lace of a veil tousled by the wind. Faces of animals push into the fray, phasing between dimensions like spectres. The long-horned brow of a bull melds into the crooked slant of an eagle’s beak, fluid as moon-dragged currents.
Crowley feels their panting breaths crowd against him, the rumble of a low, savage growl rippling through his muscles as the moment draws near. They can both sense it. Inevitable as Creation itself.
The two titans charge, serpent fangs clashing with the ghostly apparition of a lion’s maw, jaws stretched wide and poised to maim. The roar that follows is something like thunder. It picks at the seams of reality, scattering oceans and fragmenting sky, until the world comes undone, reduced to the simple presence of them.
The Guardian and the Serpent. Hunter and prey no longer.
***
It lasts an eternity. An infinity stretched within the milliseconds to be found between zero and one. The blink of an eye.
Clarity finds Crowley first, in the same violent way a hangover possesses a drunkard at dawn. His coiling body spasms as he tears from Aziraphale; tastes the bitter iron of blood against his teeth. The mutterings of Hell and their tiny, scratching claws dissipate with the sobering, leaving him hollow in the wake of their abandonment.
And then, there are softer hands reaching for him, grappling the beetle-shell curve of his exposed belly. He wants to shy away from them, the warm skin, the delicate touch. Of divine fingers sanctifying the desecration of his decayed soul with their gentleness.
“It’s alright, dear boy. I’ve got you.”
The words drag him back, like a tether to the shore, and it takes several moments for Crowley to comprehend the wetness on his face.
He knows they will be back. The voices. The pain. The madness.
He cannot be around the angel when they do.
With a plaintive warble, he casts his eyes over Aziraphale, who has just enough time to register something unspoken before the demon is gone in a whip of rippling grasses, shimmering trails of spilt ichor and crushed reeds scattered his wake.
He already knows Crowley will be back, as certain as a moth charmed by the moonlit night. Such is the habit of all nocturnal creatures who seek out the light.
***