First: Asa’el and Freya are both still alive.
So many have been asking about him, for it seems that pieces of the story have flown through heaven with a swiftness only bad news can achieve. I am not certain why I was selected to write this, except perhaps because I am considered the closest friend Asa’el has in heaven, save of course Brid and Orison, and neither of them can be taken from their tasks. So I, Inca, write now in Asa’el’s name to tell the sorry tale.
We are as certain as we can be that Asoharith did not plan the attack this evening. Kasfe believes that it was Freya’s joy that turned her head, that made her give up her caution tonight. Freya was out with a group of friends to celebrate her birthday with singing and dancing, the first time in months that she has seen many of them, and certainly the first time they had been in a group. Her joy and exhilaration rang through the sky, and to those who know her—as Asoharith must by now—it was a beacon.
Asa’el believed she was safe in the care of Ananiah, and so he did not follow it. Asoharith, in her bitter rage, did, and we are all the worse for it.
It was Asa’el’s voice that called her away from the others, or so Freya thought. We now know, of course, how she was able to mimic him so well as to fool even Freya. She excused herself from the rambunctious party to follow the call, and her friends, knowing her to need some quiet sometimes, let her go. She slipped down the corridors of the building and stepped out into the alley, and there she knew instantly that something was wrong. A voice is one thing, but no Fallen could replicate even the smallest piece of Asa’el’s soul. Freya took out her pocket knife, more for the comfort of it than anything. It did no good, and would soon do great evil.
Asoharith, who had swiftly and cruelly silenced Ananiah, pinned Freya there against the wall and ordered her to call to Asa’el. Freya resisted her, and she nearly managed to drive her away, but then Asoharith dug her claws into Freya’s soul—I saw the wounds myself. Despair and self-loathing, digging deep into Freya’s insecurities and loneliness, accusing her for abandoning her father, for driving away the only men in her life who would ever have loved her.
“Call him,” Asoharith ordered her again.
“No!” Freya cried, but she was weeping, losing strength.
Then Asoharith took hold of the knife still in Freya’s hand and buried it deep in Freya’s own wrist.
Her cry of pain and terror rang out to all of us who know her, and to Asa’el more than any. He was there with her in an instant, a figure of brilliant wrath, his weapons burning in his hands.
But they fell useless at his feet when Asoharith turned to him and he recognized her.
“Shannon?” he whispered.
“Hello, old friend,” she snarled, and with the very knife that bore the blood of his charge, she struck at his heart.
Freya felt and saw him collapse, and she screamed as she had not at her own pain. She screamed with agony and madness, and screamed again, and again. She was still screaming when her friends burst out of the building and found her seemingly alone on the ground, bleeding and weeping and screaming.
They have taken her to the hospital, and currently she is sedated. The wound itself is minor, but now she is surrounded by fear and doubt as her friends and family ask themselves how she could have come to the point of harming herself. I do not know what she will tell them, but there is a Comforter with her to help her, and a Healer too.
It is not Brid, though, for Brid is with Asa’el, and has been from the moment he was struck down. She and many others of her brethren are fighting for his life as surely as I or any of mine would fight. My heart and soul are with them, but I am afraid. It is not the wound itself I fear, although that is terrible enough, but the darkness that Asoharith’s true identity brought to Asa’el’s heart. She was once his own, and somehow she knows it and blames him for her fall. Now I worry that he will, as well, and that all of his hope will be lost.
Asoharith escaped, lent strength by her success and Freya’s pain, but Orison and Anathalie are close in her wake with vengeance in their hearts. I hope that they find her, and that she is made to feel the pain that she has wrought tonight.
I will write again when there is news, but I do not think it will be soon. From what I have seen of the Healer’s battle, it will be a long and desperate fight.