Free World After by Susan Ee

that.
    Just when I think the lessons are over, the sword’s memory flips to a situation that almost breaks me.
    As soon as I arrive, I’m slammed with the intensity of it.
    Raffe roars with outrage and agony.
    He’s in serious trouble. The pain is excruciating. The shock is worse.
    My phantom body sways as it loses its boundaries, making me feel totally disoriented. Raffe’s experience is so intense, my own thoughts and sensations are overwhelmed by his.
    His ragged breathing is all I can hear. It’s all he can hear.
    Hands and knees hold him down but blood makes their hands slip over his skin. Raffe is drenched in his own blood.
    Pain radiates from his back through his entire body. Crushing his bones. Stabbing his eyes. Pummeling his lungs.
    Blood spreads over asphalt.
    Large hands move something white into the corner of his vision. He desperately doesn’t want to look but can’t help himself.
    Wings.
    Snow-white wings.
    Severed and lying on the dirty road.
    His breathing becomes harsher, and all he can see are those white feathers lying limp on the black asphalt.
    A drop of blood from someone’s hand drips onto a feather. Beliel the demon stands over Raffe’s wings like he owns them.
    It dimly registers with Raffe that someone yells, “Hey!”
    He forces himself to look up.
    His vision is blurred through the pain and sweat. He blinks several times to try to focus beyond the screaming pain in his back.
    It’s a skinny Daughter of Man, looking tiny beside one of his attackers. She’s half-hidden behind the warrior’s burnt-orange wings, but Raffe sees her and knows she’s the one who yelled.
    That’s me. Do I really look that insignificant beside an angel?
    She throws something at him with all her little might.
    His sword? Could it be?
    He doesn’t have time to marvel. His sword would do anything for him, even let a human bond with her to help him.
    A surge of fury lends him a shot of strength. He bursts out of his attackers’ hold and raises his hand. His arm trembles with the effort.
    His world shrinks down to his sword, Beliel, and the angels before him.
    He catches the sword and in the same motion slices the demon Beliel in the stomach. Raffe almost loses his balance in the process.
    He then manages to use his momentum to cut into the angel beside him.
    The scene doesn’t slow down like the other fights. It doesn’t have to. I feel every trembling muscle, every staggering step, every struggling breath.
    He’s dizzy and barely managing to stay upright. As the attackers fly off, he sees the warrior with the burnt-orange wings smack the girl. She slams against the road, and Raffe thinks she must be dead.
    Through the haze of agony, he wonders who she is and why a Daughter of Man would sacrifice herself to help him.
    He forces himself to stay on his feet. It takes everything he has to hold his sword ready as Burnt assesses him. Raffe’s legs tremble violently and he’s losing consciousness, but he stays up out of sheer stubbornness and fury.
    Burnt, obviously too cowardly to face him alone, gives up and flies off. Raffe collapses onto the asphalt as soon as Burnt leaves.
    Lying on the road, the world blackens with only occasional splotches of color. His breath fills his ears, but he concentrates to hear sounds in the surrounding area.
    Feet scuffle behind closed doors. Inside the buildings, humans whisper and argue about whether it’s safe to come out. They talk about how much Raffe would be worth if they tore him to pieces.
    But they’re not the ones who worry him. There are more subtle scuffling, slithering noises. Soft clicking, like cockroaches in the walls.
    They’re coming for him. The hellions have found him. They always do eventually.
    But this time, they’re in luck. This time, he’s utterly helpless. They’ll be able to drag him down into hell and slowly torture him over the ages while he lies hopeless and wingless.
    He desperately tries to stay alert, but the world melts into