01. Sunggyu (1/2)

The air was cold and smelled of rain. Biting winds breezed through the dark alley as if the buildings encasing its narrow passageway were sinewy trees made of nothing but hollow wood.

Sunggyu stuffed his hands into his pockets, hood pulled over his head to protect him from what were the remnants of the Father’s temper tantrum from just a few hours before.

The sun had already set, marking the end of one of the longest days in human history, as far as records could indicate anyway. Rain. Hail. Thunderstorms. Snow. Earthquakes. There seemed at one point to be no end to the His wrath.

The reason?

Up in the heavens there had been an upheavel of sorts: chaos caused by the disappearance of one of God’s servants-- one of his right hand angels; a holy being that takes the form of a human but is not permitted to step foot on the earth. They are His messengers, His servants, His warriors. They are sacred and for one to descend on his own accord would mean betraying the law of the empyrean.

The angel needed to be found and returned before order as it had existed for thousands of years would be permanently disrupted.

Unfortunately, upon arriving on earth, the angel had been quick to conceal his presence with magic in order to protect himself. Word had spread quickly to the earth beings of this grand deceit and now thousands of hopeful men were on the search for the angel, expecting to gain some sort of honor if they managed to return him to his rightful place.

The only trouble was not knowing where to look or what to look for. The angel could be anyone and no ordinary human would be able to identify it from a glance.

Luckily for Sunggyu, he was no ordinary human. His blood line connected him to the descendents of those who had been at service to the Father many thousands of years in the past.

Sunggyu’s blood was blessed. It gave him the ability to discern what was holy from what was not. He and his kin were amongst the highest ranked earth beings, according to the laws of Heaven, and they in secret practiced magics in order to further enhance their mystical abilities. With this power, Sunggyu was confident that he would find the angel and bring glory to his long-forgotten family name once again.

A sudden jolt of electricity ran through Sunggyu’s veins, halting his footsteps. A wicked smirk spread across his lips.

“I can feel your powers,” Sunggyu called out to no one, reaching towards his belt to unsheathe his blessed blade. The cold metal reflected the light of the moon as Sunggyu leaned the flat side against his shoulder and lazily imitated the stance of a soldier.

In all honesty Sunggyu was disappointed. He had hoped that finding the angel would be a much more difficult challenge than this. He never thought the angel would be so careless as to leave a trail behind, much less make almost no efforts to escape once he had been discovered.

He sniffed the air, hunting for that particular sweet scent that all angels were said to have. Sunggyu had understandably never smelled one before as this was the first time in his twenty-three years of living that such a phenomenon had occured, but he knew he needed to act quickly. The longer the angel stayed on earth the faster the odor lost it’s potency.

“I’ve got you,” he taunted as soon as he had caught a whiff. His head snapped up ahead, eyes feasting on the sight of something tumbling over at the other side of the iron fence that divided the alley in two.

In a few fluid movements Sunggyu had run forward, using the dumpsters that lay in his way as stepping stones to leap up over the high wired wall.

There was no way that the angel could escape now. He was trapped.

“Are you going to come out on your own, or would you rather I drag you out instead?”  Sunggyu’s voice thundered.