A Gathering of Angels

by Mathias G.B. Colwell

Awakening to the sound of screaming feels more like entering a nightmare than leaving one, especially when everything around him is unfamiliar. Stream comes to consciousness in terrifying circumstances with no understanding of the world around him and absolutely no memory of who or what he is.

Accompanied by his newfound companion, the young boy Vesper, Stream, must first reach safety before he can even begin to contemplate what comes next. What follows is an exploratory journey as he discovers his own dark history and powers. As he learns about the world around him, Stream faces an age-old choice between good and evil. But perhaps he’ll opt for a chaotic balance of somewhere in between.

Is Stream a villain or an antihero? He probably doesn’t know himself. The reader will have to decide.

Excerpt

The Chapter One
Awakened

He came into awareness gradually and in confusion, the chill of existence dribbling on his dulled senses like a spattering of fine rain as he shuddered to life.

Did he hear screaming?

“Hey Mister, we have to go. Now.”

Or was that chill he felt actually water? Yes, a stream. Reality struck and his consciousness rebounded in upon himself, body and spirit—or soul, whatever one called it—collided sickeningly like the two ends of a bowstring recoiling together when freed from the stave. His stomach threatened to heave as he stared nauseously at the twilight sky, trying to collect himself. Wisps of smoky cloud, dark grey, almost black, hung low in the air in patches, almost within touching distance.

Water rushed over him, cold, mountain water that did more to bring him awake than anything else as he groggily attempted to pull himself to a semblance of uprightness. His attempt failed and he continued laying in the stream. The babbling rapids rushed over his naked body as his head and shoulders propped uncomfortably against a rock, open to the air, allowing the breath he needed as he continued to shiver fully awake.

“Come on!” The voice spoke again with urgency. He looked around for the source.

Again, a scream pierced the air nearby. This time he had no doubts about what it was. So that was what had awakened him. A terrible, horrified shriek, filled with more dread and loathing than he would have ever imagined possible. Then it cut off ominously mid-screech. That was enough to get him to roll and lurch to first his knees and eventually his feet, hunched over, fingertips of one hand dragging through the biting water as he stumbled onto the bank.

An unearthly cry rebounded across the mountains that jutted around him, unnerving to hear at any time, let alone his state of undress. And without even a weapon to his hand. He shook his head trying to fight clear of the daze in which he found himself. Even as his fingers itched for one, he couldn’t recall if he knew how to use a weapon or not.

“Up here.” The voice called again, more quietly this time, and a small, beckoning hand waved to him from behind some boulders up on the bank. He staggered toward the hand, feet treading uncomfortably on small stones and rough rocks, not yet worn smooth by time in the river.

When he rounded the boulders, grass now soothingly underfoot, he was faced with a boy of maybe ten or eleven summers. The boy couldn’t have been older judging by his size and the fact that his face still carried a little bit of the babyish youthfulness children still possess even as their bodies are beginning to leave it behind.

“Are you alright, Mister? You don’t look too good. Well, it doesn’t matter anyway,” the boy interjected without allowing a response, “we need to run!” Ragged fear flashed across his face, even as he tried to control it. “Can you run?”

When he nodded his response to the boy, the child didn’t wait to hear more, turning and racing lithely up the embankment toward the nearby tree line.

They ran swiftly, fueled by fear. It was difficult to get his body to work properly after being so strangely awakened. His body ached as if it were bruised from a fall, and there was a gnawing emptiness inside of him. His bare feet, scraped from exiting the stream, grew raw as he stepped on everything from fallen pine needles and small branches to the rough patchy soil that they crossed when not traversing the underbrush. The boy never slowed, and it was all he could do to keep up in his current state, and amidst the growing dusk. At first their path led up from the streambed, but quickly it started to drop back downward, causing him to stumble and lose his footing from time to time. He scraped his knees and hands, catching himself as he fell on more than one occasion. The boy never seemed to slow, but he also never seemed to disappear ahead in the darkness.

And all the while the occasional scream pierced the air. Each time a cry sounded in the darkening light, the boy would look up anxiously, flicking a gaze around and above himself, but still the child never stopped. They reached a gully of some kind and descended into it. They scampered on for a few moments, and finally the boy seemed to disappear ahead of him. He rushed onward, terrified by the source of those unknown screams, afraid of the implications of his bruised and naked state, unwilling to lose the one tether he seemed to have to safety at the moment. The boy.

Available August 18, 2025

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