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Quotidian, really, this day that fate had drawn in lines of fire for these people; he looked around himself and saw nothing that had not happened in this office every day for years. The men and women played their parts as if they did not know what was in store within the hour, and he reminded himself, they did not. Only he had been given the foreknowledge, his duty and his burden alone. He stood at the window and watched the sky.
He had no power to stop the massive inertia of jumbo jets on a suicide mission. What sort of guardian merely watches as his charges burn to ash, jump to splatter-gory demise, or fall in the collapse of a hundred stories of melting steel? Here he is again, our heroic angel, whose task can never end until he fails, and humanity perishes; who must ever strive to prolong his own enslavement. He smiled a little, inglorious destiny humoring him with its barbs. He watched the empty sky for oblong minutes, until at the quarter of the hour, he spotted the oncoming plane. Others saw too, now; they gathered at the window in shocked amazement to watch the fiery spectacle.
As the inferno raged, he went unnoticed as he always did in the panic and confusion. Dust and smoke blinded people, for an hour's space trying to save themselves, not knowing how. He listened to them scream and cry, he listened to soft murmurs giving what comfort they could, he heard the sure knowledge of doom in human voices, not for the first time in his millenia of earthbound servitude.
He fell with the building, his invisible wings saving him, buoyant in the particulate shroud rising from the wreckage. The comminution of so much office space surrounded him, its pulverized remnants floating up in a cloud. Landing lightly on crumbled glass and powdered ceiling tile, shattered marble, and bits of roasted flesh, he ambled away. He could hear the wails of banshee sirens announcing distaster's stroke, sharp echoes of the wounded's shadowy voices.
He passed unnoticed by ghoulish gawkers and courageous rescuers alike, just another businessman on his way home after a narrow escape. Not narrow enough. He had a few other visits to make, this day. Off to the corridors of the powers of war, for a few hours. Then a side trip to a minefield on the other side of the world; the planes would be delayed, though, and he would not get there for a week. Inconvenience merely.
He watched a child die by a chance misstep, then lifted an unexploded landmine into his arms, cradling it close. If he held this wrong, he wondered, would another have to take his place as this world's silent spirit? Not that anyone would notice, he thought with a slight smile. He threw the mine up into the air and caught it again, lightly. It lay against him as harmless as a toy. No, he thought, he would not escape so easily; compelled to the next ordained imposition.
A breath, another; soon it would be her last. He sat by the hospital bed, watched the ancient woman struggle, the machinery of the ventilator strain to impress an inhalation upon her laboring lungs. She would die soon, the plague spores grown too strong within her to resist. The angel's oblivion lure feasted on her demise.
No one knew the vector of her infection; wise healers floundered in ignorance. Paranoia, prejudice, and hatred were flourishing, the world becoming more dangerous within the minds and hearts of humanity. Nothing was sure, and it would not be today, not tomorrow; but perhaps, the end of his task would be soon. In the retrograde darkness of Ioriel's heart, a small ray of hope was born.