Philip Pullman - The Amber Spyglass

She leaned toward the shadow, as if she couldn’t control the impulses of her own body, and the shadow hungrily sniffed and seemed to gulp at the scent of her flesh.

They were moving laboriously over the tumbled and broken rocks toward the foot of the slope. The farther down they went, the more the Dust light gave everything a nimbus of golden mist. Mrs. Coulter kept reaching for where his hand might have been if the shadow had been a human companion, and then seemed to recollect herself, and whispered:

“Keep behind me, Metatron – wait here – Asriel is suspicious – let me lull him first. When he’s off guard, I’ll call you. But come as a shadow, in this small form, so he doesn’t see you – otherwise, he’ll just let the child’s daemon fly away.”

The Regent was a being whose profound intellect had had thousands of years to deepen and strengthen itself, and whose knowledge extended over a million universes. Nevertheless, at that moment he was blinded by his twin obsessions: to destroy Lyra and to possess her mother. He nodded and stayed where he was, while the woman and the monkey moved forward as quietly as they could.

Lord Asriel was waiting behind a great block of granite, out of sight of the Regent. The snow leopard heard them coming, and Lord Asriel stood up as Mrs. Coulter came around the corner. Everything, every surface, every cubic centimeter of air, was permeated by the falling Dust, which gave a soft clarity to every tiny detail; and in the Dust light Lord Asriel saw that her face was wet with tears, and that she was gritting her teeth so as not to sob.

He took her in his arms, and the golden monkey embraced the snow leopard’s neck and buried his black face in her fur.

“Is Lyra safe? Has she found her daemon?” she whispered.

“The ghost of the boy’s father is protecting both of them.”

“Dust is beautiful… I never knew.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I lied and lied, Asriel… Let’s not wait too long, I can’t bear it… We won’t live, will we? We won’t survive like the ghosts?”

“Not if we fall into the abyss. We came here to give Lyra time to find her daemon, and then time to live and grow up. If we take Metatron to extinction, Marisa, she’ll have that time, and if we go with him, it doesn’t matter.”

“And Lyra will be safe?”

“Yes, yes,” he said gently.

He kissed her. She felt as soft and light in his arms as she had when Lyra was conceived thirteen years before.

She was sobbing quietly. When she could speak, she whispered:

“I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he’d see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I’d ever done… I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn’t. There is none. But I love Lyra. Where did this love come from? I don’t know; it came to me like a thief in the night, and now I love her so much my heart is bursting with it. All I could hope was that my crimes were so monstrous that the love was no bigger than a mustard seed in the shadow of them, and I wished I’d committed even greater ones to hide it more deeply still… But the mustard seed had taken root and was growing, and the little green shoot was splitting my heart wide open, and I was so afraid he’d see…”

She had to stop to gather herself. He stroked her shining hair, all set about with golden Dust, and waited.

“Any moment now he’ll lose patience,” she whispered. “I told him to make himself small. But he’s only an angel, after all, even if he was once a man. And we can wrestle with him and bring him to the edge of the gulf, and we’ll both go down with him…”

He kissed her, saying, “Yes. Lyra will be safe, and the Kingdom will be powerless against her. Call him now, Marisa, my love.”

She took a deep breath and let it out in a long, shuddering sigh. Then she smoothed her skirt down over her thighs and tucked the hair back behind her ears.

“Metatron,” she called softly. “It’s time.”

Metatron’s shadow‑cloaked form appeared out of the golden air and took in at once what was happening: the two daemons, crouching and watchful, the woman with the nimbus of Dust, and Lord Asriel –

Who leapt at him at once, seizing him around the waist, and tried to hurl him to the ground. The angel’s arms were free, though, and with fists, palms, elbows, knuckles, forearms, he battered Lord Asriel’s head and body: great pummeling blows that forced the breath from his lungs and rebounded from his ribs, that cracked against his skull and shook his senses.

However, his arms encircled the angel’s wings, cramping them to his side. And a moment later, Mrs. Coulter had leapt up between those pinioned wings and seized Metatron’s hair. His strength was enormous: it was like holding the mane of a bolting horse. As he shook his head furiously, she was flung this way and that, and she felt the power in the great folded wings as they strained and heaved at the man’s arms locked so tightly around them.

The daemons had seized hold of him, too. Stelmaria had her teeth firmly in his leg, and the golden monkey was tearing at one of the edges of the nearest wing, snapping feathers, ripping at the vanes, and this only roused the angel to greater fury. With a sudden massive effort he flung himself sideways, freeing one wing and crushing Mrs. Coulter against a rock.

Mrs. Coulter was stunned for a second, and her hands came loose. At once the angel reared up again, beating his one free wing to fling off the golden monkey; but Lord Asriel’s arms were firm around him still, and in fact the man had a better grip now there wasn’t so much to enclose. Lord Asriel set himself to crushing the breath out of Metatron, grinding his ribs together, and trying to ignore the savage blows that were landing on his skull and his neck.

But those blows were beginning to tell. And as Lord Asriel tried to keep his footing on the broken rocks, something shattering happened to the back of his head. When he flung himself sideways, Metatron had seized a fist‑sized rock, and now he brought it down with brutal force on the point of Lord Asriel’s skull. The man felt the bones of his head move against each other, and he knew that another blow like that would kill him outright. Dizzy with pain – pain that was worse for the pressure of his head against the angel’s side, he still clung fast, the fingers of his right hand crushing the bones of his left, and stumbled for a footing among the fractured rocks.

And as Metatron raised the bloody stone high, a golden‑furred shape sprang up like a flame leaping to a treetop, and the monkey sank his teeth into the angel’s hand. The rock came loose and clattered down toward the edge, and Metatron swept his arm to left and right, trying to dislodge the daemon; but the golden monkey clung with teeth, claws, and tail, and then Mrs. Coulter gathered the great white beating wing to herself and smothered its movement.

Metatron was hampered, but he still wasn’t hurt. Nor was he near the edge of the abyss.

And by now Lord Asriel was weakening. He was holding fast to his blood‑soaked consciousness, but with every movement a little more was lost. He could feel the edges of the bones grinding together in his skull; he could hear them. His senses were disordered; all he knew was hold tight and drag down .

Then Mrs. Coulter found the angel’s face under her hand, and she dug her fingers deep into his eyes.

Metatron cried out. From far off across the great cavern, echoes answered, and his voice bounded from cliff to cliff, doubling and diminishing and causing those distant ghosts to pause in their endless procession and look up.