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Caelel took stock of the situation and every second she spent looking around in growing shock, the situation grew more and more grave. She was facing her fellow General, Tristrian Falconheart, and a cohort of war angels. Each was a man or woman she recognized, and each was carrying their own unique tool of destruction and death. Flaming swords. Shimmering flails of flaming chain capped with vast skullshaped heads that were weighted down with the sin of the world. Double curved bows with strings of moonlight and arrows of pure starfire. A lance painted with the elegant shape of a dragon, the leaf shaped blade of the lance flaring bright orangered, the very edge showing the white color of pure heat.
All the angels, worse…were smiling at her. In relief, in solemn pride, in simple joy at having found her.
“Excellent work, Caelel!” Falconheart said, taking a step forward and clapping his gauntleted hand upon her pauldron, the reverberating clang of metal on metal ringing in her ear like the bell of doom. “You have escaped and secured your armor? We expected to have to break you from a cell, trussed up like a prisoner.” He chuckled.
“The diversion we set up should get the demons to think our attack is far to the north,” the bow wielding angel said, her voice grimly determined. Cae recognized her as Kirel, the Starfall. Her wings rustled behind her as her lip curled. ‘But even demons will notice that there’s nothing there before too long. We should go.”
“Go?” Cae asked, trying to marshal her thoughts. “But how? How did you get here?”
“We found a way to cleave into Hell after some trial and error,” Falconheart said, his voice as jovial as ever. “It took searching here, there, using some arcane secrets, its all quite fascinating. It took the blood of a few thousand willing converts to really provide the power but when it was explained through the Prophets that walked their realms, they were gladly to split their veins for Heaven’s glory. They’re being inducted into Heaven, even as we speak. Thanks to them, the portal will remain open an hour, two.”
Cae felt a faint lurch in her belly, then a blooming flare of horror. “A thousand?” she whispered.
“A few thousand,” Falconheart said, waving his hand. “Mortal levies, I believe, the Prophets spoke to them. It was before a battle, they were already eager”
“You sacrificed thousands to grab me?” Cae asked, grabbing his hand and pushing it aside.
“Well, mortals. And they went straight to Heaven, really, Silverhawk, we don’t have time for this!” Falconheart snapped. Cae frowned, furiously. She was trying to think of how to
“Wait.”
The voice was Kirel’s. It was cold and sharp. Suspicious. Cae started to turn but the warangel had already thrust out her palm. Magic glittered around her palm and Cae tried to spring aside, but it was not a magical attack. A webbing of golden light surrounded her and then flashed brightly. Kirel frowned. “Ask her if she wishes to go to Heaven,” she snapped.
“A truth spell?” Falconheart chuckled, quietly, then shook his head. “You are ever suspicious, oh Starfall. But very well, Cae, come, let us go to Heaven, to fete you as you deserve for your bravery and skill!” He said, cheerfully.
Cae looked at him, feeling the crawling, gooseflesh raising sensation of the truth spell humming along her skin. She could feel it sinking into her soul, hooking in deep. She wondered…when had the touch of Heavenly magic become so strangely invasive? When had the sensation of what had been familiar and respectable, something concrete and unchangeable, become so insulting. Many an angel had cast a truth spell on her, for one reason or another tests and for assurances, and simply for clarity. Sometimes, one could lie entirely be accident or by mistake, and a truth spell could help guide one to resolution and understanding. And yet now? Now, it felt as if her entire body was being affronted. An insult that made her clench her teeth, so fiercely that they almost creaked.
“Caelel?” Falconheart asked.
Cae saw Kirel’s eyes narrow.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Cae came to the only conclusion she had left to her.
Her elbow drove back with such ferocity that even the mighty Tristran Falconheart was caught entirely offguard. She angled her blow to strike the helm upwards, so the force was not delivered through the thin faceplate and into his nose, but rather into the straps and bindings that connected it to his jaw. Holy leather was still no match for holy might, and the straps stretched, then snapped. His head flew backwards and his helmet sailed into the air like a cork popped from a bottle. Falconheart’s much scarred, square jawed face held an expression of such intense shock that it nearly jerked a laugh from Cae.
His helmet splashed into the muck of the swamp behind him.
In the shocked silence, Cae grabbed onto his short brown hair and
Don’t kill him!
drove his face down into her knee. Her armored leg had strength enough to turn his head into an expanding cloud of mist. Instead, she merely winced at the crunch of a broken nose and then tossed him to the side, carefully angling him so that he landed with his head above water. The momentary hesitation, though, was time enough for Kirel to knock an arrow, for the other war angels to spring forward, all of them crying out the same litany.
“Traitor!”
“Fallen One!”
Kirel the Starfall loosed with a sharp snaptwang as her moonsilver bowstring shot sparks off her armored bracer. Her arrow whistled through the air with cleaving speed. Cae darted to the left with a snapping beat of her wing, and the arrow merely struck off her pauldron with a spray of sparks and a resounding clang. It reflected up and smashed into a tree, which exploded into a haze of splinters. Even with her armor working to reflect damage away, Cae felt her entire arm go numb, just at the wrong moment. She reached for her flaming sword, but could not close her hand around it in time. A whistling sound drove her into a forward leap. Water surged and splashed around her as she rolled and came up to her feet, seconds before the skullflail smashed into where she had been. A roar of hissing steam exploded upwards rather than a wave of water and the other warangels sprang backwards. Kirel was in the air, her wings beating, and she had more arrows knocked. She loosed, loosed, loosed, the sparks shooting into the air and falling to the ground the source of her fanciful title!
Cae darted left, right, drew her sword, slashed. An arrow tore into the ground where her foot had been, tearing up a crater that glowed bright red, while another struck a tree behind her and shattered in in half with a sound like a giant tearing the largest book in creation in half. The third, though, met her sword and exploded in the air with a thunderbolt crack and a sharp stink of brimstone and ozone.
“Her wings!” Kirel shouted down as Cae flexed her wings.
Two angels were at her sides the one with the sword and the one with the lance. Cae parried the sword, then struck back with the pommel pull! Her internal voice screamed and she jerked the blow back at just the last second, turning what should have a killing strike into one that merely sent him stumbling backwards.
The lance angel thrust.
Burning pain exploded and Cae screamed as she felt her left wing seating not at the outer edges.
No.
It burned at the base, where it spread from her armor. She half turned, but the lancer was swifter, more brutal. He swept down and beat his wings, soaring backwards as Cae felt her back flare with an agony sharper than anything she had ever felt in her life. Tears bloomed in her eyes and she stumbled to one knee, her head tilting down, her breath streaming in thick fog around her mouth as a shocking chill slammed around her. Magic flowed into the air, spurting and sputtering a bright white hissing stream that gushed from the stump of her wing, while the feathers struck the ground and exploded into ice crystals as they touched the swamp’s hot, muggy water.
The other war angels landed around her sword, lance, bow, flail all humming with killing energies.
“Surrender, Fallen One, and we shall show you mercy,” Kirel growled, her bow lowered, her arrow aimed at the ground between her feet.
Cae panted, raggedly. “I’m…not…Fallen,” she growled, her eyes flashing as she jerked her head up, glaring at the four angels that formed a halfcircle around her. Her stump hurt, and a distant part of her wept, wept for what it meant, for what it signified. Who had ever heard of a one winged angel? She had never in her life heard of an angel who had lost their wings from another angel’s blow. Demons had, of course, torn the wings from angels. They had always died in heroic battle. Cae had known in her heart of hearts that…if a wing was removed? That was the only end.
A pinion could regrow.
Bindings could be broken.
But to lose a wing?
No. She shook her head, forcing that weeping, mewling, whimpering part of her back. She crushed it down and instead…instead she clung to her fire. She clung to her passion. She clung to Citri. She clung, too…to the rot already aching inside of her. Her wound was exposed to the air, and even now, something would grow in there. New life, life that she might need to battle against, to fight. But it was still alive. And she was still alive. Ruti was with her. She pushed her foot under her and shoved herself to her feet, keeping her balance through sheer effort. She spread her wings reflexively and regretted it. The change in her weight made her almost fall, until she drove her flaming sword tip into the hissing mud by her feet. Steam rose as she clenched her wing back against her side, and more glowing mana dripped along her calf.
She glowered up and felt that weeping Cae, that sobbing Cae, that sorrowful Cae? She was with her too.
For sorrow could be sharpened.
It could be honed.
She looked, right into Kirel’s eyes.
“I am more angel now…than I have ever been,” Cae hissed quietly. “I am Caelel Silverhawk. General of Heaven. Guardian…of Ruin. Protector of Hell.” She wrenched her sword free. “I have seen the true face of the Creator and felt the Destroyer move inside me. I am Archangel, and I will be the end of all chains. Face me…” She lifted her sword before her. “And taste ashes.”
Kirel’s scowl hid not a bit of her fear.
“Rip her other wing off,” she ordered, jerking her head.
Cae shifted her grip on her sword. Her gauntlet gripped the flaming edge, and the bluewhite flames crackled between her fingers as she held up the pommel like a mace. She caught the sword swinging down towards her chest, twisted, then smashed the crossguard of her blade into the faceplate of one of the warangels. Metal crumbled and he staggered backwards, clutching at his helmet. Cae darted and, using her hands to guide her sword like one might guide a spear, drove the tip into the thin seam between knee joint and graves. The blade bit and grated against hardened bone and bright silver blood spurted. The war angel cried out, stumbled, and she turned, catching the lance between arms and sword and twisting both, using her sword like a leaver to wrench the lance from the angel’s hands. He released the thrusting weapon but rather than draw back in fear, he rushed towards her.
Cae saw a flash of knuckles.
Then a white flash. She stumbled back in pain, her helmet ringing around her head, her mind reeling. The war angel brought his hand up into her faceplate, but rather than striking, he caught and tore. Her faceplate ripped free, revealing her split lip, her dazed eye. His own features were barely visible behind the conical bill of his helmet, a pair of furious blue eyes.
“Demonbitch!” He snarled, driving his fist towards her face. Cae, despite her agony, grabbed his wrist, then twisted and threw. Normally, he would be caught on her wing. Instead, he sailed over the empty hole in her life and her future. He crashed into a tree.
An arrow, expertly aimed and timed, thrust between her pauldron and her cuirass. It clove through her underarmor and her clothing and her skin and her muscle all with a single flash of pain. She staggered backwards, then snarled and grabbed at the base of the arrow. But the angel with the flail was storming towards her as Kirel knocked another barbed, flickering arrow. The flail swung up, then crashed down onto where Cae had stood moments before, sending up another spray of mud. Cae tried to roll to her feet, but she instead merely managed to kneel.
Another arrow sprouted, as if by magic, right at the edge of her fauld and her inner thigh. It plunged deep and she cried out as a bright spurt of silver blood gushed from around the arrow. She grabbed the base of it, then hissed and, in a flash of insight, reached back and caught some of the mana that still flowed from her wingwound. She slapped it against the base of the arrow and her blood froze solid, trapping any more within her body before she bled out.
The lancer stood, having retrieved his weapon. He moved behind her, while the flail angel stepped to her side. Kirel was aiming, her eyes coldly furious. Cae could see that the next arrow would strike her eye.
“Die!” Kirel hissed, her voice dripping venom.
She loosed.
And the arrow snapped in half, splintering between thick metal fingers. Tristran Flaconheart, blood streaming down his nose, had appeared and snatched the arrow from the air. He tossed the scattered fragments to the ground. His eyes were wild and raging. “Kirel! Tireal! Ural! Varal! All of you! Stand down!” His voice boomed as if he was in a vast battlefield, seeking to be heard over the shrieking of ten thousand demons. Cae panted quietly, her hand gripping the arrow that still stuck into her thigh.
“She’s a traitor” Kirel started.
“We will not kill Caelel Silverhawk like a demon in the mud!” Falconheart sounded like boulders smashing into one another. He stepped over, snatching the bow from Kirel’s shocked hands. “We will not shoot her down like this were some foxhunt! She…she will…she will stand trial before the Proctor.” He panted.
“But” Kirel snapped.
Tristran now did not merely take the bow. He instead took hold of her chainmail vest and hauled upwards. A warangel, even one as slight as Kirel the Starfall, weighed nearly two hundred pounds. Their heavy, elaborate armor (even half plate, such as Kirel wore) added dozens more. Throw into that the weight of their magically enhanced weapons, weapons that were sturdier and stronger than anything a mortal would carry, and they could mass the same as a boulder and be just as implacable. And so, it shocked even Cae to see her old comrade hold Kirel above his head by a single hand, his eyes sparking as he glared up at her.
“I am your General,” he said, his voice so deadly low and fierce that even Cae could barely hear him. “Do you understand?”
“YYes, General!” Kirel exclaimed.
Falconheart dropped her with a grunt and the warangel splashed into the mud of the swamps.
Cae gaped as the burly general turned to her. His face was blood streaked, his nose badly broken, his eyes filled with an emotion she could not place. Was it rage? Was it sorrow? She opened her mouth to speak but before she could, he had lifted his knuckles and brought them down. A white flash surrounded her gaze.
Then, faintly, pain.
Then nothing.
Nothing at all.
***
When Cae woke, it was with a slow lurch and a faint sense of queasiness. Her stomach wanted to rebel, but there was not enough within her to even be expelled from her lips. She felt heavy and drained mana burnt and without purchase. Her eyes opened, cracking slowly as steel shutters on rusted chains and she lifted her head up to see where she hung. For hung she did, her wrists suspended above her head and to either side of her body, leaving her weight straining against her shoulders and her back. She winced slightly as a bright light stabbed into her eyes. She closed them again but not before she heard the soft rasping noise of metal on metal…and the faint sound of countless breathing individuals.
Not a one spoke, and yet, she was suddenly unable to ignore the feeling of a thousand thousand eyes…
She was naked and chained. Brilliant light shone upon her.
While she might not be able to see, she knew precisely where she was. Those chains were bright gold, they had to be, and they swept up to the two pillars that sat to either side of her. The pillars were themselves arrayed in parallel rows, receding and progressing towards infinity, for this was the Great Hall of Heaven, the central corridor that went from the ten million golden steps of the gods to the Throne of the Creator herself. It was here, where the hosts of Heaven could all gather. Where judgment could be passed. Where punishment could be wrought.
Rasp. Rasp. Rasp.
She wondered which angel had been given the duty of sharpening the sword that would be her doom.
She opened her eyes again and, this time, she was able to bear up under the light.
It was as her mind’s eye had seen…and yet…utterly different. Cae blinked away tears as she looked out over the ranks of angels. Some stood, some hovered in quiet, stately rows, all of them having a view of her golden nakedness, her empty wing stump, her one good wing halfunfurled to her left. She lifted her chin and found herself smiling in wry wonder. Was it the time she had spent in Hell that made Heaven seem so…inhuman. So alien. The geometry of the pillars was nothing a human would craft, the vastness was so strange and cold. So removed from the gentle touch of Arral’s palm on her face. Of the simple human kindness of a fixed meal, a crackling fire.
Had it always been this way?
Had this been what had drawn her to mortal stories and mortal adventures?
Why was it the Realm of Ruin was so human, so tactile?
“Caelel Silverhawk,” the deep, stentorian voice of the Proctor filled the entire hall, reverberating off walls so distant that it’d take an artillery shot to hit them. “You have been found guilty of the sin of temptation and hedonism. Your soul has been read and your conduct has been found blacker than anything that Heaven has seen in ten thousand years.” He walked from her left to her front, silvery wings clasped behind his armor. It was an ancient suit, thick and rectangular, unadorned and obsidian black. She watched his muscular movements and marveled at how strong he had to be, to bear up under unsupported and unmagical soulsteel without showing a hint of hesitation or relaxation. Cae listened intently as he continued.
“You have had carnal relationship with demons,” he said. “Do you deny it?”
Cae tried to speak. Her throat was so parched and raw that it came out as an animal croak. The Proctor gave a jerky nod and a robed angel stepped to her side. The woman glared daggers at her, as if Cae did not deserve such grace and gratitude. The water that spilled down her lips were blessedly cool, even if half of it painted her breasts in glossy highlights. She licked her lips, coughed, then said, as clearly as she could: “I do not.”
The Proctor’s growl and the grinding steelonsteel sounds of his movements were nearly the same tone as he stomped around her. “You took up blade to protect and serve a House of Hell. Do you deny it?”
“No, I do not,” Cae said, her chin lifted. Her one good wing unfurled, feathers glimmering.
The Proctor was behind her now. “You planned…to turn your blade on Heaven. To betray us, at the most fundamental level. To attack what you once defended. To serve those you once saw as enemies. Do you deny it?”
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