Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

That verse came alive in Cas’s memory, as the slithering form of Trinket Sable coiled itself around her mind.

Dead men head to the land where angels flee.

Cas felt herself suffocating in place. The Trinket knew she was here. It had waited a thousand years and it knew! Cas wanted to hide but froze stiff. The whole world seemed exposed in the face of that… that thing.

“Wake up!”

The suffocating pressure eased a bit, replaced by violent turbulence of Sara shaking her shoulders.

“It’s not looking at you!” Sara yelled, forcibly turning Cas away from the sight. The woman made sure to stare pointedly into Cas’s eyes, showing her the honesty in them as she consoled: “It doesn’t care at all about you! You’re safe right now. Just don’t freeze on me, ok?”

Sara was afraid, too. And that made her more relatable enough for Cas to accept her message.

Cas felt herself able to breathe again. “I’m ok. I’m ok,” Cas said, speaking to assure herself as much as Sara.

Trinket Sable still hovered in the periphery of her thoughts, but – safer in the knowledge that it had more important things to think about – Cas was able to direct her attention to the surroundings.

----------------------------------------

Unlike the blasted craters and burnt forests they’d walked through earlier, the land here was astoundingly pristine. A fragrant meadow stretched out as far as the eye could see, interrupted only by a lazy river that swam leisurely through the field, stretching over the land like a glimmering ribbon.

The sky was a clear, sunny blue, spotted by a few, isolated gray clouds that hung in the distance.

It had the beauty of a rose, thorns and all.

The daylight suddenly dimmed, as the black cloud approached closer.

Unlike the gray clouds, which hung peacefully in the stratosphere.

The black cloud flew with intent, made up of screaming figures and fluttering wings as it stormed through the air, charging towards them from the far distance.

In it, Cas could make out a menagerie of monstrous figures, large and small, that danced together in an orgy of confusion. They held tight together in their chaotic formation.

Unlike the graceful flocking of a bird formation, the monsters jockeyed and bit and crashed into one another. A constant storm of dead and broken bodies rained down from the cloud of strife, shedding its weaker members as the whole pushed forward with a confused air..

It was obviously not a practiced or natural thing for so many monsters to be so close together. It looked more as if they were being corralled, prodded forward by some invisible force towards the Red Banner.

The scene on the ground was barely more hopeful. A thousand men were scattered in every direction, most of them running.

In a scene of such confusion, order stood out, and – like a sign-post of sanity in a world gone mad, the small, cohesive formation of twenty armored figures was immediately noticeable. They stood stoically by the hill Sara and Cas were perched upon, organized into a hedge-hog ring, with polearms stabbing in every direction.

Sara immediately ran to it, and Cas followed without thought.

----------------------------------------

Sergeant Dalmatian had a silly name, but his size and demeanor more than made up for it.

In a field increasingly infested with giant monsters, he loomed over the space as if he owned it.

And this was not without reason, for his space was very well protected.

Around him, a hundred soldiers circled in two rows, holding up a hundred pikes that stabbed into the air all around.

Sargent Dalmatian paced in the center of this circle. All around him, intensity was present in the furrowed brow and white-knuckled grip of every troop. All were silent, creating a pocket of stillness for their sergeant to meditate in. A silence that was swiftly broken by a distant and incredible roar.

Half a mile away, a black, shelled figure crawled out of the river bank, shaking the water off and baring black teeth in a threatening display. It roared loud enough for Dalmatian to feel it in his gut, planting a gnarled leg into the muddy bank, as dozens more of its brethren swam across behind it.

And that was the good news.

Because behind that was a screaming cloud that rained dead bodies.

Still, not a single soul in his unit wavered.

The sergeant felt a spark of pride as he looked out among his crew.

Discipline was the first thing to go in the face of danger, but he was, and always had been, a disciplinarian. His soldiers had hated him for that, for the standards he held them to, but it was what kept them alive now, and it was what he, by strength of threat or promise, would hold them to to the end of the lives.

Peeking over the gleaming helmets that surrounded him, Sergeant Dalmatian All looked around with pity at the scattered masses of routing men. They’d all abandoned their formations, the fools. Some, he could see, had even dropped their shields. T

He couldn’t bring himself to blame them. He’d been terrified, too, when the Black Flag appeared. He’d lost all hope when the prince had fallen. In truth, he was still, to this moment, scared. And it was the instinct of scared men to run from danger, but the experienced soldier in him knew that, sometimes, the safest place to be was just under the belly of the beast.

Of course, safer hardly meant safe. The belly of the beast was still quite dangerous. It would require all the focus and concentration his soldiers could muster to survive such a place.

So, naturally, he did not much enjoy the sight of a Psylen and a stranger muscling their way into his formation.

“Sargent!” Sara called out, flashing an identity badge and pushing her way past the two ranks of spears, intruding quite confidently into his space. “Sara Matalthazar reporting!” She saluted. Reaching back, she grabbed Cas and dragged her into the circle, “this is my escort Cassandria.” She had to yell to be heard. By now, the screaming cloud had approached so close, that the air was brimming with excited howls and monstrous screeching.

Dalmatian was confused for a moment before the name rang a bell. “You’re late – ” he began his instinctive reprimand before recalling the situation around him and pausing “ – actually, nevermind. I doubt it matters. I’m sure you can tell this unit is dead,” he gestured hoplessly around him. “I thank you for reporting, anyway. If you’re looking for your pay, I can assure you I don’t have it. Now leave me be!”

He turned away to continue his pacing when Sara grabbed him by the words: “I can help! I know your Psylens are all dead. I can’t sense them anymore, but I can reestablish communications-”

“I said leave me be, Mathalthazar!” Dalmatian sniped. “Can’t you see how pointless that would be? The prince is dying!” He gestured over to that red spot which every one of them avoided looking at. “The enemy has a Trinket. Fighting isn’t an option, now, just survival. You’re welcome to throw your lot in with us, but don’t even think of ordering the others to start a fight, you’ll only kill more of them.”

“But, Sergant-!”

Sara’s words cut out of Cas’s mind. In fact, the whole world took a back seat to the sudden awareness that occluded her vision.

Cas had made the mistake of looking directly at the prince’s location, and the sight stabbed at feelings she never even knew she had.

…

‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,’

It was wise enough, as far as advice went, but – for all the sense it made – Cas had never managed to divine an answer to the question inherent in the quote.

What, after all, could possibly scare an angel?

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Well, at least one thing, it turned out. And, that one thing, right now, took the shape of a dying prince..

It was quite an innocuous sight. The Red Banner gleamed high in the air, and the prince sat underneath it, reclined back against a pile of rubble, pressing a hand to his stomach. The light from the Trinket touched nothing except him, and he glowed red amidst his gray surroundings.

Looking at the scene was like staring into a wood-chipper. The sight itself was mundane, but the thought of running into it-

Cas shivered and felt the bile bubbling up from her stomach. She flashed her eyes away, and the world came into focus again.

…

“-can at least organize a retreat!” Sara screamed.

“Organize a retreat!” the sergeant laughed. “All you Psylens know how to do is organize! You’re not a soldier, Mathalthazar, and stop pretending that you are. Look around you!” he gestured to the chaos outside, and the immense cloud of monsters that was now almost painfully loud. “This is not the time for organization! This is not the time for thinking. This is the time for every soldier to do what they’ve been trained to. That’s why we train, Mathalthazar! Having a Psylen poke into their heads and distracting them with nonsense hopes will just get everyone-”

“Sergeant!” Cas yelled.

The incredulity of being interrupted was enough to shock the sergeant into silence.

Cas took the opportunity to speak. “The prince! You said everyone’s running because he’s down, right? If someone could get him, would that help you organize against the monsters?”

“Obviously?” The Sergeant said with a confused note. “Who the hell are you?”

Cas took that for the yes it was and sprinted out of the formation, running straight for the prince.

Cas’s heart thundered, and her hands grew clammy, and she felt her sense rebelling against such an action.

Cas was afraid, and the place she was running to was still a woodchipper. Worse than a woodchipper, in fact. At least, with a woodchipper, you knew exactly what would happen if you touched it. The prince, however, was trapped in a pit of dread and danger, unlike anything she’d ever felt before. A dark place that would shred anything to bits.

However, the biologist in Cas knew that – if any creature could survive walking into a wood chipper – it was a slime.

Cas charged her aura and charged straight to the hilltop where the Red Banner called. A small hop, and she glew over the eight foot tall pike wall the soldiers formed around her, and just as she touched down on the outside of the circle, she took off running.

It was quite a sensation, running under aura power. Each foot step propelled her ten feet, and the surprising thrust her legs could produce almost caused her to trip over herself. Not to mention the wind. It was like standing up in a convertible.

Those were fun little details, but they were hardly entertaining enough to distract Cas from the key question that ran through her mind as she approached the prince’s hill. Namely…

Why!?

Why was she doing this? Why was she risking her life to save him? Why save anyone? Just because she could walk into a shredder didn’t mean she had a good reason to!

It was a difficult question to answer. Maybe was doing this because she knew he was someone worth saving? Maybe she was just that soft hearted and impractical? Maybe she thought saving him was the best chance of both Sara and her coming out of this alive? Maybe it was for no good reason at all.

Whatever the reason, Cas made an executive decision to think about it after this was all over.

Shutting down all the contrary voices in her head, Cas charged forward, and focused all her attention on the task at hand. And there was a lot to focus on, enough to distract her from the terror, in any case.

—--

The screaming cloud of monsters was a mile wide mass of schooling creatures, and it was looming close enough now that Cas could make out individual figures in the whole flock. Most of them were small, but large, toothed things were apparent in the whole, and they were winning the constant jostling battle to be at the head of the pack.

The hail of broken bodies landed with splashes, now that the cloud was over the river, and the water was turning muddy with blood

Cas shared a destination with them. The Trinket glowed like a waypoint for both their appraisals, and the monsters apparently saw victory where the humans saw danger.

Somehow, this barely warranted a notice in Cas’s mind, as she struck forward towards prince hill. She couldn’t afford to think too much lest she lose her courage.

Dher best efforts, however, the occasional thought struck in against her will.

Cas tried to ignore the self doubt, but the thought reasserted itself.

Cas shook her head. She’d already gone over this. Why were these thoughts still bothering her now? She tried to shut them out.

The voice screamed in her head.

Wait a minute… that wasn’t her voice. Feeling a ring like a telephone call bouncing against her aura, Cas picked up the line and felt Sara’s voice.

Cas thought.

The language they spoke in now wasn’t words, exactly. Cas could feel something more to it. There was Sara’s exasperation and worry, for one. But, she also gained an implicit knowledge of her surroundings, like a hub map centered on Sara’s location. And she also now knew the locations of the surrounding soldiers and monsters.

Cas answered.

She was glad for the conversation. It allowed her enough distraction to think of things other than her worries.

Sara said,

Prince hill – as she termed it – was half a mile ahead of her. The monsters were four miles away on the other side.

Cas was closer to the destination, which was a relief, but the monsters were flying faster….

Cas answered simply.

Another spike of panic and confusion.

Cas had barely formed the thought when a mass of precisely formed emotions washed over her.

Sara screamed somehow, even through the medium of thought.

Cas answered.

Cas answered.

A brief pause of silence.

Sara answered. Something exasperation soaked into that statement.

Cas signed off, finding she’d eaten up more than half the remaining distance in the conversation. The monsters were still more than three miles away, now, new overtones in their chittering calls and aggravated roars.’

She could make it!

Cas almost cheered aloud at the progression. They were slow fliers indeed! At this pace she’d make it there with time to spare. To tell by the distance, she’d probably have two minutes to herself once she arrived at the scene. That was plenty of time to get the prince somewhere!

The next thirty seconds were meditative for Cas, as she sprinted through the intervening space towards the prince.

Going at this pace, the ground rushed beneath her, and details seemed to flash in and out of existence. Briefly, a small, dog-faced monster sprinted out from the side, and Cas had already leapt over it by the time she’d registered its existence.

She turned her head to look back. The monster hadn’t pursued her, more interested in avoiding the sudden hail of arrows that darted into the ground behind her, some clipping uncomfortably close to her heels.

Sara assured.

Feeling around in the mental map Sara had provided, Cas saw that the formerly scattered individuals had spontaneously conglomerated into an array of cohesive groups, and all of them – though weary of the prince’s hill – moved in unison to create a ground perimeter around the location, fencing it off from the encroachment of the titans.

One of the groups had been organized to the north, and they were moving closer to the hill. That was probably the secure location Sara had mentioned.

Cas turned back to look in front of her. She was tantalizingly close to the base of the hill, now, just a hundred feet away. She could have reached it in three strides.

However, all the hope she might have felt was suddenly quashed.

A bright, purple flash filled the whole world, followed by a strange sound of hissing thunder.

Cas planted a foot to stop herself, looking all around.

It had gotten intensely dark suddenly.

A sickening series of thuds and cracks sounded all around her, as a hail of dead and dying bodies broke against the suddenly soggy ground, turning it dark with spurting blood and gurgling croaks.

Looking closer, Cas could see they were monsters. Beaked, black-toothed things with webbed wings.

It had gotten very dark suddenly, and looking up readily revealed the reason why.

ACHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The screaming cloud sounded with a howling, discordant scream constructed from a thousand voices.

‘How?’ cas said breathlessly.

Off in the distance, the Black Flag of death, Trinket Sable held steady with its darkly glow.

It seemed unperturbed by her efforts, as if it had known she would be too late. And Cas was too late.

And the hovering mass of hell dropped, crashing down onto the Red Banner, and onto the prince, and onto Cas as well.