Queen Averill was tired. Not of the gradual victories against the magical forces of corruption unleashed by the Dark Lord one he was beaten fifteen years ago but it was the constant reports that wore down her patience and energy.

‘I’m tired of all of this…’ said Queen Averill as she waved a hand at shifting miniature models in front of her. She stood up with both her hands placed on the table willing her intent to make the pieces move and observe the real time shifts and patterns.

A single armour woman sat on an ornate wooden chair, the only other furniture in the room aside from a surprisingly large table built from a mixture of metals for strength. Her bodyguard was always there to protect her from outside threats, or to intimidate those who wanted to waste her time.

‘Nothing to say? Sometimes, I don’t know if you were turned half-mute or if you simply don’t like talking to me. I appreciate your service though. The Goddess Aliza protects and provides for us all. Even if she is likely mad. Not that I blame her, fifteen years of my work but on a far larger scale would drive anyone into the recessed of their own mind. Thank you.’ said the Queen without turning her head towards her bodyguard.

She knew that the woman would only speak if either absolutely necessary if if ordered to do so. Otherwise she was more like a puppet, she would even forget to eat on occasion if reminded. Queen Aliza didn’t even know if the woman actually needed to eat and drink such was the transformation that had taken place.

‘…..Angels….flying angels sweeping across the map scouring out all traces of corruption in unison powered by the will of a divine Goddess who turned silent but remains vigilant. To be honest, some days I’d refuse to believe she even existed unless I didn’t see her glowing avatar in the city. She grants power but never responds to prayers. Not even my own. Not that the priests and priestesses would believe me. Not after she appointed me as their leader through divine edict. Her voice, that I’ll never forget. Listen to me, I’m rambling. A side-effect of getting tired. I should leave this place and kiss my husband goodbye before he goes on another pointless attempt to defeat corruption through death. Any thoughts?’ said the Queen. Her words as usual were ignored by her bodyguard.

Not that she made much of a talking companion, her now bodyguard had been found by the Queen deep within the Monastery, part of the failed experimentations when they had taken in untold numbers of orphaned children and tried to imbue with the powers of the Goddess to create pure beings known as angels.

Being discovered still alive, bone-thin and starving but alive and otherwise healthy should have been considered a miracle if not for the huge pile of corpses that covered her young frail form. Instead a report had been made to the Queen directly and she had taken the teenage girl into her direct care.

Her husband had thought that she had missed the fact they had no children and wanted to adopt but the glow from her form had made the Queen reconsider. If not an angel of light and purity then she had been permanently changed, her body simply self-generated magical essence within her. She could not cast magic or imbue it into any other forms but her blood could ignite those with minute traces of corruption.

In short, she was similar to the Queen herself and one of the rare cases of complete immunity against any traces of corruption magic. Her mind had not been broken but rather altered, she would think in different ways, different angles and needed to be taught how to respond to normal human speech and mannerisms.

When the bodies of large numbers of orphaned children had been finally discovered, those that had failed had simply been piled in the depths of the temple and stacked like firewood or kindling.

The insane processes of directly forcing light and purity magic into young bodies of older children and teenagers had killed most and few survived. Those had been put in special holding cells and began to be worshipped as angels by those priest and priestesses who had lost their own sanity and all sense of reason.

The crimes of those involved hadn’t been directly evidenced but her Spymistress had found remaining scraps of records that hadn’t been destroyed in accordance with typical monastery religious procedure. The experiments were...disturbing to say the least and most would call insane.

The broken priests and priestesses had been quietly put to death painlessly and quickly

All of those involved she’d personally seen dealt with in her own way and their research and testing materials taken and put to better use.

No point wasting resources in war.

Her use. Any who’d spoken against her was locked away in the Asylum of her own design, far easier than trying to contain corrupted inside a prison where none could be treated and if possible cured.

She knew a few of the higher level priests had escaped true justice and one had confined himself in a monastery prison. When she’d read the reports on that one she’d simply left him alone to his own suffering and madness.

In spite of what they had achieved the process of taking innocent lives in the hope of creating higher tier beings who could simply wipe away vast sources of corruption not through channelling the power of the goddess but by generating their own

Every square inch of the table was covered in models, the capital city in the centre, the surrounding countryside and farms, even the borders of her kingdom were represented and the three once allied kingdoms which had previously given their support during the war positioned as towers with small individual model figures of the present rulers atop them.

She was based in her personal tactical room within her palace. This was a quiet, peaceful place where only she had direct access and her own personal key. She had taken members of her court into this room on occasion if only to educate them about the actual threat that the corruption posed. Or if she'd wanted any would-be cultists turned into grey ashes by the divine power of the Goddess.

A decent variety of maps had been pinned to the walls and the main source of light was a single hovering globe of pure light which had been set in the exact centre of the room which spread out magic covering every single surface and object. Shadows had formed across the map, each one represented the degree of corruption and how much the powers of the Goddess had driven them back.

At the borders the shadows were barely existent, a reminder to Queen Averill that her once allied surrounding three kingdoms of Lothis, Midotha, and Graboki had barely suffered the same as her kingdom had after the war.

Her father and mother had been greedy for glory and to solidify their own reign by promising their armies and nobles on the battlefield the rights of plunder and land once the Dark Lord had been defeated. They had refused the protests of their allies who had pulled their own soldiers back during the final push to their own damaged homelands, and it had all been for naught.

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Her kingdom damaged and both her parents, along with various uncles and aunts, even older cousins barely able to ride an armoured horse had perished in the initial explosion which had torn apart the last stronghold of the Dark Lord.

His armies torn apart, the humanoid monsters had either fled back their homes or been converted by the spread of the veil of corruption energy into unthinking creatures of madness.

Enemies within and without and hungry wolves looking for fresh meat from a weakened lion.

She’d spent enough time underneath it that her had begun to bleach a little as her skin tone had lightened from its original olive skin colour. She’d need to keep an eye on that and reduce the amount of light and purity magic held within her

Either that or she would simply request to take a visit to the Asylum of Light and Health to drain a heavily corrupted human and have their own corruption added to hers to balance her body and mind.

Despite holding divine protection from the goddess she wasn’t immune to the effects of channelling vast amounts of light and purity energy into her priests. Goddess Aliza provided but was unable to divert her divine attention towards matters of state and organisation.

The goddess willed but it had been a long time since she had issued direct instructions beyond simply protecting the people and removing the source of corruption. Likely, channelling the power of all the other gods who had removed themselves from the kingdom and passed on their own divinity to fuel both the creation and sustaining of the protector Goddess known only as Aliza.

Those who had committed the atrocity upon innocent war orphans had been excommunicated or removed from public duties but their research and results were useful. All weapons were in a war that she'd fought for more than a decade and which had claimed her youth but not her beauty thankfully.

There were benefits to being a conduit and direct representative of the Goddess and slow ageing had been one of the few which she could count. Not that it was uncommon, even the half-human augmented which had survived the experimental processes had the same function. As did the few remaining Fallen Angels at her disposal.

More to do. If only that idiot husband of mine could take on paperwork instead of meaningless gestures of violence.

As the named Head of the Church of Light and Purity, she held dual roles as both the monarch of the Kingdom of Nurburg and the responsibility of the reclamation of the lands lost during the war which had suffered.

Those in roles of high nobility who survived the war and its aftermath took on new roles to form her personal council. They also assisted her with financial affairs, matters of trade and diplomacy, managing internal conflict and the daily running of the capital city.

She had been swept out of her palace as a young girl when the Dark Hordes first came and moved into the capital city as a young girl. As the ongoing war had taken its toll and finally ended in the death of the Dark Lord and the destruction of his armies, monsters and his final battlefield destroyed they had rejoiced.

And then the transformations had begun, slowly at first when the soldiers and their support were cheering their final victory and then more so when they had returned to the capital and those living in the countryside had discovered that the Dark Lord had one final form of revenge.

A magical virus which slowly turned those infected into monstrous forms who would be drawn to concentrated areas of corruption. The source had been determined as the former final stronghold of the Dark Lord but with exhausted armies and allies alike there lacked the will and strength to make a final push to locate it.

The gods of the kingdom had worked together and one of their own had risen above the others to provide them with support and guidance during this trying time. The Goddess Aliza, who wielded the powers of light and purity and granted them to the priests of the former gods.

As the ruling monarch, Queen Averill had been selected to act as the representative of the rapidly developing religion. As a fresh young girl barely out of her teens she hadn’t even consider it at the time the degree of responsibility that she had taken on. Her husband was soon arranged, a boy the same age as her and they spent several awkward years trying to understand each other and attempt to achieve a balance if not a loving union.

A repeated knock at the door to her tactical room saw her bodyguard stand out of her chair, withdraw a bladed weapon and with a silent gesture positioned herself between the doorway and the Queen.

The knock at the door repeated as her bodyguard slid down a small hatch as she thumped it twice in response. Given the extent of the experiments performed upon her body she took her blade and rested her palm on it allowing her blood which glowed white to leak out as she smeared it on the edges of the hatch.

The voice coming from the bodyguard was hoarse and low, as though she had struggled to talk.

‘Talk. The Queen listens’ said the bodyguard.

The voice of one of the Queen’s Guard rang out, his voice was alert and prepared as he touched the edges of the hatch with his bare skin. There was a light sizzle which was ignored as he withdrew his fingers.

‘Your Majesty. Lady Joanne Dee Mawr has sent word that she has finished progressing with her initial trial and will be moving onto to the next group of candidates. The site she chose was a cultist haven, it has been fully cleared of active presence and a team of the Queen’s Guard with accompanying support is on the way. The Lady requested a Fallen Angel accompany a team of warrior-priests to fully cleanse the site and purify the residents.'

‘The Queen has heard. Leave. We will leave this room shortly. Leave. Leave. Leave.’ said the bodyguard of the Queen.

The Queen herself tore her gaze from the model pieces on the tactical warfare table. The borders of her own kingdom and those that edged along their three once allied kingdoms were what caught her eye the most. There were soldiers, horses and siege equipment there all lined up along the sides and prepared to attack.

Unless she could either stop halt their armies with a larger threat or remove the source of corruption within her own kingdom to allow her own forces sufficient respite then they’d take without mercy.

‘I’m so tired. I would curse the Goddess if she would listen and even if she did I’d be wasting my breath. Time to meet Ulrich. He likes me to watch him getting dressed. Or he’s already prepared and wants to take a walk across the walls. He’s always been a romantic man.’ said the Queen as she prepared to exit the room.

With a final deep look at her tactical table she made all the figures, pieces and structures melt into the board once more covering in layers of shining golden sand. The Queen knew that despite the security to get into the room, there was always deep temptation despite all her efforts. Only the love of the Goddess and her Kingdom were usually enough to sustain the loyalty of her subjects and personal guards but she preferred to keep her plans closer to her chest.

Turning her attention to her bodyguard who had shut the hatch and had positioned her own body in front in case of immediate threats the Queen spoke to her lightly.

‘I admire you Sara. Your role is to protect me from harm. I’m trying to do the same for my own kingdom but as you saw there are too many moving pieces, too many variables for me to try and keep in my my own head. How would you feel about a change in duties? Not that I don’t appreciate your hard work and effort but I’d feel comfortable with you acting as my own eyes and ears on a highly specific task. When all this ends, when we find a solution I want you to live a peaceful life. One you deserve, free from threats where everyone is. I’m babbling, open the door and let us get some air outside of this stuffy room. My husband surely needs my attention for his little war games.’ said the Queen as she gestured for her bodyguard to open the secure door.

Her bodyguard, Sara, simply bowed in her direction without a glimmer of emotion on her face.