The angel of bad weather closed the distance, sweeping his sword of lightning as if to bisect me from hip to shoulder. My augmented reflexes and Velean close combat training united to keep me alive, moving to parry with my force mace—thank Darwin the weapon was nonconductive.
The weapons made impact. The divine weapon crashed into advanced technology and the technology held.
My stance did not.
One hand on the handle and one hand below the head, the force of the blow buckled my elbows and barely kept the blade away from my chest. The angel completed his swing, flinging me into the air with a crackling boom. My ears popped as I flew down the street. With the help of my proprioception augments, I wrenched myself to get vision on this bastard, only to see him swooping after me with wings that looked more like fins. He raised the sword above his head, lightning crackling across the sky, before bringing it down. I yelped, managing an awkward swing with the force mace.
Our weapons collided again, flinging us both in different directions. I didn’t see where he went. I was too busy pirouetting into the mud. I cratered spongily, hurling myself up as soon as I could get my limbs moving fluently again.
“Contact!” I spluttered, head swiveling in all directions to try to find my opponent.
“Retreat,” the commander urged me. “Use the cloak.”
I activated the cloak moments before catching movement. The North Wind descended, a lethe and lethal shadow blurring out of the thunderclouds like a missile aimed straight at my position.
“Fuck!” I shouted, leaping away.
My augmented legs flung me away from the impact site, pursued immediately by a high-velocity wave of mud. Before I could even gather my bearings, a coruscating blue-white blade slashed through the wall of mud and the North Wind was on me again. I grunted and heaved a heavy strike at him.
He raised his thundercloud shield, which absorbed the blow the same way a sandbag leeches all the energy out of a punch. Then the kinetic translators activated, blasting it to shreds and knocking him two steps back. We locked eyes as the last of the mud splattered all around us.
My reflex augments had dilated my sense of time. The world felt like it was in slow motion.
But my cloak hadn’t stopped him from finding me.
“Val,” I subvocalized. “Something’s wrong with my cloak.”
Out loud, I said: “Okay. Let’s do this the right way.”
I flicked the force mace once, stepping into a combat stance.
“I am warrior of the motherfucking Old Ways,” I said to the angel. “I’ll give you this chance to surrender the field, or I swear to Darwin I’ll turn your face into chunky salsa. Come at me, bitch.“
He regarded me with maelstrom eyes and a smile as cold as the winter tide.
Very well, he said. I am a warrior of Horcutio, the Lord of Deeps and Warden of the Skies. Your feet mar this ground. May the Greatmother prune your branch today.
“No!” said Aulof. “Lilith, get out of there!”
The sword in his hand lengthened into a spear of lightning. He raised it as if to throw it at me.
“I might have found the problem,” Val interjected.
Screaming, I rushed the angel and swung at his head.
The spear flew, lengthening into a bolt that passed under my armpit. Every hair on my body stood straight up, and searing pain radiated all over my left side. The medical translator was already running at full capacity. My scream shifted to admit notes of pain, but the mace landed right where I wanted it—in his face.
I sneered and pulled the trigger. His head exploded in a shower of stormwater.
I had a moment to process that the body wasn’t collapsing before it backhanded me with enough force to throw me into the rainy air and through a wooden wall.
It always looks so painless in the movies, but consider: the insightful laws of Sir Isaac Newton tell us that being thrown into a wooden wall is equivalent to getting whacked all over with a giant plank. My flesh pulped. My bones strained. My left ring and pinkie fingers bent the wrong way, and an errant shard of wall skewered the meat of my right arm.
I screamed again, then told the medical translator to shut off my pain receptors. The medical translator told me to fuck off. Or at least that’s how the “busy” response felt.
“Judging by these readings, your soul is healing from the injury you received at the hands of that godseed,” Val said. “It’s putting pressure on your cloak augment, which was installed in the missing region.”
“Gotta be kidding me,” I groaned, pushing myself up. I was in someone’s home—well, the wreckage thereof—rising from a pile of damaged weaving equipment. My shoulder erupted in agony when I tried to move it. Maybe dislocated.
“This isn’t unheard of,” Val continued, as if I wasn’t bleeding out in someone’s bedroom. “Normally it would be a positive indicator of the team’s health. I’ll need to take a look when you return.”
“You’re telling me my cloak isn’t working because I had too much personal growth?!” I groaned.
I looked at my arm, looked at the wall, and bit my lip. I shoved my working forearm between my teeth, the taste of mud and splinters filling my mouth, and flung myself at the wall. A grunt of pain escaped me as my arms popped back into place.
“Ow!” I said, spitting repeatedly to get the grit out of my mouth. “Fuck, that hurts!”
I told the medical translator to prioritize getting my shoulder fixed up—that wall trick from the movies trick isn’t all that reliable and it doesn’t just make everything better—and mercifully this time it was able to prioritize the job.
“Lilith, he’s moving again,” the commander urged me. “Get out of there!”
I snarled and broke away, leaving by the door. Hopefully the angel didn’t know how to navigate human buildings, although truthfully I couldn’t think of any reason why he wouldn’t.
I tried reaching for my cloak again, pulling it over me like a comforting blanket that was just too short to cover your feet. I could feel myself vanishing from the world like usual, the cloak tying the ideas of me and nothing together in my immediate area, but the vibe was just off somehow. It was like the cloak was taking part of me, leaving…
“Fuck this,” I said, limping down the hallway. “Maybe I should just duke it out with him. He’s gotta run out of juice eventually, right?”
“Ah,” said Val. “It looks like your self-confidence grew faster than the augment’s self-adjustment mechanisms could accommodate.“
Markus burst out laughing.
“Keep running,” Aulof said. “Lilith, promise me you’ll flash if you have to. We’re prepping a kill site.”
Splintering wood behind me announced the North Wind’s arrival. I glanced over my shoulder, picking up the pace. I didn’t see him at the moment, but the building’s exit was right ahead of me.
My ears picked up the sound of rushing water. I looked behind me again, only to see a rushing wall of water coming down the corridor to flatten me.
“Fuck!” I said, looking back at the door. I almost used the force mace to deal with it, but then I had another idea. I broke out into a lopsided sprint, leaping into the air to kick the door out of its frame. I knocked it out just as the water hit the frame, rushing out beneath me as I kicked the door down.
There was water raging all around, the North Wind apparently trying to get me with a tactical flood. But unlike the last flood, I was ready for this one. I landed on the door and used my augs to keep my balance.
I couldn’t remember my surfing lessons, so this time I didn’t try. I had military-grade reflexes and an enhanced sense of balance—I could stay upright on a board for a couple seconds. I surged across the flood, whooping.
Lightning struck the water nearby, singing my face with superheated ozone, but apparently North Wind didn’t have my exact coordinates. So the cloak was kinda working. I tried pushing it harder. Once upon a time, I’d hidden Markus from an angel by expanding my definition of myself, so why couldn’t I do that when it was literally me?
The board hit something and catapulted me over the water. I barely held on to my weapon, snagging an errant clothesline with my other hand to keep myself upright.
I landed in ankle-deep water, which was thankfully not streaming fast enough to knock me over—which I’d been worried about; even shallow flood water can mess you up. That explained why my watery chariot had run its course. I took off southward toward the position the commander was pinging to me.
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Interloper! roared the North Wind, slamming into the cobblestones in front of me and spraying us both with floodwater. He brandished his sword in the air dramatically, then fell over as I maced a hole in his torso and kept running.
A line of searing heat scorched the back of my neck as a sizzling blade almost decapitated me. I flailed blindly to keep him off my back, pounding down the cobblestone streets toward the docks.
There. Ahead of me, a warehouse-looking place. I was almost home free.
“Twenty seconds!” I panted.
“We’ve got the amplifiers set up,” said the commander. “Just get him through the doors!”
I sprinted like I’d never sprinted before. My comm warned me about energy gathering behind me. I chanced a look. I was treated to the sight of the North Wind afloat on the storm and wreathed in lightning, his sword growing to the size of the Ragnar.
“Angels are bullshit,” I muttered, and then the sword came down.
I dodged quickly enough that only the shockwave hit me, a wall of burning air that scalded my skins and parched my airways. I was flung chaotically into the side of a building, dropping about three feet to crack my skull on the ground.
The warehouse was utterly destroyed. Burning, too, despite the storm. Markus yelled in pain.
“Amplifier 2 is still operational,” said Val. “1, 3, and 4 are down. I’m coming with backups.”
“Lilith’s not going to last long enough for you to make three trips,” the commander said.
“I can do this with three amplifiers,” said Val.
“That’s still two trips.”
“I’m down for the count,” Markus groaned. “Damn it. My legs are smashed. I’m going to bleed out.”
“Just flash to backup,” said the commander. “We’re done. I’m calling an abort.”
A moment later, my comm announced that Markus had fled his body.
“Commander,” Val insisted. “I have another pair of hands here.”
Footsteps splashed their way toward me at a sedate pace. I didn’t need to look up to know who they belonged to. My comm screamed warning after warning at me.
“We are not allowing an agent of Kives aboard the Ragnar,” the commander said.
Strong hands gripped me by the shoulders and hauled me off the ground. I stared blearily into eyes whose irises were hurricanes and whose expression was deeply, unfathomably pissed.
Hubris, it said. That is the sum of your ilk. And the Lord of Storms will see you all drowned for it.
I tried establishing an etheric tunnel to flash back to the Ragnar. The angel’s eyes shifted to the side and a cruel smile crossed his face. He waved a hand, brushing it away like a cobweb.
Of course. This fucker went toe to toe with one of our assault ships. Why the fuck had I ever thought I could take him on?
“I can’t flash!” I subvocalized in a panic.
“Fuck!” the commander shouted. “Val, do it! Hurry!”
“How convenient,” Val muttered. “Ell! Come here quickly, there’s an emergency!”
“H-hey,” I said to the angel. “I know you’re after my secrets.”
He scoffed. Like a scurrying rat of Meris?
He threw me down the street. I flopped strenuously through the air and then landed on my tailbone, knocking the wind out of me. North Wind emerged from a nearby puddle and stomped down on my right ankle.
The medical translator had gotten around to nulling my pain receptors, so I just scowled at the unpleasant sensation of my ankle bones shattering and grinding against each other. It didn’t hurt, it just felt wrong.
“Just hold on, Lilith,” Aulof said. Worry leaked through his tone. “I’m on my way. Keep stalling him.”
“You know,” I told the angel, looking up at him, “where I come from, the girl hurricanes always do more damage. You gotta step it up.”
Hubris, he sneered, and kicked me.
As I flew, I tried to pull my arms over my head to prevent any life-threatening injuries. My foot flopped distractingly. I landed in the fetal position, carbon-laced ribs protesting against my body’s inertia.
A hand roughly grabbed me by the back of the neck and hauled me up. I dangled limply.
You mewling rodents think yourselves equal to the gods, North Wind said, voice drizzling with contempt. He began dragging me toward the harbor. I will bring you to the sea floor. You will drown but not die. The crabs will tear your flesh, but there will always be more. And when generations of vermin have gorged themselves on your meat, I will raise you to the heavens, to be frozen by wind and flayed by hail. The clouds will stain red with your blood.
“Quick question,” I gasped out. I should have been incapacitated with pain, but with those receptors blocked out, all I felt was the giddiness of my body’s compensatory endorphin response.
The angel regarded me frostily.
“If Horcutio’s so great,” I giggled, hanging limply from his grip, “can he make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?”
The angel stopped moving.
Then, before I fully registered what had happened, he tore my arm off.
“Fuck you!” I screamed. “Do you think arms grow on trees?”
Arterial blood splurted from the ragged stump, the medical translator fighting and failing to repair the damage on top of keeping me conscious. The street was starting to look like the aftermath of a water balloon fight, if the water balloons were full of ketchup or something.
“One minute,” Val said. “You might consider diplomacy.”
“Angel!” Aulof bellowed. “Drop her!”
North Wind turned to look in the direction of the voice, and was rewarded with a disrupter bullet through the eye. Then he dropped me. I collapsed to the ground, immediately trying to pull myself away with the arm that wasn’t a slowly coagulating stump.
Behind me, the commander advanced on the angel, spear in one hand, disruptor pistol in the other. He fired continuously on the angel, who reeled under the onslaught of ether munitions before reforming his thundercloud shield.
Interlopers and blackguards, you who spit in the eye of the hurricane! North Wind proclaimed. The Greatmother has spoken! This is the day you meet your end!
The commander fired the last of his magazine, then holstered his pistol while its ammo regenerated. He flourished his spear, spinning it around him and stepping into an offensive stance.
What? the North Wind laughed. No speech graciously inviting my surrender?
“You hurt my apprentice,” the commander said, and moved.
The angel’s sword appeared in his hand as he struck, a lateral slice that threw out tendrils of lightning across the whole street. The commander danced between them effortlessly, closing the gap without so much as a singe.
He speared the angel through the abdomen, then kicked him off the blade. Taken by surprise, the angel’s return strike went wide. Aulof didn’t even bother dodging. He whipped the butt of his spear up the angel’s side while its guard was open, delivering bone-shattering strikes to ankle, hip, and armpit.
The North Wind didn’t have bones. It clamped the weapon under its arm and stabbed for Aulof’s torso.
The blow never landed. Aulof pivoted to the side, digging the spearpoint into the ground and attempting to lever North Wind off the ground. The weapon tore through North Wind’s shoulder instead, which reformed moments later.
Aulof spun under an attack and knocked another aside with a graceful spin of his weapon. North Wind drove the edge of his shield at Aulof’s neck and only hit rain. Their weapons glanced off each other once, twice, spraying the area with sparks. I could feel the shockwaves from where I lay bleeding out.
Any one of these attacks would pulverize the commander if they landed. He just… wasn’t allowing them to land.
The angel and the warrior of Veles exchanged blows at literal lightning speed, bolts flying all over the area but never touching the commander. Aulof’s spearhead ripped through North Wind’s face. North Wind snarled, backing off and holding out his hand. Energy gathered in his palm.
The first lightning bolt struck the commander head on, scattering in eleven different directions as the commander’s comm shielding disrupted the etheric effect animating the bolt. Thunder boomed overhead, announcing the angel’s fury. Aulof smiled.
I’d seen the commander fight before, but I hadn’t understood what I was looking at. Now I did.
A master of the Old Ways was a blade that would cut heaven and earth.
When the second bolt came, Aulof’s descending spear cut it in two.
Utter disbelief flashed over the angel’s face. He spread thunderous wings and took to the sky, his sword already growing bright and growing in size.
The commander smoothly drew his pistol and shot the sword. It was an etheric effect—it shattered with a blast of thunder that flung sheets of rain down at us.
ENOUGH! the angel bellowed. He flapped his wings once, buffeting the entire street with gale-force winds. A structure upwind of us collapsed, flinging debris like artillery shells. I rolled into an alley, but the commander had stabbed his spear into the earth to avoid being blown away. A chunk of brickwork grazed him, and when it passed only the spear remained.
“Commander!” I shouted.
“I’m alive,” he replied. “You should have flashed out by now.”
“Job’s not done,” I groaned, hauling myself to my feet.
The wind had died done, so I staggered out of my little alley toward the spear. I loped as my body tried to adjust to the sudden loss of weight on my right side.
A bloody hand reached out before I could grab it. I turned. The commander’s face was scraped up something awful, and ragged lacerations were visible all down his side through the tears in his clothing.
“No, really,” he said, grinning on the side of his face that still had skin. “Get out of here before I stab you and force the issue.”
“Aw, but you made it look so fun,” I said, matching his smile on both halves of my face. “C’mon, coach, put me in. I can still shoot with my left.”
A flash of lightning illuminated a winged figure descending from the sky. Thunder rumbled above us.
“If you accidentally shoot me, Val has seniority,” Aulof reminded me, bringing his spear to bear. “Hold on. Did you just lose my favorite mace?”
I shrugged with my intact shoulder. “I got disarmed.”
“Maybe you should shoot her first,” Val suggested.
I drew my knife, watching the angel appraoch. “Oh, hey, Val. How’s your date going?”
“Predictably frustrating,” he said. “Or perhaps frustratingly predictable.”
“That’s not opaque at all,” I said. “Listen, Val, if we don’t make it out of here, I want you to tell Markus I liked him more than you.”
Aulof sighed. “Get behind me, Lilith.”
The North Wind swooped down in a smooth arc, trailing electrical arcs that crawled sizzlingly over every surface within thirty feet of him. Dark, angry clouds boiled off him as he picked up speed, leveling out to streak straight down the road at us. The force of his passing shattered windows and pulled buildings down.
“I am wolf-friend,” the commander murmured to himself, settling into his stance. “I am death-friend. I am war, and war is my companion.”
“How quaint,” said Val.
A single note sounded, quieter than the wind and the rain and the crackling of the incoming angel, but audible all the same. It was halfway between a guitar and a harp. Unlike an instrument, though, it didn’t fade away. Parts of the sound dropped out, while others grew stronger, like someone adjusting the levels on a sound system until what had been a note was just a tone—pure frequency, mathematically precise, transcending mere noise to become the platonic ideal of a sound, until you thought it more than heard it.
The North Wind, rocketing toward us with doom in his wake, seemed to freeze. Whatever force was animating his avatar of stormwater had had its strings cut. The lightning fizzled out. The thunderclouds billowed like fog. The angel’s form lost coherence and became a fast-moving mist.
When the North Wind blew over us, it was nothing but a wet breeze.
I was too exhausted to quip. I just sat down in the mud.
“Good kill,” Aulof said, levering himself onto some fallen masonry.
“I’ll be sure to tell her,” Val said.
“Wait,” I said. “You don’t mean…”
Val rounded the corner with Ell, who was carrying something that looked like a guitar. She kept looking down at it with a dumfounded expression.
Val looked at her with utter exhaustion, then gave me a wry smile.
“Yes,” he subvocalized. “Isn’t it incredibly convenient that we had all the materials to make this kill, right when we needed them?”
“I think I hate this,” I said.
At the sound of my voice, Ell looked up suddenly. Her fingernail slipped on the string, making the exact note that had killed the angel. She jumped at the noise, huddling close to Val for the moment it took her to realize that the effect wasn’t about to happen again.
Above us, a break opened in the clouds, illuminating her. The edge of the light very precisely did not include Val.
“You’re not fucking subtle!” I yelled at the clouds.