Immediately, I was surrounded. Head and shoulders above the crowd of humans, I was an easy target for those with the right training.

And this crowd had the right training.

Unfortunately, they were slow. Slow like I hadn’t really thought possible.

The first person I killed was a woman about my sister’s age. Her face froze in my mind: bright, clear eyes and a rictus of determination. My axe felt like it was cutting paper.

I screamed. Not rage, not sorrow. Frustration.

Her face stayed in my mind through the next swing, and the next. For every hit I dealt, I took two in return, but it didn’t matter. My armor took most of the hits, enchanted blades clanging off or taking out nicks of red-hot metal. Spells of all elements—except fire—splashed against me.

They burned, but the sickening feeling in my gut liked the pain. This was supposed to be harder. This was supposed to hurt more.

I ducked to the side of my first real opponent’s thrust. Thrumming with magic, the tall, armored man moved like a demon, and a circle around us cleared. Half by my tail, and half by a shouted order. There were no words, just racing pulses and that same determined look.

Only this time, there was pure hatred in my opponent’s eyes. Raw and cold even as I stole the anger from him. Larger spells rippled the air around us, and a rain of arrows struck my side of the field the moment he charged.

The arrows weren’t magicked, and they fell like freezing rain as I dashed back from the thrust of a gleaming polearm. Tail as a counterweight, I dug claws into the snow and spun. Axe high, claws low. The man ducked the axe, and my lower hand burned, leaving gouges in his reinforced armor. He thrust again just as I got both feet planted, and twin lances of holy light hummed through the air at me.

I dodged back again, and the spells curved. One took me through the arm, the other the stomach. I still overlaid the face of that first girl on this man. Different by years, different by malice, but looking like a future I wanted for nobody all the same.

He shouted, as he thrust. The only word I’d heard over the rush of blood in my ears and my own screaming, now cut short.

Axe dropped, hands forward: I caught the haft even as the lances of light embedded in me exploded outward. Before my scream finished, the bleeding was slowing, the rush of my blood on the dirt steaming in the cold.

The enhanced man’s eyes widened. I pulled, and he came with. My axe was back in my hand; one hand met skull, one neck met axe.

Enchantments blazed, then burned out, and I tossed his head away. The first step I took, I fell to one knee. The second, and two more lances hit me. The third, and I was standing blood pouring from open wounds and organs stitching themselves back together so fast I could feel them.

My mana reserves were dropping. Before two days ago, I’d be dead already. Sobering for the mind, but my body burned all the same. So I roared.

Silence met my challenge. Then another order: Form up, try again. She’s weakening. Behind the Church, the mercs called out something else, and the arrows stopped.

But the… fanatics, they had to be fanatics—no words of mine could stop them. I didn’t know how many had died, but there were many fewer now than before. And I wouldn’t let them set up again.

A quick crouch, a flare of my wings, and I launched forward into the Church forces. Shoulder out, I barreled through to where I heard that order. And right into a wall of burning, holy light. One axe swing later, it cracked, but I was out of time and swarmed again.

These people weren’t all like the man who’d nearly killed me. Some showed only naked fear in their eyes, and it hurt my heart more than any of my wounds ever could.

***

Seyari raked her nails across someone’s chest, screeching through armor under the robe and drawing bloody furrows. The blade in her other arm sung, blocking a strike as she kicked the injured man and flapped once.

Once was enough to push her back from a hastily cast spell, and she threw her own back with nothing more than a flick of one bloody hand. Her pulse raced; she felt alive.

“Down!” Kartania shouted.

Seyari went up instead. Under her, just barely under her feet, a rain of ice pelted the attackers. They were fewer now, and if not for a few strong mages in the back, would have broken already. Every probing attack met a shield of light, and every wing-flap too close sent attackers swarming over the wall's defenders.

Despite this, and despite her magic, they’d taken losses. Kartania and Nelys still held firm. Taava and Brazz held the walls. Inside, for the few who slipped through, Brynna was waiting with spiked knuckles. And somewhere beyond that, the demon Shyll had recruited helped ferry the wounded to Joisse. Should the wall fall, or should a surprise attack come from the side, her daughter would prove a most effective last line of defense.

As the hail cleared, Seyari fell on dented armor and shredded robes, slicing and kicking. Her wind magic aided her strikes, let her dance out of the way of theirs, and sent any wayward arrows flying.

Unfortunately, there was little she could do about spells.

She dodged one, and Kartania cried out in pain behind her. Before she could send healing magic her sister-in-law’s way, two bolts of holy light smashed into her wings.

Throwing her magic downward, she turned a tumble into a roll and came up just in time to block a sword. Unlike her robed compatriots, this zealot wore armor overtop: a paladin. And from the way Seyari had to duck and roll under the weight of her strike, a strong one.

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The wind changed, and she knew she’d been boxed in. The spellwork was hasty, and sloppy, but that hardly mattered if it worked. To the sides, the remainder of the church forces rushed the gap in the wall.

Before she could try to break free, Seyari had to block another swing of the sword. Behind her, shouts rose, and orders flew. She didn’t hear Kartania’s voice amongst them.

Block, feint, block. She danced, taking grazing hits from spells even as her limitless-seeming mana felt like it was finally getting low. All that she gave back was absorbed by the magic protecting the paladin or healed in the blink of an eye.

So she did what Renna would do: something phenomenally stupid. She barely deflected the next strike, letting her sword be knocked away, and the paladin recovered brilliantly into a follow-up. Seyari let the thrust hit her, driving through her leather armor, her abdomen, and out the other side.

The pain was like an old friend. An old bastard of a friend.

Seryari grabbed the paladin’s hand with one of her own and pulled. When she was still part-human, she’d been strong. Now? Despite her enchantments, the paladin tumbled forward and Seyari slammed her palm onto the woman’s face.

And then she poured as much magic as she could into the hottest fire she could conjure. Crimson flames burst into life and the paladin screamed. Even through the enchantments, she still burned, and Seyari kept pushing, ignoring the spells hitting her, ignoring the barrier around her breaking apart.

She only stopped when one of the mages rushed her. Seyari wrenched her other hand forward, pulling the limp arm and bloody sword with it, and she kicked the smoking corpse at the man. The paladin’s armor, once shining with magic, now glowed an eerie red-hot.

The corpse, head charred beyond recognition, slammed into the mage with the sound of meat hitting a hot pan, and they tumbled down the ruined wall together. Seyari stared down the remaining two, feeling her flesh start to knit together where she’d been impaled.

Her mana was low, really low, but they didn’t need to know that. Carrying the paladin’s sword despite the awkward weight of the blade, she charged. One died trying to put up a spell, when the other shoved him into Seyari’s blade. She cut the other man down as he ran, then turned to the wall.

Bodies lined the gap, most enemies, some not. But she didn’t see Kartania’s armor. At the top of the wall, a pair of brown-furred ears popped up, followed by a familiar face.

“We got it handled here! Go help the boss, ya blood-winged psycho!”

Seyari glanced out at the battlefield. A trail of bodies led back to the edge of the farms, just outside the town proper. The non-Church forces were disengaging, but the rest were massing around a lone, crimson figure. Throwing magic and magicked weapons alike into the fray.

With a running jump, Seyari took to the air, dropping her borrowed sword in favor of her own talons.

***

Sonia’d seen blood before. She’d dressed wounds, but mostly helped the ailing. Not the badly injured. Inva and the paladin named Gareth were running the show in the courtyard. Until the wall came down, until she’d heard Zarenna’s voice booming over the walls, it’d all seemed so distant.

Now, though, it had come to her. Reports flew by her, meant for other ears. A lone caster slipping inside over the walls on the mountain side. That had been the demon Shyll reporting, half covered in burns and sporting a wicked smile.

Over by the breach, Paula was holding across from Joisse. Zarenna’s daughter looked for all accounts a slimmer, reedier version of her mothers. Except the fear; Sonia’s hand shook too. The pair were intercepting the few people who trickled through. Church people, her people.

She couldn’t imagine it. Didn’t want to think it could be real. Every bloodied body in familiar robes made her think of Luzio back in Inolza, of all the others who’d shown her kindness. She imagined herself or Inva swept up in a tide of fervor, rushed out into the middle of nowhere to die to a misunderstanding.

Why?

Renna had worked with the Church. Inva was proof of that, and even stodgy old Priest Herron had come around to her side before she’d left Lockmoth. All this must be because Renna had killed a high priest. But that didn’t make sense anyway, as the High Priest had clearly attacked her, and wasn’t willing to even hear Zarenna out. There were dozens of witnesses—Sonia had spoken to several.

And now Sonia was running supplies and dressing wounds; for the Church’s enemies. Another demon, a quiet, demure man named Oszandius, was pulling wounded back from the wall. Only their wounded. Inva and Gareth were triaging, only healing what would prove immediately fatal. And they didn’t have time or magic to risk healing the Church wounded.

All of this left Sonia with a cold, heavy feeling in her gut. She felt useless.

A shout and a bright flash of light up at the breach grabbed Sonia’s attention. An unfamiliar head in familiar robes popped up, then another. She watched, frozen, as Paula and Joisse dove in. She’d seen Paula fight before, back in Lockmoth.

Sonia had never seen Joisse fight before, never seen the sweet demure girl show a pinch of violence. And she’d never seen anyone move so quickly. Her closed fist flew like a blur, and the first attacker went down in a heap. No claws, a hit to the arm.

She must be as terrified as I am.

Sonia snapped out of it just in time to see Nelys carrying someone in shining armor over their shoulder. A familiar wave of black hair pulled free from its braid.

That’s Renna’s sister!

Nelys shouted something, but Sonia didn’t catch the words. Gareth rushed by her, and Sonia saw Kartania twitch as he swore. By the time Kartania was brought back to the tent, Joisse had punched her way up to the wall. Holy magic battered her, but she didn’t seem to care, and with the militia rushing forward it looked like they’d hold.

“Pliers!” Gareth shouted. “Her armor needs to come off!”

Like lit kindling, Sonia’s senses ignited again. Years of training shoved her worries to the back, and she grabbed the tool from the next tent over. From there, it was a blur of bent metal and disfigured flesh.

Without the battle behind her, it was just like the worst sections of sick ward’s she’d been to. And while those places often had to make due with herbal remedies, here they had magic. And Gareth didn’t let up until Kartania’s mangled arm and severely burnt shoulder were back to pink, albeit scarred, skin.

When the former paladin’s eyes fluttered open and she tried to sit up, Sonia released a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. It may have just been a day, but Kartania Miller was in Sonia’s eyes everything the Church could be—should be.

Sonia glanced over at the breach, where the fighting was dying down. While her heart trusted Renna, her mind couldn’t help but ask the question: What would Zarenna do if the Church had killed her sister? When Sonia looked back, she saw Kartania grabbing for her helmet.

Gareth grabbed it first. “You can’t. Half your armor’s gone and the new skin’s fragile.”

“I must,” she replied, glaring up at the other former paladin. “I’m not down yet, and they need me.”

“Kartania—”

“It’s better me than the breach falls.”

“Look, you—”

“No, look.” Sonia realized only after she’d spoken that she had, the words dry and hoarse. Gareth and Kartania followed her finger. Up at the wall, Joisse was standing still, staring out over the field at something they couldn’t see.

Kartania took the distraction to snatch her helmet and clamber out of the cot with a wince. Gareth chased her up the hill of rubble and Sonia trailed behind.

The other side of the breach was littered with bodies, one at the base in charred and smoking armor. The snowfield beyond, that beautiful blank canvas Sonia had spent her recent evenings looking out over, was a muddy, bloody mess.

Her breath caught in her throat as she saw beyond the field to the current fighting. Visible as a burning crimson smudge near the edge of Astrye proper, Zarenna was fighting the Church’s remaining force all at once, magic clouding and splitting the air above. The darker colors of another army of some kind were pulling up the hill away toward the pass. And Seyari, a red-winged cannon shot, was flying straight toward the fray.