We can directly attribute the growth of the Church of the Angelus to the Cataclysm, and to the very practical benefits offered by a growing dedicated priesthood. This was not a circumstance such as Etalan conquerors arriving in Narvonne with their own gods, feast days, and customs; these were actual, shining Angelus swooping in to save people from daemons. Priests who could, with time and support, bind a daemon. Aurelius only ever had seven Exarchs, and they could not possibly be everywhere at once; but every village could raise a shrine, and have their own priest, and that promised at least some measure of protection.
* François du Lutetia, A History of Narvonne
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10th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC
“Vinea,” Clarisant cried. “It is Vinea the Stormbringer!” She recognized it from the precise illustrations of the Marian Codex: the ruff of fur about its neck, the bare, clawed feet more like a cat’s paws than a human’s body. She knew it was dangerous to speak a daemon’s name aloud, but the thing was already here.
“Alberic. Yaél,” Sir Rience du Camaret-à-Arden called, straightening in his saddle. “Get Lady Clarisant safely into the forest. Protect her with your lives. For Narvonne!” With a shout, Claire’s father-in-law dug his heels into the flanks of his courser. Small sprays of dirt and tufts of grass flew through the air as the warhorse picked up speed, barrelling straight for the feline daemon, and the old knight raised his sword high.
“Come, my lady,” Brother Alberic said, reaching for Caz’s bridle, but the destrier shied away. Clarisant knew she should go with them, but she couldn’t look away until she knew what happened. Sir Rience had been a war hero in his youth, famed for killing a Caliphate Exarch. Surely he could-
Thunder rolled, and a jagged white scar burned itself into her vision, linking Rience du Camaret-à-Arden’s sword with the dark clouds boiling above the town. A woman screamed, and Clarisant realized, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes, that it was her own voice. Someone must have gotten Cazador’s reins in hand, because the destier was moving under her.
“I’ve got you,” Claire heard Yaél say, and then she had to lean over and wrap her arms around Caz’s neck so that she didn’t fall off. She tried to blink away the darkness in her eyes so that she could see, and they were galloping now past the panicked townspeople, along the side of the woodcutter’s track. She risked a glance back over her shoulder, and saw wings spread against the dark sky.
“Get down here!” Acrasia cried, and there was the faerie, bright as the sun behind them. Lashes of fire shot out from her upraised arms as the storm-wind caught her hair, and though one missed, the other wrapped around Vinea’s leg and yanked him into the ground. Dirt sprayed up from his impact, and then the daemon was lunging at the faerie, claws extended. Cazador veered to the right, following the curve of the path into the very edge of the forest, and leaves blocked Clarisant’s vision of the fighting.
The people of Camaret-à-Arden were running in blind panic now, along the path. Here, Clarisant recalled, the mature trees had already been logged long ago, and there were only saplings which had been planted by the woodcutters. Acrasia had said that she could protect them better once they were in the Ardenwood; did this count? Claire’s vision was clear again, and, straightening on Cazador’s back, she could see that Yaél had the destrier’s reins. She had no idea where the monk had gotten to, but he was on foot and could easily have become lost in the crowd.
In a flash of light and with the stench of cooked flesh, Acrasia appeared on the back of Yaél’s gelding. The faerie was smoking, though the light that seemed to shine out through her skin was undiminished. She wrapped her arms around the squire, and shouted to be heard.
“He doesn’t care about these people,” Acrasia yelled. “He’s coming for her. Get us off the path, Yaél, and ride where I say!”
With a roar, the daemon Vinea crashed through the saplings to their right, swooping directly at Clarisant. Cazador ripped his reins out of Yaél’s hands and rose to meet the monster, up on his hind legs, and suddenly Claire was high above the ground, slipping out of the saddle, hanging on only by her arms around the destrier’s neck as he struck the demon with his iron-shod hooves. To her astonishment, Vinea banked away from the horse at the last moment, and where Caz’s hooves landed, the daemon’s skin blackened and burnt. It’s the iron, she realized. Just like the faeries.
Then Caz was down again, and the impact rattled her bones and shook her loose, tossing Clarisant onto the dirt. She curled into a ball as she fell, arms wrapped around her stomach. Please, she thought desperately, don’t hurt the baby. Don’t hurt my baby.
Another roar, the crack of lightning against a nearby sapling, but Cazador was still between her and the daemon, and a woman’s fingers wrapped around her own and yanked Clarisant up onto her feet.
“Run!” Acrasia yelled, tugging her off into the woods. Claire looked back, and caught a glimpse of Yaél, still ahorse, cutting at the daemon’s wings with her arming sword. Choking back a sob, Clarisant ran after the faerie she hated, deeper into the Arden. Briars tore at her clothes, but still they ran. Her feet splashed through a rocky stream, and then they were stumbling uphill. She was gasping for breath, in a blind panic, and that must have been the reason that Clarisant didn’t immediately recognize where they were headed.
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The ruins of the Chapelle de Camiel still stood atop the hill in the Ardenwood, where Clarisant had last visited them a moon before. The ancient oak, trunk thicker than a grown man could spread his arms, sheltered the old stones with its spreading canopy.
“Here,” Acrasia said, tugging her along to the stone arch. “We’ll be safe here.” With a final surge of strength, the faerie pulled Clarisant after her, and made to duck past the wall - only to shriek and fall to the ground, as if she’d run straight into a solid block of stone.
“No!” The other woman dropped Claire’s hand and scrambled in the dirt, beneath the leaves, scattering them aside until she found the head of one of the iron spikes that the monks had driven into the ground. “No, no no,” Acrasia cried over and over again. “I can’t, I can’t get in, who did this?”
“I did,” Clarisant gasped, drawing herself up and leaning against the stone, then sliding past the faerie and beyond the wall.
“Why?” Acrasia sobbed, clawing at the ground, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to push her fingers into contact with the head of the iron spike.
“I ordered two dozen spikes of iron made,” Clarisant said, with a tired smile. “I ordered them driven into the ground in a circle around this cursed place, while the monks said the old prayers and burned their incense, and I watched it all happen to be certain it was done correctly.”
“Why?” Acrasia repeated, sitting back on her heels in despair. Clarisant was satisfied to see tears streaking her cheeks. At the bottom of the hill, a tree fell with a massive crack, and another bolt of lightning shot down. A roar signaled that the daemon Vinea was still coming, and Clair hoped that Yaél, at least, wasn’t dead.
“Because you killed my husband!” Clarisant shouted across the circle of iron spikes at the faerie. “Because I want you to hurt like I hurt. Because I wanted to take something away from you, just like you took something from me.”
“Enough running!” The daemon roared, coming up the hill on all fours like a wild beast, wings tucked in at its shoulders. Trees shattered on its pauldrons as it came, and the sky rumbled and split overhead, like a pot reaching boil.
“I will keep my Oaths!” With a cry, Acrasia turned to face the oncoming monster, and Clarisant saw her teeth barred in fury. Lashes of fire and light unspooled from the faerie’s body, whipping into Vinea’s path, and though the monster barrelled through them all, though it was three times her size and charging, she did not back down, and the light shining through her was undimmed.
The daemon Vinea shouldered through Acrasia’s burning whips. Its massive arm shot forward, taking the faerie by her delicate neck, and it hoisted her up, completely off the ground and into the air, her bare feet dangling and kicking.
“First the faerie, and then you,” Vinea growled around its over-sized fangs, eyes meeting Claire’s.
This is it, Clarisant realized. The moment Acrasia died. She couldn’t do it herself, but she could let it happen. Perhaps then Percy would rest easy. Her hand rested on her belly. In just a moment, the murdering whore would never be able to hurt her, or her child, again.
The muscles in the daemon’s forearm bulged as it squeezed, and Acrasia’s twists and whirls of fire drooped, lifeless, only jerking spasmodically like a fish fresh-caught from the bay.
But what would happen to Trist? He was fighting a daemon right now. Clarisant blinked, and remembered the way he moved, flashing around the red monster and cutting it to pieces one swing at a time. She imagined him falling as that speed and strength left him, and then the great sword of the scarlet daemon descended in a single, brutal blow…
With a cry of frustration, Clarisant fell to her knees and clawed at the dirt around the head of the iron spike. She wrapped her fingers around it, heedless of her breaking nails, set her feet, and pulled. It jerked an inch, then stopped.
“What are you doing, mortal?” Vinea asked, looking down at her as it strangled Acrasia.
“Killing you,” Clarisant grunted, and with a great heave pulled the iron spike free of the ground, scattering dirt in every direction.
“Foolish,” the daemon growled. “Just like your husband.” It took a step forward, past the broken barrier, the dying faerie in its arms already forgotten.
Acrasia’s hand clenched, her fingers closing. Vinea didn’t see it, but Clarisant did, and she held her breath. An instant later, there was motion from left and right, and she didn’t know where to look, there was so much happening at once. Patches of briar twisted and twined, thickening their vines into legs; then legs wound together into torsos, which split into arms holding sword and shield, leaving knights of vine and thorn.
Claire’s shadow moved, and she watched in horror as it shot out from under her, lunging for the daemon's leg. Acrasia’s shadow moved, as well, and even the daemon’s, all three of them falling on the monster and grappling it, completely independent of the movements of the bodies they once were attached to. With a cry, the daemon dropped Acrasia, its fingers pried apart by its own massive shade. The thorn knights charged, stabbing their sharp swords into Vinea’s chest from either side.
“You came into our woods, daemon,” Acrasia coughed. “Who is the fool now?”
Clarisant shivered, and watched frost crawl across the hem of her dress. She scrambled back along the ground, cold iron spike still clutched in her left hand, as lightning blasted down from the sky, setting one of the two thorn knights on fire.
“Do not fear, my lady,” a familiar voice called from behind her. “You are safe now.”
Wide-eyed, Claire turned, and there was Percy, pale and luminous, armored and holding a sword in his hand. Nor was he alone: a line of restless spirits, one after the other, emerged from the great oak, climbing an earthen stair that had not been visible before. Men and women and children, some armored, some carrying only hoes or pitchforks, they marched past her toward the daemon.
Vinea roared, but he was held fast by shadows and swarmed by the ghosts of the Ardenwood. They stabbed the monster again and again, spilling its black ichor onto the earth, and it fell to its knees. Overhead, thunder rumbled, and Clarisant knew another lightning strike was coming.
“No,” she said, rising to her feet, and raising the iron spike high in both hands. “No more.”
Clarisant brought the spike down onto the daemon’s head.