Irina waited for the disciplinary summons from Dayseus, she had deviated from the mission and jeopardized the safety of the unit for one boy’s life. It never came. Instead, a messenger from the Bureau of Ascension and Development visited and delivered a voucher for three additional augmentations to her H.A.L.O.
“A reward for exemplary service” was what the messenger had explained when Irina asked why she had received them.
Irina was stunned.
I deviated, I almost cost us the mission, and I’m being...rewarded?
She left her humble dwelling, a single level home with a meditation chamber, armory, and a large room for combat drills and practice, for the Bureau to follow up on the vouchers.
The augmentations she selected would be more important than she realized.
The towering glass and marble structure stuck out amongst the skyline of Heaven. Most of the buildings were ornate, complex in their architecture, and beautiful to behold all at once. Gabriel and Michael, in their creation of Heaven’s architecture, wanted to ensure that the souls that found their rest in Heaven were content and inspired by their surroundings.
The Bureau of Ascension and Development was more like an obelisk than an architectural wonder. The interior of the building, however, was a different story. Raw glass baubles, flecked with myriad minerals and precious metals were suspended in the air, ever adjusting to catch the light of the sun and stars. Tapestries showed the many cycles of mankind on the alabaster walls.
Irina approached the front desk and signed in. “A wisp will be with you shortly!” the cherubim assistant told her.
She fidgeted with her H.A.L.O while she waited. A gold and cobalt circlet, for angels that were not soldiers, it sat suspended above their heads. Demons knew to target the HA.L.O, to knock it away from an angel. If an angel was separated from their Halo for too long, their divinity would fade until they became mortal, forced to leave Heaven, and live as a mortal on Earth.
The Bureau’s first creation was an Essence Harness; angels would insert their Halos into the fixture that laid between their wings, the magic circuits built into the harness aligned with those within an angel, granting more direct access to their divinity. The harness made it more difficult for an angel to lose their Halo, essential for the angels on the front line. After all, “A Halo overhead is snatched easier than one that’s on your back” was the phrase that was drilled into Irina’s head by her Basic Combat instructor.
Irina had only had two occasions to wear her Halo outside of its harness, being accepted and graduating from the Institute of War. A moment of melancholy swept over Irina. Her Halo was beautiful, it was a part of her and she feared that there would never be a time that she could wear it formally.
Will the war ever end? Will I ever be able to bond with a partner? Bestow my legacy?
All questions for another day. A pale blue wisp drifted over to where she sat.
“Lady Irina, we are ready for you,” it announced, in a pleasant and disembodied voice, derailing Irina’s thoughts. “Would you kindly follow me this way?”
“Of course,” Irina said with a smile. She followed the floating ball of essence through several hallways and to a lift that took them up to the top of the building.
“Please feel free to peruse the catalog. When you have made your selections, simply remove them and place them on the altar with your Halo and vouchers in the designated spots.”
“Thank you, wisp,” Irina replied.
Wisps ranked lower than Cherubs on the hierarchy of Heaven. The Intellectual minds and souls of Humans that even in death, could not come to terms with the spiritual realm. They achieved a sort of synergy that Irina envied at times, one collective consciousness that functioned on logic and efficiency.
The altar stood in the center of the room, a construct of hewn quartz, quicksilver, and sparkling gold crowned by a glass slate etched with Enochian runes and a sacred circle for infusion. Irina sifted through the catalog, a collection of crystals that housed the augmentations to be infused. By granting a small portion of the essence to the crystal, visions of the augmentation within would be conveyed to the user, most commonly by pressing the crystal to one’s forehead. The vision would play out almost like a waking dream, or a memory.
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Irina flipped through them idly, absorbed in thought until one of the augmentations caught her attention.
“Halo Internalization Protocol” was the name of the augmentation. In the vision, an angel meditated on their Halo, and another came and removed it. A silhouette of the Halo shone through the angel’s chest as the vision time-lapsed, the degradation of divinity was significantly slowed, as the glow persisted over the ten-year lapse. Irina plucked the amethyst out of the catalog as she searched more intently for two additional augmentations. She decided on a quickening augmentation; that would allow her to charge more powerful bolts faster; and the wound-knitting augmentation that would speed the recovery of any wounds she encountered in the field.
Irina laid her Halo, the augmentations, and vouchers on the glass slate in their proper positions and began the infusion ritual. The prayer bench slid out from the altar, and Irina knelt, uttering the sacred prayer.
“Our Lord, who art the Heavens
Hallowed be thy purpose
My body be thy weapon
My blade by thy wrath
Bestow upon me thy boons
That I may bring light to the darkness
That I may purge wickedness from your creation
For I am thine
Forever and ever
Amen.”
A stream of blinding white light surged into the altar from the cosmos, its radiance filled Irina with a warm, tingling sensation, like being in a warm bath for just a little too long. As the augmentations were spent and infused into her Halo, the soothing sensation receded. Irina opened her eyes, anything that hadn’t been built into the floors and walls was scattered about the room, her own aurelian locks had come out of the cord that she used to keep them in a high tail. As she smoothed out and re-tied her hair, the freshly infused Halo floated a couple of inches up off the altar, as if waiting to be taken.
Fastening a Halo for the first time after a fresh infusion bordered on unsettling. As the circlet passed over Irina’s head and slid into its harness, the sensation of prickling needles spread out over her shoulders and radiated throughout her entire body, ending at her fingers, toes, and the tips of her wings. The enhancements granted by infusion always took a couple of weeks to feel “normal.”
After the creeping, tingling response receded, Irina departed the Infusion Chamber and made her way back down the lift. To her surprise, Oriphiel was in the lobby waiting. Irina strode up to greet her comrade.
“Are you here for new infusions too?” Irina asked, in an effort to make small talk with the brooding assassin.
“No. The Wing-Commander would like to discuss the next mission with you, in his briefing room.”
Irina’s wing twitched.
“Me?”
Oriphiel eyes not only gained contempt but lost interest all in the same motion of rolling away to look at the ceiling and then back at Irina.
“But, why?”
“He has a task that he claims only you can accomplish. Ask him when you get there. Now go.” Oriphiel scolded.
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Hours Prior
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“Wing-Commander, I have been informed that Irina is at the bureau of Ascension and Development using the vouchers you had sent to her,” Boel informed Dayseus eagerly.
“Ah, good. I’m sure that she will find the intended augmentations.”
“How can you be so sure, Commander?”
“Boel, you would have to walk many battlefields to understand, to see what I can see.”
“I don’t--”
“Yes Boel, that’s the point.” Dayseus chided.
“But-”
“When you watch an angel decide on the battlefield, Boel, when they act, in that one moment, when you have seen what I have seen, you can know their heart entirely.”
“Ah, yes, of course, Commander. As perceptive as always.”
“Boel?”
“Yes, Commander?”
“Attempt to placate me with flattery again and I will have you replaced.”
“Yes...Commander.”
Dayseus busied himself after dismissing Boel. His great work, the end to this eternal conflict was finally starting its most delicate phase. He prepared meticulously for Irina’s arrival. Unlike most Wing-Commanders, Dayseus wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty for the sake of his project’s success.
The monitoring chamber was alight with real-time visions of Heaven displayed on crystal and glass screens. Oriphiel had delivered the summons, as planned, and was tailing Irina back to the very building that Boel and Dayseus had been plotting and planning in. Irina had selected the three Infusions that Dayseus had predicted and was too caught up in the moment to realize she was being followed, also as anticipated.
With the closure of the Hellmouth in the fallen Achaemind capital and the termination of the low-born garzok, the abdiel would be combing the city for any souls that had not yet heed the call of Heaven or Hell. The abdiel were both intelligent, and cruel enough to take any living being back down to Hell, to their Archduke. If Dayseus was right, the demons in this region belonged to one of the most powerful of the Archdukes, Bael.
This was their chance.
The end of the war justified the sacrifice of one angel.