Mordwell Verune, 250th Lassedite of the One, True, Resurrected Angelical Lasseditic Church was unstuck in time—and that was the least of his troubles.

It was as the old saying went:

Times change, and we change with them.

How? As time passes, mankind worsens.

With knowledge came misery. The wonders that surrounded him were now tarnished and dimmed. The towering structures? The miraculous technology? All were vanities—marvelous vanities. A chrome façade for a rotting house.

Yet, still, the Park was beautiful. Verune could not deny that.

Cascaton Park was a slice of Paradise. Where mankind had decayed and failed, the Park endured and flourished.

Verune had witnessed the Park’s construction himself. Orrin had grown up alongside it. By the Angel, what a marvel that had been, to watch as the fetid markets and tenement hovels were blasted away to make way for God’s green earth.

It was as scripture said:

The dear earth everywhere blossoms in spring, growing green and anew. Forever blue is the horizon, everywhere, forever.

Verune had many cherished memories. His completion of Seminary School, his many ordinations—Luminer, Archluminer, Prelate.

Lassedite.

But even those shining moments paled in comparison to the treasures Cascaton held for him. All the perfect moment’s of Mordwell Verune’s life had played out on days like this—on radiant, windswept afternoons—where he shared a walk in the Park with Orrin, after the boy had finished a long day of study at Seminary.

The Park had given Verune his son. He doubted the boy would have ever come out of his shell without it.

The first few weeks after Orrin’s removal from his birth parents were the hardest, for both Verune and the boy. To sever a natural family was a grievous sin. Orrin was right to cry over that. But it was far more egregious a wrong to desecrate the Bond of Light and the pledge of Bondage. Orrin had been baptized by the Sun’s holy light. He belonged to the Church. It was his unbelieving birth parents who had wronged him. Had they converted to the faith instead of hardening their hearts against the Church, the Nadkila family would have remained unbroken.

But it was not to be.

Yet the Godhead works in mysterious ways. They broke Orrin—and Verune as well—so that They might rebuild them, stronger than before.

As the Park had grown, Orrin had asked Verune if he could see it, and the Lassedite had been more than happy to oblige. The beauties of those newborn gardens had struck a chord with the child. It resonated with Orrin’s innate curiosity. It helped him find the sense of awe and reverence he held for nature and nature’s wonders.

He found those wonders in the fields of grass that lined Cascaton’s graveled paths.

He found them in the sighing arches that surmounted the underpass tunnels.

He found them in the wide brick stairs that lead up the hill to the autumnal gardens.

He found them in mallards ambling through the ponds.

Verune and his adopted son developed a shared ritual: they’d make lunch on a bench in the Cascaton, eating cheese and pastries and fruits—fresh or candied—and as they sat, Verune would tell the boy stories. He’d tell him what the mallards meant. What the bricks meant. What the daisies meant. What the ponds meant.

What the sky meant.

Everything had a story. Everything had a purpose. There was meaning in every rosebud; design in every blade of grass. The Angel’s plan was omnipresent and all-encompassing.

Verune couldn’t help but weep as he wandered through those same gardens. Traveling down the Cascaton’s rambling paths, he saw and relived the walks he’d taken with his son. Their last outing had been only days before, during the brief break Orrin—now an ordained Priest—got following Mass and Unction.

But, now, Verune knew that quiet afternoon was on the other side of a chasm two centuries wide.

But that wasn’t all that was amiss.

A darkness had come to Cascaton Park—the darkness of Hell, no doubt about it. Here and there, near the entrances, or in the shade of an underpass tunnels, Verune passed by human beings resting in the sleep of death. The corrupting fungus blossomed from the corpses as if their sins had been given flesh. The corruption had begun to creep along the land; across the grass; up brick walls and tree trunks.

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NFP-20, they called it.

Verune passed scenes of battle—or, perhaps, the site of a culling. Entire stretches of the Park’s greenery had been burnt away. What remained of the trees stuck out from the char, gnarled and perverted. Eerie growths rose from the edges of the burn marks, like fairy rings for Demon Norms.

Verune kept his distance from them. He was not ready to confront their evil.

At least, not yet.

Silence reigned in the Cascaton. There was no birdsong.

Orrin had loved the birdsong. He’d memorized the different species’ calls. The bluejay. The robin. The mourning dove. But they sang no more.

Wind was the only sound. It haunted the Park’s emptiness, rustling through sickly branches, setting wilting leaves a-shiver. The desolation seemed to whisper to Verune, but he could not make out the words.

Verune scratched the sleeves of the hummingbird robe absent-mindedly. His arm itched.

To say that he was nervous and fearful would have been a gross understatement. The Angel had not abandoned him; he still had a role to play in the Godhead’s machinations. That knowledge and power filled Verune with elation and hope. And though that joy and eagerness was still within him, it smoldered under his worries.

Would he be good enough? Would he be worthy?

That was why Verune had come to Cascaton Park.

There was work to be done. He needed to do everything he could to prepare.

It had only been a few hours since Verune had awoken. He’d spent most of that time alternating between testing prayers and spiritual meditation in the Park’s silent gardens.

Verune did not need scripture to tell that a battle was approaching. He felt it deep in his bones. The world would not end without a fight. And Verune intended to be ready.

The sycamore fell with a crash of leaves and wood. An electric throb burned down his spine as Verune stepped back to survey the wreckage. His arms still tingled.

The dying tree had fallen without difficulty. The fungus had eaten away at the sycamore’s heartwood. Verune’s prayer had snapped its trunk, leaving a jagged wooden stalagmite jutting out from the leaf-littered ground. Branches and twigs were scattered around the toppled trunk, broken off when the trunk had hit the ground.

The Lassedite found himself panting heavily, surprised at the toll the prayer had taken on him. He leaned against another tree, several feet away from its fallen sibling.

The ease with which he could recall and conjure the powers sealed within the Lasseditic prayers was nothing short of extraordinary. Yes, the Church’s secret histories spoke of how Enille had mastered the miracles of the Sword, but reading those histories hardly compared to living them.

As it was written, to strengthen Her powers, the Lass would walk upon the waters of Elpeck Bay and stand atop the waves, communing with the Angel through His living miracles. She would freeze the water and carve floating sculptures from the ice. She would split the sea and walk along the muddy ocean-bed, holding the waters at bay with the Angel’s might.

During the office of Duncan I, 6th Lassedite—last of the Righteous Five to ascend to the Lassedicy—he and Amphelise, 4th Lassedite—took steps to ensure that their knowledge they had of Enille’s miracles would not be lost to time. It was only because of the efforts of the Five that Duncan II, 7th Lassedite came to power. Duncan II was the first of the Chosen to be found after Enille’s death. His ability to call forth the Sword’s miracles was but a shadow of the Lass’ powers. Had Lassedite Amphelise not found him, the faith might have crumbled. But she had, for it had been the Angel’s will that she find him.

With Amphelise and Duncan I’s assistance, Duncan II had been able to verify and set in writing the prayers Enille devised, and the meditations she practiced. From there, down the line of succession, it was the duty of each and every Lassedite to learn those secrets from the ancient documents and ensure the knowledge’s safe transmission from one Lassedite to the next. And if, by the Angel’s grace, another of the Chosen was discovered and raised to the office of Lassedite, whatever discoveries they made of the Sword’s powers would be added to the chronicle, so that the fulness of the Angel’s instrument might be better known.

Verune would never forget the awe he’d felt when he’d read the documents for the first time, to hold in his hands the writings of his predecessors, copied and recopied across the ages. But, thanks to Agan—that heretic—and the pet demagogue he had in Hilleman, the sacred lineage had been broken.

Because of my failure, the chain of transmission was broken. But, by the Grace of God, I have been blessed with the chance to set things right.

This was his mission, a mission from the Angel Himself.

Verune looked up at the Sun.

It has fallen to me to save the future from itself.

The people were lost, and Hell had come to Elpeck to reap its harvest.

Verune had been making a list in his mind, checking the prayers one by one. Spying a loose branch on the ground by the fallen tree, the Lassedite chose the prayer he’d test next.

“Fleoganin stan. Befléon, likken hali bird. Ic bawd Þe, Ic bawd.”

This one required imagining an unseen bird flitting through the air from the object being targeted to its desired destination.

The stick lifted off the ground and shot into Verune’s hand.

“Good,” he muttered, “that one works.”

Verune tossed the branch to the ground.

At first, he had gone about testing the prayers to discover which, if any, had been corrupted by the passage of time. As was to be expected, not even the Lassedites were immune to human error. But, as he soon discovered, many of the prayers had… malfunctioned. The secret history contained copious records of the different miracles and the prayers that conjured them, yet, to Verune’s surprise, not all of them worked as advertised. The prayer that had felled the sycamore was supposed to have sparked a flame, yet it hadn’t, and he couldn’t fathom why.

Verune had also noticed that his experience of the miracles were not quite aligned with what was recorded in the Church’s secret histories. According to the chronicles, the Lass and the Chosen that came after her had the ability to illuminate the Angel’s miracles. The Fleoganin stan prayer was supposed to move objects at a distance by way of a phantom fabric, woven of pure light, and though Verune had felt the presence of that phantom fabric in his mind as he’d intoned the prayer’s words, the prophesied light failed to materialize. Verune was at a loss to explain these differences.

Then again, I am at a loss to explain any part of what has befallen me.

If there was rhyme or reason behind the prayers and the miracles they wrought, Verune could not see it. Some had no effect whatsoever. Others worked, but only after a fashion. He could not conjure fire, nor exert control over light. He could not call down lightning, nor turn water to ice. But he could move objects. He could lift stones and snap twigs; he could push himself off the ground, topple weak trees, and stir up wind.

To Verune’s chagrin, the miracles he could work were, for the most part, disappointingly small. He supposed it was a matter of his faith. He had to deepen his faith and temper it, until it was as sturdy as steel.

But, ultimately, these were mere details, and it was not proper for him to dwell on them. Verune chose to place his faith in the Angel.

I needn’t trouble myself with trivial matters. Doubt is the enemy. I cannot lose my faith. Not here. Not now.