Mordwell Verune, former Lassedite of the One, True, Resurrected Angelical Lasseditic Church had a story to tell. He felt like a child again, wandering the lonely dirt road in Vineplain with only the crescent Moon to guide him. Back then, the Moonlight Queen had reached out from her ethereal palace to ignite the flame of faith in his heart. With that flame came order and purpose. It laid out the path the boy could take to become a man. Through the faith, Mordwell found his salvation, as much in this life as the next. He’d found the purpose he thought he’d never have. He found his place in the sunshine.

But now, that sunshine was gone, and Verune was terrified it would never come again. He’d never felt so lost.

The Night was dark and deep, and the future was dying.

The former 250th Lassedite walked down a street alongside his newest companion: Simon, the changeling from the grocery store—its former cashier. The streets of Elpeck’s doomed future basked in the orange haze of the tired streetlamps’ glow. This particular street was less alien to Verune than some of the others. The brownstones and townhouses that lined the street were nearly as old as he was. Fungus sprouted from the pots on the balconies overhead, subsuming whatever flora had been there. Some of the fungus had even begun to grow onto the buildings’ walls. The way it spread across brick and stone eerily paralleled the way it spread across the bodies of its victims. In places, the fungus had begun to dig into the structures.

It was just as scripture had foretold: Hell had begun to remake the world.

Every once in a while, they’d pass an apartment building or townhouse with one or more corpses sprawled out on the sidewalk, surrounded by splattered halos of black blood and greening bones. No doubt, they’d leapt to their deaths. The fresher ones were still wet and pungently, powerfully sweet. Green dust blew across the ground where the fluids had dried, and, in places, the fungus had begun to grow along the sidewalk, spreading like a lichen, furcating, digging—plunging into the storm drains and the cracks between the pavement.

Verune had been talking with Simon during their aimless walk, though Verune’s heart hadn’t been in it.

For one, the whispering of the Angel in Verune’s mind had been drowned out by feelings of dizziness and lightheadedness—assuming it was even the Angel’s voice at all.

“Have you heard anything like whispers in the corners of your thoughts?” he asked.

“No,” Simon said, shaking his head in the negative.

There was more Verune wanted to say, but he couldn’t bring himself to say them.

He couldn’t tell Simon that he had used his powers to kill other changelings. The cashier was the only meaningful connection he’d made in this future world, and Verune refused to jeopardize it.

If Simon is not a demon, there is a chance the others were not demons either.

He doubted the changeling would take kindly to the truth.

Verune was trapped in a crisis of faith. His soul was in dire straits.

Simon seemed to sense that something was amiss. “Are you alright?” he asked.

“No,” Verune admitted. “I am lost. Terribly lost.” He looked up from one of the drying suicides, fighting the urge to bend down and feast. He shook his head. “I thought I was following the Angel’s will… but now, I am no longer sure. My certainties have… abandoned me.” Verune looked up to the Night, discreetly wiping a tear off his cheek. “Whoever heard of a Lassedite having a crisis of faith?” He chucked bitterly. “Forgive me for thinking you a demon.” He added, bowing apologetically at his companion

“It’s not a problem,” Simon said, returning the bow. “I don’t know what I am.”

Where most people would have ended the conversation, however, Simon continued: “Just a couple days ago, I—”

—Verune let himself drift along as Simon chatted away.

His soul was torn between what he thought he knew and what he found himself learning. Questions assaulted him at every turn.

Have I killed innocents?

How can I be one of the Angel’s Chosen if am turning into a monster?

What will happen to me?

Meanwhile, Simon’s lecture had passed into explanations of the history Verune had missed during his absence.

Verune looked up at the sky once more. “Why am I here, Lord?” he muttered. “Why?”

“So, what do you think?” Simon asked.

Verune blinked. “Pardon me?” The question snapped Verune out of his thoughts.

“What do you think of the future?” Simon asked. “Other than the plague, of course.”

“It…” Verune sighed. “It is more than I could have ever imagined, and yet… somehow, it is also less. The people have lost sight of their obligations to God. They have lost their connection with the Angel, and in doing so, have fallen into wickedness.”

“Well, other than that,” Simon asked.

“I suppose I don’t much care for the architecture. A bit too sleek and plain for my tastes.”

“Yeah, I guess you would think that. Things were pretty ornate back in your day. Still, they’re impressive, aren’t they?”

Verune nodded hesitantly.

“You must have seen Cascaton Park getting built,” Simon said. “What was that like? Did you ever meet Cordimer Olm?”

Verune answered the young man’s questions as best as he could. In a strange way, Simon reminded him of Orrin.

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The cashier’s mood had an almost manic bent to it. Two days prior, after closing for the day, Simon had collapsed in a seizure, and when he woke several hours later, he found himself dead and ravenously hungry.

Just like Verune.

Simon hadn’t been able to keep himself from feasting on the Gilman’s wares. Consuming vast quantities of food accelerated his transformation, and the cashier quickly decided to immure himself in the Gilman’s, rather than risk being seen on the long journey home. No wonder he was desperate for company; he’d stayed in the Gilman’s for two days straight, utterly alone—at least until the looters arrived.

As Verune and Simon continued on with their walk and their surreal small talk, Verune noticed figures lurking at the edge of his vision, silent and unmoving. Verune felt a buzzing in his head whenever he tried to focus on them. They were like mirages; they vanished when he drew too close. He hadn’t the faintest ideas who or what they were.

Ominously, they cast no shadows in the streetlamps’ light.

“Simon, do you see that? Do you see them?”

“See who?”

“There,” Verune pointed. “Those people.”

Simon blinked. “You see them, too? What are they?”

“I do not know,” Verune answered. “Perhaps they are spirits of some sort? They do not cast shadows.”

“W-What does that mean?” Simon asked.

Verune shook his head. “I want to believe that this is all part of the Angel’s plan, but… now I am no longer sure. I thought you were a demon, and I was wrong. If I cannot trust my faith or my judgment, what can I trust?”

The mysterious whispering grew louder in Verune’s thoughts.

“You said that before,” Simon said, “and—I’ll be honest—I don’t get it. How can you still have doubts? You’ve held the Sword of the Angel in your own two hands. You alone survived the Hallowed Beast’s wrath!”

“But what if it wasn’t the Hallowed Beast?”

“What else could it be?” Simon said.

“I don’t know,” Verune muttered, lowering his head.

How the mighty have fallen…

Days before, he was the leader of the largest religion in the world.

Now, a cashier is giving me a homily.

“While I was alone in the Gilman’s, turning into a monster, I didn’t know what to think! The Green Death made no sense. It was something that we didn’t understand. How does an ordinary person deal with this kind of thing? What does life even mean, now that Hell is on the march and people are turning into monsters?”

“I…” Verune started to speak, but lost his words before he’d even found them.

“But then I met you, your Holiness,” Simon said, “and I learned your story. You have to be one of the Chosen—one of the Blessèd! Lassedites don’t just travel through time for no reason! It’s just like my grandma told me: there’s order in the world. Things happen for a reason. There has to be a connection.”

And, just like that, what Verune had told Orrin was now being told back to him. Verune was truly proud of the priest his son had become. The Angel had lifted him up from the belly of Sunbasker heresy and cultivated him into a rock of the faith, just as He had with Verune.

I wish you were here, Orrin. You could guide me, just as I once guided you.

Suddenly, as they neared another intersection, Simon stuck out his claws. “Wait…”

They stopped in their tracks.

Simon pointed. “What’s that?”

At their right, one block over, a column of smoke had begun to rise.

“Fire,” Verune said, softly, and then again, louder: “Fire!” He ran ahead, with Simon hobbling along behind him.

Verune’s breath caught in his throat as he turned down the intersection. “No,” he muttered. “No!”

An angry mob had set a building ablaze. About one dozen strong, the group was tossing flaming bottles of alcohol at the apartments lining the street. One of the brownstones on the middle of the right-hand side of the block was already up in flames. Smoke billowed out from the bottle-broken windows, filling the air with a causticly sweet stench—like a candyman burning alive. Green dust glinted in the smoky drafts as windows shattered in the mounting fire.

The mob threw more bottles at the brownstones on the opposite side of the street, sewing more flames. Windows broke, curtains caught fire. More smoke rose. The hooligans hollered, thrilled by the destruction. The fire-light flickered in gold on their faces, illuminating the black lightning of the contagion in their flesh.

It left Verune speechless. He turned wroth. Here, in the darkest hour mankind had ever faced, these ruffians were wreaking wanton havoc.

They were scum, through and through.

At least Hilleman and his blasted Blueshirts were fighting for a cause!

The whispering in Verune’s mind grew louder.

“Have they gone crazy!?” Simon yelled.

Verune turned to see the cashier pulling himself around the street-corner, digging his claws into a building’s stone wall.

Simon craned his long neck upward. He gaped. “Angel, no!”

Verune whipped back around to see a man stepping out onto one of the balconies of the burning brownstone. Electric light spilled from the room at their back, only to sputter out as the fire raged. Smoke billowed from the open doorway.

Verune ran toward him, muttering a prayer under his breath.

“Befléon, likken hali bird.”

The man jumped!

Verune flung his arm upward, thinking of a bird rising mid-flight as he spoke the next words, only to gasp as a flock of holy hummingbirds blinked into existence and fluttered through the air.

He lost his focus, shocked at the miracle, racing to understand its significance.

A second later, the man hit the pavement with a wet thud. His body twitched slightly, and then fell still.

“By the Godhead! No!”

Verune skidded to a stop. He ran his fingers through this short hair, pressing down on his golden skullcap.

“No… no…”

What have I done? he thought. What have I done?

He looked up again. “The hummingbirds! Where are the hummingbirds?” He looked and looked, but could not find them.

Verune fell to his knees, shivering. He squeezed his hands around his head.

The whispering grew louder. It seemed to turn into a chorus.

Behind him, Simon yelled.

Verune whipped his head around.

“Oh God…” he muttered, stepping back on his knees.

That’s no choir!

He was hearing the screams of the people trapped within the building. Some of them barely sounded human. The sounds grew louder as people streamed out of the main entrance. But they didn’t move like people. They staggered and lunged, stumbling on the brownstone’s stop, crawling forward on all fours when they fell, like wild animals.

They roared and snarled.

A shiver ran down Verune’s back, all the way to the tip of his stubby, fledgling tail.

The hooligans in the mob pulled out guns—pistols, rifles—and opened fire.

“The armies of Hell…” he whispered, barely able to hear his own words over the howls and the gunfire.

The bullets did not stop them. One of the feral infected got shot in the skull; their head burst open, splattering black ichor everywhere. The headless corpse fell to all fours and charged at the hooligan who’d beheaded them, and then leapt and clawed.

In that moment, Verune set his crisis of faith aside. Yes, he was lost and filled with doubt, but that didn’t matter. There were monsters in his midst. Real monsters—both kinds. The mindless ones, who knew nothing but destruction. The mindful ones, who chose destruction, even though they should have known better.

Verune made the mistake of thinking Simon and the other changelings were monsters, just because of how they looked.

He refused to make the same mistake again.

Clasping his hands together, Verune raised his head to the sky. Above the rooftops, the crescent Moon was peering out through the curtains of ash and green, the same Moon that had guided him to the Abbey of Lct. Alora as a child. Verune wept at its undying beauty. And then, closing his eyes, he began to pray.

“Aualen to Þe ground. Bowe in wurðscipe, ribaud monnes.”

It was one of Eadric Athelmarch’s battle hymns. During the Second Crusade, when Angelicals were still considered heretics, Eadric had used that prayer to make the dissidents prostrate before him. He pushed them down with the Angel’s hidden Light, crushing them like grapes, drenching the earth with their body-wine.

Lassedite Athelmarch could kill a hundred men with that prayer.

Verune’s body burned and buzzed as he worked Eadric’s technique. His thoughts rattled and roared. Life and death flashed through his flesh.

It was too much.

He opened his eyes as he screamed.

His body could not handle the power. He had called on more power than he could bear. He trembled in agony.

I need your power, Holy One. Please!