The arrow was longer than the ones from before. The arrowhead protruding from Hant’s eye-socket had been modified to pierce through armor.

Then another arrow came, and another, and another. The chariot’s left horse was hit in the flank, and the right horse grazed at the withers. The reins flailed, falling from Hant’s dead hands.

The horses shrieked, thrashing their heads. The chariot rattled and shook. In an instant, Enille twisted the Sword’s power once more. She bid the holy blade to leave her hand and floated beside her, freeing up room as she willed the reins toward her. The horses’ panic pulled her forward as she grabbed the reins.

The arrows kept coming.

They were coming from the hills to the west, next to the burning forest.

It had been years since she’d last held the reins in the thick of battle, but the tension’s push and pull in her arms brought out Enille’s skill. She pulled hard, slowing the chariot just enough to make it safe for a turn.

The horses whinnied as she made them bank to the right.

And then, she saw it: a third army cresting over the western hills, on the opposite side of the battlefield, led by a party of mounted archers.

The Winged Hussars.

They charged onto the plains. Prodigious feathers streamed behind them, fastened to racks mounted on their backs. In the wind, they fluttered like wings, making the hussars seem to soar across the battlefield as they rode. Their helmets were polished to a sheen. Light glinted off them, blinding and brilliant in the noon-day sun. They hussars sang as they rode, belting out war songs to the beat of their horses’ hooves.

Nocking their bows, the Hussars fired.

Armored Trenton soldiers stumbled backwards as the armor-piercing arrows burst through their helmets.

Enille’s heart raced.

Arrows hurtled toward her.

She made the chariot swerve, desperate to dodge, only for an arrow to power through the head of her right-hand horse.

“No!” Enille screamed.

The Hussars were madmen! They’d kill the Gods’ chosen!?

Have they no honor?

But it made no difference.

The Angel’s Will would be done.

Throwing the reins aside, Enille grabbed the Sword by the hilt and drew deep from its silver glory. She wove the Sword’s light around herself, powering her movements as she leapt from the chariot. Her hair and robes streamed behind her as she arced through the air. Below her, the dead horse fell, and the golden chariot lost control. It spun, then crashed, and crumpled.

The Lass flew, gliding over the arrows. She looked down the hussars as she made her long, sweeping descent. One warrior caught her eye.

He rode at the heart of the charging hussars, he stood out from his companions like a peacock among fowl. The feathers at his back were fragments of the empyrean, boldly hued in cerulean and celadon. His armor was resplendent—a sculpture on his chest. Fury roared in his wild, hairy face as he held up his bow, its lacquer gleaming in the sun.

Krog Karak, King of All Polovias, had come to see the Lass die this day. Three armies, to kill one woman.

Enille almost felt honored.

The Lass spun as she landed. She didn’t stop for a moment, deftly moving from the instant her boots hit the bloody, ashen plain. The Trenton army was scattered and divided. The hussars’ arrows had punched through the defensive squares. The spearmen broke their formation to run from the hussars’ blades and hooves. The mounted archers did not stop to pursue them; they rode on, harrowing Enille’s army with arrows and song.

So many faces Enille fell to the ground, one after another, their faith true to the last. She knew too many by name.

Their sacrifice would not be in vain!

Standing up tall, Enille held the Sword out to the side and made a weave of the winds. She called them by their names. Nordri, the North Wind; Sudri the South Wind; Vesdri, the West Wind; Ousdri the East Wind. In her mind’s eye, a transcendent weave plumed off the Sword, billowing like the sails of a ship on the Great Bay.

The winds answered the Lass’ call. From the world’s four corners, they came, whipping into a fierce vortex. She shaped them with her will, drawing them into tall, roaring walls that tore furrows in the ground, flinging up ash and death and burnt grass. The air around her grew thick and blurred. It flicked away arrows like wayward flies.

“Kill her!” Krog yelled. His voice rang out over the plain—though, against the churning winds, it was barely a whisper in the Lass’ ears.

The Lass raised the Sword up high.

“I have your Light, Holy Angel,” she called. “I will use it. I will not let it be lost to the unbelievers’ darkness!”

She squeezed the Sword’s hilt with her trembling hands, scraping away the skin on her palms.

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“I need your power!”

The Sword glowed. Threads of power streamed off its twining blades. The light in Enille’s mind glowed before her eyes, engulfing the Sword in a lambent aura.

But it wasn’t enough.

She needed more.

Enille closed her eyes and steadied herself. She let her soul commune with the Sword, as she had when she had studied its powers. She could feel its energy coursing through her. It probed her thoughts, like it had a will of its own.

Enille drew deep. She dredged up a great well of strength. Sparks skipped along her arms. The wind whipped through her robes and her smoky hair. Her breaths stung and her muscles trembled.

Bearing the Sword as high as she could lift it, the Lass called upon the power of her Angel. She gave everything she had, pulling deeper from the Sword’s reserves than she ever had before.

But she drew too much. Or perhaps, in a way she shouldn’t have. Whatever the reason, it happened so quickly, too quickly for her to understand.

Enille had spent nearly five decades learning the Sword’s ways. It was like a living thing, willful and dynamic. Yet, as she felt power bubble out from the Sword’s hilt and rasp against her hands, she knew this was something different.

Something new.

The unknown power chafed at her thoughts. It did not fit. It did not belong. It filled her with impressions of the ever-shifting and the unnamable; something multitudinous and echoing, shaped like cypress needles in spring.

Power exploded through limbs, raging through her body like torrents of sand. She screamed in pain as the spell went awry.

Even so, it was a glorious view.

All at once, the swirling winds died out. Chunks of sod and stone lifted themselves out of the earth, deflecting oncoming arrows. Then, a great sphere coalesced into being, a void of darkness at the heart of the flock of floating earth.

The hussars fired. The arrows entered the dark orb, but did not emerge from the other side.

Light struck through the sphere, blooming in self-similar patterns. To Enille, the shapes that formed seemed like the very eyes of the Gods.

The Polovians’ armored horses reared up in terror as the sphere rose higher.

It swelled.

Enille could feel its power growing out of her control. She tried to stop it, or change it, but she couldn’t. She was as flimsy as morning fog.

She barely had the strength to stand.

In her mind’s eye, Enille watched tendrils of lightning out from the runaway miracle. The invisible energies passed into the earth. Their wild, dancing movements grew faint as they sank deeper into the ground, where they took root and spread, tapping into some unknown connection—as if something had been waiting for them.

Then, there was a blinding flash.

Suddenly, the sphere changed. Where, before, there had been darkness, now there was a hole in the sky, like a window in the air, but visible from every direction.

Within the window, dusk was approaching. Hues of orange and mauve gripped the horizon of the window’s sky, near to the brightness of its setting Sun. An unearthly jungle grew from this foreign soil: gigantic herbs and flowers, with petals as red as blood. Above the jungle’s canopy, the window’s sky was a soft blue, made alien by a tinge of pale green. Higher still, up where the sky darkened into night, lights twinkled.

Enille wept at the sight. The lights reminded her of the ones she’d seen in the Angel’s face when He’d placed His hand on her head.

Was this a vision of Paradise?

On the other side of the window, the hussars rallied. Krog barked orders to his men as he readied his bow.

Enille fell to her knees, drained beyond her limits.

But then, she heard a sound. It was unquestionably speech, but with a voice that was not human. It was as if a songbird had become a man, and learned how to speak.

Enille looked up.

Things flew in the window’s sky. Bird-things, man-shaped, and clothed. Wings grew from their backs, beating so quickly that they faded into a blur. The wingbeats made a thrum that Enille felt, even in her bones. Their feathered bodies were cyan and vert, iridescent everywhere, their clothes giving flashes of white-plumed bellies. Around half of them had proud magenta-red shining all over their heads.

Hummingbirds.

They were hummingbirds, like the ones that would come by Enille’s village when winter came and the days grew short. Only these were man-shaped, and as large as children. Their soaring, gossamer cries burst into startled chirrups as they flew out of the window and into Southmarch’s skies.

Krog screamed an order.

Most of the hussars raised their bows and fired at the hummingbirds, though several turned and galloped away. Their desertion triggered the Polovian King’s fury. Krog’s vitriol blended with the hummingbirds’ shrieks as the arrows pierced the creatures’ chests, impaled their eyes, and split their wings.

Enille looked on in horror as the creatures fell. The blood that spilled from their wounds was red, the same as any man’s.

She wanted to help them. She wanted to stop Krog, but she could hardly move. Her limbs were lead.

The horses reared up in terror as the hummingbirds fell. One of the animals spooked and dashing into the window, carrying its rider into the world of the green-tinged sky. The horse was halfway through when the power blasting through Enille’s body finally gave out.

The window instantly blinked shut.

Horse and rider fell dead, pieces of their bodies simply carved away.

Yet, through her mind’s eye, Enille saw that all was not over. Beneath the earth, something stirred.. The miracle’s energies continued to flow, migrating, deeper and deeper.

Enille looked up as a sharp pressure stabbed her stomach. Heat erupted in her belly, alongside hideous, lancing pain.

She screamed.

Cackling, Krog lifted up his bow and grinned. The proud feathers on his rack fluttered in the wind as his horse pranced over the dead bird-men. Its hooves kicked up the creatures’ iridescent plumes and flicked them into the air.

Enille fell onto her hands and knees, pierced by the cruel king’s arrow. Her view shrunk down to grass and dirt, though bits of sky lurked in the corners of her eyes.

And in her mind’s eye, deep, deep within the earth, the migrating lightning suddenly vanished, having reached their destination.

And something stirred. It began with a pulse in the depths, and then another, and another, each louder and broader than the one before it. The pulse sent waves across Enille’s mind. It made the Sword’s power seem nothing more than a pebble in the sea.

And the earth shook.

With trembling arms, Enille pushed off the ground.

She had to look. She had to see.

Something was happening. Something unique.

A new scream filled the Southmarch Plains. It was not a war cry, nor a plea for mercy. No: it was a scream of fear. It was the desperate, scrambling terror of the rabbit staring down the wolf’s maw.

The earth cracked.

Fissures erupted across the plain, heat and steam geysering up from the cracks as the ground spat up liquid fire. One of the fissures shot beneath the legs of Krog’s steed, instantly killing both mount and rider. The King of All Polovias toppled to the ground, first boiled in his armor, then crushed beneath his horse’s falling corpse.

One of the fissures came rushing toward Enille.

There was nothing she could do.

She braced for death.

And then she felt a voice. It spoke to her soul. It boomed louder than her thunder-miracle. It turned all heads toward the sky.

The voice screamed in pain and terror. It was the roar of a dying god as he fell into his grave.

The dead sky! The all-consuming sky!

The thrum of power at the heart of the earth came to a stop. The world-soul was dead.

As a fissure opened beneath Enille, she threw the Sword as far as she could. The last thing she saw was its twining silver blade clattering softly on a patch of distant grass, and then the earth swallowed her whole.