I’m hardly one to repeat the party line, folks, but for once I agree with the normal radio: please stay indoors today. I know there’s no formal state of emergency. With the Conclave busted and the deacons squabbling over chairs, probably won’t be one.
Just take it from me, okay? If you’re not on the road – and if you are, Walter’s getting kind of sweaty so pick up the pace! – then tuck in and stay in shelter.
Mark my words. Things are getting choppy.
Spring 53
When dark fell on the seventh day of the Sevensborough Rebellion, Mel fell deathly silent.
At the Conclave, the faithful held vigil. The square swelled, hundreds laying hands on the Conclave and praying with all their might that the foul taint upon their cherished idol might retreat.
In the streets beyond, torches flickered, and men prowled in packs like wolves.
Conclave! Conclave! They dare befoul our Conclave!
In Sevensborough, the last vanguard watched as fires flared across Mel. The acrid smoke of lives being destroyed; flickers of orange against the clouds; and the whisper upon their necks of a freshly sparked fury.
Borough by borough, sparks blew east like the dead Harvest wind.
The vaunted Rebellion was eighty men now. If the constables had known their true number, they would have bulldozed the force in an hour.
Only the fear of those warrens held the line now.
May they remain ignorant, Aldersman Boucher prayed on his watch. He perched on the wobbly roof of a Verdant home, listening to the abandoned borough sigh with the breeze. Faithful, heretic, or just plain terrified, everyone had fled to the matching side of the line. He was aldersman to a graveyard now.
A distant warehouse window broke, though Boucher doubted there was much left worth the trouble at this point. The thieves must be desperate to risk this battlefield. Godspeed to you, fools and vagrants.
Compulsively, he glanced east again across the dark plain. The last vanguard took shelter in Greenleaf’s block, half a mile north of Main, with a few men ranging wide through the abandoned Azure section to make the occasional ruckus and watch for any real incursions from Sixborough. All waited, packed and breathless, for the final trucks.
After a few minutes, one of the boys knocked on the wall beneath him.
“How are the fires?” Boucher asked.
“Getting’ closer,” the boy answered.
“We have any wagons left?”
“Two.”
Nodding to himself, Boucher rose to stretch his legs. “Hook them up, would you?” He clambered down the side of the wall by his fingertips; they dared no light but the moon. Landing with a grunt at ground level, he turned to the boy. “Okay. Lay it on me. How bad?”
“Five hundred strong, at least, and angry as the black waters.”
At least Oliver and Belle got out, Boucher thought numbly.
“Greenleaf’s asking for anyone willing to man the forward barricade.” The youth swallowed. “To set up with the last of the ammo and dissuade the rabble.”
Boucher nodded. “I see.”
Truth to tell, he wanted to pray for the trucks, or to leap on the wagon, or to flee into the fields. Wanted the ringing in his ears from a week of rifle fire to subside. Wanted the old world back.
But Boucher had followed the flow his whole life. Followed Betha in his youth; followed Oliver in the borough; and now he followed Greenleaf in the thin hope that Verdant bravado would see them through another night.
“Alright,” he said, the words heavy. “Alright, let me see who will come.”
He wondered if his parents would be proud of him. Then he brushed the thought aside, irritated. It didn’t matter; they lay in Lumia with so many others.
Boucher ducked into the house to survey his remaining forces, though he counted more bandages than bullets.
If Oliver was here, he’d have something to say. Some way to put the fire in them one last time.
“What’s the news?” one asked, arm freshly wrapped in the shreds of a blanket. He’d broken it in a scuffle with a few of Tommy’s former gang. The kids had tried to bust in for the bounty, figuring they had the home turf know-how to crack the Rebellion’s egg.
The bodies had been thrown in a ditch to rot.
Right next to this man was a youth, formerly of Tommy’s gang, who had changed his tune and pitched in.
Life is a funny thing. How’s a man supposed to know how the wind’s gonna blow?
Philosophy was more Oliver’s thing, really.
“Boucher?”
The aldersman laughed to himself. “Sorry. Greenleaf wants…”
More bandages than bullets…
“Greenleaf wants me to grab a box of ammo and meet him at the barricade. Chasing off another pack.”
“We’ve only two left boxes left.” The bandaged man paused. “Do…do you want both?”
“No. Not leaving you lot empty-handed.”
“Empty-handed? We can always throw our guns!”
The assembled managed a weak laugh.
Better than despair.
Boucher accepted the box and checked its contents: thirty-six rounds. Then he accepted a rifle, strapped it on his back, and opened the door.
“Get on the wagons and head east,” he said, trying to mimic Oliver’s authority. “Meet the trucks halfway.”
Then he stepped out, heading west, and delivered the same message to everyone he met in the warren.
To his surprise, as many followed him west as returned east. By the time the group reached the silent pile of rubble that formed the last barricade just west of Oliver’s burned diner, twelve walked together in silence.
Greenleaf waited there with twenty-three of his own.
The western clouds flickered, bright with fires.
“This everyone?” the Verdant aldersman asked. A dark stain across his ribs marked where a ricochet had nearly claimed his life.
His sylph had not been so lucky.
Greenleaf had wept like a child as he laid her tiny body in an unmarked grave early this morning.
Did she die for him? Was it her last act to turn that bullet two degrees out? Boucher wondered. So that he might see one more dawn…
Could a sylph be as much a hero as a man?
Aloud, he answered, “Seems so.”
Thirty-six men in total, one per round in the box.
They divvied up positions – some along the main barricade, some in the surrounding buildings, and some dispersed further out. Lacking enough rifles, half their lot made do with rocks, bricks, and the occasional glass bottle.
Boucher chose to stay on Main with Greenleaf. They numbered ten in total, each with a rifle – and, including Greenleaf’s ammo, eight bullets each.
The trick is to remind a man in a crowd that there’s a bullet waiting for him in particular.
A good strategy against constables. The coneheads could manage the basic math of their pay cheque versus their lifeblood. Amazing how well the business end of a gun spurred a man to reconsider his priorities!
But what of a mob?
Breaking glass broke the stillness, and he heard distant, pounding feet.
…Conclave! ….Conclave!
The street beneath them shivered.
“Greenleaf?” Boucher whispered uncertainly. That doesn’t sound like five hundred!
The Verdant aldersman licked his lips and turned to one of his nephews. “We still have any grenades?”
“Nope.”
The street shivered again – this time with the force of approaching feet.
“Helmets?”
“Nope.”
“Fire bottles?”
“Last one right here.”
Windows shattered, and the furthest scouts sent up their final signals.
Closer, closer approached the drums.
“Should have taken that last truck,” Boucher whispered.
“You, me, and half the damn country,” the man beside him whispered right back.
“We’ve not the ammo for half measures,” Greenleaf growled, sighting his rifle. He gave a grunt of pain as he shifted, fresh blood seeping into his shirt. “Put the first wave down and let the second contemplate their fate!”
They all followed suit, barrels trained on the gentle curve of Main.
Conclave! Conclave! You dare befoul our Conclave!
What rounded that bend might have been composed of men but resembled nothing of the sort.
Boucher registered torches, angry faces, and a wall of men. He spotted rifles among the crowd, and adrenaline spurred him to pull the trigger.
It was getting easier by the day, though he’d never done worse than trip over a dog before this season.
Conclave! Heretics! Befoulers!
The dozen upon the barricade fired into the crowd; the crowd fired back.
Bullets bit past Boucher’s ear, and three upon the barricade dropped.
Their men on the flanks hurled rocks and bottles, but the approaching horde was endless as a tide. Even if the first wished to flee, the pressure shoved them crashing into the barricade.
They threw the fire bottle into the crowd, and the screaming men were swallowed beneath the waters as the barricade rattled like a sapling.
Fallen, trampled, and lost in a blink.
What foul magic transfigured men into this monstrosity?!
Boucher spun and grabbed Greenleaf’s nephew by the shoulder. “Run!” he roared above the chaos. “Tell them to get out! The borough is lost!”
Then he grabbed a fistful of bullets and struggled to reload with shaking fingers.
A screaming, howling man climbed and crested the barricade.
Boucher shot him point blank.
“Greenleaf!”
“Fall back!” the Verdant aldersman shouted. “Fall back!”
But Greenleaf stayed put, braving the pelting bullets and firing fast as his bloodied fingers would squeeze.
Damn it all – so did Boucher!
Even as the others fell back, fleeing at top speed for the wagons and the questionable safety of the open fields.
The aldersmen put down twenty men in short order. As the twentieth toppled backwards into the crowd, the shaking subsided.
For a moment, Boucher let himself hope that the corpses upon Main and the threat of the same fate would at least inspire…
Then a youth from a far roof crowed triumphantly, “They’re out of ammo!”
They weren’t.
Not that it mattered.
The crowd roared, black as the Wyrm, and surged up the barricade.
Up and over, charging for two lone men.
Screaming, slobbering, rabid wolves pouring forth.
Ruhum revealed at last, Boucher realized.
Then the tidal wave caught him and pulled him over the barricade into a sea of hateful hands.
Amidst screams and punches, someone drove their rifle into his belly and fired until the clip emptied.
His own gun lost, his senses ablaze with the agony in his gut, Boucher sank to the cobblestone road.
The butt of another rifle caught him across the face; blood and gristle and coughing against the drowning copper flood down his throat.
A slim blessing amidst the torrent: their blows grew distant against the heavy, heartbeat pressure out his belly.
Warmth slick and final; all that he had left to give.
And what was it the wolves barked as they tore at his clothes, beat at his head, and called for the noose?
Ah, yes.
In the name of God!
In the name of God!
In the name of God!
***
Spring 54
Stolen novel; please report.
Twelve precious days left.
The Archangel’s halo buzzed, but she paid it no mind. Her expanding senses drank all the anguish of man, drums pounding from countless lands.
There was a world where nuclear bombs dropped, one after the other, sometimes two in an hour, sometimes a lull of peace…
There was a world where men knew nothing but wood and bone; tribes raided tribes to take slave wives and kill the children of their enemies…
There was the sacrifice world she and the Wyrm had visited; rebellion spread like wildfire, and the empire crumbled before an alliance of freedom…
There was simply so much need of her, and she could only bear the grief of it until the Wyrm lay dead and undying in his prison.
Around her, the Edenward bloomed, its tendrils of Light interweaving like the first buds of Spring.
That metaphor too embodied power – rebirth and renewal after the darkness.
Alisandra stretched forth the hand of her mind’s eye to seize that power from laconic blooms.
Then the blooms burst into thorns, leaped forth, and wrapped tight around her arm.
The scion finally slips Malkuth’s bounds in service to her Quest! welcomed Verdandi.
Surprised, Alisandra gripped the vines. Light-hard thorns bit into the soft flesh of her hand, and the shock of pain set her heart to beating faster.
Free of the fear of flesh, pain is just another sensation, isn’t it? whispered the Deepbloom witch like a sorority secret. Beware. All twist under the burden of eternity.
Recoiling from the fragile Web
Retreating into our Works
Defining the limits of our Worlds
Sebastian held his tongue, steadying the Work with a hand as Alisandra gripped the ever-growing vines.
“You speak of twisting from your bedsheets!” the Archangel responded, squeezing tighter. How kind of you to arrive, Verdandi. We so seldom speak!
A god that left her people to struggle against the ever-evolving jungle; a corpse blindly robbed by Donovan; a Seer that elided the Wyrm.
I sometimes wonder why I bear your weight!
The vines considered. T’was your father reset the life-giving sun, Archangel.
Her words; her vines; the same thing in this shifting, astral space. They drew a trickle of blood.
The Hand of God throbbed at this offense.
The jungle is not fool enough to challenge a Blade unsheathed, sang the Seer. No, I but offer the same gift as I offered your mother. As I offer my mortal children.
An opportunity to grow
Verdandi’s vines constricted, Alisandra snarled, and the shadowy impression of the Bones beneath her feet crumbled away.
She fell, instinctively stepped, but still she fell.
Drawn down not by distance but by the weight of inherited sin.
Here where a Covenant once bloomed between–
***
Sudden as a dream, she lay on the neat paving stones at the top of a bluff before a temple of three gods.
Halo ringing from the abrupt intrusion of this new vision, Alisandra wondered, Where in the icy hells is this?
The scene twisted and smudged like oil paints at the edge of her vision, but the core held fast in semblance of Malkuth.
Yesod, perhaps? Close enough to Malkuth to ape its form. Or a higher sphere, cloaking itself in careful guise?
When would she get to explore these strange waters? To see the impossible colors of Tiferet and hear the resplendent Song quaking through Netzach as hinted in her father’s journal?
Of course, her father’s journal also spoke of angels lost to the spheres – the distinctions of flesh and spirit blurred until the angel no longer recognized the difference between a man and his metaphor.
There were so many ways to go astray.
Seal the Wyrm. Keep Esmie safe, she reaffirmed, dusting herself as she rose.
Everything was in order. Halo above her head, Hand of God at her side, clothing affixed. In fact, she wore her old, lost boots! Shaking her head at such sentimentality, she marched into the temple.
Three gods awaited her upon their thrones: dusky Hylas in a pair of loose canvas shorts and reed sandals reclined atop some monster’s massive skull, mysterious Verdandi hid naked among her tendrils of ivy, and the Tempest herself waited with ankles crossed atop her plinth of marble.
Though this Tempest had fair skin, aquamarine hair, and a proud halo of war as she stared down her sharp nose at the imposter before her.
“Then I am your Tempest, Verdandi? Tch. At least you are not so crass as to pretend to Mother,” Alisandra murmured under her breath.
Smooth, the Tempest rose, her skirts flashing the hints of her thighs. “You stand before the Covenant, interloper. At least do us the honor of your name!”
Is this how you see me, Verdandi?
Planting her boots on the stones, she answered, “Alisandra Mishkan!”
“Mishkan?” the Tempest sniffed. “A dead House. Memory and ash!”
“And yet here I stand!” Alisandra snapped, annoyed.
Hylas on his skull leaned forward. Sniffing, he grinned. “You don’t smell like politics to me, traveler.”
More like blood and sand and the pounding drums of the unconquered sun!
“Tis been a busy Spring,” she retorted.
“Ah, you draw your words like a blade!” he laughed.
“They dispatch most foes well enough.”
Verdandi’s vines shifted, and the angel of Deepbloom watched.
What do you want from me, seed-seer? Shall I parade myself before you for judgement?
You think you have that damned right when your peaceful slumber was bought at the edge of my Blade?
The Tempest waved a dismissive hand. “Begone, outsider. This Covenant ruled this land before Archangels, and we will rule it after.”
“Before you knew of Archangels,” Alisandra corrected.
“We do not require your protection.”
“Perhaps you do not,” she acceded, taking three steps forward to stand just beneath her shadow’s plinth. “But would the mortals you rule provide such a glib answer?”
“Angels act as we please, and mortals suffer as they must,” the Tempest answered.
“Fuel for your jungle experiments to breed a better beast!” accused Alisandra to Verdandi through this shadow.
“So speaks an experiment all her own,” whispered the Jungle.
Born of the greatest witch to walk these lands and the Archangel himself
Raised in secret wisdom and ancient tongue
Time bent before her
Behold her ascension
Behold her waiting THRONE
Hylas clapped his hands together. “She’s got a point, you know. What makes you so damn special?”
“Special? Are you some noble scion to lord your blood? An excuse for the weak!” Alisandra corrected. “I am the one who held when the Wyrm descended.”
“You walked a road paved on the backs of every angel before you to get there.”
“Yes,” she acknowledged. “Your point?”
He leaned back onto his elbows, crossed his leg, and rumbled, “Do you feel that weight?”
Of every debt you can never repay
Of every soul looking to you – last star against the dark?
Adoration.
Revulsion.
Despair.
All pouring together into a vast, pounding song like heavy drums – or the crash of endless waves – upon her gleaming crown.
“What you build upon our home…what you bind in our memory…what right have you to claim this temple?” the Peak demanded.
“You abandoned it,” she countered. “You retreated to your Plateau and your wars!”
“If you think me the villain, consider this star beneath the yolk of the unleashed Tempest,” he challenged. “You think your black waters will ever know peace?”
Dangerous, she thought. Mingling her and her mother; the Archangel and the Tempest…
Here in angel dream where myth and metaphor were weapons equal to any knife.
She answered carefully. “I carry the Tempest that no other be afflicted by its demands.”
“Neat as that, wrapped up in a bow?” Hylas laughed. “It’s good to be young, huh?”
There are no endings for angels
Catching Verdandi’s jungle accent in his words, she assessed: three gods and three faces. The Seer in her element: the flow of past, present, and future.
Even here, the Wyrm’s mockery echoed:
You people do realize Skuld is the one who sees the future, right?!
The Archangel scowled. “Yes, the Wyrm must seem very distant here. A few unpleasant echoes! Maybe a flicker of despair from some passing soul! Should he maim a planet in his games – a trifling matter! There are always more mortals!”
Her bitterness welled in her throat, and the stones beneath her boots blackened like ink.
Hylas shrugged. “Then what do you want?”
“For my people to be safe!”
“Such selflessness,” praised the Peak. “A saint among us.”
A martyr impeccable
“Mockery from the Rock? You warred with monsters for an age instead of cutting to the rot beneath their hive, and they have terrorized us to this day!” She gripped her Blade. “You warred for naught!”
“For naught?” Hylas flexed. “Silly girl, I warred with them for the thrill of it!” He leaped to his feet, tore a fang from the skull, and flung it into the heavens in an explosion of bone chips. “Ah, but I’m sure an Archangel is above such sensations!”
It burned so good
Goosebumps ran up her arm.
“Terror or pleasure? Or both, pleasantly mingled.” hummed the other Tempest, stroking fingers across her bare belly in anticipation.
“I tire of the critiques from this languid Chorus!” Alisandra growled. “Rise, Verdandi, and help me lay the Edenward! You built the elemental beasts to be angel killers; I build this ward so that angel killers will never again be needed. The time when mortals shudder at the echoes of Eden will end here!”
A cold wind blew across the temple, and three Verdandi stared at her. The youth, same age as Esmie, clad in a loose shift of jungle leaves; the woman atop her ziggurat of marble, shadowed by the hints of priests; and the ancient, wizened flesh woven of ivy and leaves.
“You have heard them suffer! I know! I have heard them too!” Alisandra cried.
Like Edward face-down in the ash, blood in his hair
Like Valkyrie’s father, struck down for daring to lock eyes with the Mighty
“We can stop this, Verdandi! We can save them!”
The youngest kicked her feet; the eldest nodded along with the words; and the middle smiled wistfully. “Ah, Alisandra…your cup runneth over.”
You still feel their every parting
“Someone must! Someone must stand! How can you slumber among the boughs while they suffer every sling and arrow?”
“Because that is the nature of durance.”
“Says who?!”
Her words rang into the smeared background of the painting, and the frame creaked around them. The dream exhaled, admitting wisps of shadow and stars. Distance and Time and a great parade of hundreds more, their shuddering steps marking the heartbeat of existence.
“I will not accept it!” Alisandra snarled.
Verdandi smiled, pitying, eyes full of withheld visions. “What do you think awaits you at the end of this path, Archangel?”
Why can I never reach them? How much stronger the Work would be with her help… The Archangel sighed. One more try. Heed me, Verdandi!
“In truth? I do not know. Yet…should I shrug this burden…what becomes of this world?”
What have they done to deserve the consequence of my failure?
“And so you would strike down any that stand in the way?”
Alisandra met her gaze. “…anyone.”
“Then perhaps you have found wisdom I lack. You charge that I spend their lives – a cheap currency – and I in turn ask: when it is right for an angel to kill?”
“There is no difference between angels and men. When they refuse to relent from a course that threatens more than their own foolish lives.”
“Even should they be those you love?”
The wind roared, the dream’s paints ran, and Alisandra stumbled into the wreckage at the feet of a holy terror.
Archangel Gabriel, coated in blood, cloaked in righteousness.
Holy, Proud, Mighty
Holding fast against the howling gale, Alisandra swallowed hard. “Yes…even those I love!”
Faced with her father’s darkest reflection, she found the Hand of God in her trembling hand…
To consign even him to an Edenward; to bind even him to an angel’s eternal binding…
“I would,” she hissed. “Any who would claim to Rule.”
The vision rippled, and they stood atop the Deepbloom ziggurat on an oppressive summer day. Verdandi twirled a flower in her hands, pondering, and Alisandra took a deep, guarded breath against that last vision.
“Father…Father called us powers and principalities,” she said, regaining composure word by word. “The Wyrm calls us the Mighty. Do the names matter?”
At that, Verdandi sharply turned. “The names always matter!”
You who are Tempest and Archangel and Morningstar
Oh, you will be needed before the end
Somewhere in the depths of that echo, Alisandra thought she heard another voice beneath Verdandi’s.
The name caught her in throat, smothered by a veil of unimaginable time and distance, carried upon a scent of challah fresh from the oven.
Then, almost instantly, a stab of pain behind her eye.
Alisandra hissed, whirling for any sign of her assailant, but they were alone in this dream.
“When Light was cut from Dark, limits were set upon this place,” Verdandi whispered.
Placed upon us
That the durance might endure
Bars final and absolute
“One such bar you wear upon your hip, Archangel Tempest. A Blade most discerning.”
Dabbing at her eye, Alisandra wiped away a speckle of Light-tinted blood. The wound already began to close.
“And a second above your head.”
Her halo pulsed.
“A crown without a doubt,” the seer hummed. “You are not the first to claim it, of course. As you know.”
“The Tyrant,” Alisandra muttered.
“He who found many novel uses for cast-off regalia.”
“And he rests now in an Edenward. As the Wyrm will in twelve days – whether you help me or not.”
“I will not. Will you strike me down?”
The Archangel sighed heavily.
A disappointment but hardly a surprise. Privately, she wondered if this was the better course. Fickle Verdandi, always ranging wide across Time’s plains. More interested in her Jungle than the waking world. Was that the strength to cherish mortality?
“Just stay out of my way,” warned the Tempest.
In answer, a door grew from the wimba tree; creaking open, it revealed placid stars of Malkuth.
See? thought the Tempest. Is it so hard to accede?
Alisandra walked out.
***
–and snapped awake in the mud of the Bones, staring up at the growing stems of the Edenward and the cloudy night sky.
“Welcome back, Archangel,” Sebastian offered, resting on a bone.
Alisandra leaped to her feet. “Sebastian! The Work!”
“Much remains, but the Foundation is laid,” the angel of Witness assured her. “In passing Verdandi’s trial, you have claimed this temple as your own.”
Indeed, the stems thrummed with stable Light now – sank deep into the Bones and now growing towards the sky. The air around them pulsed with the growing harmony of a new song, momentarily drowning out the incessant demands against her halo.
“Ah, thank the heavens,” she breathed. I’ll be home soon, Esmie.
“The drums will summon you north shortly,” Sebastian remarked. “You may save seven minutes by preceding them.”
Alisandra heaved a sigh. “What now?”
“The Sevensborough Rebellion.”
“The wh–” She bit off the words. “I assume the matter has degenerated?”
“Quite so. The Conclave has been effectively dissolved, the deacons prepare for a contest of Keepers, and the nation borders on war.”
“Hells!” There dies what little hope we had of an amicable end. There will be ships to sea with the turning season! “How long can we spare from the Work?”
“With our newfound stability? Thirty minutes a day.”
Thirty minutes a day with a war now brewing in the north.
“They will need some time to prepare the ships,” she reasoned. “What of diplomatic means?”
“A most scalding invective has been transmitted to Waves.”
“Casus belli?”
“Effectively. The inciting incident can always be found after the fact.”
Even should they declare war, the vast sea will oppose them. Twelve days…
“I shall stall them. Give time for their passions to cool.”
Alisandra leaped for Ruhum.
***
The remnants of the Sevensborough Rebellion abandoned the borough shortly before midnight. The bloodthirsty crowds and other misfortunes had claimed many of the last defenders, and less than fifty escaped into the fields. Ten with the wagon and horses abandoned the rest, and the leftovers struck east on foot along a hopeless road.
Behind, Sevensborough burned.
The procession marched in silence, praying for the light of the trucks.
“There!” called someone in delight, spotting distant headlights headed west.
“Stormmother save us!” muttered his fellow.
“What’s left of us,” answered another from the anonymity of the dark.
The lights grew closer, resolving into one…two…five…ten….twenty heavy vehicles…
“Oh, hells.”
“Leave it to Briarwood to sweep in once the hard work’s done!”
“Gripe later, you morons! Into the ditch and your heads down!”
They hurried into the weeds and hunkered.
“You know they’re gonna hear about us and turn right around.”
“You have a better idea?!”
A crack of lightning hit the top of Woodhaven in the distance.
“Oh, thank the Stormmother,” whispered the Azure faithful.
Then, a few moments later, another bolt drove into the center of Sevensborough – the heart of the flames.
Where bodies dangled from short ropes and tall light poles.
Flickers of lightning flared into the clouds, arced to the horizon and back, and then a torrential rain burst across Mel.
Briarwood’s heavy trucks slowed, only a hundred paces away from the hunkered Rebellion, and stunned soldiers peered out from their seats at the torrent.
“Tempest, hear our need,” prayed the Azure faithful.
Lightning split the road, and the Tempest stared coldly into the pale headlights of Briarwood trucks.
“Ah,” she hissed, rime slowly creeping out from where she stood. “The military deigns to join the fray at last.”
“Holy hells, it’s the Tempest!” a soldier cried.
“Astute as ever, too.” Despite her placid expression, her halo crackled against the air. Glancing into the ditch, she jerked her chin towards the convey. “You require transport, correct?”
Her faithful leaped to their feet. “Y-yes, holy Tempest!”
“Why were your prayers so quiet?” she asked – though they could not tell if she asked the stars or her faithful.
Greeted by the sudden intrusion of several dozen heretics, the soldiers–
Bolts of lightning slammed into the road before the Briarwood soldiers, hurling the front line backwards.
“I will ask again. Why did you not call for me?” the Tempest reiterated.
“W-we prayed, of course! Every day!”
“And we corresponded with Aaliyah in the Cathedral, of course!”
“And Oliver, he–”
“Is Oliver among the dead?” she interrupted.
“N-no, holy Tempest! Wounded, but he and your Wavespeaker are safe in the Cathedral now!”
“Then I will speak with him when time permits.”
By now the temperature across the entire fields had dropped enough for the men to see their breath, and the torrent over Mel continued unabated.
“For the moment…” She regarded the Briarwood soldiers. “Move aside.”
What possessed a man to choose a moment like that for courage? For whatever reason, the sergeant stiffened his spine. “No good man of Ruhum will ever surrender an inch to a false god! Men, forward!”
The Tempest tilted her head to the side, regarding the sergeant.
His men gripped their rifles hesitantly.
“Men. Forward,” she mulled.
A crack of lightning, and she stood atop the truck bed with the sergeant dangling from one hand over the tailgate.
“Yet your own feet remain firmly planted.”
The soldiers around the duo dropped their weapons and leaped out of the truck.
“You call for the good men of Ruhum – but tell me, Sergeant.”
Her fingers tightened.
“Was Boucher a good man?”
Something snapped, and the sergeant went limp.
The Tempest tossed his body into the weeds. “I have always detested the easy bravado of the officer. How easy to spend others’ lives! Hark! Today your sergeant leads by example. Who shall follow?”
Briarwood’s soldiers surrendered their vehicles.
She turned to her Azure faithful. “When you arrive at the Cathedral, you will inform Oliver that I require an explanation. If you face further difficulties, you will call for me. Is this understood?”
“Yes, holy Tempest!”
Wiping the stain of the sergeant on a stray bit of tarp, the Tempest spared one last warning glance at Briarwood and vanished in another bolt of lightning.
***
The rain hammered on every tilted room in smoldering Sevensborough, and Alisandra gently lowered Boucher’s corpse to rest in a row beside the others.
Greenleaf she knew. Boucher she knew. The others…
There was not enough left of most of these bodies for a positive identification.
“Why did you not call?” she whispered to the bodies.
To empty mortal shells, their spark slipped free for the Black Gate.
“What is the point of a Tempest you will not call?!” she demanded.
Rain drumming on her halo in self-recrimination.
“Why…”
Why would Oliver choose this?!
Kneeling beside Boucher, she yearned to stoke her black rains – harder and heavier until Ruhum sank under the deluge.
Instead, she leaned forward and closed Boucher’s one remaining eye with shivering fingers.
A single moment
A single lapse
And away they slip
Her shaking hand squeezed Boucher’s dirtied lapel. Even a gentle touch dented the metal beneath her fingertip.
“I have failed you,” she confided, “but your sacrifice will be honored.”
Let this be fuel for the Work. Let every life lost to this insanity lay at the Wyrm’s feet.
Fighting the urge to whisper sod it and drown them all, Alisandra stilled her overflowing heart.
The rains ceased.
As the last drip fell, it spoke in Sebastian’s voice: Archangel, the Work requires attention.
“Where is my Spear?”
The droplets answered: Young Valkyrie assists in the evacuation. She does not require your assistance at this time.
“And what of the Witness that reveals only that which suits his purpose? That surely Witnessed Boucher’s suffering and offered no word?”
When the Work is finished, Archangel
He shall labor for his sins in the gaol
And when even that duty shall end?
Do with him as you please
For a fraction of a second, she fought the urge to demonstrate her thinking to him now.
No – no, that is not how Father would act. Quieter, that practical whisper: And we still need him for the Work.
So instead, like a great ship turning against the waves, she tucked her black recrimination deep inside and leaped once more for the Bones.
For the Archangel she had to be – for everyone who still lived.