Foundations imposed certain limitations.
Man might contemplate the limits of his time and ask, “Why seventy years? Why not seven hundred?” He would be left pondering in silence, deaf to the answers shouted by the very stars.
Yet the Archangel could press her fingers into the aether and feel the bars of this Cage.
Time – inexorable river, tugging merciless at every strand.
Fortune – ever contrary, laying strands of happenstance across the path.
Freedom…
Let no binding be eternal
Freedom that she secretly yearned would rise against her.
Instead, she heard echoes of the self-righteous from troublesome Ruhum – once her home, now a foreign place…
“What do you mean they turned back? Two tanks and thirty men against–”
That would be Angela Cecille with such fury in her voice, berating Briarwood commanders like schoolboys.
“…then take their food supply! Or take five hundred men and lay waste to Walter!”
Authority by the whispered name of God – such a brittle thread – mortal works always were.
“…and I don’t want to see you again until you have Oliver Oshton and Belle Osh in handcuffs!”
Petty little dreams of public executions.
“Hells, Margaret wouldn’t have bungled this…”
How brave she was, high in her tower, ordering forth troops to match her maps.
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To slaughter and be slaughtered while she takes her tea
Would not the world be better without such commanders?
“Please focus, Archangel,” the Witness asked. Not Sebastian. Not here. Here he was a shimmer of thought wreathed in Song…
From this vantage, Alisandra beheld Cecille as a fetid nexus of connections. So many fragile threads linked together by her command: military, civil, religious…
The Grand Inquisitor’s echoes rose loud and clear to Alisandra’s hearing.
Time to fetch that little harlot’s friends and put them to iron
She will come when they squeal
“Archangel?”
“Hold the weave a moment, Witness.”
***
Hunched at her desk, Angela rubbed at her face. Everything left undone in Margaret’s absence piled before her, and the deacons chose today of all days to press their concerns about that damned radio jockey still spouting his drivel on rogue airwaves…
Pigs in their trough braying over mud.
Pressing her fingertips into her eyelids, she saw stars. Then the windows rattled, and she realized she could see those stars through her closed eyelids.
Through her fingers, the bones outlined by radiance.
“Hello, Angela.”
A heartbeat later, the Tempest wake ruptured the windows and hurled Angela across the room.
The impact alone sentenced her to death; she hit the unyielding edge of her hardwood bookshelf and heard her own bones breaking.
Alisandra Mishkan – her nemesis and quarry – stepped over the ruins of her desk and drew the Hand of God.
“Let us share the final honor of sparing us both a charade,” the heretic goddess stated. “I will recite your crimes if you wish. We shall skip the trial; any council of five would damn you.”
And is this not the balance of life?
You ever so kindly spared me and mine the trouble of the jury
A favor repaid in kind
The Blade hissed like one of Briarwood’s turbine experiments, sucking in the air like a great, hungry breath.
Angela bit her lips, trying to hold her last gasp against its demand. “Of course…of course…”
In dying, the Inquisitor saw clearly.
The source of the impurity at last revealed
Alisandra Mishkan
Terror of the Black Depths
Tempest Ascendant
“You may call me a terror, but how many lives would you have thrown in my path to forward your evil ambitions?”
Shivering in her last moments, Angela Cecille managed a sardonic smile.
Her admission of guilt.
All of them
Then the Hand of God swept up, filled her vision, filled her world, and sent her home to meet her son.