Administrator Johns oversaw the expansive Bureau of Clerkship. Its mandate encompassed the composition of texts in accordance with the will of the Conclave: no more and more less.

In less polite terms, Johns’ clerks turned the drunken scrawl of the nobility into functional legal code.

Though this required a certain exercise in discretion, Administrator Johns strove to remain a neutral arbiter on behalf of the Regency. He thus looked askance upon the requests from various Houses to meet in the confines of their plush estates and insisted that any visitors should come to his modest office on the southeast corner of the Conclave square.

Today, he fumed to find that Lady Mishkan blew past her appointment by a full half-bell!

When she finally arrived, her hair still wet from a leisurely shower, she merely offered a curtsy and a statement, “My apologies.”

Scowling, Johns already resolved to rebut her every proposal. This was still a nation of laws!

“Let us move directly to the point,” the Lady stated.

“Of course.”

“I want to fund your department.”

Johns laughed. “Plant your spies among my clerks? I think not!”

“The funds will be entirely at your discretion.”

Baffled, the Administrator shook his head. “There is always a catch, Lady Mishkan. Do me the honor of acknowledging that much.”

“The catch is that your bureau will be more effective with proper funding. The Conclave has yet to pass a Spring budget and remains unlikely to do so. If you must downsize, you will lose decades of institutional competence. Believe me – I am well aware how difficult it is to rebuild competence in the aftermath.”

A patter of fine words from a vixen! he decided. Her flow of money would be the hook by which to drag him under and subvert the Conclave. Her finger would land on every bill without a single vote!

His job was to clarify the Conclave’s intent, not to mint new meaning. Certain laws might be odious, but he would not see his department politicized!

However, Johns recognized the displeasing necessity of avoiding an offense. House Mishkan could be a potent enemy, and so he chewed a careful response.

As he pondered, the Lady Mishkan waited, hands clasped patiently.

“Lady Mishkan…” he began.

Until the moment a ripple ran through the air, and her gaze whipped east.

She bared her fangs.

“…I would…”

One moment, Lady Mishkan awaited his rejection.

The next, he lay amidst wreckage of his furniture and papers, his head ringing with an explosion that rattled his soul.

Staggering to his feet, he almost fell into a pit carved straight into the depths of the earth.

***

For I am Jörmungandr, dread Wyrm, blight upon the stars!

Words like the call of destiny, summoning the Archangel to righteous war.

The rancid bureaucrat before her fell away. Her plans for the Conclave faded.

The moment she dreaded; the moment she dreamt; arrived.

She stepped straight down through foundation and stone, banked in the depths, and drew her Blade amidst the searing heat.

“Cursed, despised, I am–”

She oriented herself skywards by the Wyrm’s foul stink and lunged.

The Archangel blew between Oliver’s feet and drove the Wyrm into the sky, Blade deep in Lee’s belly.

“Why am I not surprised?” she growled, twisting the hilt. The Wyrm finds his perfect candidate in a fallen Lord. Of course he would pick a reflection of me!

The Wyrm coughed, spitting Lee’s blood. “Clever little pet you have!”

She knew better than to rely on a sword through the gut. She yanked the Hand of God free, eliciting a grunt from the Wyrm.

Together they soared, outbound. The clouds and the air grew thin, and the stars faded into view.

Clearing the firmament, Alisandra kicked Lee towards the barren moon.

The void sang placidly around them, a thousand-fold chorus of uncaring stars.

Finish him before he wakes! Alisandra recited.

The grief of Lumia lending weight to her intent.

For all we lost! For all we mourn!

The Hand of God unfolding once more, stretching its golden filaments in winding fractals up her arm.

“One strike to finish it!” she prayed – may the Chorus hear!

Archangel Ascendant

Angel of Valor

She who will stand against the Dark!

“Nice to see you again,” the Wyrm laughed through Lee’s lips. His fingers floated through the mist of blood, beginning to weave some foul trick.

I will not give you that chance!

Alisandra gathered herself – Halo and Hand and thundering drums – and struck the Wyrm with all her fury.

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Drove him into the moon, drove the Blade deep, sought his black-hearted core…

Lee’s voice, not the Wyrm, rose in an agonized yowl up through her Blade. All the agony of dying; none of the release of death.

Mortal pain caught her by surprise, and she flinched from singular purpose.

Her blow tore across the moon, raising a sea of dust. Somewhere in the swirl, Lee’s mind evaporated, and she came to a stop on dead stone.

Beneath her boot, the corpse of a mortal man pulverized beyond recognition.

Mere meat.

Behind her, the Serpent laugh. “Straight to the heart of the matter today. Very well. Let us exult in power, Archangel! Kings among kings, the Mighty undiminished! Shall we war for eternity?”

Alisandra leaped from her crater, surfaced above the cloud, and sought any sign of her foe. Wary now, she steeled herself for the long, hard way forward.

So much for opening with my strongest attack.

Seeking the Wyrm, she asked, “What was that trick with the ghost?”

“Ghost?” rumbled the Wyrm from the cloud of dust. He cracked his neck, and the cloud shivered with every wet snap.

My halo sensed him beneath Shadow. It will sense him here.

But even as she focused, she felt the gap between this fight and Lumia. The incandescent singularity of her mind in that moment versus all the plans and fears swirling in her now.

“Seems I’m not the only sleepy one today, o’ Archangel. That was no ghost. Only just arrived and you wanted to see me buried! Naturally, I threw Lee’s mind in your way. See, the soul claims what’s gold, or at least that’s what your Chorus has to say. Ever wonder what happens to the rest?”

Even as he chatted, his echoes mocked her.

You’d have had me but for that foolish mercy

Would you stay your Hand for a bubble of left-over ego?

Gonna be a hard fight if you stop for every pebble on the road

“I am here for you alone,” she replied. Just the two of us.

Though she worried for this battlefield. One strike gouged the moon; two would break it entirely. Would her mother’s influence maintain the tides? How long would she have before the fragments fell?

She might draw him into the void, but their blows would hurtle through space for unknown shores.

Father chose a dead world, and I shall do the same. A stony tomb to absorb our wrath while I seek my opening.

Being dead rock, the nearest planetary neighbors were difficult to hear. She had meant to map them but never found the time, and now she was left to act on little but the memory of her and her father’s brief spat with the Wyrm.

Which returned her to the moment when her father had pushed her out of the way…

Her halo throbbed in pain, and the echo pulsed sharply enough to billow away the lunar curtain.

Reformed, the Serpent posed for her atop the cracked edge of their new crater. He assumed the form of a mile-long snake, black scales throbbing with pinpricks of fire and ash, buoyed by a single wing of shadow.

“Take heart, Archangel,” he praised, flaring his one wing. “You tore from me the other. Shaped what I was and what I become.”

We war with all we are

Immortal and indefatigable

Let us evolve beyond every star

“Still…you seemed stronger before,” he pondered, turning his head back and forth so that she might admire his jagged jawline. “Do not hesitate now! Would you risk your dear home for a vituperative lordling?”

“The taste was unpleasant. You mimicked his reek well.”

Jörmungandr laughed! “Mimicked? Ah, dear sister, where are my manners? I should explain myself properly. I forget how young you are!”

The Serpent surged forward, fast as lightning even with that bulk. She parried his bite, but the force still sent her tumbling backwards through space.

Hells, he wakes fast!

“Attend the lesson! Mortal body, mortal mind, immortal soul. The Black Gate sings, and the flesh rots. What of the mind between?”

He slithered through space at terrible speed and struck with his tail, its tip blazing with celestial heat.

She parried, arms ringing.

“The soul must flee the Gate, but it must reclaim its harvest first. The fragments of gold won by such earnest penance must be sucked from the marrow!”

She stepped three times, circling him, and kicked his coils back to the moon.

“Though one must wonder: does the immortal soul wake from sleep salivating to devour the highlight reel from the mind? Or does it grimace at the foul infliction of polluted memories?”

He is focused on me. Thus, she could lead him afield.

Oliver had the right of it: keep the bastard talking.

“Regardless, if the mind lays between, it must tilt towards heaven or earth – and a mind like Lee’s…” he laughed. “Let’s just say that soul went home empty-handed.”

Alisandra filed his words away from an analysis once the Wyrm lay back in Reverie.

Time to pull him to a safer arena.

She prepared a step.

But this fight came with echoes of her own. As she sought, she heard her own raw scream.

Daddy!

She arrived at the dead planet from their last war. The scar of that last encounter still throbbed, the planet cracked with a web of volcanos like scar tissue venting gases into the cold of space.

Following, the Wyrm caught her square in the back and smashed her into that scar.

“Looking to warm-up among the memories?” His eye glinted. “Or were you hoping a dead world would keep your own safe?”

You could have just asked

I can be quite reasonable

Kicking him away, the air reverberating with the failure that had cost her father’s life, she snarled, “Perhaps I will ask you to tear out your own heart and spare me the trouble!”

Jörmungandr grinned. “And deprive you of the pleasure?! Ah, Ali, why make a liar of your tongue? In that moment, as you struck true, did it feel like trouble? Or did you – for one shining moment! – feel unbound by every shackle?”

Her plans already wobbled towards ruin. Though she had played this encounter a thousand times in her head, the Wyrm adapted at shocking speed – and she had yet to land a real blow.

Remember your priorities, she told herself. Keep him away from people. Keep him away from Mother until she can finish her Work. If it takes a God-damned season to put him down, we spend that season. As long as we can keep his attention.

Her father had greeted the Wyrm by cutting off his head. The wisest course! Hells, why did she flinch the first strike?!

Archangel and Valor

I must persevere!

“Persevere?” sang Jörmungandr, tapping his tail. “You stink of their tiny minds, Archangel Alisandra Mishkan. Have you truly spent these years dutifully tucking yourself back beneath the covers? Burying the moment that sings from your unearthed Blade?!”

The Hand of God vibrated in her hands like an open power line.

Keep talking.

He shook his head. “Oh dear, oh dear. If I had realized you would backslide this far, I would have roused years ago! We really do need to shake things–”

Pouring heart and soul into her arms, Alisandra gripped the Hand of God by both hands and cut downwards.

To take the Wyrm and the planet in one.

So that he might sleep until the dust congealed!

Her strike cut the world in half.

It separated slowly, like a man not yet aware he was dead, with tender filaments of dust and fire rising from its wound.

And the laughing Serpent caught her in the ribs with his bony tail.

His blow shuddered through her body, mirror to the planet below, and the drums only rang the heartbeat after – as she spun wildly away from the cracking planet.

“You are sleepy,” he chided. “Perhaps a contest of speed is in order! Warm those limbs up!”

Then he slammed her from behind. Again, the instant before the drums!

“Too reliant on the echoes of blood by far,” he whispered in her ear.

Alisandra whirled, slashing after him.

To her eyes, she cut through his neck.

But the Blade tasted only afterimage, and she barely parried his next strike from above.

Head-on, she could absorb any of those blows. From any direction, before the drums could even sound?!

A flicker of electric fear teased up her spine, powerful as the feel of his searing tail.

This was no little biter, chewing on her Light like a termite on a mountain. This was the Wyrm, his nature mirror to her own.

Angel against angel.

She was the stronger, but he was ancient and clever.

I can lose this.

“Come! Let us outrace the hands of Time herself!”

Six leisurely swats from the Serpent bounced her through the shuddering surface of the breaking sphere and out the other side.

She barely felt the rock, the pressure, the lava. They were dreams, suggestions, echoes and fog.

Each crashing blow of the Serpent’s tail, though…

That was real. As real as her own Light.

Jörmungandr flickered back into view, blunt head on his coils. “Let’s keep it simple. First one to the goal…”

His one wing pointed into the dark of space.

“…gets to choose who lives and who dies.”

Alisandra snarled. “You bast–”

The Wyrm’s after-image already began to fade.

An echoing laugh through the astral lighting his trail.

Swearing, Alisandra cast a glance at the wreckage of the sphere beneath her.

I will make you proud, Father

I swear it

The Archangel chased.