Page 1 of Angel in Absentia
CHAPTER 1
THE HEART OF LODA
HE FOREST OF Shambelin had always been the subject of poetry and song. The woods were rumored figments of the Warlord of Shambelin’s army, spawning claims that a carpet of bones could be seen in the roots of its overturned trees. Totems of civilization long-passed stood like twisted memorials of a war too brutal to be truly captured in the pages of history. In more ways than one, the woods were echoes of the past, and as they closed in on the last cities, those echoes crested against the receding islands of mankind’s future.
In such a way, time seemed to go in reverse, history aching to repeat itself, cycling back to a time when mankind no longer existed at all. The beginning and the end were circular, and Clea strained like a vice, connecting both pieces to each other, feeling the tension of time through the very core of her soul.
She didn’t always feel it, but today of all days, the idea arrested her. At the end of a historic victory, here she was, in some semblance of a beginning again.
She drew off her helmet, long strands of caramel hair sticking and straining, welcoming the coolness of the air on her sweaty scalp. The heavy helmet hung from her sun-darkened fingers as she ran her other hand through her hair, tipping her chin to a pink and yellow sky before looking over her shoulder to see those same colors reflected on Loda’s walls.
This was the historical end of a year and a half of planning and strategizing that ultimately included a nine-month campaign through the forests. This was the end of countless grueling days and nights of training, debates, arguments, heated battles, and heart-wrenching losses.
Every risk they’d taken that felt uncertain and painful had at last solidified into a victory.
It was over.
Looking at the walls and standing in the vast might of their stature, she remembered clamoring toward them almost two years ago. She’d clung to them like a refugee, broken, famished, exhausted, unsure, and afraid.
Today, she’d greet them as a hero with the strength of the Lodain Golden Army at her back and thousands of Virdain refugees in tow.
Something deep and important inside her chaffed at the notion of being a hero, but she coated it over with the balm of fresh victory, hoping it would let her mind rest at last.
“Your Highness, it’s time to gather the refugees,” Dae said from behind her, every word hammered and polished against an anvil of proper annunciation despite the boiling tide of exhaustion and excitement she knew he felt.
Dae was a statue of a man, a shadow at her back, and always poised without the faintest hint of expression or exhaustion. This was the end of his second night without sleep, but he remained the picture of the perfected Lodain soldier. Tall and strong-bodied with a broad face that captured her city’s strength, his cool blue eyes reflecting the iron of its will.
Clea wrestled her helmet back on. Dae was naturally demanding when she had to pretend to be, and so she rather enjoyed mocking him with impersonation. “Let’s go, slave,” she commanded in his standard tone, the last word quieter, before marching off. He was one of the few who knew her well enough to know that impersonation was exactly what it was.
She thought she almost saw the shy spirit of a smile tug at Dae’s lip. It would qualify as one of three sightings over the last nine months. One had been at a particularly beautiful sunrise when she’d stumbled upon him praying in the early morning, and the other had been after lopping off the heads of two Venennin at once after a lucky swing of a sword blade he’d masterfully blessed with ansra.
She still didn’t know what to make of either smile. Dae was all at once a complicated and simple man.
“Yes, Your Highness,” he replied, and this time she heard the smile in his voice. She smirked to herself and resisted the urge to turn around and glance at it, knowing it would vanish on sight.
She walked ahead of him on wide steps, careful not to appear too eager. It was never recommended as royalty to be spotted rushing anywhere. Her plated boots crunched through the ashen landscape that seemed only darker in the morning light. The forest’s illusion around Loda no longer grew to envelop the forest in the daylight; the illusion was weakening as Loda’s hope grew.
Clea gathered followers who saw them heading toward the gate, carving a snaking path through the trees and avoiding the young, green patches of life.
New life had finally begun to grow again. The deep forests were still saturated with cien, but around Loda, and by the radiance of its Veilin, life had struggled forth once again.
As they drew closer to the walls, they passed the first small settlements that had been built outside of the city in decades. The settlements had allowed Kalex tribes to nestle against the city walls for safety, the beginnings of tedious alliances.
Clea and a golden river of soldiers formed a protective line around the yawning gates of the city walls. Well-trained and observant, the surrounding soldiers acted with a natural sense of the next formations.
Reflecting the brilliance of the sunrise, they collected at the gates. In their golden armor, some still reinforced with powerful blessings from battle and others reflecting the light of the sun, they looked like ethereal beings around the city walls. Over the last few months, Clea had been amazed to witness firsthand the incredible power of the human being, and as she saw them now, they did look ethereal to her. They waited for the last Virdain refugee to cross the threshold along with the wounded Lodain soldiers.
The air was electric, the city stirred awake by the early commotion outside.
Her eyes moved from Dae to Yvan, a Virdain woman with strong legs and a warrior’s shoulders who had taken a place in the Golden Army since the liberation of Virday from the Venennin siege. Her dark skin was radiant against Lodain gold, and to have a Virdain Veilin dressed in their armor was just as much a sign of victory as it was unity.
Yvan straightened for the ceremony to come, tipping her chin up, perhaps in a fruitless effort to appear taller when Dae towered next to her. Yvan was never beneath competition, no matter how futile.
Clea withheld any expression of emotion as Yvan and Dae kept a practiced distance in the silence, protective ribs guarding her from the rest of the crowd.
Clea’s father had been titled the Walls of Loda to represent its strength, while Clea had been given the title of the Heart of Loda, to represent her people’s resilience. That fact would be further cemented today.
Returning to the city from the forest was a ritual, and the first real step was her own crossing of the city’s threshold. The people on the other side calmed in anticipation, and slowly, she walked forward, the metallic shift of her movements loud in the sea of quiet around her.
