Page 4 of Angel in Absentia
Clea blocked with the long dagger clasped across her forearm, her own sword lying amongst the rubble next to her fallen comrades. Another stroke from a heavy blade and the supernatural strength that drove it sent her stumbling back as it scraped across her armored elbow and crushed the earth beside her. Her side was bleeding, sliced open at the start of the ambush.
Bodies slumped like dolls around them among the ruins where Clea’s officers had receded for protection. She dodged the body of a gouged Venennin, seared marks from a blessed sword blade already rotting over his chest.
The familiar, green-eyed Venennin was hunting her, deeply wounded by the skirmish moments ago. Cacivus was his name. He knew hers, though they’d never exchanged them formally. Dressed in the dimpled black armor of the Iscad Venennin Kingdom, he’d been a key enemy in the campaign to salvage the city of Virday from total annihilation. His desperate attempt to kill her on her army’s return to Loda had landed them here, finding solace in the ancient ruins of King Kartheen’s Castle, the only formidable structure for miles.
Cacivus lashed his weapon at her again, his black armor glossed with blood, his eyes fierce, his body a cien-infested machine with every intent to lop off her head. There seemed to be no innate advantage in being a Veilin. No superior senses. No instantly healing bodies. No extended life spans, but Veilin had one powerful thing above the enemy.
Clea threw one hand forward, ushering a blessing of expulsion from her hands and dispelling the cien around her just as Cacivus prepared to swing again. Cien was expelled from his bones, his skin, his muscles, weakening him for a moment.
The Venennin, accustomed to the privilege of great strength, was robbed of it for a moment, and he miscalculated, swinging too slow. He swung slow like a trainee, a new fighter, a man all at once transformed into a fledgling warrior again, and in that moment, she struck.
She readied her weapon with a blessing and drove her body forward, nearly slipping in a pool of blood as she dodged his swing and plunged her dagger into his leg through a gap in his armor. Cacivus stumbled back and took her with him, grabbing her body and slinging her across the rubble and over the bodyof her fallen general. She rolled over the ash and staggered up, blood seeping through her side as she clutched her wound.
They watched each other for the briefest moment, and she saw a look in his eyes she’d seen before. Surprise. They all looked that way, when despite all of their years of living, all of their power, a single blast from ansra made them human again for just a moment, and in that very moment where they had to compensate, they did it too slowly.
She wondered then if he thought back on the lack of discipline that permeated a Venennin’s life because they thought they had so much of it. They had so much of everything, when every day for the last year she’d trained for the mere possibility of a moment such as this one and had risked death so often it felt natural to be so close to it now.
Venennin had so many advantages, but they did not carry the burdens of life, not until a moment like this one.
She saw the faintest flicker in the man’s eyes, his wound gushing as cien could not heal it. He sank down to his knees.
“Well played,” he said, his voice a steely rasp. It was the first time she’d heard the man speak, a strange sensation after knowing so much about him, and there was an acknowledgment in his words when both of them seemed to recognize that in the chaotic slew of warfare, any outcome was still possible no matter the preparation of each party.
This time, she’d been well prepared, but she’d also been lucky, and the cost of victory had still been heavy.
He collapsed forward and died. Suddenly, she was alone among the corpses, the faint rattle of battle beyond the hillside still ringing in the air.
Wincing, she rolled back against the nearest broken column, straining up as she clenched her teeth. Her body still trembled with adrenaline. Her eyes glanced in the direction of Achor’s corpse, an unrecognizable bundle of carnage. A beloved comrade. In such a small army, they all were, but Achor had been a general, a partner in the heated debates of the war tent.
A heated statement he’d made the night before echoed through her:
The Iscads are dead. The Belgears are next. The Virads. The Ashana. We’ll take them all. No matter the cost.
Her legs filled with the urge to run out of sheer passion to dispel the feelings churning in her gut. She hoisted herself from the column, wincing as she drew a sword from the carnage. She took it, turning back toward the field of battle, looking, as she always must, untouched.
She took in the sight of the Golden Army finishing the battle beyond the hill of rubble.
The Golden Army was in many ways the soul of the city of Loda. In gold-plated armor, the warriors were five thousand strong. They were ten thousand swords bred in combat, and ten thousand hearts prepared to offer everything to give life to an idea: the future of their people.
When sunrise sparked through the heavy hang of night, their armor ignited and the Golden Army came alive like ten thousandscales of a dragon, breathing fire and heat through the forests of Shambelin that had once dominated the continent.
On this early morning, those flames raged with every flash of a sword blade and brilliant burst of ansra energy that cast the darkness back. The sun and the army were kindred forces, and just as the Lodain people worshiped the sun, by the dawn, the sun seemed to bless the army that reflected its presence.
Forest beasts receded back through the trees like a black tide, retreating from the smoldering battlefield of dancing wind and smoke. Sweat steamed through Clea’s armor, her heavy breath white and crisp in the morning as chaos meandered back into silence.
She waited as the army gathered itself, yielding to a peculiar reverence as collectively the soldiers seemed to recognize the finality of their victory. One by one, they turned their eyes to the hill where she stood, and she could feel the light of the sunrise dancing off her polished armor, catching her just right.
Heart still pounding from the battle, she threw her arm into the sky with the sword blade gleaming. She felt her wound bite and seep, small streams pooling beneath the untouched polish of her armor. She felt faint. Her mind continued to replay the attack that she’d only just survived, but she held fast to the weight of the sword, brandishing it just as she brandished the sword of her symbolism.
A series of raised arms and boisterous cheering washed the forests with noise that had its own light. It moved through the trees like a cleansing, laying to rest thousands of screams from thousands of victims of the forests’s tyranny over the last centuries of darkness.
She felt the pulsing blood of her people move through her. She was the heart, the channel, and having embraced her role as a symbol, she was no longer a slave to it. Now she wielded it, the sword in her hand, the image of an untouchable body, the legend of having come back from the dead, of having destroyed the Deadlock Medallion.
Even reflecting back, she was painfully aware that while Dae had crushed foes and Yvan had built walls of unparalleled splendor, beyond being a symbol, her greatest victory was simply in staying alive. She avoided thinking of the inadequacy of it, knowing that such thoughts had been her driving force since she’d survived the forest a year ago. Feelings of inadequacy had carved every inch of her success, and she bore the feeling like a brand, driving her onward.
Catagard’s next words pulled her into the present again for the final time and the meeting continued on.
They had accomplished the impossible, but this was still only the beginning.
