Piety

After a visit to a human channeler and two weeks in rehabilitation, Dackorec Seraph feels like a new man.

Perhaps not “new”, upon careful consideration. Back to normal, certainly. In any case, his wings work again and that is something. A blessing amid various disasters.

First there had been the humans’ raid on his lovely battleship, resulting in the deaths of several of his soldiers, the crippling of several more, and the ultimate destruction of said battleship. How could five children be so destructive? Heathens all.

And of course, the shame of his own contribution to the ship’s defense. Dackorec winces privately every time he recalls his combat with the strange white-haired human girl. He is a proud, capable Seraph man, really in the prime of his life and his faith, and that skinny little girl, sickly really, had very nearly bested him with her little knives. Only a desperate, brutal swing had broken her defense and knocked her out.

And then, thinking to use the girl as a hostage, he’d held her aloft and called for the other humans to cease their assault… and the next thing he’d known, the big one with the blue glow had cast a bolt of light and Dackorec had come perilously close to plummeting into the ocean. Of course he’d dropped the girl, and the destruction of his breastplate had broken three of his ribs. Ridiculous.

And he still can’t bring himself to admit what happened with his grand- no, with the Abomination. The half-breed had escaped somehow, from what was supposed to be a permanent prison, and laid waste to the crew with his disgusting, blasphemous shadow magic.

Attempting to intervene, Dackorec had attacked the child himself, only to be embarassed and crippled by the half-breed’s speed and cruelty. What vile promises had the boy made to underworld beasts, that they granted him such unnatural boons?

Witchcraft. Communing with the things of the deep Hells. Punishable by death.

Relaxed somewhat by thoughts of justice, Dackorec rolls out of bed and immediately regrets it, wincing at the pain in his shoulders. His wings still aren’t completely painless, and the channeler who’d healed the breaks had warned him that perhaps he should keep weight off them for a month or so.

As if anyone could go a month without flying. In deference to the humans and Pteros, Seraph places on Fallen were constructed with ladders and walkways, but any proud Seraph still preferred to fly where he could. Flight is a sign of good health, physical fitness, and above all, racial superiority.

No human or Pteros can look at a flying Seraph without feeling jealousy. That makes them less. Dackorec understands this, and uses it to his advantage, exults in the greatness of his race at every opportunity.

And now, to be reduced to walking everywhere, even for a few days… torment on a level with physical torture.

Scowling, he gingerly pulls a tunic over his cramping wings and ties his broad sash, keeping quiet so as not to wake his wife and daughter. His only daughter, as far as anyone knows.

Dackorec stalks down the hallway of his manor house, wrapped around and through a mighty tree, the only way a good Seraph house can be. Parting the curtains at his daughter’s doorway, he looks in on her sleeping form. Twenty-seven, beautiful, and studious, Gael is a paragon of what it means to be a Seraph woman. Dackorec suspects she is courting, and smiles. She’s been seen with a Seraph man, a strong, pious Sergeant in the army. The kind of man his magnificent daughter deserves. Perhaps they will marry, soon.

Leaving his home, feeling invigorated, Dackorec awkwardly decscends the ladder and begins the slow but meditative walk to his office. Producing a handheld screen from his pouch, he begins to flicker through the news, pausing at anything that seems especially heretical or blasphemous. He makes a note of a rather exuberant party in Celestrian City, where a Seraph female, who shouldn’t have been out without a man in the first place, had been detained for lewd conduct.

Celestrian requires his attention, then. Dackorec heaves a sigh and tries to suppress the tremors in his hands, an old tic that seems to plague him whenever he hears about a Seraph girl misbehaving.

Approaching the military district of New Ventrae’Pol, the largest Seraph city on Fallen, Dackorec begins greeting familiar faces with his iconic grim smile. Here is your leader, it seems to imply. Here is a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, who will cleanse the world and help you understand your place in it. Someone actually takes a picture, probably for a news broadcast.

It seems like more people than usual are watching him, this morning. Dackorec feels very slightly uncomfortable, simply because he doesn’t know why. The reason for this uncharacteristic scrutiny becomes obvious just as he reaches his chapel.

He glances down at his screen again and very nearly chokes at the newest headline, big and bold and horrible, fresh from the newsmen in Azuria:

“REBEL THREATENS SERAPH WAY OF LIFE, CLAIMS TO BE GRANDSON OF PROMINENT PRIESTHOOD LEADER!” An icon under the headline reads, “Read More!”.

And there’s a looped video, silent but animated, of Sebastean, the Abomination, speaking calmly and coldly out at the ever-watchful world.

Dackorec sways on the spot, his ears ringing. The communicator in his pouch vibrates and chimes agressively, multiple calls from multiple people, friends and family and superiors calling to ask, is it true? To ask, did your eldest daughter really consort with a Pteros boy? To ask, did she really somehow carry the heathen’s child? To ask, did you really kill her? Did you really murder your own daughter, this Elenor?

His pouch rings with a familiar bit of song, the special tone for Gael.

His hands won’t stop shaking..

* * *

Valentine leans over Sebastean’s shoulder, watching the newsfeed on the wallscreen. “Do you think it’ll really work?”

“Maybe.” Sebastean says with a smirk. “Either way, it’ll make him mad. He’ll come after me, personally. And fall into our trap.”

They turn away from the display, satisfied, and head out onto the deck of Sebastean’s favorite boat, the Elenor. A beautiful, shining airship, named for his lost mother, the Elenor hangs a thousand feet above Fallen’s crystal seas, surrounded on every side by smaller boats, attached by a network of platforms and bridges than can be retracted at a moment’s notice.

Several channelers and a couple dozen fighters mill about the network, busy with the basic maintenance and preparations that go into fighting a war. Sebastean looks around at his little army and smiles. This will do nicely.

“Don’t you think Dackorec might bring more soldiers, more ships than we can handle?” Valentine asks, looking like she’s calculating things in her head, but Sebastean brushes her concerns off.

“We don’t have an upper limit. And anyway, with what we’ve got planned, the bigger of a fleet he commands, the better.”

They make their way below the Elenor, where a small, flat boat hangs suspended several meters lower than all the others. The Anglerfish is barely larger than a fishing boat, with no interior spaces and a single canvas awning, but it serves a very important purpose on this mission.

As Valentine and Sebastean watch, a channeler who calls himself Limit takes a seat on the Anglerfish and makes himself comfortable. The girl who he’s relieving, another channeler named Stacia, heads up the ramp and past the pair, looking exhausted.

Limit closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them, golden light shines from his usually dull irises. The light brightens more and more, and with an almost-visible pulse, silent thunder, Limit’s channeling reaches a peak. The air around his body takes on a similarly golden glow, his hair seems to float on a breeze that isn’t there, and his arms and legs flex as though with great effort.

Far, far below, the waves churn. Noticing this, Valentine looks curiously at Sebastean, and he answers her question before she asks it.

“Evan mentioned something to me a couple weeks ago, that the sea monsters seem drawn to channeling. I’ve been posting people down here for a few hours a day, just to draw those things to us. At this rate, we’ll have hundreds of them by Friday.”

“What’s on Friday?”

“That’s when Dackorec will show up. And we’ll have a lovely display of aquatic wildlife waiting for him.” Sebastean grins devilishly and heads back up the ramp.

Valentine looks down at the twisting maelstrom of gigantic sea creatures, and shudders. Leave it to Sebastean to involve those terrors in his battle plan.

But how on earth are they supposed to help, all the way up here?

She shakes her head. Sebastean apparenly knows what he’s doing. It’s best to trust him, of course. And nobody can doubt that if he claims he can do something, he’ll do it.

Giving the monsters, and Limit, a last look, Valentine follows Sebastean up the ladder. Only three days left to prepare.

* * *

Evan stirs at the sound of wings, leaping out from under the blanket and pulling on his absurd poncho, already channeling when he sprints out into the early morning. Looking around for soldiers, ready to fight, he drops his guard at the sight of Kari, leading a group of Seraph men in dark clothes. Feeling sheepish, he lets the power drain away, hoping the people from Providence haven’t seen how paranoid he is.

He looks back into the wreck, wondering if Aelia is awake. After a night of confusing conversation, they’d slept together on her amorphous blob, under a tattered blanket he’d found in one of the crates. He’d held her hand until they fell asleep, but as usual he’d shifted around in his sleep to the point where he was just thankful that he hadn’t hurt her.

Sure enough, his display of aggressive defense has her awake and confused.

“What’s the matter, Evan?”

“Nothing. Kari’s back with help. Ready to go?”

“Just a minute,” Aelia replies, eyes lighting up with a dim blue glow. The blob mattress shimmers and flops into regular old water, splashing and soaking into the ground. “Don’t want to leave any evidence that we survived.”

“Good thinking,” Evan says, as the delegation from Providence lands, Kari in the lead. Eight rather malnourished-looking Seraph men in black, baggy pajamas, (reminiscent of the ones Vietnamese men wore, Evan recalls,) and one haggard twenty year old human girl with dust-covered clothes, greasy orange hair, and an expression of deep frustration. The gray light fades from her eyes and she looks ready to bite someone’s head in half.

“Hello,” Evan says to the Seraphs, looking oddly at Kari. What’s her problem?

One of the men, with a large metal ornament on a chain around his neck, steps forward. “Blessing of the Gods upon you, human. We thank the Gods for your timely arrival, and for the mighty gifts that allowed you to triumph over those unholy creatures. Truly you are the answer to our prayers.”

Evan suddenly appreciates Kari’s irritated expression. “Well… we answered the distress call, anyway. I don’t know about any prayers.”

The Seraphs smile at him, patronizing, and one of them brings forward a bundle of black cloth. “We were told you had nothing decent to wear, so we brought you a gift. Our garments are one-size, so we trust you will be comfortable.”

Grateful for something to wear, Evan quickly pulls on the black, loose-fitting pants and ties the drawstring. “We ought to get back to your village, sir.”

“Please, call me Naerim. There’s no call for formality.”

“Great, Naerim, I’m Evan North. Like I said, we need to head for your town, talk to some people, set up some kind of defense. Those things will be back, tonight I think.”

“Oh, we know. Every sunset. It’s been terrible. Only by the grace and mercy of the Gods have any of us survived.”

Evan bites back a question about the mercy of the Gods, realizing a theological debate isn’t going to get him anywhere. Luckily, Kari speaks up.

“One problem, Evan. There isn’t a village.”

“What?!”

“Oh no,” Naerim interjects, “The village was destroyed several nights ago. Thank the Gods, nearly everyone got away in time. Since then we’ve basically been moving from field to field.”

“I spent all night trying to find these dopes,” Kari mutters, hopefully so the men can’t hear.

Evan and Aelia share a look of horror, and Aelia regards the apparent leader with an expression of disgust. “So you’re what, all sleeping in tents?”

“Mostly. The females, and our children of course. We men generally stay out on open ground. There’s no proper homes, you see, no marital beds, so it really wouldn’t be right to sleep beside our wives.”

“But you’re still married,” Evan protests, confused.

“And I love my wife dearly. But there are right ways of doing things, as you must be aware. So, shall we show you to the camp? We can plan a course of action, now that you are here. Thank the Gods.”

Evan doesn’t reply, only nods affirmation, and the group begins the long trudge across ruined dirt.

This is going to be a long rescue mission.