by Billy Wong
"Wait," Blackbird asked Colt, "do you know where the angels get their power from? If you answer and I think you're lying, then I'll kill you."
"T-they get it from God, where else do you think?"
She let him sweat under her gaze for a bit before finally turning away. "Time to hunt angels?
Henry touched her scarred face. "Is this really okay with you? We've been relying so much on you, but if you don't want to do it..."
"Sometimes I've pondered if this isn't really my fight. Before meeting you I hadn't killed many people, and now I've slaughtered dozens of times more. It's a bit disconcerting to think I came back to society just to kill. But it's fine. Uncle Pete never hurt anyone, all he wanted was to help mankind and look what the church did. They shouldn't go unpunished for that. Plus, you and Andrew are the people I care about most in the world. So I'm riding this wagon with you to the end, because... we're friends."
"We're nakama," he said.
She smiled. "And together... we will bring down the church and make a better future!
"Hope you all aren't too squeamish when it comes time to study that angel's body, though."
Chapter 9
They decided not to go all the way back to Septapolis yet, and instead gather information in the riverside town five miles west of the shrine first. Maybe there were angels stationed close by that they could target. Some people seemed to recognize or suspect who they were while they asked around, but nobody attacked them. Probably some church doubters sympathized, while everyone else just feared the demon. They heard the Angel of Wind had been replaced while the ones of Flame and Earth hadn't, but didn't learn of any conveniently located nearby.
Blackbird came up with a different plan. "Since Colt and friends are sure to inform their superiors of our visit, why not wait and see if they send an angel?"
"That sounds like it might take a while," Kara pointed out.
Henry said, "No, probably not. The church must be on alert with regard to us, and they have various means of fast communication like messenger birds and those rumored 'Eyes of God.' And once they get the report, it should be a high priority to come after us." He looked at Blackbird. "My concern is, what if too many come for even you to handle?"
"I don't think they'll send that many for now," Andrew replied. "People we talked to are already doubting the angels because Blackbird keeps killing them, remember? It would be a blow to the church's reputation to admit it takes several angels to beat a single 'demon' that looks like a small girl, so I bet they'll first try to bring her down with one or two of their best at a time maybe backed up by some grunts."
"And if there are too many for me to take head on, we'll think of something else. Divide and conquer? If anything, you guys can pitch in." After all they'd let her face alone, Henry welcomed her idea.
They left town and hid out in the forest, using high treetops as vantage points to keep an eye on happenings in town. Eventually a group of five church knights showed up on horseback, four of them familiar. "That's Lucius," Andrew said, "and the men who were with him before. Looks like they found a replacement for the one who died."
Blackbird looked blankly at him. "Lucius?"
"That angel we told you about who created light blades, and killed the giant turtle. He seemed very powerful."
They couldn't hear what was going on from here, but the group went around talking to people no doubt asking about them. "Should we go for them now?" Kara asked. "If we take them down with witnesses around, that could help us convince the world they aren't so great."
Henry replied, "It could, but I don't think fighting in town's a good idea. Somebody could decide to interfere, and it would more likely be in their favor than ours."
"You're right. I suppose we should wait until they're on the move." The church knights soon headed out in the direction of the shrine. Henry and friends followed. They discussed possibly waiting until the enemy made camp to attack, but if they didn't leave the area right away that might take a while since they could just stay in town. They settled on confronting them before they got to the shrine, if for no other reason than it might save time.
On a flat stretch of road with a hill on one side and trees on the other, Blackbird stepped out in front of the mounted knights, sword held out at her side. "So you're still here," Lucius said calmly. "Where are your friends?"
"They're in hiding. I don't need any help to defeat the likes of you."
"Are you sure about that? I've been wondering about the extent of your abilities."
"Then test them!" She charged. But before she reached the group whose attention was focused on her, three projectiles flew out from the nearby trees. One of the church knights dodged by leaning sideways so that Andrew's crossbow bolt missed his head and another blocked Kara's javelin with a shield, but the chubby older one caught Henry's arrow in his throat. He tumbled gurgling off his horse.
Lucius bared his teeth while Blackbird leapt and cut at him. He jumped backwards off his steed to avoid it. "You said they were in hiding!"
"Yeah, in the brush!" Kara said. "Fooled you good, huh church pawns?" She and the men ran from the treeline, barreled into the riders hacking and jabbing away with their weapons. Andrew stabbed a man in the leg. As he was distracted, Kara hopped onto his horse behind him and slit his throat with an axe. Henry pressured the largest warrior with heavy blows, battering him back.
Meanwhile, Lucius threw a volley of light spears at Blackbird, then another. She danced aside from the first, spun between two beams of the second towards him. He smiled. "But then I have a surprise for you too." The new addition to his entourage, a lanky knight who had not engaged one of the friends yet, made an upward motion with his hand. Woody tendrils shot from the earth to coil around Andrew and Henry's legs, then wound themselves up towards their arms and necks. "My partner, the Angel of Roots."
"Angel of Roots, really?" Kara asked irritatedly.
A root wrapped around Henry's sword wrist, hampering his assault. His opponent struck back and he blocked repeatedly with his shield, but then that arm was caught too and pulled down. The church knight raised his longsword with a triumphant look. Kara dove from her horse into the way, taking the blow to her back. She landed hard, rolled over grimacing and threw an axe at the man. It split his face, making Henry's stomach turn as they were so close. He fell away and Kara lay back in pain, but roots burst from the ground around her. Henry looked to Andrew. He was in major trouble, having lost his sword and now pulling desperately at a root around his neck seeking to crush his throat.
Kara appeared too hurt to move, but while her arm was still free Henry had to try. "Throw your other axe at the root around my sword arm!" he cried. She raised and hurled it with the last of her strength, missed and grazed a horse's leg instead making it whinny. Now Henry felt something curl around his throat too. Dammit!
Blackbird and Lucius still fought, the former chasing while the latter tried continuously to keep his distance. Though he could produce longer-lasting energy blades for melee, he showed no desire to risk challenging her at close range. Both sported minor wounds, him from her sword when she'd caught up for a moment, her from beams that had grazed her. She glanced at her friends, saw them immobilized and in big trouble. The Angel of Roots strode towards them with sword in hand while Lucius shot another array of beams...
Blackbird sidestepped so that only one threatened to hit her and turned her sword at an angle. The light made contact with her blade, bounced off—and blasted through the Angel of Roots' torso.
Lucius' jaw dropped. "What?!" he said as his ally's body toppled and Henry and Andrew struggled free of the loosened roots.
She held her sword before her proudly. "Light can be reflected, you know. Just waiting until I could get the right angle." She pulled the blade back. "Now get ready!" She streaked at him like an arrow. Just as she was about to reach him, he thrust both palms out at her. The giant light sword began to extend from his hands towards the middle of her chest. Henry's heart
skipped a beat. He thought she would die. Even if she could survive being skewered through the sternum, he'd just rip it upward through her neck and head. Not even she could live through that—and she didn't.
Because the beam never impaled her. Instead, it disappeared and a screaming Lucius fell backwards onto the dirt. Blood spurted into the air from the stumps of his wrists. Right before she would have been stabbed, she had cut away both his hands.
"I feel lucky for once," Andrew breathed, kneeling over Kara. Though pale, the girl insisted she was all right.
"Somebody sear his stumps before he bleeds out," Blackbird instructed. Henry lit a torch and did so queasily, and she shouted the all-important question. "Now, where do you get your powers from?"
Lucius took a while to gather himself enough to answer. "That's what you want to know so bad? From God, you idiots."
"That's your opinion," Henry said. "We want to know, very clearly, exactly what happened immediately before, during, and after you received your powers. For example did someone you believe to be God talk to you at any point, was anything put into you that could give you your abilities?"
"No, and I... I don't know. The Archcardinal gave me holy water to drink to go to sleep, and when I woke up I sensed I had this power which he told me were granted by God."
"Sounds like what Grendel did with me, only I could see what I got," Andrew muttered.
"So you angels don't even know where your powers come from?" Blackbird snorted. "Gosh, this is getting annoying. I guess time to dissect you." She approached Lucius, who raised his stumps in fear.
"Wait," Kara said in a pained voice. "Not that I'm opposed to killing him, but don't we have another corpse we can cut open first?" She indicated the Angel of Roots.
"It seems we do." Blackbird glanced back at Lucius. "Lucky you getting a stay of execution."
They tied him to a tree for the time being while Blackbird went to work on his cohort. The others didn't look much, though they could hear the wet tearing sounds, and treated Kara's wound. It was deep, but she stayed calm and didn't seem afraid she would die, which helped reassure her friends. "You saved me," Henry said as she rested in Andrew's lap. "Thanks for that."
"It was nothing. Now you just have to save me back, and the two of us will be just like you and Andrew." The men laughed.
"So how's it going, Blackbird?" Henry asked, watching Lucius instead of what she was doing. The angel couldn't seem to turn his eyes away from the scene, and vomited as a result.
Her voice was tight with concentration. "I'm going through the organs now... wait, I think I feel something!" There was an especially loud ripping noise, and despite themselves everybody looked. In her blood-soaked hand, which she had just pulled out of the dead man's abdomen, was what looked like a gnarled miniature heart made from metal fashioned to resemble wood. "What is it?"
Henry walked closer to examine the object. It reminded him of a couple of curiosities in Pete's vault, metal imitations of other materials that seemed to have no discernible function—until now. "I think it's an artifact!"
The significance of this dawned on everyone. Andrew concluded, "My second arm must have been an artifact too, and also the spear we took from Clayton. And we just assumed it was a holy arm or nonmagical... They wanted it back so badly because they didn't want us to figure out how the angels get their power. Instead of actually destroying the artifacts, they've been collecting them for their own use!"
Blackbird nodded. "So when a killed angel is replaced, the artifact must have survived intact and was able to be retrieved. When they're not replaced, like the angel of flame, that means the artifact was lost or destroyed. I guess the second Earth Angel's must've been in his neck, and I sliced through it."
"Then the disease curing ring probably still exists, and we can get it back!" Henry beamed. "You know, from the church... eventually..."
"Now for the other one?" She pointed meaningful at Lucius with her sword.
Not wanting to hear or see that again, he said, "Why not check his hands first? They're already separated from him."
After slicing up Lucius' right hand enough, causing him to dry heave, she found a small sun-shaped metal disk under the flesh of his palm. "This is what produced that energy—I wonder if the other hand has one." After carefully feeling it, she confirmed, "It does."
"Leave that hand intact. We can use it for evidence."
"Evidence for who?"
Henry smiled. "Prince Michael has been criticizing the church for ages now. If we can show him proof the angels are a fraud, I bet he'd help us."
"It really came... from an artifact?" Lucius was mumbling, face full of doubt.
"So what do we do with him?" Andrew asked.
Henry considered. "Let's take him along. It'll be easier to convince the prince those hands come from an angel when we have their owner with us."
They procured the dead knights' steeds. "You're riding in front of me," Blackbird snarled at Lucius. "Try anything and I'll break your neck."
"Can you even ride?" Andrew asked dubiously. "You can't have been trained."
"I've ridden giant tree-eaters and mountain hornkings before, of course I can ride a little pony!" At Blackbird's words, Andrew rolled his eyes.
Henry saw Kara struggle to climb atop a horse. "Are you sure you're okay? I know Andrew already asked you a million times, but..."
"I'm good. I just got a slice taken out of me, it's not the end of the world." She finally got mounted, though she hugged the beast's back tightly, and added, "Although, I guess we're like the four horsemen of the church's apocalypse now."
Andrew scoffed. "More like the one horsewoman and three sidekicks."
"It's not that bad," Henry said. "We beat those three knights on our own."
"That's great when she's defeating multiple angels."
Blackbird rode up beside him. "You guys distracted that second one for me. So don't sell yourselves short!" In spite of himself, Andrew smiled at the earnestness in her words.
A short time later, they rode their horses in a gallop through the town. "The angels are fake," Kara yelled for everyone, "they're powered by magical machines!" Then they were gone.
#
When they stopped to rest and sat eating around the campfire, Blackbird took a peek at Kara's injury. "Nice wound. Should leave a pretty scar."
"Yeah, and you look so great yourself."
"I was just saying. Not making fun. Won't be many people looking at your back anyway unless you like low dresses."
Kara regarded her bashfully. "Yeah, I know you didn't mean anything. Sorry I'm not in the best mood due to being tired and in pain. And I... I don't know if we'll ever be able to go back home again."
"I miss my home too. Being with you guys has been good, don't get me wrong. But I'm not sure I'll want to stay once the fight's won and you all are safe."
"You might leave after the church is defeated?" Kara asked, surprised. "What could there possibly be out there that you'd miss over things here?"
"I don't know, I'm just more used to it. I miss the grasslands, the mountains, and though I have some bad memories there, even the tower... and I hope Mare's doing well. Miss her too."
"Who's Mare?"
"A friend of mine."
"You could always go back to visit her. Or maybe you could bring her here. Don't see what benefits there could be for a girl to staying in that scary wilderness."
"Doubt she could get over the mountains. She's a tree-eater from the Mulhrum Swamp far south of here; probably weighs a few hundred times as much as you. I used to have fun riding her around while she trampled monsters to protect her herd's young."
Kara blinked. "Oh. Anyway, I don't think you have to choose one or the other. Lots of people move away from their hometown but go back to visit sometimes. Considering how self-sufficient you are, you could easily decide for yourself how to divide your time between both."
"What's 'divide' mean?" She cut Kara's reply off with a laugh. "Just kidding, H
enry taught me already. You're right, though. We needn't be bound to one place, even if it might be more convenient."
Kara did wonder if Henry might want Blackbird to stay put here. He seemed to really like her, and probably didn't express it only to avoid distracting from their mission. She didn't think he was the type who would live in the wild for extended periods just to be with her, though. Since Blackbird hadn't brought it up, though, she didn't either. She hoped they would even live long enough for all these issues to be a concern. She really felt in over her head, considering she had just sought to feel confident and good about herself only to be involved in a fight with the fate of the continent at stake. But since she still wanted to be strong and regarded as such, she wouldn't complain.
#
Because the horses had brandings that identified them as belonging to church warriors, they ditched them before trying to get back into Septapolis. Since she had some makeup skills, Kara made disguises for them all with supplies they'd gotten at the river town. Henry became a priest, Andrew his pupil, Kara an old pilgrim to explain her still hindered posture, Blackbird her disfigured daughter, and Lucius... a homeless cripple. Blackbird put a knife to Lucius' spine while they walked, and he wisely cooperated. They made their way to the royal palace, a great white castle with multiple towers rounded and straight, and asked to see Prince Michael. "Tell him it's about the church's lies, and we have an angel helping us," Henry told the guards.
"Helping?" Blackbird asked.
"Well, he's going to like it or not."
One guard came back with a frilly-jacketed courier, who led them down bright halls to a private study full of bookshelves. Michael stood within. Once a stereotypically handsome young prince, at thirty-six he had become indulgent towards his appetite and his slightly shorter than average frame now tipped the scales at three hundred pounds. His appearance aside, his public protest against the church's cruelties made Henry admire him. Even after all they'd gone through, being in the presence of royalty felt somewhat intimidating—but apparently not to Blackbird, who just looked curiously over the prince's intricate layered clothes.