The Heavenly Host

Saint Hilda of Rivenrock trudged through the brambles in the dark, in the middle of the night, scanning the terrain for any demonic manifestations. It was quite tedious. If only she had not been so diligent, she could be home enjoying a good book and a fine glass of wine this evening.

This morning one of her illuminaries had suddenly gone dark and then, not long after, had started drawing mana at a rather large rate for several minutes before dropping to a very dark level. A single illuminary might not have been noticed by some of the more famous avatars; but frankly, Hilda didn’t have a huge number of illuminaries, so she was sensitive to each one.

She had reported it to her supervising archon, who probably would have ignored it, except that another avatar reported a similar experience shortly thereafter. Both were identified to be in the same area, and after a few more enquiries to avatars with illuminaries in the area, it was learned there was a total of five illuminaries in the same state in Astlan, all in close physical proximity and all stationed with most of the Rod. All currently dark.

Clearly, something had happened. Unfortunately, the bureaucratic nature of these things slowed down their ability to synthesize all the relevant information. Thus it wasn’t until late in the evening, relative time for Hilda, that she’d been notified that she was to join the advance team to do the ground work preparation for a Visitation from the archon currently overseeing this project. She had been chosen, as one of her illuminaries had been affected and she had been the first to report the problem. Joy.

Naturally, to the uninitiated, being part of an advance team sounded like a high honor; but having been at this now for just over two hundred years since her canonization, Hilda knew better. This was her fourth recon job, and they all sucked. They had to do a complete perimeter scan and interior scan for the region, which meant manually checking the area for any sign of anything that could potentially disrupt the archon and his or her Host.

If only she had a decent singing voice, maybe she could have gotten into a Host. Just show up and sing praises to Tiernon and whichever archon needed to announce their presence. Unfortunately, she couldn’t carry a tune, so that wasn’t going to happen. Not to mention that the body fascists in the Hosts would have made her afterlife miserable.

Squelch. Hilda stopped and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She had just stuck one of her golden-slippered feet into a six-inch-deep puddle of mud. Great. It would probably get stuck in there. Boots would have been so much better, but no; avatars could not wear boots while in the field. Not unless it was specifically mentioned in their canonization and subsequent depictions that they wore boots.

Seriously, was it really this big of a deal? There was a battle, a few priests got taken out, so they went dark. Priests die. If the Afterlife Receiving Department was a little quicker on reporting deaths, they could have had the explanation already, with no need of a Visitation. However, there were no reported dead priests from the area. Of course, everyone knew the department was a day or two behind on reporting.

Gods and Their Agents[9]

∼

“So, what are your plans for him?” Antefalken asked Tom as they sat on a ledge a few hundred feet from the mouth of Tom’s cave. They had taken the knight there as a first staging location. The knight would need to sleep and the cave was far safer and cooler, a dark place for him to rest. The man was extremely beat up. Tom guessed he was about as close to dead as a human could get in the Abyss, without actually being dead.

“I have no idea.” Tom shook his head. “It was one of those ideas I had in the middle of combat that sounded a lot better then, than it does in reality now.” His wings twitched; he was still feeling rather wired from the battle, which was surprising given the time that had passed.

Antefalken smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve made more than a few of those decisions in my life. Usually involving a pretty maid.”

“After the crap he was pulling during the battle, I figured he’d try one last time to cheat, kill me. I was thinking if he finally showed some honor, I would just grab you guys and we’d leave. However, if he wanted to try and cheat one more time, I’d give him a lesson he would never forget.” Tom shook his head again. “Of course, what I didn’t realize at the time was that that meant I’d get a lesson too: what to do with a hostage.”

“Killing him would have been a lot easier. He would probably be happier up there in the heavens with his god. Who knows, they might have made him a saint,” Antefalken replied.

“Easier, yes, but I’d like to put an end to these stereotypes of demons being pure evil killing machines — basically all the bullshit he represents,” Tom said, gesturing to Talarius back in the cave. Tom grimaced and emitted a small belch, rubbing his stomach.