by Ari Marmell
Eden. He could have gladly gone until the end of time without ever again hearing the name Eden.
A garden realm of wonder and beauty, peace and plenty. Set aside ages ago for the sole use of a people not yet born—by the express command of the Creator Himself, in an earlier age when He still occasionally deigned to speak with His creations—Eden was quite possibly the nearest thing in any reality to a true paradise.
Perhaps it should have been no surprise to anyone, then, that the Nephilim—caught forever between demon and angel while belonging to neither; a lost and vicious race—had attempted to annex it for their own. It was the last world they ever invaded, the end of their reality-spanning rampage. Many of their corpses still rotted beneath the surface, feeding all manner of ancient power into the soil.
It was a past that Death would have been quite content to leave buried, and gradually forgotten. Apparently, someone out there didn’t feel the same.
The horse abruptly tossed its rotting head, uttering a spectral call somewhere between a whinny and a moan.
“Yes, Despair.” Death flicked the reins idly. “I am paying attention, and I know precisely where we are. I’m not about to get us lost.”
The creature—Despair—whickered with blatant skepticism.
“If we’re not there shortly,” the Horseman offered, “I promise I’ll let you take the lead.”
A final ghostly snort, then silence once more.
Briefly. It was only a few moments later that the billowing pallor surrounding them began to waft away, thinning to reveal the first signs of an actual realm. Despair’s hooves began, once more, to make muted thumps in the dirt.
Dull patterns of shape and color, very much like blots of dyes and paints not yet dried, slowly resolved themselves into towering trees and heavy brushwood. The light forest stretched from its bed of gently waving grasses toward an azure sky so bright, it was almost painful. The gentle gusts of wind were practically unnoticeable, at least as compared with the world he’d just left, and high, piping birdsong filled the air.
Only for a heartbeat or two, of course. The wildlife fell unnaturally silent at the approach of the Horseman and his half-dead mount—presumably because they were busy scrambling to fit themselves into the tiniest of hiding spots.
Beautiful and bucolic, but certainly not Eden. Nor had Death expected it to be. The garden was isolated from the boundaries of Creation as defined by the Tree of Life. Not even the Horsemen could simply enter at will. No, like any other traveler, Death had to wend his way through ancient forests on unclaimed worlds near the heart of reality, until he located the single trail that allowed ingress to that most precious domain.
The first signs of unrest, when he finally came across them, were not difficult to spot.
Entire swaths of trees had fallen, cut down by potent magics and brutal weaponry. Splintered wood and tattered leaves, churned soil and scorched earth, stretched as far as Death could see. He could smell the blood, still wet and seeping into the dirt, but he didn’t need to; he felt the deaths imprinted on the landscape, sensed the newly freed souls slowly fading from the air.
“Dust.”
The crow squawked an acknowledgment and took wing, spiraling high and far, watching for any hint as to what had occurred—or for any imminent danger. Death dropped lightly to his feet, leaving Harvester lashed to the saddle in the full knowledge that it would answer his call should he need it. He crouched, studying the soil, but all he could tell was that a fearsome struggle had taken place.
That much, I knew already.
He pressed his fingers into the rich loam, then raised them to his mask. The blood was angelic, as he’d anticipated. What he hadn’t expected was to find only angel blood. Whoever their opponents might have been, either they did not bleed, or the soldiers of the White City had not managed to injure a single one.
The first prospect was far less disturbing than the second.
Too many signs, too much death and blood in a confined area; the Horseman couldn’t hope to follow any one trail back to its source. If so many had been slaughtered here, though, where were the corpses? Why did only spilled blood remain?
Death straightened and carefully studied the wounded forest. No sign of any other observer, enemy or ally, but something was off. It was nigh impossible for anything living to hide from him, yet had someone lain concealed at that precise moment, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised. He couldn’t see anyone, couldn’t hear, couldn’t sense; but he did not feel alone.
A shrill cry from Dust interrupted Death’s musings. The crow was circling deliberately over a spot of woodland some few hundred paces away.
“All right, I see you.” Death didn’t bother shouting; he knew Dust would hear, regardless. He opened his hand, calling for Harvester to settle comfortingly into his grip, and turned back toward his mount. “Looks tight in there,” he said of the thickening trees. “Follow if you can. If not, I’ll call when I need you.”
Despair whickered once in reply, a distant, uninterested sound.
With an impossible grace the Horseman slipped over, under, or between the obstacles in his way, leaving the ravaged swaths of churned earth and shattered boles behind. The protruding boughs might as well have been hinged doors, the overgrowth a rich carpet. On the very rare occasion when the trail was too thickly occluded even for him, Harvester carved a path with no effort at all.
He sensed Dust’s discovery long before he could see it. The growing miasma of blood and early rot, the almost corporeal tang of the soul’s recent passing, all served as heralds of what lay ahead.
The angel had fallen in a thicket of brambles and dead leaves as brittle as old parchment. A small gap in the canopy allowed a single finger of sunlight to prod tentatively at the body, as though it were afraid something in the foliage might leap out and bite. Without his personal attunement to the scents and sensations of death—and without Dust having spotted the angel from above—the Horseman would never have located the remains.
No wonder, then, that whoever had recovered the other bodies had also missed him.
Death pushed through the thistles and thorns without pause or even a second glance. The sharpest tore at the pallid flesh on his arms and bare torso, leaving shallow gouges that failed to bleed. If he felt the trifling pains at all, it showed neither in his gait nor in his gleaming eyes.
Oddly wide and jagged gashes formed abstract patterns across the angel’s broken body. A carpeting of bloody feathers surrounded him in a disturbingly neat circle, having been knocked and torn from his battered wings. The intricate angelic script on his gleaming breastplate was marred beyond recognition, and the blade of his glaive was badly notched. It had struck something, repeatedly, yet no blood marred the edge.
A moment, to plant Harvester a few inches deep in the soil, where it stood like some petrified pennant, and then Death knelt beside the fallen soldier. He held his left hand, palm-down, above the corpse’s heart; the right, with fingers curled toward the sky. His mask quivered as he incanted syllables that no humanoid mouth should ever have been able to produce.
A fragment, the tiniest sliver, of the angel’s departed soul split away, swept back through the worlds by the Horseman’s necromancy. And though the blood did not flow, nor the lungs draw breath, the eyelids fluttered open as the angel awoke.
CHAPTER TWO
I DO NOT … WHERE …
Who are you?
Oh, Creator, that voice! Everywhere, everywhere …
Who are you?
I do not understand. I saw the most wondrous colors, heard the most beautiful songs. I was at peace …
And you will return shortly. Who are you?
My name … I am … I was Sarasael.
You know who I am?
I do. I know not how I know, but I knew you the moment you called me back, before I knew even myself.
You died here.
Yes.
You were murdered here. Cut down by your enemies. I would know wh
o. I would know what happened.
And then I might return to my rest?
I promise it.
Then listen well …
I WAS A SOLDIER of the White City, and served well for centuries uncounted. My place was, and likely would ever be, with the Faneguard. We were a brigade of steadfast, battle-hardened warriors. Our commander was Malahidael, personally chosen and elevated to the rank of general by our Lord Abaddon himself!
We were a rarity among the legions of the White City: a division tasked with the defense and protection of vital or sacred places, rather than more direct action against the enemies of Heaven. A position of smaller glories, perhaps, less likely to raise us high in the esteem of our brethren, but an urgent and necessary undertaking for all that. We did our duty, followed where Malahidael ordered, and never once resented our lot.
In our day, we guarded military outposts and ancient temples and repositories of knowledge that would make even the archivists of the Charred Council weep with envy. And then, at the dawn of the current age, we were assigned to patrol the borders of Eden.
I can sense your surprise. You had no notion that the angels had taken it upon ourselves to defend the garden. But is it truly so startling? We know the Creator’s mind; we know His plans for that place, and for the race yet to be born.
We certainly could not trust the Charred Council to look after Eden. Even if they thought it fell under their purview—and we still do not comprehend their thoughts or motivations well enough to guess whether they would have—who could they send to defend it? One of you? A Horseman? The last of the Nephilim, whose bloody transgressions are the very reason Eden requires protecting at all? No. Unacceptable.
So the Faneguard came here, to this empty little world to which Eden is bound. Our long-term presence might technically violate our pact with Hell and the Charred Council, but we’ve never interfered with the world itself, nor left the isolated area we were meant to guard. A defensive force only, ready to rebuff any effort by any creature or faction to breach the sanctity of the garden, until the coming of the race-to-be.
Our task was simple, and our battles few. Mostly we engaged the occasional scavenger, a Maker or one of the other Old Ones curious to explore the promised land, or to study its nature, or perhaps to forage the remains of your slaughtered brethren. We drove most away with ease, and killed those who proved too intractable for their own good. Again, perhaps not the most exhilarating of assignments, but we understood its importance.
I do not believe we grew complacent. I believe that the forces that came upon us so recently—I cannot say precisely when, having lain here dead for some time—simply overmatched us. But I do not suppose we can know for certain; perhaps we were, indeed, unwary. Careless.
They burst from the trees, making for the gateway to Eden, and we almost failed even to spot them! They had come to this world some distance away, taken their time, crept slowly and silently through the underbrush until they’d drawn near enough to make their charge. They were, too, astonishingly small. Six-limbed, with an almost canine body and a humanoid trunk, but even had they stood upon their hind legs, they’d scarcely have reached my shoulders. Headless. Featureless, save for a smattering of unfamiliar runes scarred into their substance.
Stone, these creatures, not flesh. Constructs, clearly intended either to labor or to do battle as the occasion might warrant. Their fingers were long, far too long in proportion. They twisted and writhed, flexing in ways no natural stone should flex, sometimes blending fluidly together before solidifying once more. They could, it appeared, form only the simplest of tools or the simplest of weapons, but their edges were sharp and their blows heavy.
You know, better than most, how effectively the simplest weapons can kill.
We needed no orders from Malahidael. The Faneguard trained and drilled extensively for any contingency—including a sudden influx of earthbound adversaries from the depths of the trees. We each had our assigned positions, and we took them without hesitation.
I heard the cannons engage from behind, saw bursts of raw force and blessed flechettes erupt across the forest. Miniature volcanoes, they were, or the Creator’s lightning! Whole swaths of forest were blasted apart, everything within shredded or incinerated. No simple stone, even mystically vivified as these constructs were, could stand against such a bombardment. The creatures died by the scores!
Yet they appeared by the hundreds. Someone prepared heavily for this attempted incursion; by the time I and my brethren had closed to do battle, necessitating the silencing of the cannons, there must have been well over a thousand of them scuttling toward the gate.
I dropped through the trees, wings spread only enough to slow my descent. A blizzard of leaves and broken branches swirled out around me, torn from the boughs at the touch of my armor. Barely a moment’s thought was sufficient to call the power inherent in my weapon; lightning and fire flickered across the blade in intertwined arcs.
The earth shook beneath the impact of an entire phalanx of the White City’s soldiers. The first of the constructs was directly below, and I cleaved it with the glaive even as I landed. It burst apart, unable to stand against the sacred steel, let alone the powerful energies that danced over it. Several bits of stone shrapnel ricocheted from my armor, and I recall a brief flash of pain as one drew blood across my scalp, but it was a trifling wound, easily ignored.
And just as well, as I had no attention to spare.
A dozen and more of the constructs came at me from all sides, their hands oozing into blades of rock. At first, they could not so much as touch me. I swept between them in a dance of feet and wings, sometimes stepping, sometimes turning, sometimes rising high above. Every swing or lunge they made cut only empty air, or gouged the tree trunks, while almost every sweep of my glaive obliterated another foe. I could not take the time to look about me, and even if I could, the forest blocked my view—yet it seemed, from the splintering sounds and battle cries, that my brethren were doing as well as I.
But there were so many, so many … And they were more cunning than we credited.
Our flight ceased to be an advantage as they started coming at us from the treetops! Apparently their legs were just as malleable as their hands, making climbing as simple for them as walking. They brought several of us down in those first moments, diving upon us from above, crushing with their great weight or stabbing with their jagged limbs.
Whether by skill or fortune, I was not among the first to fall. I heard the rustling of the branches, saw movement just before the creature leapt. I kicked out with both legs, and though it felt as though my feet might break, I succeeded in knocking it back. It struck the tree from which it had just emerged and began to fall, but I had already dived below, glaive upraised. It tumbled past me in two distinct halves, crumbling to smaller pieces well before it struck the earth. I was even able to nudge one such piece aside so that it landed on one of its fellow constructs, distracting it sufficiently for me to finish it off.
We were destroying them, but not swiftly enough. A small mass of them came at me from behind, and I turned my glaive, not on them, but on a nearby bole. The great tree tumbled, crushing many of the enemy, and granting me a moment to recover. And still there were more.
The Faneguard would be overrun.
Or so I feared, for a moment, before salvation appeared above, silhouetted against the burning sun.
I told you before that each of us had our assigned duties for almost any contingency. What I had not known—what most of us had not known—was that, should an enemy of overwhelming numbers appear, one of us had been assigned to return instantly to the White City in search of aid.
I understand why we were not told. Some would have found it demoralizing to contemplate. Some would have thought it a slight to our pride. When had the Faneguard ever required outside assistance?
Yet now I see the wisdom.
From above, a second phalanx plummeted into the fray. And at their head was not just any captain,
any general, but great Abaddon himself!
Have you ever looked upon Abaddon? Have you ever seen him in battle? He is a force beyond reckoning, beyond comprehension. His wings are iron as much as muscle and sinew and feather. His impossible sword, longer than he is tall, he wields as though it were a toy. Taller and broader of shoulder than any of us, his golden armor and ivory-white tabard gleaming more brightly than the sun behind him, he waded into the foe. It appeared that his blade, which he swung so rapidly it seemed to form a solid arch, needed only get near one of the constructs to blast the creature to dust. He refused even to acknowledge the presence of the trees, but swung his sword as he needed. If it encountered a trunk on its way to the target, well, it simply swept through without slowing. And somehow, no matter what the direction from which he struck, those trees always fell to hinder the constructs, never even a single angel.
Between Abaddon’s ferocity and our newly inflated numbers, we rapidly turned the tide. Only a handful more angels fell to the constructs, while we destroyed them by the hundreds. The woods were filled with the crash of shattering stone, punctuated by sporadic bursts as the cannoneers found an open target.
But even as the seemingly endless horde finally began to taper off, something else appeared in their place. The enemy had reinforcements as well.
These, too, were constructs, but entirely unlike the initial wave. The stone that made up their narrow bodies was all but hidden beneath angled plates and long limbs of brass; they looked rather the way Heaven’s champions might be depicted in the stained-glass windows of the White City’s grandest chapels. Sharp, angular, jointed in abnormal places. They did not walk at all, but rather sat upon a narrow brass spindle that spun rapidly from the waist downward without ever jostling their upper halves. They boasted four long arms; like their stone forerunners, they had no heads, and their hands seemed capable of forming whatever implements they might require.
Do I even need to tell you that most of them had chosen to form massive, razor-edged blades?
