Thread: Fate Versus Fiction [Ironic ║ Ryees]

Sirrus leaned against the window frame, peering out of the carriage at the clouds beneath. A pair of Pegasi trotted lightly ahead of the black-lacquered carriage that held him and his drop squad. How has it come to this? A hand touched his shoulder and he turned his head to see Mikael's face, grave as always, but now tinged with something softer concern, by the way his eyes scanned his commander's face. Sirrus gave a small shake of his head. Mikael's hand fell away and the man leaned away back to the quiet conversation going on between the other four men in the carriage. One and all, those six men were geared in fitted plate. The back of their armor held telescoping pods of steel set over the shoulder bladeswhen their wings extended, those plats would telescope out and fit over the ridges of their wings, protecting the more delicate bones that made up the support of their wings. Each had a sword propped up beside them, plain looking in comparison to the red velvet and silver trim of the carriage's interior. Tools that were meant to be coated in blood and viscera needed no finery. And those blades, surely, would be taking their baths all too soon. All too soon. The thought echoed hollowly in Sirrus' mind. It had barely been six years since he had left his earthbound academy, and barely five since a light from the heavens had pierced the ceiling of his atelier and allowed entry of the divine. Of course he had accepted that offerwhat freshly-graduated magus would ever decline what to him sounded like an internship as an angel? That his propensity for sword-magic and combat tactics had carried him so far, so quickly, he never would have guessed, but he did guess that someone higher up the chain of command had expected exactly that. Sirrus had spent enough time in the heavens since then to know that the purported omniscience of God was not a result of him being all-knowing and all-seeing, but rather the result of a bureaucracy of seers and prophets that predicted the outcome of events as they saw them. Sirrus had yet to see a wrong prediction come from them. Through his leather gloves, he thumbed the ring bearing the crest of Ilvertahss. First and foremost of the magical academies in earth's underground magical network, he had been at the top of his class with very little by way of rivals for all six years of his study there. Some part of him remembered a face, a name, someone that had challenged him, pushed him, made him into the focused and cutthroat battle-scholar he was today, but he shoved those thoughts away. It would be harder to put a sword through the heart of someone he knew. He felt his balance shift, pulling him from his thoughts, and his eyes refocused out the window. The clouds rushed upwards as they dipped down, piercing the veil of the clouds in the mid-afternoon sun with a bar of sunlight guiding them downward. Outside, he could see similar shafts of divine guidance pierce through, a wing-drawn carriage following each one down to the ground. When Sirrus' hand had found his sword, he did not recall, but his grip on it was white-knuckled. Responsibility held him fast. He would perform his tasks as told. But that did not mean he had to like it. The first days of Heaven's assault on earth were fast-paced and hectic. Unlike any terrestrial threat, none of the world's military organizations had any ability to prepare from a bombardment of actual, factual angelsValkyries as they had been dubbed very shortly after their appearanceclad in mystical plate and wielding blades bearing the holy wrath of Heaven in their edges. Major bases and those with anti-air capabilities were targeted first by those first Valkyries to break the cloud cover, allowing for the massive skyships containing ground troops to safely land in major metropolitan areas around the globe. Bearing with longbows that fired arrows bathed in sunlight, blades edged in Heaven's spite, and armor as protective as their faithful convictions, it was barely a week before the majority of combat had ceased. World leaders and heads of state were imprisoned and taken skyward, those who were unclean and unholy were slaughtered those who were true to the faith of Heaven were spared, but subjugated, told they would be safer within the sheltering arms of God than in any man-made structure. Those who resisted, died. Some of those who did not resist died. But after the first day of warfare, most stopped resisting. Man's news networks ran headlines at the behest of their angelic overseers, urging people to stay calm and listen to the orders given to them by any bearing heaven's seal. Their cooperation was their best outlet to survival, they said. Those networks were not the only ones airing bulletins and information, though on the third day, a covert message was sent out on the deep web by a group of survivors in the French Alps. Encoded and distributed with great care, it sneaked along the information waves to other operatives throughout the world that had taken to finding a way to fight back. Referred to as Seedlines, these information channels were buried deeply enough in the channels that sent them or hidden in plain enough sight that they avoided the wrong sort of attention. The Seedlines bore fruit, and by the end of the first week, a resistance had formed. Six horses clopped down Main Street of the small town that, a week ago, had been Hammondsport, New York. Lost in the upstate back lands, its barely 700 initial residents had been deemed low priority, near the bottom of the list of towns necessary to subjugate. Now, the houses were clearly full-up on refugees and stragglers who thought that a town so far away from the city centers would be a safe place for them to live their lives. Mikael's voice echoed out powerfully, reading from the scroll as he had so many times now. Sirrus barely heard him, his eyes instead scanning windows and cars for signs of movement in the streets that, save for the angels, were empty. The searching light of Heaven has come to this town bearing mercy! This earth was given to you in Grace, and squandered! We come now to relieve you of the responsibilities your kind has clearly shirked! Those who come forth will be spared those who repent will be spared those who are pure of heart in God's eyes will be spared! Those who will not submit to the Divine will be relieved of their wasteful sin, taken back to the loving arms of their Creator to be born anew in an image less wasteful, less sinful, and returned to the image of Man that God created so man millennia ago! In unison, the angels drew weapons two with long halberds swung their horses about the previously two-by-three column, taking up lancer guard positions. The two men remaining in back nocked arrows and held their bows ready, brace at identical angels across their saddlebows. Sirrus and Mikael each took a step ahead, just between the lancemen, and drew their swords, resting their long, two-handed blades across their knees. They would wait ten minutes in that formation for any who would show themselves. Saint James' church, just up the street, would be their destination, wherein they could repent at their altars before the attention of God. After that, the angels would travel door to door, and any they found inside... Sirrus swallowed the urge to vomit. Bloodshed was not why he had pledged to his life.