Falling from heaven was always a terrible loss, Laurus thought, as he stood at the pinnacle of creation. The great celestial city was built so that its every detail - from the largest spires to the most delicate filigree captured the reflected light of the glory most high in a display of impossible splendor. Then stepped off the edge of the marble walkway, and dove through the sea of clouds beneath those golden towers. He fell on wings of feather and fire, and moment by moment that perfect light faded behind him until that light was gone, and he was alone in the misty void.
Experience did nothing to lessen the pain, but if a cherub came to you with a mission for the divine plan, it would be blasphemy to refuse. When the messenger of light came to him and told him the Abbey was under assault by dark forces and that he must intercede at once, he stopped only to don his breastplate and buckle on his silvered greatsword before diving into those dark skies that separated Heaven from the fallen world below.
He was an angel of the second choir, and had risen high in the angelic host. It had been centuries since he was a wispy messenger of light like the one that had visited him today, and the role of a throne or principate remained far in his future. Today he was a warrior, falling to earth to smote the wicked. Even in free fall though, the first hints of light beneath him were only just starting to glow dully beneath him. Falling was the easy part. Only an angel could fly high enough to reach heaven, but anyone could fall from it. The flight home was exhausting, but it was worth it to feel the creator's light once more.
Laurus fell through the gloom guided only by gravity's unyielding grip and the dim light of his halo. Slowly the light bloomed beneath him like his own personal sunrise until rays of sunlight penetrated the layers. When he finally broke though those final clouds and spread his wings for the first time, he took in the lay of the land from the world beneath him that lay unfurled like a map. Then he oriented himself along the familiar Carpangian range, and adjusted both sets of his wings and aimed for Mount Theodosius. The sun would set in several hours, but he should get to the Abbey of Saint Erianne before dark. His main wings each stretched almost nine feet as he set them against the wind. This allowed him to soar even in this thin air while his much smaller secondary wings beat hard to speed him up.
If not for his urgent mission, Laurus would have happily spent the day soaring along the range's updrafts. Though not as glorious as God's light, the cool winds of her creation were a close second. Angels couldn't enjoy most earthly delights that mortals enjoyed. Food and wine were forbidden, but flying through icy winds while appreciating the timeless march of glaciers was definitely allowed. He reveled in the sensation of that arctic breeze playing through his long golden hair and raking across his pinions without letting it slow him down. The soothing sensations passed the time while his wings brought him ever closer to the Abbey. Though they looked small from this height, the Carpangian's were the backbone of the continent. Except for a few passes,like the one next to the Abbey of Saint Erianne, they were an impassable wall of rock and ice, save for a few passes. The prayers had mentioned a growing darkness and the stink of corruption, but they weren't specific and they were almost two days old. There was no telling how they had metastasized and corrupted the flock.
Did that mean there was a plot by the forces of darkness to seize the pass and make further inroads into the soft underbelly of the faith, Laurus wondered as he gazed dispassionately at the hills beneath him. It could be something that sinister and planned, or it could be something as simple as a sister that had been seduced one market day by a merchant or miscreant. The former meant that the dark cults across the border in Litheron were regaining their strength, but the later indicated something much less menacing. Trying to guess with so little information was a fool's errand though. Instead he cleared his head and sought solace and guidance in the tapestry of the world that unrolled for mile after beautiful mile beneath him. From this height tilled farmsteads were only spots of brown along the river that were almost lost in the green yellows of the plains and the dark greens of the forest. The angel took comfort in that man was only a small part of a much larger design until the leagues that passed finally revealed the Abbey and the town it overlooked.
A century ago, Laurus first visited Treadebren as a new angel of the first choir when he had been part of a host of three score angels. They had come to the defense of the faithful when the armies of Litheron had sought to conquer their neighbor. Things had certainly changed. The old city had been little more than an armed camp. Now it was a hive of urban life that stretched along both banks of the river at five times its former size. The people were faithful, and so they doubled and then doubled again with the bounty of their god's blessings. From this height he could see the lower walls and buttresses of the great cathedral they were raising in her name. It was still decades from completion, but one day it would be a striking monument of their faith.
That was why he was here - to see that faith was rewarded.
As the town got closer, he glided lower, until he could smell it as much as see it. From on high humanity was a marvel, but seeing them was always better than smelling them. As he soared only a few hundred feet over the thatched roofs Laurus could smell everything from the baking of bread to the chamber pots being dumped. They were normal, healthy smells that, though alien and disgusting to him, were reassuring in that whatever rot had spread had not yet made its way from the cloisters to the city.
As he looked across the city he could see a thin line of black smoke rising from the Abbey on the hill. It was too dark to be a cookfire, and as the wind shifted direction he caught the barest hint of sulfur, a sure sign of evil. Laurus started to beat both sets of wings now, doing what little he could to speed up his approach without arriving on the scene too exhausted to fight. Things were definitely getting worse. It was one thing for humans to be dirty squalid creatures after all - that's what it meant to be fallen, but the smells of hell were very different. Even the sickly sweet smells of leprosy and pox were perfume compared to the scent of the damned. Evil had a smell, and right now it was coming from the last place in the world one would have expected: a cloister of the devout.
Flying as fast as he could, the minutes it took to cross the valley were still painfully slow to Laurus. The closer he got, the more details resolved. An inner courtyard wall had been blown apart by dark magics, and dark smoke boiled out. The motion he saw in the courtyard was more troubling than the fire though. There was a pitched battle taking place between the nuns, and whatever spawn of darkness had boiled up from the seven hells to taint their consecrated grounds. The virgins of Saint Erianne were a martial order that had been founded in the wake of his visit a century earlier, so between their faith and their silvered weapons they had all the tools they needed to fight the darkness. Even with those advantages, he could see that they were taking casualties too.
Scattered across the courtyard and gardens were bodies of imps, tanglers, and other lesser demon spawn, along with some of the faithful who lay dead or bleeding. Silently, Laurus mouthed a prayer to his god. 'Blessed Creator, queen of queens, and lord of hosts, the devils of sin and damnation have tainted the sanctity of your world and I shall make them pay a terrible price for it.' He didn't seek further aid from her - it was too soon for that, but should the worst befall him, he'd want whoever came next to have more warning than he had.
He wasn't worried. Laurus had faced few worthy opponents since ascending to the second choir that he relished the opportunity. That pride would have to be shriven and repented after battle, but as he hit the ground amidst the damned like a thunderbolt he decided that right now he would let himself indulge in that lust for battle and glory. The impact crushed a group of tanglers with their gooey tentacles and short claws that were flanking an embattled group of warriors. In that crater, he paused only a moment to take inthe field of battle.
The central courtyard was lousy with monsters, living and dead, and the sounds of battle were everywhere. Nearly obscured by the smoke, was the wavering heat shimmer of a portal that was a direct conduit to the deepest pits of hell. It widened as he watched, growing ever larger and instead of more imps continuing to boil out of the rift, ever larger and powerful demons forced their way out instead as they sought to escape into the daylit world. It was one thing for a battle nun to take on lesser demon spawn. Even by the score like they faced now were a manageable foe to trained force. Some of the things arriving now were the sort that a mortal could never hope to face though, no matter how much faith they possessed.
Between him and the breech though, there were dozens of lesser spawn and a few overseers herding the nearly mindless beasts against the warrior nuns of Saint Erianne. For their part, the women didn't let him distract them, and barely looked at him as he pulled his six foot tall greatsword from his back and brandished it; he felt the morale shift, but there were too many enemies for him to save everyone single handed. The women each fought an enemy or two in a cautious fighting style, but for Laurus this was no time for caution. He began to scythe through the growing horde with a fury that would have seemed careless if the enemy didn't fall like wheat before him. The warrior was headless though because he knew no demons so puny could hope to do more than scratch him before they were cleaved and two and reduced to ash by his righteous blade.
