When the kingdoms prayed for deliverance, you were silent. When they wept with joy as the Heavens sent their warriors against the horde, your eyes remained dry. And tonight, as the angel defends against yet another attack, you do not cheer and sing with your fellows.

It's impressive, to be sure. She darts across the inky expanse almost too fast to follow, drawing her bow and loosing a hail of golden fiery bolts upon the mob below. The hellspawn wail and scatter, only to be skewered either by her arrows or those of the mortal defenders atop the walls. They try to loose back at her, but you and your fellow guards disrupt their aim, harrying them with bow and catapult. This attack, as all others were, is quickly repelled.

Then comes the part which truly sickens you.

When the midnight wind carries away the stench of demonic ichor and smoke and a great cry of relief rises from the city walls, and the angel, work done for the night, descends. She sets herself gently upon the roof of the cathedral in the city's heart. Wings flared, shimmering a bright ivory in the night, the light of the moon and stars dancing upon her golden armor. She still holds her bow but has no arrows nocked. She's smiling. You're too far away to see it but you can feel it, like the dawn's first light creeping over and covering the city. Everyone gathers beneath her. Everyone sings thanks and praise to her, and to her Heavenly mother for sending her unto mankind during this time of crisis. They throw up their hands and cry out to her, tears of joy running down their cheeks.

All except you. Where was she before this?

Even when no demons tear across it, the earth is always full of suffering and horror. Really, you hardly see a need for the demons or their Hells. Humankind is perfectly good at tormenting itself. The difference, perhaps, is that it's quieter. Veiled in thin justification. Yet, evil lurks all the same. Where are the angels then? Why do they not answer the prayers of the abused housewife, or starving child, or shackled slave? Why do they only intervene when the world teeters above a pit of hellfire, when it would be lost without them?

Well, that's just it, isn't it? It's all about appearances. Keeping up the facade of benevolence. They'll act against a single great evil so you stay groveling, never questioning why they ignored a thousand small ones.

She's so beautiful. Her dark curls swaying in the wind, her wings spread as if to encompass her flock. All an act. And everyone is falling for it, except you. You could vomit. You would hack up the smoldering bile churning in your guts all over her perfection if you could.

That's how you get the idea. It's audacious. Maybe stupid, as well- even you can't deny she’s saved the city more than once.

But you need to ruin her.

You need to expose her for the false idol she is. In doing so, you will expose those fickle Heavens themselves. Who will pray to a broken doll or a spent whore? If humanity is to perish, at least let it be an honest death, facing the pit with clear mind and eyes.

Eventually the crowd's fervor fades, and they begin to disperse. The angel, having relished in all of it, descends to enter the cathedral. That's where she dwells when she isn't needed. You still have a few hours of dark. She'll be spent now after the attack. Still, it's not easy to reach her. Creeping down from the walls and into the cathedral. Past the soldier-priests who quietly patrol the place to prevent the exact sort of thing you have planned. But you know the cathedral well enough to evade them- you were dragged in there enough times as a girl, after all.

Eventually you find her. She's up in the belfry, stripped down to a resplendent white robe, knelt in silent prayer before the bell itself. Her halo, a disk of light the color of sunrise, hovers aloft behind her head. You creep up on her, shifting your weight carefully as you go. You'll take her by the wings first.

"I feared we'd meet like this eventually."

You freeze. You'd been so careful. And yet, the angel rises and turns to you, a look of knowing in the luminous sky blue of her eyes. She's even more radiant up close, chocolate curls framing her perfect pale face and tumbling down her slender shoulders.

"Yes," she says, her voice deep yet sweet, "I felt you, as well. Your anger, your resentment." Something flashes in those blue, blue eyes. "Your intentions."

Your stomach drops.

"Perhaps," she continues, "it might help you to ask me yourself, and hear an answer from my own lips."

Maybe it would. You were certain you could've taken her unaware. Now you need to be smart. So you ask her. Why do the Heavens ignore only but the most severe evils? Why do they permit such suffering in the world, and only alleviate it when it might benefit them?

The angel smiles sadly. "We recognize your kind's agency and will, and the need you have to exercise it," she begins. "To intervene in every matter- punish every small sin or purge every little evil- would risk reducing you to cattle in need of tending. Rather, we hope you will help and uplift one another."

That's it?

Your blood boils. There are great evils done by human hands as well, beyond what simple kindness alone can solve. Why are these not addressed?

"Are they not?" She tilts her head. "Perhaps we don't always intercede as I have. Perhaps we can be subtle when needed. Salvation need not be loud."

Your hands roll into fists. Is she toying with you?

"I see you're unsatisfied." The angel considers this. "I doubt it would help to explain that there are forces in the cosmos beyond your ken. Things we must tend to beyond your world, trillions more souls than yours to mind."

So she doesn't have time to help? Are the cries of the many thousands suffering here beneath consideration?

"That isn't what I s-"

You rush her.

"Halt."

You do. You didn't only hear those words. You felt them tingle through your skin into your flesh, tremble into your bones and organs. They linger in your ears, ringing painfully. They roil in your head, raking the folds of your brain like fingers.

The angel's smile changes. Shifting from sadness to the impatience of an adult having to deal with a fussy little girl.

"I could tell you there is an order to creation," she says. "A hierarchy that must be heeded and maintained. Mechanisms beyond your imagining we must attend. But that wouldn't assuage you either, would it? This isn't about the thousands suffering, the abused spouse or neglected child. They are how you justify yourself. Aren't they?"

These words flay you. The light of her halo shimmers around her head, beaming past her to burn away the artifice you've constructed around your anger. She's right. Every other evil and transgression you lament are only pieces of camouflage, obfuscating your true motive. Now her light and her word peels them away. You feel it tingle painfully across your flesh. Your eyes water as it burns them. Your head begins to throb as it blinds your mind to its own thoughts. Piece by piece, you are revealed as the raw, selfish thing you are. This was always about you. Your bitterness, your spite and resentment. There's a relief in admitting this. A weight falling from the back of your neck, not having to dress up this ugly growth upon your soul. This was always about you.

"Not anymore," she says.

Not anymore?

"Kneel."

You drop to your knees. Her will pulses through you, blinding your body to its own power. Her light fills your eyes now- her shining pure robes and wings, her beautiful face with their piercing eyes, her halo's radiance. You can almost smell the world burning away around you, devoured by Her cleansing flames. You feel them flickering against you as they melt away your armor. Licking hotly but not painfully against the exposed sinews of your flesh as your skin sloughs off under their heat. You can feel your mind melt and run from your ears like candle wax.

"That sin you planned to commit tonight," she says, her voice like the Heavenly trumpets themselves, blaring in your ears, "will go undone."

You were going to ruin her. Break and ravage her and dump her wreckage in the city square for all to see. The idea becomes ash within the inferno.

"The selfish rage you hold in your heart," she continues, "will be released."

The flames reach your heart and you feel their teeth eat away its imperfections, scalding your chest cavity clean. The tumors on your spirit, scorched away. The weight on your back becoming dust and blowing away. A smile creeps upon your face. It's such a relief, letting these blasphemies and the justifications you'd built over them burn and vanish. Her voice rings in your skull, now hollowed. By now there is hardly a You left. There's only Her, and the vessel She fills with Her voice.

Tears run from the vessel's eyes to boil and evaporate on her cheeks. She would sing but her Angel's fires have even burnt out her voice, finding the words it carries impure. Instead she mouths nonsense praises, babbling thanks to be rid of her sapience and the sinful pains it had fomented in her.

The Angel's smile eases, still a little sad. To purify a soul by force is a last resort, not to be used outside of the gravest circumstances. She laments its necessity here. This woman could have harmed Her, and thereby doomed the city. Besides, She can feel Her new vessel is happier this way. Sometimes they simply crave oblivion. Very occasionally, it's merciful to let them have it. "You are Mine," the Angel intones, with the gentle finality of a dying hearth. "And you are pure."

And it's over. There are no more fires nor trumpets. The holy work is done. The Angel's light is only a gentle glow, Her halo warmly shimmering. The vessel is whole of body again, staring up at her Angel with eyes wide with dumb reverence. Pure of soul and mind, her anger and spite incinerated. "I am Yours," repeats the vessel, slurring slightly for the reduction of her mind's capacities. "And I am pure." It's abject elation, speaking the words aloud. Permitting them into herself as Truth. Warmth blooms into the hollow where her sinful thoughts once stewed, and between her legs blooms a damp warmth.

Reaching down, the Angel brushes soft fingertips across her cheek. "Good girl."

A whine of sheer animal bliss escapes the vessel's mouth, and she nuzzles her face into her Savior's touch. She is now pure, and so is forgiven.

The next day, the vessel returns to her post atop the wall. Her fellows notice little difference. She's quieter now, speaking rarely and tersely. Every so often they hear her in the latrines lately at night, loudly pleasuring herself and mumbling words to a liturgy none of them quite recognize. Eerie as that is, however, she seems less sullen. Less bitter. Whatever change has come over her, they judge it to be a good one.

Only she and Her know the truth.

One can sometimes catch a small glimpse of it. When the Angel emerges to patrol the land just outside the walls during the day. Her vessel watches Her soar and circle above, a look of idiot bliss filling her eyes. And the Angel smiles back down on her, content with the holy work She's done.