Brona Scorrey wakes to the venomous reek of diesel fumes and the warm kiss of sunlight.

“…Help much now, does…”

“Up you get, Scorrey.”

Brona opens her eyes to find Haspin’s narrow face glowering down at her, alcohol on the other woman’s breath. Above, the sky is deepening to evening violet. Brona’s about to ask if Haspin had felt anything- if it wasn’t just herself who’d heard- but the moment she opens her mouth, Haspin tips the glass lips of a bottle into it and pours in a stream of pisswater whiskey.

The other woman takes a swig. “Fuckin’ Heavens,” she rasps, grimacing through the sting. “Weren’t me who wrecked the engine, was it?”

Rubbing her eyes, Brona collects herself. Then her attention snaps to Haspin. “What about the engine?”

Haspin jerks a thumb over her shoulder. “Engine’s shot.”

It occurs to Brona that she’s laid in a vast shadow. She just has to look past Haspin to see it: Lucifer’s Folly. Thirty feet of steel, a brutal rhomboid of a body atop two pillar-like legs and a pair of machine guns stabbing out of the “shoulders”, like a tank stretched out into the rough shape of a man. An impressive machine, so much so one feels like they have to walk up and touch it to accept it’s real. Now, however, Folly stands inert, its jade-and-grey paint raked with bullet holes. 

Painted on the right side is an angel, resplendent in her silvery armor, spear raised and four wings spread. Brona couldn’t say which angel. She hadn't been able to remember all the seraphim and cherubim even back in the orphanage, when they'd been trying to raise her into a priestess. Could be Lucifer herself, she guesses.

Brona feels a chill, either from the damp mud she feels seeping through the back of her own uniform, or from the sinking realization of where this leaves them. “Odal said the engine was fine.”

“It was.” Haspin totters to her feet. “Until you took a nap on us.”

“Took a…” No, don’t pick a fight, Brona reminds herself. Haspin’s drunk. One of the others will tell her what happened. Her hand goes to her neckline, a self-soothing habit. Her necklace is still there, a few faded red beads dangling from it. There you are, Laisie.

Exhaling, she gets up, sweeps her blond curls into a semblance of order, and follows. Odal, their mechanic, is climbing down the rungs along Folly’s leg, smears of engine oil on her dark face. Brona waves to her as she reaches the ground. “Odal,” she calls, “What happened?”

Odal opens her mouth to speak when someone else shouts, “We were left to die, is what happened.” This is Venters, the driver. She sits back against the wall of a chest-high ridge, which offers the group some shelter. An icon of the Silver Goddess dangles from her fingers, and her eyes bug at the edge of panic. Her splash mask lays in her lap, a brutal thing with goggles and a chainmail veil to hang over one’s face.

Nearby on a blanket lies Jaderett, one of the machine gunners. A bandage is wrapped over her right eye, crusted with a dark blotch of dried blood.

Odal puts up a placating hand. “They’re not just gonna leave us, Venters.” To Brona she adds, “Engine’s shot.”

Brona goes cold, having it confirmed by someone sober. “Okay. How so?”

“Dunno. Can’t find anything wrong. It just won’t come on.” Odal wipes grease from her face with a soiled cloth. “But listen. I’ve sent the pigeon back to the lines, and it’s not like they wouldn’t notice we’re missing.”

Brona nods, trying to let that be reassuring. Trying not to look around at the miles of grey mud and craters and scorched earth surrounding them. “Is Harry about?”

Odal sits next to Venters. “No Harry,” she replies. “Not that we’ve seen.”

“Plenty of Harries, actually.” Haspin is milling about, nursing her whiskey- no doubt she’d smuggled it in. “They just ain’t tryin’ to kill us.”

That’s another thing Brona had been trying not to see. The bodies of the enemy, littered around them, melted to the earth or shredded apart. The Host- Harry. The great rotten plague eating the world alive, twisted things of meat and metal. Here’s one that looks something like a flayed horse with a machine gun for a head. There’s another like a massive bat. Laid near the crew is one that looks almost human.

Hence why it’s such a blow to see Lucifer’s Folly incapacitated. The machine is the first of a new breed. A prototype for a new kind of weapon, one that would let humanity stride shoulder to shoulder into battle with hope, and beat the piss out of its cousin, death. And it was working, at first. Now Folly's down, and here the five of them are, skinny and dirty in their green uniforms, all exhausted. 

“Well, what else is new,” says Haspin, slapping Brona on the back. “You must be losin’ count many times this has happened to you, Scorrey.”

Brona grits her teeth. But when the others give her inquiring looks she admits, “I was in a tank crew at Darsimal.”

“You too?” Odal manages a smile. “Explains how you could shoot with Luci lurchin’ about like that.”

Brona returns the not-quite-smile. She isn’t sure how to explain what happened when she fired her weapon, the long sword-like rod poking out of the front of Lucifer’s Folly- the prism cannon.

They get to talking as they keep watch, the night closing cold dark wings around them. Most of them have some story hanging off of them. Venters has her icon of the Silver Goddess. Odal has an icon of her own, a bronze shield ringed with eyes- an icon of some specific angel. Jaderett has a fake rose stuffed into her breast pocket, a symbol of joyful defiance against the grey death consuming the world. Haspin has something similar in a few blades of dead grass pinned to her sleeve. Brona herself has a scar on her right hand from her time working in a munitions factory, making the same shells she’d later be drafted to fire, and the necklace Laisie gave her. A parting gift between sisters. 

Before long Venters starts getting antsy. So, Odal leads them in a quick prayer, getting down on one knee, laying a green prayer cloth over the raised leg and folding their hands over it. “Silver light of dawn,” Odal intones. “Please reach us through this long night. We ask the Silver Goddess for protection now, and in the battles ahead. We do not ask for glory nor blood, only that we may live to protect humanity. We do not need nor want any more.”

Venters, still clutching her icon of the Goddess, settles. The words simply roll off Brona. She supposes the Silver Goddess is up there looking out for someone. But She sure as shit wasn’t around when Brona and Laisie ended up in the orphanage after Mum was taken, nor when Brona was snatched from there to the factory. 

She's not sure the Goddess is looking out for anyone, really. The Host has been spreading like a cancer for longer than Brona had been alive. 50 years now, she's heard some older folks say. A war stretched out for decades, with no end in sight. But that’s a fight she certainly doesn’t want to pick now, lest Venters come undone.

Prayer over, Haspin raises her head and sweeps her short dark hair out of her eyes. “So what’s the odds of the Goddess sendin’ a few angels down to get us out of here?”

Odal shoots her a dour look. “That’s not how it wo—“ She notices the bottle. “Haspin, tell me you haven’t drank all that yourself.”

Venters finishes the original thought. “Faith is a garden you tend,” she says. “And devotion the water you tend with.”

Haspin rolls her eyes. “Must be an angel who knows how to fix an engine.”

Normally Brona would lean more towards Haspin. She probably does, but again, she’s worn down enough fighting Harry, let alone her own crewmates. Her eyes wander to Lucifer’s Folly, feeling a sense of calm as the prism cannon’s nozzle glints white in the rising moonlight.

Fighting in Lucifer’s Folly hadn’t been so different from a tank at first. Diesel engine snarling in her ears, filling the cabin with rancid fumes. Worse still, the machine’s every step made the whole cabin lurch from side to side. They had to strap their boots to the floor to not get tossed around as it shuffled across no-man's land. Brona was dizzy before she even spotted the enemy through her view port- hundreds of misshapen things shambling about the trenches and shell holes, riddling Lucifer's Folly with bullets.

Then it got good. First Haspin and Jaderett returned with the machine guns, and the Harries started dropping in swathes. Then Brona pulled back the lever on the prism cannon, felt the mechanisms inside thrum to life through the grip and handle, and squeezed the trigger.

The prism cannon is a lovely thing. You barely even have to aim. Just fire and sweep it back and forth, like you're watering the garden. There's a flash of silver and a scream like the highest notes of a violin, playing Harry’s swan song, and then the beam of spiraling mercurial fire takes care of the rest. Brona grins like a madwoman every time she pulls that trigger. For a moment its light fills the viewport, and then once the beam dies there's nothing but scorched earth and silvery flames.

It's power. Real power, and for those three-second bursts, it's all hers.

Lucifer's Folly rumbled on, machine guns crackling, Brona blinking that silvery flash from her eyes as she waited for the cannon to recharge. Back in training, it only took a moment for her vision to clear. Just then, however, those pops of light lingered a little longer. 

"Scorrey," bellowed Venters, strapped into the pilot's seat with a periscope fixed to the goggles of her splash mask. Enemy fire cracked a harsh staccato against their armor. "Light, now!"

Brona pointed the cannon at a group of Harries running to a trench and fired. Light, screaming, the whole world burning. Only this time, she didn’t grin. Didn’t feel that heady rush of power.

Instead, she felt calm. A serenity deep in her chest. Had the prism cannon's light always been so pleasantly warm, pushing away the sweltering heat of the engine?

When the light cleared, the trench crawled with white flame.

"I'm empty!" Haspin, starting to reload her machine gun. Through pops of light Brona could see a few Harries, wreathed in flames, crawling back out of the trench to take a few more shots at them. 

"Tanks moving up beside us." Venters, cranking the levers and pedals that animate Lucifer's Folly. "Scorrey, mind your aim."

Brona couldn’t see the tanks yet. She leveled the cannon at the keratinous hump of a Harry bunker ahead and fired.

The prism cannon didn’t scream. Its light wasn’t an eye-searing flare. Instead there was harmony in the sonorous hum it produced. Almost like a choir, dozens of voices in droning unison. She could see clouds swirling in the light, and deep within, a flash of movement.

It was soothing. Even there. Even then.

The light cleared. The bunker was melted flesh and greasy black smoke, rolling upwards.

Brona almost hunched down to try and see the sky. See if above the battle, the clouds were as pure a white.

No, she was delirious. The fumes softening her brain. Right?

A ragged wail of pain. Brona looked to see Jaderett writhing on the floor, a hand pressed over her right eye.

"Masks on!" Odal, shouting as she hurries to undo Jaderett's boot straps. "Scorrey, put your mask on!"

"Shoot!" Venters, pulling Lucifer's Folly to a stop. "Someone shoot, dammit!"

Brona was calm. Readying the cannon, she picked out a larger Harry, one of the horse things charging for their right flank, and fired.

Radiance engulfed her. It drowned out the battlefield, peeled open the front of Lucifer's Folly, opening it to a pale sea of clouds. The choir filled her ears, their song almost intelligible, almost familiar. Had she heard that song before? Perhaps, back at the orphanage. A hymn.

Another sound rose up beneath it, the beat of heavy wings. She could see them approaching. Vast and bright, shimmering with their own light. Eight- no, ten, a dozen?- spread from a single shining source. So bright it burnt her eyes to look at, yet the last thing she wanted to do was look away.

Through the glare, she could just make out something extending out to her. A hand. As comforting and welcoming a gesture as she'd ever received.

It hit Brona then, removed from the bright, painful chaos, that she didn't want to be powerful. She didn't want to fight. She wanted this.

Brona reached out.

GOOD, LITTLE LAMB. COME TO ME.

Haspin swishes her whiskey around. "So what happened?"

Brona rubs her eyes. "Engine fumes, I think."

Haspin cocks a brow. "Right when the engine went to shit?"

"Come off it, Haspin." Odal rolls her angel’s icon between her fingers. "It was the prism cannon. Must've been. Never seen anything like it in all me life. Couldn't even guess how it works, and I'll be frank, I don't like that."

"Nice while it lasted," admits Venters. She rubs the icon of the Silver Goddess between her fingers. Brona finds herself trying to count how many wings it has.

No. Just fumes. Brona asks, "So everyone else just left us?"

"Artillery started coming down."  Venters looks down at her trinket. "Took us off guard, I suppose. Half the tanks were popped, the rest fell back." She settles back against the ridge. "So now it's just us, waiting for a miracle."

Haspin plops down beside Brona, throwing an arm around her shoulder. "Or for some fuckin' thing to kill us." She offers Brona the bottle. It's half empty. "C'mon, Scorrey, you can't tell me you don't want a drink."

Brona doesn’t really. But if she doesn't, Haspin’s going to drink the rest of that bottle herself. "Since you insist," she says, and Haspin pops the bottle into her mouth and tips the drink down her throat. Brona lets her, trying not to sputter. 

They chatter a while longer, then just sit in silence. Brona takes another swig at some point, and finds herself sagging against Haspin’s shoulder. She's not overly fond of the other woman. Not unfond, either. They're simply comrades in the struggle. She feels like a ghost next to them, bled dry while they still have a little left in their veins. A life required living, and Brona never got much of a chance to do that. Slums, to orphanage, to factory, to war.

Maybe that's why it feels nice to have Haspin’s arm around her, the taller woman chuckling into her ear. “There’s a good little soldier. Never mind the beasties, I could gobble you up myself.” Seeking her lips to push damp, hungry kisses into them.

“Hasp- Mmh…” This is all the protest Brona can manage. She has an inkling to resist more, but can’t pull the will together. Fuck it. A little snogging can't hurt, right? She’s survived by choosing her battles, where she had the choice, at least. Fight if you must, but don’t go picking fights. Mum picked one over how hard the factories worked her. All it got her was snatched by city guard during the night. She lets Haspin have her fun, tasting booze on the other woman’s tongue.

It doesn’t even last long before Haspin slumps off her and falls asleep in the mud. Venters and Odal are still locked in conversation. They seem to have agreed the Harry artillery strike was to cover a retreat rather than to set up a countercharge. 

Brona looks up at the moon, half-hidden in the clouds and mantled with stars. Its light casts a silvery sheen along the outline of the clouds. She feels that deep calm again, followed by a biting curiosity. That was just the engine fumes, right?

She gets up and strides towards Lucifer’s Folly.

Odal calls after her, “And where are you goin’?”

“Checkin’ the cannon.”

“I already did. It’s fine, Scorrey.”

“It’s my weapon,” Brona replies, already starting up the ladder. “I wanna take a look.”

The others mumble frustrations as she opens the access hatch at the machine’s hip and climbs inside. She’s got a torch on her belt and flicks it on. Nothing’s obviously amiss, save for the dark stains flecking the edges of Jaderett’s viewport. She goes to the prism cannon and kneels by it. Odal would have done a more thorough investigation than she could, Brona knows. Still, she has to look. Has to know what that was.

Pale wires run from the back of the cannon down into an opening at the base of the weapon’s stand, running down under the floor. Brona tries to calculate where these would go. The best she can figure is the engine room. So, that’s where she goes.

The engine sits in its own little ventilated closet at the back of the cabin, perhaps to try and mitigate the noise and smell. It’s silent now, but still reeks of burning diesel. What catches Brona's interest, however, is the smaller box in front of it. More wires run in tidy lines from it to the engine. Another row of wires run from the front of the box and under the floor, towards the prism cannon.

Brona knows whatever's in that box is no business of hers. There's going to be hell waiting for her if she opens it. If only she could shake that deep calm, that soothing warmth. Those voices singing to her, those glimpses of pure ivory. If only she could shake that invitation.

She looks for a way to open the box, and ends up just prying the lid off with her fingers. Once it finally comes free, the air of the whole cabin seems to lighten, like someone's opened a door and let cool air flow in. She examines the box's contents. 

Cradled inside and hooked up to the wires is something that looks like a golden tiara. Veins of deep green run along organic-looking patterns, like bushels of leaves and tortoise shell, and a smooth orb of emerald sits at its center. Brona can only see all these little details, however because the tiara itself emits a pale yellow glow.

On any other night, Brona would know not to touch it. But tonight, she's trapped out in no-man's land with thirty tons of broken down metal, waiting to either die or be pulled out of the meat grinder to be thrown back in another day, and she's got hymns and quicksilver clouds swirling in her head.

She unclips the wires and grips the object- and flinches as it shocks her fingertips. It only hurts for a heartbeat. Just a hot little pop before it feels more like running one’s fingers through tall grass. Then she puts it on.

At first, nothing. It tingles faintly against her forehead, but no more. Brona deflates. Maybe it was just the fumes, then. 

Until she feels that tingle spread. It sinks through her skull into her brain, tickling at first before the sensation dulls into calm. Automatically her breathing deepens, steadies, grounding her in this peaceful feeling.

The feeling trickles downwards into her chest, branching out into her limbs. Within moments Brona feels lighter. Softer, like she’s not spent her whole life scrapping in the gutter for heels of bread and pocket change. It reaches the tips of her fingers and toes. Those harsh memories of the battle, of all the battles before it, of the factory and the orphanage, of the night Mum was taken, all of it starts to fade. She grasps for details but finds them slipping through her fingers. What did a rat’s teeth feel like when she woke up to one chewing on her? What did artillery shells smell like as she made them? What songs did they sing in the orphanage? What did Laisie’s voice sound like?

Wait.

Brona tries to remember her little sister. What she looked like, her quirks and mannerisms. All of it is sinking into this silver lake of serenity filling her. It’s so soothing, a balm on every wound she’s ever had, but it’s taking Laisie from her. Brona tries to push against it. 

It pushes back.

It’s like having boiling water dumped over her. Cooking her alive, sweat prickling and running across her body. But she can’t scream. She can’t thrash or reach for the tiara. It won’t let her. It’s taking control of her body as much as her mind, paralyzing her. All she can do is spasm, fighting it in flesh and soul.

THERE YOU ARE, LITTLE LAMB.

And just like that, she’s lost. Five words make the battering ram which breaks the last of her resolve. She loses what grip she had and drops back into calm waters. She knows she can’t fight that voice like she knows she won’t sprout wings and fly if she jumps off a ledge. Feeling the heat subside and serenity take its place, Brona realizes she doesn’t want to fight, either. 

VERY GOOD. SUBMITTING ALREADY. 

Something begins to run from the tiara, through her hair and down her forehead. It descends in many warm, tacky lines around her ears, between her eyes and around her nose and over her lips, down the back of her neck. At the edges of her vision she glimpses something like steel guitar strings, pale and glistening. They spread across her body, along her torso and limbs, weaving between her breasts and around her waist. 

YOU’RE DOING SO WELL.

I WASN’T SURE ABOUT YOU. I COULDN’T DECIDE FROM THOSE GLIMPSES IN THE LIGHT.

YOUR HEART IS SO HEAVY WITH DOUBT.

BUT NOW, BRONA, I’M SURE.

Still, she does wonder. She asks, her own voice distant and dreamy in her ears, “Sure of what?”

DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’VE JUST PUT ON?

The voice chuckles into her head. It filters right into her mind, bypassing her ears. The sound is such engrossing music, so brimming with fondness, that Brona can’t help but giggle along with it. 

YES, LITTLE LAMBS LIKE YOU AREN’T MEANT TO KNOW THESE THINGS. GUESS, THOUGH.

THE PRISM CANNON. IS THAT WHAT YOU’VE CALLED IT.

PEACE, BRONA. I’M NOT UPSET WITH YOU. YOU DID NOT BUILD THIS MACHINE, NOR STEAL MY DAUGHTER’S HALO TO POWER IT.

And with that, Brona realizes who she’s speaking to. 

She manages to ask, “Is your daughter alright? Has her halo just been stolen, or…?”

The sorrow in the Silver Goddess’s voice is a winter night, snow radiant in the dark until it’s swallowed by solid black.

I DON’T KNOW, BRONA. I SENT HER TO AID YOUR PEOPLE. THEN, SHE DISAPPEARED.

She asks the only thing she can. “Is there anything I can do, Goddess? To help find her?”

BRING ME HER HALO. 

GO WEST. WALK UNTIL ONE OF MY DAUGHTERS MEETS YOU.

THANK YOU, LITTLE LAMB. SUCH DEVOTION, ESPECIALLY FROM ONE SO PLAGUED BY DOUBT, MERITS REWARD.

Something slips through the mercurial surface of those calm waters in Brona’s heart. Something she’s just barely been able to hold onto.

“Goddess,” she begins, “I had a sister once. Laisie, her name was. There was a bad sickness goin’ round our orphanage one year, and…” She swallows hard. “I don’t ‘spose she’s up there?”

I HAVE MANY DAUGHTERS. BUT YES, I RECALL A LAISIE.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE HER AGAIN, BRONA?

More threads run through her hair like loving fingers. Then they sink their points into her skin, through her skull. She feels them caress the folds of her brain, gentle as a breeze running over a fresh wound, offering relief. They find purchase, and slip in. Brona flinches- then loosens. 

There comes a final plunge and twist, just behind her forehead. Then, finally, quiet bliss like she’s never known. Brona Scorrey- orphan, factory worker, soldier- sinks into silver and fades away. There is then only Brona, a lamb of the Silver Goddess. Beaming. Content. Eager to serve.

THERE, MY NEWEST DAUGHTER. NO MORE FIGHTING. ONLY THE RADIANT SANGUINITY OF OUR HEAVEN.

OF COURSE, MY LITTLE LAMB. NOW, COME. YOUR SISTERS ARE WAITING FOR YOU.

Brona looks west. Far out over the wasteland, a star glimmers in the gulf of the sky, arcing slowly down towards the earth. She wonders if it’s Laisie. See you soon, little sis. Wiping the last tears from her eyes, Brona creeps away into the dark, Mother’s love nestled within her head.