The town sits high in the mountains, mantled in snow as winter settles its white cloak upon the peaks. Here its people hoped to find sanctuary, hidden above the turmoil of the world below. Within its walls and watch towers they eked out a quiet existence. The sparse forests gave them wood and game. The stone gave them shelter. All was well.

Until tonight. The Host have found them.

The walls are breached and the watchmen shot dead in their towers, and death shambles into Haylen on limbs of frostbitten flesh and rusted steel. A wailing mass of townsfolk flee towards the crude bunkers higher up as the few remaining militia try to hold off the swarm with old rifles and animal desperation. It does nothing to slow the horde. Dozens of rotting things, reeking of decay and burnt oil, made of old flesh and metal in the crude likeness of men. Guns and jagged blades replace their hands, dripping with the blood of fresh kills. Bullets tear chunks from their fetid bodies. Still they encroach, puppeteered by a nameless malice.

Neither man nor undead notice that golden star growing in the night sky. Not until it blankets Haylen in its radiance, and crashes into the heart of the swarm as it passes through the town square.

For a moment, calamity. A shockwave rippling with heat and electricity. A hundred windows shattering. The burning shattered wrecks of many Host thralls, thrown into stone walls. Both attacker and defender are hurled down to the snow by the force. The living rise first, blinking into the shimmering pale smoke curtaining the new crater in the heart of their town.

The smoke ripples away as something within stirs. Wings. Massive and white as bone, four in all. As they spread, they reveal silver armor within, shining like the moon, decorated with rows and bands of eyes which seem to blink in the light. It isn’t until the newcomer stands that they realize what they’re looking at.

Haylen has prayed for salvation. Dorakael, Angel of the Order Ophanim, has answered.

The surviving thralls haul their stiff bodies to their feet. Dozens still surround Dorakael and now focus their attention on Her. However, She is a shining tower, looming over them. As She draws a war hammer from Her back, the townsfolk take their leave. They called for a miracle. Now they let Her work.

Forty rusted guns train on Dorakael.

One might imagine an Angel as elegant, a strong summer wind laden with warmth and vitality. Indeed there is a brutal elegance to Dorakael, as with a single monstrous wing beat, She meteors into one cluster and reduces the four of them to rancid mulch with a swing of Her hammer. She barely feels the impact in Her arm, just as She barely feels the bullets that pepper Her armour and ricochet off into snow and stone. Even Her wings are protected by panels of ivory plate.

Shooting back up into the sky, She selects another group and strikes them like artillery. The thralls try to scatter but one is crushed into the cobblestone, the others stumbling as the impact dents a second smaller crater into the earth. Panels shift in Her pauldrons, heavenly machinery rearranging into a pair of shoulder-mounted cannons. With these Dorakael incinerates the downed ones in a twin blast of thrumming golden fire. She is a winged tank, an airborne ironclad, raining retribution with ordinance and blunt breaking metal.

The Host is without fear, however. Dispersing across the square, the remaining thralls seek cover to fire from. But the hundred eyes of Dorakael’s armour are not decoration- She can see through every one. Her enemies cannot take Her off guard, nor can they hide. Some crouch behind benches or stone fences. Some crawl through windows to shoot from cover. With cannon and hammer She finds them all, leaving mangled wrecks and ashen shadows in Her wake. The night seethes with fire and thunder, hellish light ceding to Heaven’s wrath. One thrall manages to close with its blade. Dorakael grabs it by its breathless throat. Gilded flame wreathes Her hand and spreads to the abomination, engulfing it in a heartbeat. She hurls it at another as it flees, dropping both in an immolated heap.

Then, a peace of sorts. No more gunfire. Smoke both oily black and holy white mingle in the air, piercing with burnt meat and ozone. Dorakael, silver armour now stained with sludgy viscera, surveys the square. Something catches her eye, limping out from behind a fence. It isn’t one of the Host.

A young woman, swaddled in a heavy green coat with chocolate curls spilling down her shoulders, hobbles towards the path the rest of the townsfolk fled along. Perhaps she’d been injured in the mob’s senseless flight and was left behind. Dorakael is content to let her go. These people prayed for intercession. She has interceded. So long as the Host are repelled, the Ophanim need take no further action.

Until She feels the earth tremble beneath Her boots.

The Angel acts quickly. With two wing beats She reaches the girl and scoops her up with a single arm, the little creature yelping in surprise. Something is barrelling towards them, breaking stone and wood in its charge. Carrying the girl up into a watchtower, Dorakael sets her gently down there. “Peace, lamb,” She assures her. “I will finish this.”

 

Leaping out of the tower, Dorakael hovers over Haylen and sizes Her foe up. The mortals have named the different builds of Host. She’s gleaned the hulking, headless thing now crashing through a smaller structure towards Her is- amusingly- called an intercessor. It throws a signpost of its way with a swing of its club arm as it enters the square.

Raising Her hammer, Dorakael swoops down upon it. But the intercessor is swift. Raising its arm it swings at Her just before impact, forcing Her to twist out of the way. The brutal club clips the Ophanim’s wing armor, throwing Her off balance. Dorakael spins and crashes shoulder-first into the cobblestone, gritting Her teeth as pain flares in that shoulder. She tumbles across the square, wrapped gracelessly in Her own wings, but it only takes Her a moment to regain Her footing and rise. In that time, however, the groan and snap of breaking wood reaches Her ears.

The watchtower leans to one side. The intercessor has damaged its base. She can hear the girl cry out.

But the intercessor thunders back into the square, an avalanche of rotting meat and metal plating bearing down on Dorakael with four centauroid legs. Dorakael plants Her feet. She opens with a barrage of Her shoulder cannons, bolts of golden fury meeting the monsters charge. Its armor is blasted to white slag, sloughing from its body, taking chunks of green-grey flesh with it. A lucky hits shreds its right shoulder and the arm falls away. It doesn’t slow. If anything, it’s coming faster now.

Dorakael doesn’t need it to slow.

Pushing off into the sky, She launches down on it again- this time with the curved claw on the back of Her hammer’s head.

She bisects the intercessor to its waist. Vestigial entrails and broken machinery spill out as its momentum pushes Her. The Ophanim keeps Her footing, leaning her weight into its ruin. Its remaining arm dangles loose at its side. Its pushed Dorakael halfway across the square by the time it stops. She wrenches Her hammer out of the corpse, and it collapses onto its side, gone to its second and final rest.

Another crack of wood. The tower is leaning lower, threatening to crash down onto an adjacent house. Within the girl screams for help. Dorakael wastes no more time. She launches towards the top. She’s swift but the lean is worsening, the structure’s injured groan rising to a cacophony. Landing inside She scoops the girl up again and carries her out. It’s not a moment too soon. The tower falls onto the house, collapsing them together into a wreckage of wood and stone.

Hovering again, Dorakael’s hundred eyes look over Haylen in search of more foes. What few they see are fleeing, staggering away through the mountain paths. This battle is won. However, the Ophanim spies something else which demands her attention. Around girl’s neck is a pendant, settled lopsided on her chest. A pair of wide-splayed antlers whittled from wood. A sacred icon, but not in honor of any Angel. Dorakael was sent to save these people because they had prayed for an Angel’s intercession. Therefore, She assumed, they must generally be faithful.

And yet, this girl is a heathen.

Dorakael lowers them into the ruins of the square. As She does the girl raises her head. There is no relief on her face. She knows. “A-Angel...”

“Hush.” Dorakael gently sets her down on a bench on a more-intact porch. One of Her sisters might now say, be not afraid. Dorakael finds this to be an empty platitude. Unless compelled otherwise, mortals will always be afraid. “I will ask no great thing of you, little lamb.”

The girl stares up at Her. She’s trying to keep a brave face- perhaps to remain strong in her god’s honor. Yet she’s betrayed by the slight trembling at the edges of her mouth.

“I will only ask this.” Dorakaels cannons fold back into Her pauldrons. “When you prayed for salvation today, who answered?”

The girl’s eyes linger on Her a moment, before they drift downwards. They’ve been captured by the soft golden glow of two eyes on Dorakael’s breastplate. She blinks, as if trying to dispel the two points of yellow light reflected in her own blue eyes. “What...?”

Dorakael does not repeat the question. She knows the pretty little heathen will tell Her what She wants to hear, but doubts the girl will truly internalize its meaning- doubts she will say it with conviction in her soul. This must be fixed. It’s to that end that Dorakael now lights many of Her armored eyes and bathes the girl in their calming shimmer. She shines and dims them, as if they’re blinking, all across Her armor. The rims of Her pauldrons, along the bands of Her arms and legs, the false eyes of Her helmet, making Herself a glittering constellation in the night. The girl’s focus snaps between them, trying to follow, her own eyes seeming to sparkle.

“Well?” asks Dorakael. “Who answered, my lamb?”

“I...” The heathen screws her eyes shut. Only for a moment. When they open again, the Angel’s lights are still dancing in them. “Angel, I don’t...”

“Yes, you do.” Dorakael is patient, letting the girl gently sink. Easing her into what is to come.

The fear has left the girl’s eyes. Instead, a gilded glaze hangs over them as they drift sleepily after the lights. She murmurs, “Pretty...”

Within Her helmet, Dorakael can’t help but smile. Many of Her sisters wouldn’t admit it, but there are few sights more charming than a mortal cradled in the inexorable arms of holy trance. Especially such a pretty lamb as this, brown curls framing a soft freckled face. But Dorakael will not abuse Her influence. She has transfixed Her mark in divine light. Now She will lead her to said light. “This radiance awaits you,” says the Ophanim. “I only need you to answer.”

 

“Not I,” says Dorakael. “I was sent by my Mother, who heard your people’s prayers. Who is She?”

Her lips twitch, the answer all but hanging from them. Yet she resists. A last sinew of misplaced faith, holding her back. “I-I...”

It’s not unusual. Mortals are stubborn in their delicateness, clinging to whatever illusion of self-determination they can muster. Wanting to feel as if they have some real sway over their lives. Some need an extra little nudge into the light. She reaches for the girl and brushes a swath of hazel curls back over her ear. Then, She sets the eye in the palm of Her glove against the girl’s temple.

Her lamb shudders as she feels Dorakael peer into her. The Ophanim feels that waning resistance flare, like sand being thrown at Her eyes. It settles soon enough, soothed by brilliance. Then all that keeps Her from studying the girl’s mind is a thin haze, easily dispelled. All the girl’s memories, loves, fears, wants, everything that makes her, are laid bare before Dorakael. She could sort through it all, and reshape or destroy it as desired. Her lamb is now clay in Her grip. There’s no need to remould her entirely, however. Only to leave impressions in the right places.

Dorakael finds the heathen’s memories of her faith- going with her grandmother to a shrine higher in the mountain, where they each imbibe a thimble of mead beneath antlers spread like the sky. Leading a goat to the town square, where she and her grandparents paint the animal in blue dye. Her grandmother handing her a knife, and her cutting the animal’s throat. Meagre feasts and bonfires reaching to the sky. Songs in a language so close to extinction that Dorakael now only hears it in memories.

The Angel sets fire to these memories. From their ashes, new ones will grow. There are no more shrines or goats. Feasts are not held beneath vast antlers but beneath stained glass, and in place of mead, communion wine is imbibed before a priestess of Silver. Grandmother teaches hymns instead of pagan songs. On the bench, the girl mutters and twitches as her past is rewritten. This is a kindness. Severing her connection to the old impotent god who failed her, and leading her to Mother’s love.

Only two steps remain for the lamb’s rebirth.

Dorakael withdraws Her hand and steps back. The girl follows, slumping forward like a puppet with strings cut. She lands upon her knees and teeters from side to side, before managing to crane her head up to face the Ophanim. She is now more a mouse than a lamb, tiny and trembling, eyes bugging from her face and flickering with the radiant golden fire behind them, burning the impiety from her mind.

Dorakael orders, “Confess.”

“Angel.” The girl’s voice is a thin rasp of leaves. “I have misplaced my faith. I have sworn myself to the Old Lord in the Mountain, who sleeps through my prayers. He gives us nothing in this time of dire need. I have shed blood and sang blasphemy in his name, all to die ignored by an absentee god.”

 

The girl’s voice hitches. “F-Forgive me, Angel. I am a heathen and a fool.” She raises her shaking hands to clasp them in prayer. “Forgive me. I-I beg of you, Angel, I have strayed far, worshipping stone when I needed only look up to see the light above, and the salvation therein. I-I...” Her voice breaks in a sob and she forces the words out hoarse and unsteady. No tears fall yet. “I do not deserve the mercy you’ve shown me tonight.”

“And yet mercy you have received,” Dorakael leads. “For I see in you a soul misled, not damned. Not beyond absolution. So then, who shall you now place your faith in?”

“The Silver Goddess.” The girl all but weeps it. It is a wretch’s hymn, wild and desperate and so beautifully needful. “I swear myself now, in body and soul, to the Silver Goddess and her Angels.”

“Good girl,” says Dorakael. She crouches, still towering over Her lamb, and slips the heathen pendant up over the girl’s head. Then She burns it in Her fist. The girl watches tongues of angry gold flicker between Her fingers. Unclenching Her hand, the Ophanim lets the ashes slip between Her fingers as She sets Her other hand atop the girl’s head. “I absolve you.”

The lamb stares a moment, disbelieving. A fat silver tear falls from her eye, trailing mercury down her cheek and staining her coat with shining grey. Her old sinful memories, melted from her mind so new piety can take root. Then another, and another, as she breaks into sobs. “Thank you, Angel,” she blubbers, smiling through her tears. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, my lamb.” Dorakael brushes Her fingertips once more across the girl’s cheek, for She does love this meek creature, whose life and soul She has saved. Daughters of Silver love all their adherents, treasure every spirit in their possession. But now Her work is done. Rising, She returns to the centre of the square and pushes off into the sky. While She ascends She does one final scan for Host and finds the town is free of them. So too does She look for that pagan shrine. Some further correction may be needed here. But that will be another day’s work. She soars higher into the night and rejoins the Heavens.