Page 58 of Angel in Absentia
Archers lined the walls with blessed arrows, shielded back behind the wall of light. As the army assembled, the sky bruised crimson. The forests beyond Loda—once golden and alive—shifted. Their leaves curled, their trunks blackening into burned casts.
The next few minutes were filled with the dialogue of warfare, urgent commands, shifting metal, and the roar of burning fires. The air was saturated with ansra, giving it a crackling warmth that brought the light sheen of sweat to Clea’s skin beneath her armor.
Clea and Dae took positions on the front lines, a symbolic gesture more than a strategic one. The first few minutes of silence after preparations were the longest minutes of all. Every drawn breath felt as if it lasted for ages, the quiet beyond the woods pulsing as thousands lay in wait.
A whistle echoed from the walls, signaling to the front lines that the enemy was closing in through the woods.
Dae drew his sword and lit it as a signal. The motion was followed in rows on either side; swords were drawn in a long and powerful sequence of scraping metal. “Brace!” he shouted again, and the order echoed along with the sounds of clanging shieldssoon blessed with ansra. Everything around them burned with light against the redness of the setting sun over the mountains.
Clea first heard the Venennin tearing through the trees en masse, the horde large and hungry, breaking into Dawn Field and triggering the first rain of blessed arrows that soared down and struck with explosive blasts of light. More charged on, met by a second wave of arrows. Other Venennin stumbled sickly over the felled masses, not stopping—charging, hungry. The air cooled with an icy bite as the first waves of cien-soaked air preceded the onslaught.
Several Venennin morphed into monstrous beasts, towering floors above the others in disfigured bundles of claws, tentacles and eyes.
Clea tightened her grip around her sword, feeling lightheaded as she steadied her breathing.
“I’ll meet you again in the light,” Dae murmured beside her, voice wavering with adrenalin.
“You better mean dawn,” she replied back sharply and saw the slightest smirk greet his eyes beneath the helmet. Alas, the fourth true smile on record.
The Venennin thundered forward, and Clea felt the collective tension as they waited for the clash. Only feet remained between them, the Venennin churning forth like a rapid boiling wave.
Clea forced one last inhalation before sword and shields met their foes. The earth shook beneath her. She could see the Venennin’s eyes in a vast array of hungering color. Their snarls roared into her ears. She drew her sword back.
A thundering line of explosive darkness drummed down the space between them with such force that both sides were thrown back.
Venennin were violently crushed away, and Clea was lost in a fog as a black veil of scattered earth, ash, and smoke washed over them. The first lines were thrown to the earth, and disoriented, they scrambled up, Clea’s ears ringing.
“Retreat back out of the fog!” she shouted when she didn’t hear Dae give any orders. Her own voice seemed lost in a black fog that absorbed all sound. It sucked at the light of her sword and armor, the ansra draining away as if the darkness around her hungered for it. She tried to extend her senses through it, but nothing remained, and then at last, she stumbled out the other side into an active battlefield.
Dark, crushing violence pushed across the clearing. Veilin were present but only at the fringes of the fog, watching as silver-clad warriors destroyed hordes of Venennin left and right. The silver was not armor, not like normal armor, but scant and almost tribal in nature.
Other Veilin hung back in shock, but having a sense of the Insednian’s origin, Clea didn’t hesitate. She joined them. She cut down the nearest Venennin, deepening the fight into the woods. Others followed her lead. Clea and another with her faltered and staggered back when an Insednian crushed several Venennin they were fighting with a long chain.
She caught his eyes, recognizing the Venennin in the broken mask. They both stood still, watching each other with several feet of space between them. He was ragged and frightening. It was the Venennin who had witnessed her healing of Ryson. Theshackles were still attached to his body, a silver eye peering through a broken hole in his mask.
She backed away slowly and darted into the woods and other areas of the battle. Darkness shifted around the trees like mist. Veilin spells flickered between branches. Clea fought her way forward with groups of Veilin who converged and then were scattered time and time again. Soon, Clea was hard-pressed to find enemies not being torn back by an Insednian fighter. Few but powerful, their energy soaked the battlefield.
She knew before the battle was over that she’d need to pull her people back to the city, ensure that the Insednians who had come would stop their onslaught at the Ashanas and not go any further.
On her way back, she navigated with a group of Veilin through the woods, trying to make it back through the darkening fog that obscured the steps beneath them. In haste, they ran out into Dawn Field and stopped short, nearly colliding with a gathered group of Insednians.
It had been so quiet and the fog so thick that everything ahead of her had seemed empty, the sounds of battle still echoing from her left and right.
Clea jolted back as she and the other Veilin found themselves only feet away from the bulk of the Insednian forces. They all turned, eyes like burning coins, to look at her and her scant group, each with ansra-lit swords and armor that had made their intrusion painfully obvious.
They’d fallen upon a kind of ritual. Someone lay dead in the fog at their feet. Clea recognized the clothes, and soon, she recognized the figure.
Myken. Executed.
At the center of the Insednians, clad in black and silver, stood a single tall figure with his back to her. His clothing was different, layered, and almost regal.
A massive roar shook the field, and Clea and her group drew up their weapons as two of the Venennin monsters broke into the field. Vile and distorted, they charged forward, Clea prepared to fight before the central Insednian figure stepped forward and lifted a hand.
Clea looked over at him, his face shielded by his arm so that she couldn’t see his face even in such close proximity. He raised a silver clawed hand to the beasts across the field as they pummeled forward.
The other Insednians seemed calm, almost relaxed. Clea’s heart pounded as she saw their leader’s open hand constrict rapidly into a clawed first.
The Venennin beasts opposite to them shrieked as their massive bodies were crushed inward, carnage exploding across the field in a torrent of filth that boiled and steamed along the edges of the forest.
