Current Day.

“What?” Agnar Perennia choked. “You want us to fight Beasts?”

“Open your ears, kid,” tutted one of the older greybelts. “She said we’re investigating. Isn’t that right?”

In the present, Ennanis and the rest of her newly-assembled squadron were huddled in one of the meeting rooms aboard the barge. Lanternlight swayed upon the angel soldiers standing around the table.

Ennanis nodded. “That’s the idea. The Beasts have access to a terrible, world-ending power. We have to investigate the Beasts first in order to find out what it is we’re dealing with.”

“Don’t call me kid!” Agnar fumed. “This can’t be allowed. If even Emperor Prometheus had trouble with it, that’s too dangerous. This should be a job for, greybelts or something, not the rest of us.”

The greybelts gave him dirty looks, but some goldbelts nodded along with him.

“What else did you think we were going to do?” a greybelt droned. “Zoleil is the Graveyard Commander. Obviously we were going to be doing something that involves Beasts.”

“I don’t know, I thought she was here on punishment,” Agnar said, pacing the room furiously. “I thought we were gonna… sweep the undercloud streets or something. Fighting Beasts, a World-Ender monster, or whatever? That’s a whole different story! This is ridiculous, don’t you guys agree?” He looked pointedly at the other goldbelts. Some of them looked uneasy, but they remained silent.

“No one’s making you stay, you know,” his clanmate, Lys said in that barely-audible voice of hers.

Agnar whirled on her, slit eyes raging. “You shut up! I only volunteered so that I could protect you.”

Lys’ face scrunched up, incredulous. “What? I don’t need your protecting! Besides, if you really were here for that reason, you’d have volunteered right away, not only after what I said.”

Agnar fumed. “I was just trying to decide if I wanted to work with a greybelt like her!” He shot a daggered look at Ennanis, then at the rest of the soldiers in the room. “Plus, where she goes, there’s a lot more of them.”

“Why, if you don’t watch your Medusa-damn mouth-” the older greybelt began.

Through this, Ennanis’ face was blank, her expression dull. The rose-haired angel said nothing, merely making her way to the head of the table. Once she was there, she stopped.

From her hand, she summoned her spear, Lienna—and slammed its shaft down on the table.

WHAM! 

The gold-blazing weapon sent a shockwave of heat roaring through the table. Everyone whose hands were touching the table flinched backwards, withdrawing their hands from the suddenly-scalding wood.

“Can everyone please pipe down?” Ennanis said. Her voice was quiet, but it was full of a commander’s authority. On all ends of the steaming table, the soldiers simmered down. They blinked at her with irritated looks.

Ennanis gazed back at them all. Then she addressed them:

“You are assembled here because Commander Truwing insisted that I have a taskforce for this mission. If you’re here, you’re here, but I don’t need any of you. So if you want to, you can leave at any time. Just don’t get in my way.”

She gestured at the door. “Anyone?”

Silence.

“Great,” Agnar muttered, folding his arms and sitting back. “And she’s supposed to be leader here. Amazing. There’s no way this can go wrong.”

“I do not enjoy games of pretense,” Ennanis intoned. “I know why most of you are here, and I don’t like it.”

“If I may,” Sabira Beneste cut in breezily. She rested a hand on her former comrade’s shoulder, leaning in to whisper to her. “Ennanis, Derrick was right. You can’t save the world on your own. You need teammates. Won’t you at least give it a try?”

“This mission needs all my focus, all my power,” Ennanis replied her lowly. “These fledglings will only drag me down.”

“These angels are your responsibility now,” Sabira insisted.

“You’d be a better leader for them than me,” Ennanis said. “Just look at them. They hardly respect me. How will they listen to me, let alone cooperate with me for such a risky mission?

“I know you could do it, if you tried.”

Ennanis shook her head. “I can’t.”

Sabira looked sad. “You used to try, Nana.”

Ennanis looked back at Sabira. The commander’s gold eyes often looked made of light, but now they were unfathomably dark.

“Believe me. Once upon a time, I tried. I’ve tried, too many times,” the angel commander breathed. “Companionship is not meant for everyone, Sabira. I'm just one of those on the other side.”

With that, Ennanis folded her wings, and walked out the door.

“Oh, for the love of Prometheus. Why, if Derrick hears about this—” Sabira sighed, for the pink-haired angel was long gone.

~~~

The base of Mount Casca was surrounded by sprawling forest. Beyond the Cascan forest, four human kingdoms had sprung up around its borders, taking advantage of the rivers, flora and fauna that the forest provided, as well as the proximity of the sun, whose magic made the land more fertile and arable.

The four kingdoms formed a single continent, shaped like a ring around the mountain, or a sort of doughnut. It was named Loukoumades. To the north, you had Kanch, the kingdom of mountains. On the western coast lay Archizoun, the kingdom of industry. To the south, Fenlin, humble kingdom of the forest.

The 52nd Brigade’s barge had docked in the eastern kingdom: Wataron, the kingdom of rivers, running rich with fish and boats.

Alone, Ennanis wandered through the village. Typical of Wataronese villages, its buildings were perched upon stilted or raised platforms, to ward against flooding. Deep canals ran under flagstone bridges, gurgling. Ennanis figured out from a signboard that this village was called ‘Lightwood’, and specialised in logging and woodcraft. She’d walked past several carpenters’ shops already, fat bundles of firewood, ticking cuckoo clocks and spinning wooden tops in their windows.

All in all, it was a quaint town. There was one thing strange about Lightwood, however, and that was how… dilapidated the buildings looked. Many were in obvious disrepair, with parts of their roofs caved in or completely gone, revealing their wooden skeletons beneath. There was many a shattered window, and courtyards littered fragments of wood and glass. More than once, Ennanis found her path blocked by a fallen tree-trunk collapsed across it.

Yet, the villagers did not seem to pay the destruction much mind. They seemed unsurprised as they trotted up and down the streets, slinging bags of groceries and pushing carts of firewood around the fallen trees.

Whenever Ennanis passed them, the humans looked to her with reverent gazes; some of them paused their activities to bow at her. Such was the treatment of angels around some parts of the undercloud. Ennanis was thoroughly unused to it. Still, in politeness, she attempted to smile and nod at the bowing humans.

As Ennanis turned into a busier part of the village, street peddlers began to fill up both sides of the road. Out of curiosity, she slowed her footsteps by some of them. A particular peddler’s wares caught her eye: a chest heaped with glittering jewels, an uncommon ply amongst all the other wood-based wares. She stared at the prismatic gemstones, transfixed by the way they refracted the sunlight.

“Can I help you with somethin’, angel?”

At the voice, Ennanis glanced up. The stall owner sat forward on a stool behind the chest of jewels, smiling toothily at her. He seemed to have finished talking to another hooded customer browsing through the jewels, and now he had turned his attention to her.

“I was just looking around,” Ennanis replied, “but as a matter of fact, you can. Have the Beasts been causing trouble in this area recently?”

“Beasts?” The stall owner rubbed his chin, frowning as he thought. “Yeah, the same old. They’re on the newspapers all the time. Burglaries and kidnapping, and whatnot. Brrrr. I stay indoors when it’s nighttime, make sure my kids don’t open doors for strangers, the usual. I’ve got more than enough to contend with down here without dealing with Beasts.”

Ennanis’ brow creased. “What do you mean by that?”

Now it was the stall owner’s turn to raise his eyebrow. “The storms, obviously.” Then, upon Ennanis’ blank look, he sighed. “The wind’s been rippin’ through buildings like cardboard, and the bleak weather is bad for business. I used to have a proper shopfront, round there—” he waved a hand at a spot where a half-crumbled building stood, with shattered windows, “but now I’m enjoying some fresh sunshine. Hah!”

“Why doesn’t the Wataron council do anything about it?”

The stall owner passed his hand through his box of clinking jewellery. “Ungh. They don’t really care about a tiny village like Lightwood. It’ll be years until they remember that we exist.” He huffed. “I’m glad you angels are finally here to help, at least. Maybe you could get some angels around to fixing my shopfront?” he asked hopefully.

“I’d love to, but sorry, I’m on a different mission right now,” Ennanis said apologetically. “I’ll pass a message.”

“Hmm,” the stall owner grunted unhappily, but he didn’t push it. “Well, whatever. In that case, you could always buy some of my goods. You’re a fan of jewellery, ain’t ya?”

“Huh?...” Then Ennanis noticed that the stall owner was zeroed in on the gleaming ring of Lienna on her hand. “Oh. That’s not… no, not particularly. But sorry, I don’t have any money on me right now.”

“Is that so?” the stall owner said, sounding unconvinced. He probably thought she was fibbing to appease him. Angels, particularly Knights, were known for being quite well-to-do, as they earned mortal currency from their patrols. But in Ennanis’ case it was true; it had been a long time since she had been on patrol, or gotten paid from it.

“—Well, still, have a think about it.” The man rifled his hands through his jewellery box again. “I’ve got here some gorgeous amethyne stones. No, not amethyst, mind you. Amethyne is a premium form of amethyst… it’s only found in Kanch, mined deep in the hearts of the volcanoes. They are the most exquisite violet. Let me show you.”

Mid-motion, he froze, his eyes widening.

“What’s the matter?”

“My amethyne stones,” he said, raising a brilliant purple stone from the chest. “I’m supposed to have six of these, but one’s gone. That rascal must’ve nabbed it!”

“What rascal?”

“He was browsin’ through the stones, right as you came. He must’ve taken it to pawn for cash.”

It must have been the other customer that had been standing beside Ennanis until a second ago, but she hadn’t paid him enough attention. “What did he look like?”

The stall owner scratched his head. “Funny enough… I don’t remember at all. Blast it, I was just talking to him, why can’t I…” He shook his head, looking mystified. “He was a scrawny teenage boy. That’s all I remember of him.” He continued to mutter to himself under his breath, looking completely bewildered.

It was unrelated to her mission, but Ennanis felt bad for having inadvertently distracted the stall owner. So she rose to her wings.

“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll find him.” And then the stall owner watched as she shot up into the air, a comet-blaze of rose.