Love was not a word Y’Homa had been familiar with in her old life. She knew what it meant, of course, had used it many times over to describe her relationship with the Fallen Mother, and the Allmother’s affection for the broken world. Yet that had all been so abstract, so speculative. Now that she had taken an angel into her flesh she not only understood love, she experienced it. Her soul was full to bursting with it, making her as giddy as a sinner reveling in the delights of the Deceiver.
She loved to bond with Sherdenn and Lagren, her fellow angeliacs. She loved the feel of Lagren’s spiders crawling from their mistress onto her own flesh, and she loved Sherdenn’s bombastic oration as they flew south to oversee the assault. She loved the sensation of missing Lagren, the priestess staying behind on the northern shore of Othean to supervise the stream of reinforcements swimming down from Jex Toth, and to prepare for the arrival of the Immaculate navy once the heathens realized their blockade had been useless against the deep-diving leviathans. She loved to feel the power of something greater than herself flying through her body, and more than anything else, she loved the feel of flight.
Her angelic charge had soared through the First Dark, and now they soared together over the fallow fields of Othean, and the sensation was indescribable save for that holiest of four-letter words. Their steed was also of the First Dark, which was to say, further fruit of the Fallen Mother’s abyssal womb. The longer she kept counsel with her angel, the better Y’Homa came to understand that was the true nature of the First Dark, after all—the primeval paradise wrought by their maker, that eternal font from whence all good things sprung, and to where all good souls returned. That she had been raised to believe the First Dark was hell just proved how powerful the wiles of the Deceiver truly were. Hell was all too real, obviously, but it was not to be found beyond the Gates. Hell was the flesh, the world of sensation where the Deceiver held court like a mad king. To escape the snares of the Enemy one must travel beyond the veil, or better still, tear that veil asunder, so that the Allmother could cast her cleansing gaze over the clean and the unclean alike, judging all mortalkind before assuming her rightful place on the throne of the world. Everything was happening.
Still, it brought Y’Homa no pleasure to see her armies cut down the sinners who stood against them. She had thought it would, before she awoke, but now she knew better. She did not revel in the slaughter. She felt no love to see the misled mortals fall before the scythe of their savior. Their fear in her coming, that filled her with love, and their anguish as they realized their reckoning was at hand, certainly, but the act itself did not stir her breast. No, each death broke her heart anew, as if their failures were her own. She took no joy in her conquests, even as she knew their sacrifice on the sacred blades of the Fallen Mother’s army ushered in a new age, a better age.
Yet even in the darkest hour of her pity for the wretches she exterminated there shone a light. So much had been false but there remained some deeper truth in the Chain Canticles, and that was what she saw as her armies crashed through Othean’s inner wall. She was bringing salvation through sacrifice. She was lighting a candle for the First Dark. As each unworthy Immaculate perished on the bones and barbs of her righteous legions, the Fallen Mother swam ever closer through the void, and when the beacon burned bright enough she would return to this benighted world. She would save it from itself, bringing with her the host of angels who were the rightful heirs of the Star. The Deceiver had sought to claim the Star for his own, planting the evil of free will in every single mortal breast from the moment it was exiled from the womb, but soon they would be freed from that burden. Soon the Fallen Mother would return home, and her bastard offspring would know nothing but reverence, forevermore.
First, however, the sacrifices must be made. Mortal sins must be paid with mortal flesh. The world must prove itself worthy of salvation, its barren fields made rich with offerings of blood and ash. The Garden of the Star was not Jex Toth, it was what the world would become if only the faithful were strong enough to see it done. This was Y’Homa’s sacred task, something only one who truly loved the world could carry out, because the truth was it agonized her to see so many die. To reap such a bitter harvest. Such was the love Y’Homa felt for her imperfect, corrupted realm, that even through her tears she would see this through to the end.
Not that it would take long now. The seed was planted deep, the earth damp and fertile. Smoke was rising from where their forces had brought down the inner wall, opening up the flank of the castle and the city beyond. The Empress of the Immaculate Isles hid within, and no matter how fiercely her guards fought they could not stand against their righteous executioners. It had taken less than ten thousand knight-queens to break through the walls, and now Y’Homa and Sherdenn brought three times as many reinforcements to overwhelm the Immaculates.
Thousands upon thousands of warriors incapable of fear or mercy, living only to serve the orders of the Vex Assembly—each black-shelled soldier consisted of dozens upon dozens of drones working in tandem to fulfill the orders of their queen, angel-ridden insects that dreamed of being human. It did not escape Y’Homa’s notice that the knight-queens’ very existence was a microcosm of the Tothan command, and indeed, of all life on the Star—swarms of lesser beings striving in ignorance to fulfill the obligations of their mother, to become something greater than the sum of their parts. The queens themselves even possessed souls, the same as any mortal; the only real difference was that these blessed children of the Allmother were incapable of going against the commands of their masters, which was to say, incapable of sin.
The rest of the army proved slightly less predictable, but even more powerful. Most of the holy spawn the Vex Assembly had called up from the deepest recesses of heaven loped on four legs but others lumbered on two, or eight, or didn’t have legs at all, slithering their spiny bulk through the muck of this mortal realm. Banking her steed just out of arrow’s reach along the outer wall, Y’Homa felt her horde’s excitement at the unexpected presence of mortal fear and fury on the field ahead. She goaded her mount to fly faster through the rain, her second-soul aching with love even as she felt the twinge of remorse that they could not simply eat and eat forever, that however hard these sinners fought, their resistance must be short-lived.
Slower. Sherdenn’s thought pulsed through her head, the ancient priest flying somewhere near the rear of their army. The message smelled of dust and rotten fruit. Cautiously.
Faster, thought Y’Homa, her angel seconding this course as she ground her flesh against the bone saddle of her steed, the thrill of reckless flight electrifying. Beneath them, the muddy fields trembled as her army picked up the hot scent of her intention and broke into a charge, struggling to keep up with their commander. Her mount began to careen from side to side through the driving rain, unable to completely satisfy her lust for speed. Despite her angel’s joy in the mad flight she slowed their pace, banking again to fly back to the rear where Sherdenn waited. He wanted their legions to approach with slow and stately grace, to further amplify the fear of their damned quarry, and unless Y’Homa ceased her outriding at once the army would mistakenly follow her swift lead and the pungent trail that hung in her wake.
Just as she was about to turn back, however, she caught sight of a shred of blue banner on the distant field. She blinked through the rain running down her living helm, and though her angel didn’t understand her excitement and hatred it impulsively obliged her, looking farther than any mortal eyes to confirm her suspicions.
The Cobalt Company was here, on this very field, attempting to draw the first Tothan regiment away from Othean’s breached walls. Y’Homa had never felt such warring passions in her breast, primal wrath at their rebellion wrestling with enlightened gratitude at the role they had played in summoning Jex Toth back from the First Dark. Her angel reveled in her internal conflict, just as it reveled in all the raw sensations billowing up from the busy battlefield, and finding guidance in its rapture, Y’Homa smiled in thanks at yet another of the Fallen Mother’s bountiful gifts.
Spurring her steed to carry her down over the vastly outnumbered mortal ranks, Y’Homa and her angel prepared to bestow their own reward upon the Cobalt Company. The only pity was it would be over so soon.