Date unknown SperoI awaken to the sound of frantic ringing bells. An arm. An attack. I scramble out of my course bed and pull on my pte mail and strap on my swords as I rush out the door to my modest home.

  Through the slits in my helmet, I see dozens of buildings on fire and countless other plumes of smoke cwing into the sky. I immediately head for the garrison.

  Halfway there I’m nearly knocked to the ground by an explosion. I regain my footing and press on ignoring the screaming people around me fleeing.

  Finally, at the garrison, I see a few wounded but what angers me is only one man has all his armor on. “Half of you get your gear on then the other half now”

  They all stiffen then after a few moments of sorting out who’s gearing up first they burst into movement. I hear the cshing of metal not far from us so I have the few men who have put on their gear follow me. “The rest of you once you finish getting ready help the civilians”

  My group leaves and marches into the burning city. Maybe a minute ter we encounter the enemy soldiers who sprung upon our city.

  I draw my swords and set to work on the frontmost enemy. Pary after pary our steel meats until finally I catch his sword on my hand guard holding it long enough for my other sword to find his neck.

  With a gnce around all my fellows are engaged but two enemies take notice of me and beeline. I drop my stance and once the first take a swipe a duck letting it scrape across my back armor and go for his legs.

  My sword finds his flesh in the gaps of steel and he drops leaving the other guy. He’s got an ax and not wanting any holes in my armor I study him for a moment.

  Guessing the wooden handle would snap if I hit it while he’s going for a vertical strike I aim to bait him into exactly that.

  I feigned an open horizontal strike and got what I wanted redirecting my offhand to meet his strike the bde bit into the wood and with the force he put behind it the ax head broke off. Unfortunately, it’s still moving and hits my helmet ringing it like a bell.

  I stagger back slightly but still swing my bde and bury it into his neck. I blink away the dizziness and my vision clears.

  A quarter of my men are dead but the road is clear. “Come on we need to buy our people time to escape” I wave them forward and lead us to a rge intersection.

  We catch another group by surprise and only lose one man against them. Not terrible but also not a rate of attrition we can keep up.

  I spot the rgest plume of smoke and it’s coming from the gate. We head for it to slow the tide of enemy soldiers. I gnce behind me and a decent amount of civilians are going the way we came from.

  At least some will survive. I hear a faint whistle tearing through the sky. “Out of the street now” I yell and moments ter a burning barrel impacts and explodes where we just were.

  Someone screams and after a few moments to get to him I see a burning fragment going through his entire arm. “You” I point to the soldier next to the injured man “Get him back to the garrison for medical attention” he nods and gingerly helps the other man up.

  A few minutes ter and I can actually see the ruined gate now. This can’t be right it’s melted, how could they have melted it, it required the hottest forges to barely be able to work the metal and it ruined them afterward.

  I survey the rest of the area and spot a few intact ballista empcements “Man the ballistas anyone staying on the ground find a shield and make a wall”

  The bolt storages are all intact and full so the ballistas have several thousand bolts plus the small bolts for the crossbows. We should be able to hold here for a while at least.

  The next wave of soldiers is reduced in size from the ballistas and the choke point created by the gate means the few men I have can stem the tide.

  We hold this position through several more waves and several hours at which point we are drenched in sweat hungry tired and thirsty.

  Nearly out of bolts, this position is becoming unstable. “Get ready to fall back we’ve held long enough” I call out but that seems to trigger something.

  Out of nowhere, I hear trumpets, not just a bir but a tune. I look around but strangely find it coming from the sky. A human shape is floating seemingly made of different brass instruments.

  Unfortunately another shape rockets down past and impacts the ground making my men stumble and creating a dust cloud.

  “Fall back fall back now” I yell and some of my men begin to run. I watch the haze and see the figure get up. The figure has two bird-like wings and two eyes and a single sword.

  I can probably pull this off. Though I doubt this is the creature that destroyed the gate. Surprisingly the thing speaks “What an annoying insect”

  I roll my shoulders and drop into a fighting stance. “You're just some common attack dog” I reply. If let’s out a screech and charges me.

  It knocks my helmet off but leaves me otherwise unharmed as I swing as hard as I can at its shoulder. If I remember correctly Casper said that cutting off the wings of lesser angels would be sufficient to kill them.

  Having an opening I drop my swords and move behind the screaming angel and grab its wings. I pnt my feet on its spine and pull. My ears begin to ring from its screeching but despite that, I can still hear the ripping and tearing of its flesh as the wings separate.

  Breathing heavily I barely hear the scream of another and dive to the side rolling and picking up a discarded sword. It rips through where I was standing in the blink of an eye. “What the fuck is all your problems why can’t you just leave us alone”

  The second angel just lunges at me. I lock its sword in the teeth on the back of my sword and punch its face with my free hand.

  It fights to free its sword so I just punch it over and over. This doesn’t seem to be working. I take a gamble and let go of the sword and grab its head with both hands and bring it down into my knee.

  With a resounding crunch, I feel something break. The angel seems dazed now so I scoop up my sword again and Cleve off its wings. I quickly gather my other sword and jog back to the garrison.

  About halfway back I nearly throw up from exhaustion but I keep it down and keep going. When I get back however I don’t get a moment's respite. The area is swarming with soldiers both friend and foe.

  Dripping sweat I move in to help. I catch a few by surprise but quickly catch the attention of those nearby. My men seem to see me and rally where they seemed close to routing they all double down and slowly but surely we hold the garrison.

  It only took over an hour of exhausting combat. A soldier whom I guess is a lieutenant approaches me “We were able to gather the remaining citizens here with the time you bought us” he states.

  I nod and notice a bunch of women and pre-adults rush out of the garrison carrying rags and water. “I don’t think we can hold the city any longer. There were angels at the gate” I tell him.

  One of the runners brings us a rag to wipe our faces and a water skin for each of us. We both take a moment before he speaks “I was inclined to agree before you mentioned the angels now I believe we need to evacuate, we can’t fight them we were barely able to hold their army”

  I gulp down more water “How long until we can leave” he takes a moment to think “We won’t ever have enough supplies to truly get away from them… I think we could leave by morning but that’s if all the civilians listen”

  I nod “I’ll make an announcement, it should make things easier. Set watches for the soldiers we need them fit we won’t make it far without them”

  He heads off to organize what he can meanwhile I head for a central location where I’ll be seen. Once there I loudly clear my throat then shout, my gruff voice carrying just fine “Listen up we are leaving have your things ready to go by sunrise otherwise we will have to leave you we cannot hold this position longer than that as our enemy has much greater numbers then we thought”

  A few civilians immediately got to work packing what little they had while a few looked at me with eyes filled with hate. I ignore them.

  Me and the remaining lieutenant have a quick conversation on who gets to sleep first and it’s ultimately decided that I get to rest first as I actually ran around and fought as he just directed.

  I join the other soldiers who are also resting and immediately fall asleep.

  Sometime ter I’m suddenly awoken by a loud boom and the shaking of the ground. I rush outside and the sight stops my blood.

  It’s an archangel. Six wings six eyes but it’s only showing two arms. That makes it worse. I quickly find the lieutenant who has blood running into his eyes “Get everyone out of here now” I bark at him.

  He shakes off his daze “What will you do” I frown before I answer “I’ll buy you time” I approach the fiend and draw my swords. hearing strange music I gnce up into the sky and see those weird creatures again as their tune starts off slow.

  It looks like I caught its attention as all six eyes lock onto me and narrow. “Do you really think you stand a chance” it bellows out condescendingly. I ignore any fear I might have and answer more for myself than anything “Only one way to find out”

  It extends its hand and a sword so bright it hurts to look at apperates into its hand. It brings it down into an overhead chop that I manage to avoid but I feel the heat radiating from the bde.

  “Resisting is futile you are a mere insect to be crushed beneath your betters” the archangel calmly states. Taking the second of respite I try to form a pn. I severely doubt I can parry its bde… that leaves dodging but that’s not reliable.

  Its eyes are a weak point, it won’t kill it but it should help. Severing its wings will weaken it but not by enough to be worth the effort. That leaves its halo as the only means I have to kill it, and with it entirely aware of this it’ll be next to impossible.

  Knowing what needs to be done and now only needing to do it I approach it only as a man without fear of death could. Because I don’t fear him. “I appud your bravery I shall give you one chance to repent now for a life of sin”

  I dash forward and sh out at the tendons in its heels only nicking them. It tries to stomp on me but I’m already scrambling away narrowly missing a kick as well.

  Maybe I’ll have better results with the arms. Though maybe with its biology it doesn’t need either. I risk a gnce and am relieved that I’m the only one around the evacuation is working.

  I refocus and dodge its next attack retaliating in turn cutting into its wrist. It strikes out with a punch from its other hand and I deflect most of the force cutting its hand in the process.

  As I feared it simply ignored the wounds. Taking a gamble I raise my voice “I consider myself a schor, is your body no more than a vessel enabling you to ignore damage”

  Surprisingly it pauses “interesting… you aren’t as dull as I previously thought but no this is not a vessel but I do not require it to be as intact as you do”

  I nod somewhat happy that my gamble paid off but now it’s more wary so I’ll have to be more creative. Unfortunately, it summed another sword seemingly intent to copy my style.

  I pn a second gambit and run forward which causes it to sweep its swords together though with a considerable gap between the bdes. I hug my arms and swords close as I dive through then spy out in the air going for a ssh at its halo since it stooped so low.

  I narrowly miss the halo and instead burst one of its eyes. With my remaining momentum, I shoulder-check it away and nd unceremoniously on the ground.

  The second I burst its eye however an incessant wail that was completely unnatural mixed with a high-pitched keening and I had a breath before light enveloped where I was before.

  The Archangel the source of the noise was filing its arms around and beams of light were emanating from its remaining eyes destroying anything they touched. To make matters worse it was thrashing its head around. This forced me to dive out of the way a few times to avoid being melted. Eventually, it calmed down but now it looked like it was seething.

  Instead of having to dodge light now I'm avoiding an endless rain of attacks from its swords, being significantly smaller than it is a huge help. It didn't take long however for my already fggard stamina to catch up to me as I tripped and rolled onto my back I was able to bring my left sword up to block the archangels.

  As I guessed though it didn't do anything, the mass of fmes turned my sword into nothing more than sg. It kept pushing and pierced my shoulder boiling the armor around it and heating up my entire chest pte.

  I bellowed in pain but was pinned into the ground I couldn't do anything. The archangel seemed to enjoy this turn as it then decided to pick me up holding me by my smoking charred chest. Through force of will alone I kept hold of my right sword. Though with the weakness in everything I doubted it would get used again.

  “Such an insolent insect” it stated the sheer amount of contempt that it radiated was almost physical. “You sted longer than other pitiful creatures but your end has come” The pain was well and truly setting in and I was having trouble making out shapes. I didn't notice the bck marks in my vision stretch further.

  Another voice entirely different echoed in my mind sounding like a grizzled grandfather “You’re only wounded not dead, strike it down” I feel a sense of vertigo and am lifted to the Archangel's face. It screams into my face “Have you nothing to say”

  Deciding that I'll see death in a few moments I chuckle then with all my might I swing my bde cutting into its halo and to my horror my bde shatters. That feeling it repced a moment ter however by the feeling I was hit by a fully loaded carriage and intense heat.