In the aftermath, sirs and misses are made. Made by words and talk, of legends and heroics at a hill between victory and death. By the words of Lucan and Garmore, hailing the majestic lord's word of peace, urging the crippled knightdom onward to the old lands. Into further dust and mayhem, under a sun that bleeds gold onto the vale below.
Lucan remembers the spirit of a mad dog calling them to surmount the encroaching shadows. Garmore remembers a tranquil warrior, calmly planting his flag and nation over all others.
What you remember is blood.
It runs in ruddy webs between your breasts, skin split wide from clavicle down to the base of your thighs. Pale, shredded flesh like silk matted with wine. You can feel the air brush the tips of your bones, insects scraping at your ribs. Spots color your vision, nausea overcoming you—here amid the clash of battle and the scream of defeated heroes, you will pass and be consumed. Sawn open by your countryman's iron, and now to be devoured by the dust that bore you.
Your wings shudder, damp feathers flattened under misaligned bones. Fingers grasp them, bind wood to the splintered sinew. They pluck the beetles from your flesh, peeling shattered armor away from your wound.
Color returns to you in a flood. One palm is at your neck, pressing you into a thick canopy, tracking heartbeats closely. Someone whispers in your ear, telling you to lie still. A moment ago, death stood before you with that same whisper and you yielded unhesitatingly. Now that life is giving the command, you cannot abide.
Color returns fast, but still you are blinded. You keep your world dark for now, opening your eyes in brief moments to see if you can distinguish the figures. Only pools of blue linger in the surgical lights.
You are shaken. Afraid. For seven years you lived invincible, a promising young woman with a sword and a platoon to call hers. Now you lie, opened up to the doctors, wondering what is invincible in this world of blood and dust. Your fingers rake the canopy, grasping—one surgeon takes your hand.
"Knights, countrymen, paladins, lend me your ears!"
Others heard his word from foxholes and cliff edges, some with blades poised at their backs. You hear the majestic lord's speech through the muffling shield of a hospital tent.
"…Some of you lie defeated now, but that need not be the end of your hope! Is reform not the will of your heroes? Did Blaster Dark give his life for your revolution? Or did he…"
Garmore remembers a flag being planted. A banner and legend on which Sagramore and Vortimer were raised. You remember the surgeon who held your hand.
"You can't do this! You get on Garmore's bad side and he'll bury you!"
"I was discharged."
That happened at the twins' birth; this happens when they're six.
"Where will you go? Who will shield you?"
"I'll find somebody."
"Stop!"
And for a moment you do. Then your eyes open, and you walk out on Lucan. Your wings still don't align perfectly—the surgeon said they never would. You're grateful just to keep them.
At Angel Feather you earn a different pair of wings. A gold lapel, harnessed with an iron cross and the authority of a senior officer. Your military career goes far to pushing you through the ranks, but your feelings do more than that. You keep to the rear in deployments, where you can fly with sun at your back and all the world before you.
There, you can watch the cuts form and the bruises spread. You can sweep in, play the rescue out, tearing through flesh and sinew while the doctors work. It's not like under Alfred—you don't have to charge in with nine soldiers and take on an entire army. You just need to keep the world at bay.
Your name is Kiriel. They call you the Circular Saw. And the only heroes you believe in are the ones in surgeon's masks.