Through Flame and Blade

Ch. 35 A Tale of Two Brothers

*Chiara

Chiara wrenched her mind from the thought that after escaping Hell, she would have to escape Logan, the trap of her own making, and concentrated instead on the endless, empty stage. A white spotlight bored into her eyes like the sun in the angelic training arena pummeling head, and casting dark shadows on the ground.

When Chiara had been in training, Daviid and the other commanders brought in a human who had died and been brought back by them, one who had been on the brink of descending to the pits of hell, but had supplicated for a chance to ascend so sincerely that they made him an offer: fight for the angels and earn a place in the Heavens later.

Few humans were ever given such a choice, no matter how much they begged, and this human was spectacularly unworthy, in Chiara's opinion. She couldn't understand why he had been given a chance, and she despised him so openly that Daviid took her aside in the middle of sparring to talk to her in private.

"When you fight the demons, you will understand better. We have rules, we have strict ways of life, but it is all for good reason," he said.

"That human is a sinner, he is foul and disgusting. Why would we ever give him our steel and silver weapons? How could I ever trust him not to turn on me if we stood side by side?"

"It is not for you to decide, not yet, who deserves a place here, and it is because he knows sin and the face evil that we need him in our ranks."

She made a chopping motion. "I don't want him near me, ever."

"He won't be in the ranks like you. He will go alone into the darkest, ugliest, most wretched holes in the Midlands to clean them of demonic infestation. He will do this alone. He will do it because he seeks a way to forgive himself."

She pulled up short, not sure how to respond. "If I don't have to trust him in battle...."

"Chiara," Daviid said, "Many angels here, in the counsel, and throughout Heaven believe that only the purest, most untouchable celestial beings should be allowed to remain, but I don't. Sin is not a reason for being cast away."

"Then what is?"

But another commander called him to mediate some problems between recruits and they never finished the conversation.

She watched the human male training, though, from the corner of her eyes, never getting too close, but always studying him.

Scarring lines criss-crossed his face and his nose jutted at a jagged angle from being broken more than once. But the longer he stayed and the more he trained, the more she respected him. And feared him.

No one believed in angelic rules and regulations more than him. He refused to be healed of his earthly flaws, tattoos, or marks. He trained ruthlessly, pushing himself more than any angel.

When Chiara fell to the ground at the end of the day, wrung dry from hours of sparring, throwing, running, dodging, and being hit over and over again, and the sky was dark with night, he was still there, sweating and bleeding on the arena's sand.

Now, in the depths of hell, steeped in sin and fighting to survive, no matter the cost, she was beginning to understand both Daviid and that human.

"Chiara!" Logan snapped. She jolted, remembering where she was. Hell.

"What? Are the guards already searching this hall?" The stage was still empty.

"Yes, so pick up the pace, because more will join them."

"How many?" she asked.

"All of them. The horns summoned the revelers in the Halls as well as the guards. With luck, only demons will answer the summons."