Desmone dove to her right, in a patch of darker shadows beneath a torn market stall. She winced as her bound wings hit the floor, but kept still and silent as the noise came closer. Sprawled on the ground like that, with clothes encrusted with mud and blood, she looked just like another mangled corpse from the sky. At least, she fervently hoped she did. She screwed her eyes shut, not daring to pray even within her own mind, in the chance the demon leading the patrol over her head could sense her piety. Desmone didn't trust her odds against a demon in her current state; more importantly, she had specific orders.

The patrols seemed to grow lax as she got closer to their nexus of power; this one didn’t even slow to get a good look of the corpse-ridden street. They probably didn’t expect her kind to be furtive. Desmone scrambled to her feet and sneaked in the perpetual red gloom until she was out of hearing, then started to run again.

After five days of creeping through blood-soaked farmlands and cities turned into slaughterhouses, Desmone came in sight of her objective at last. It looked like a building made of soot and filth. Endless streams of imps coming out of the structure's large shapeless holes, drifting upwards like plumes of chittering smoke. No proper demon in sight, but the sheer quantity of eyes made stealth a hopeless prayer.

It was time for the last and more disgusting part of her suicide mission.

Desmone just strode toward what might have been a doorway once, reaching with her mind to her bindings and the power they stored. As she approached, more and more imps detached from the ascending columns and came to orbit her, raining vulgar jokes and crass threats with their shrill voices.

Desmone discarded both her filthy cloak and her magical bindings, spreading her wings in a burst of angelic light. The closest imps were incinerated, and every vile creature within twenty yards shrieked as the flash blinded them. Desmone just had to think about battle and her bladed chains appeared in her hands, glowing with warm golden light as her stored energy overflowed through them. She charged, scything through the blinded imps as she went for their source.

Predictably, they came from the cellar. Feeling the burst of stored power was starting to fade, Desmone dove to the lower level, turning everything in her way into a shower of sticky ichor, and felt more than saw the demonic portal that spewed the endless stream of imps. She cast a lattice of ghostly bars in the passage, sealing her own grave.

Desmone, an angel from the lowest chorus, anywhere else would have been swiftly overwhelmed by the endless and bloodthirsty swarm coming at her from all directions, but angels had been forced to learn a lot in the war. They had learned that the ideal they incarnated didn’t just shape their personality and magic, it also amplified their power. Locked by her own magic in a dark cellar, up to the neck in imps, fighting an overwhelming force in an enclosed space for the sake of her people and following direct orders from the highest ranks of angelic command, the angel of Bonds couldn’t ask for a better battlefield for her last stand. Her chains glowed with renewed power whenever they grazed against the cellar’s moldy bricks. When the swarm got past her weapons and pressed on her, pinning her arms and wings against her body, the strangling constriction gave her enough energy to let out another burst of immolating light, granting a much-needed reprieve.

She soon lost track of time. Her thoughts were lost in the desperate effort to survive as long as she could, to make her sacrifice worthy. She felt hours pass as more and more imps dissolved in small bursts of ichor. As her armor and wings got progressively drenched in the foul liquid, the back of her mind started wondering why no proper demon had crossed the portal yet. When the level of the ichor in the cellar came to her ankles, she noticed recurring words in the imp’s mad chatter.

“Lord Zlak! Lord Zlak’s coming! Praise Lord Zlak!”

Pure and unmitigated dread filled Desmone as she recognized the mangled name of Izalak, Lord of Slaughter. She felt the portal slowly stretch, bending space itself to prepare for the passage of Izalak and his retinue. All the Bonds in the world wouldn’t save Desmone from being disintegrated – or worse – by the archdemon. She let her chains go, taking out a few more imps in their falling arc, and pointed both her palms toward the portal, tapping all the remaining power within her to conjure the second most powerful sealing spell she knew.

Certain of her imminent death, Desmone wondered about how much time she had bought to the rest of the army. Izalak wasn’t known for his precision or patience, so she could hope the seal would hold the invasion a few more hours before crumbling under Izalak’s blunt but overwhelming power.

Desmone had just completed the seal, leaving her dazed and faint, when something hit her on the head.

“Wake up, love, you’re needed.”

“Thinamei? You should be on the battlefield...” Desmone’s thoughts were hazy. Thinamei’s voice sounded sad.

“You’ll understand soon. Wake up, Desmone.”

Desmone felt Thinamei’s presence fade, and weakly reached for her…

Her fingers closed around a glowing emerald orb. She was in the dark cellar again, lying in the ankle-deep pool of demonic ichor.

“At attention, soldier,” ordered a young but authoritative voice.

Desmone stood up shakily, the orb in her left hand, ichor dripping from her pair of wings. She saluted with all the dignity she could muster in her state. “Commander Victoria.”

Victoria stood unperturbed in the disgusting ichor, her three pairs of black-tipped wings held back like a glossy cloak; her only concession to the honor of her station was the shiny circlet of office, the design of her armor dull and pragmatic. Victoria was such a callow name for the angel of Victory, but war had denied her the traditional decade of soul-searching the young angels underwent; an angelic commander couldn’t just remain nameless, and with the death of Sorithia, the angel of Salvation, the mantle of responsibility had fallen on the shoulders of the freshly reincarnated Victory.

“At ease, agent Desmone. Congratulations on the success of your mission.”

Desmone frowned; she understood why the Highest Chorus had chosen the angel of Victory for their command, but Victoria’s ways were no less cynical and uncaring than her predecessor’s. “I had understood that I was to die buying time for the final push.”

“And you did offer your life, even though it wasn’t actually taken,” Victoria replied. “The final push of the army, in turn, was a necessary diversion for our sortie here. Their sacrifice will be remembered.”

Desmone was hit by the unsettling awareness she was probably the oldest angel alive. “Our?” Was the only reply she managed to utter.

“Fury is taking out her frustration on some patrol who came to check on the sudden lack of reinforcements,” said an angelic voice she didn’t recognize.

Desmone turned. The four-winged angel floated effortlessly above the ichor, her blue hair and wings suspended as if underwater. She looked too peaceful to be Trickery reborn.

“Stillness has been instrumental in carrying my plan forward,” Victoria commented. “I doubt you’d have waken up in time without Thinamei’s contact.”

Desmone looked around frantically. “Where’s Thinamei?”

A red blur shot from the ghostly bars Desmone had placed at the top of the stairs, congealing into another angelic form as it took place at Victoria’s right. Fury looked just like the last time Desmone had seen her, wild red mane dancing like a flame and twin ruby blades sizzling. “Patrol has been taken care of. I took the liberty of setting up some exploding seals,” she said as her two pairs of red wings beat frantically like a hummingbird’s.

“Good thinking,” Victoria replied.

“Where’s Thinamei?” Desmone asked again, turning to stare at Stillness.

“You’re holding her,” the angel replied evenly.

Desmone almost dropped the emerald orb. “She’s within this?”

“No, the emerald is her very essence condensed,” Stillness explained, emotionless. “A very ancient enchantment.”

“Horamasel told me you know a spell that would seal the portal for good,” Victoria interjected. “That spell is the last chance for our world. My last order to you is saving Pourtak.”

Desmone sighed. There was no sense in denying something the angel of Vision knew. “The Soulbind.” Even facing certain death, Desmone’s self-preservation instinct had made her shy away from the most powerful seal she knew. Her gaze fixed on Stillness and Victoria, then on Fury and finally on Thinamei’s essence in her hand. “Even tapping all five of us, the seal wouldn’t survive all the archdemons attacking it on both sides.” She felt a shameful hope, like saving the whole Pourtak wasn’t worth being woven into the spell.

“I know,” Victoria replied. “Stillness, show her.”

The air around Stillness filled with dozens and dozens of floating orbs of every color. "I gathered all the angels that died since you've been gone."

Desmone didn’t bother to hide her horror as she addressed Fury and Stillness. “Do you two know what the Soulbind even does?”

Victoria’s intense gaze became a steely glare.

“Commander Victoria told us we will pay for the world’s safety with out lives,” Stillness said. “We are honored to have been chosen.” Fury nodded her assent.

“The Soulbind would meld our very essence with the portal,” Desmone explained under the commander's glare. “No soul returning to your Constellation to be restored, no reincarnation, nothing.”

Stillness' feet almost touched the ichor, and had to beat her wings to regain her balance. Fury turned to look at Victoria and went worryingly still. Many floating orbs trembled, as if manifesting dissent.

“The only way to get out would be destroying the portal,” Desmone continued, “and even then nobody can’t tell what would remain of us. Maybe our souls would be shattered like-”

“Enough.” Victoria ordered, and turned to addressed the blue-winged angel. “It’s all to stop the demonic invasion, an angel of Stillness shouldn’t hesitate a single moment to offer herself to this cause.”

Desmone felt genuine pity for Stillness; every angel eventually met the horror her own ideal could bring, but there were few worse moments for one’s first time than at the decisive moment of a plane-wide war.

Victoria turned to her right. “And you, Fury-”

“You’d leave the plane’s safety to world-raiders?” Fury lashed out. “They’re the ones who caused the invasion in the first place!”

“Stand down, Fury.” Victoria spread her six wings, making the red-winged angel flinch. “We’d have been wiped out months ago if the planeswalkers hadn't come to oppose their fellow "world-raider".” The black-winged angel stepped toward Fury, forcing her to fly back. “But more importantly, you don’t get to question my orders." Fury lowered her eyes in shame.

"Speaking of orders.” Victoria rounded on Desmone. “If you’re done dragging your title through the mud by sowing discord, angel of Bonds, it would be time for you to follow mine.”

Desmone winced at Victoria’s words, but felt the hint of sorrow in the commander’s voice. Desmone had pitied Stillness, but couldn’t imagine the pain of being born for her elders to immediately shove the highest responsibility on her shoulders, and to knowingly send all her people to either certain death or eternal oblivion because her very essence allowed no alternatives to carry out her duty. Desmone looked into Thinamei’s orb, and felt a reassuring pulse of energy wash over her body. I’ll support you every way I can, Thinamei’s voice echoed in her mind. Desmone's heart filled with loving admiration and boundless melancholy.

“...I’ll need you to do as I say.” Desmone spoke quietly, but the three angels immediately turned toward her without a sound, disagreements crushed under the weight of the moment. She traced a circle in the air with her right hand, and a pentagon of white light appeared over the sealed portal. On the other side, she caught a glimpse of Izalak’s terrible axe furiously hitting the seal, creating minuscule cracks. “Stillness, put your hand against the rightmost point of the pentacle.” The blue-winged angel obeyed.

Desmone conjured a long, ghostly chain. “Commander Victoria, the point beneath Stillness’s.” The black-winged angel knelt in the ichor to put her hand on the point.
Desmone made the chain pass through all the floating orbs, connecting all the fallen angels’ essences. “Fury, on the Commander’s left.” The ichor sizzled as the red-winged angel crouched and discarded her blades.

Desmone wrapped an end of the ghostly chain around her neck, shook some of the ichor off her wings, and took flight so she could put her right hand on the highest point and press Thinamei against the leftmost one. “Now we pour our energies in the seal. Don’t hold back.”

Desmone felt Thinamei’s energy blossom in stark contrast with Victoria’s blunt stream of mana. She felt Stillness’ mana seeping smoothly in the seal, while Fury’s energy dove in with frantic eagerness. She felt the essence of dozens of angels flow in the seal through her, and a faint shared pride as multitude turned into unity. A vestment and two armors fell with a splash in the ichor.

Desmone brushed her essence against Thinamei’s for a last time, then she dove within the seal to complete the spell.