It is a gate that leads nowhere, though it is of surprisingly fine craft, and strange material.  I am certain that no Etalan hand built this, but it cannot have been the Narvonni savages.


    <ul>


    <li style="font-weight: 400">The Journal of Decimus Avitus</li>


    </ul>


    ?


    16th Day of High Summer’s Moon, AC 297


    The outer neighborhoods of Vellatesia had been nearly entirely consumed by the Ardenwood.  Crumbled stone foundations were overgrown with moss and grasses, sinking into dark pits filled with scrub and young trees.


    Trist continued to move carefully, though now instead of being concerned that his boot would get stuck in the mud of the sucking swamp, he worried that a turned stone under his heel would lead to a collapse.  The last thing he needed was to be dumped into a centuries old cellar, break his leg, and have to crawl the rest of the way.


    Perhaps a quarter mile in, he found a barrier far more intimidating.


    Acrasia had spoken of how the ancient priests of the Angelus had sealed the city, and so Trist had been picturing something like the seal of Veischax beneath the Cathedral of Saint Camiel in Lutetia.  He should have known better: rather than the tomb of a single Angelus, here an entire city had been locked away.


    A circle of fire, raised up in a sheet higher than the tip of a mounted knight’s lance, stretched to his right and left until it was lost amidst the ruins.  The light cast by the wall of flame cast flickering shadows from the tumbled stones of the ancient city.  Trist stepped forward and razed a single, gauntleted hand, but he could feel the heat of the blaze even from half a dozen paces away, and was forced to back off again.


    “Acrasia,” he said, glancing down at the sword on his belt, into which the faerie had retreated.  “How do I pass this?”


    “The seal was created to bar the passage of daemons,” Acrasia answered, “above all others.  We believe that Veischax would have left a means for Angelus and their Exarchs to find a way through, but the single time Auberon sent a knight, they were nearly destroyed by the flames.”


    “Just the physical body?” Trist asked, pacing a ways to the right, to see whether there was any difference in the wall of fire.


    “No,” Acrasia’s voice came from just behind his ear.  “This fire is more real than most of your world.  It will consume your soul utterly, if you let it.”


    “Then how did my father pass through?”  Trist asked.  “And come to think of it, how did my mother?  If she was still Exarch to Agrat at the time, she was exactly the sort of person the barrier was designed to kill.”


    “We believe they were judged worthy to pass,” Acrasia said.


    “By who?”


    “Recall the bindings on Adrammelech, and beneath the cathedral in Lutetia,” the faerie woman prodded him.  “Your priests renew most bindings yearly.  But when the Angelus needed to be certain that a seal would last…”


    “They used the corpse of an Angelus to fuel it,” Trist finished.  “Camiel in Lutetia.  Abatur in Falais.”


    “And there was one other Angelus who died during the Cataclysm,” Acrasia pointed out.


    “Saint Madiel, Angelus of Fire,” Trist said, nodding.  “We lit bonfires to him every High Summer, to drive away witches and dragons.  He died fighting the Sun Eater.”


    He couldn’t see Acrasia nod, tucked away inside the sword as she was, but Trist could imagine it well enough.  “You must convince whatever remains of Madiel that you are worthy to enter,” she said.


    Trist sighed, lifted his wineskin and took a drink to wet his throat.  Even at a safe distance, the wall of fire was making him sweat beneath his armor.  Speak to a dead Angelus - of course.  He stoppered the wineskin, noting that it was less than half full, drew his sword, and took a knee.


    He removed his helm out of respect, and set it down on the ancient stones of Vellatesia’s outer streets at his side, then clasped his hands over the hilt of his sword, letting the point rest between two stones, and began to pray.


    “Saint Madiel,” Trist said, “Protect us and keep us in your warmth and in your light.  I ask you to hear my words now, and to listen to my plea.  Three hundred years gone, you sacrificed yourself fighting the Sun Eater.  Now the monster has come again, and we must put an end to it.  The world is dying in darkness.  Please, let us pass.”


    “Like your father before you,” a voice cracked and hissed from the flames, like a green log throne onto the fire.  Weak at first, it strengthened and deepened until a burning form stepped forth from the seal.


    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    Madiel - or whatever was left of him - was fashioned entirely of flame and smoke.  Stones underfoot cracked with the heat of his passage, and sparks were carried aloft by a sudden gust of wind.  As it approached, the Angelus spread six wings, three to each side, like the Caliphate legends of the phoenix.


    Trist braced himself against the staggering wave of heat that emanated from the Angelus, tightening his fingers around the hilt of his sword.  “My thanks, Honored Saint,” he said, “for listening to my petition.  It is true; my father came here while I still grew in my mother’s womb.”


    “But not alone,” Madiel intoned.  “Three mortals entered, one daemon dragged behind them in chains, and you, the tiniest seed within your mother’s belly.  I allowed you passage once, at the petition of your parents, and now you seek it again.  Nor are you alone now.”


    “It is true,” Trist said.  “The faerie Lady Acrasia bides within my blade, and would accompany me.  And though they are dead, the ghost of my father is here, and his companion Sir Tor, who came to you once before.  And my elder brother.”


    “Nothing is new,” Madiel mused.  “Everything that passes, comes again.”  The Angelus waved a hand, and three ghosts appeared in a line with Trist, each one a knight kneeling in their armor.


    “Saint Madiel,” Rience du Camaret-à-Arden said, “we meet once again, as you said we would.”


    “And here I thought,” Tor said with a laugh, “when he claimed we would meet after death, he meant in some higher world.  A world without pain.  You could have been more clear.”


    “Nothing is certain,” Madiel said.  “But even then, I saw that skulking thief, Auberon, at the edge of his forest, watching you.  I surmised his goal.  And so you have come before me again, no longer an infant, now a man grown,” the Angelus said, turning back to Trist, “at the bidding of the King of Shadows.  To cut this world from the others like a knife cuts the child free from the mother.”


    “I come to keep an oath,” Trist said.  “And to end this long night.  You sacrificed yourself once to stop Sammā?ēl,” he pressed.  “Will you not help us this time, as well?”


    “I am tired,” Madiel admitted.  “I have stood sentry here, little more than a shadow, through the long years.  My fight did not end in death, but only continued.  I would see it done.  Perhaps,” the Angelus continued, looking over the ghosts that knelt beside Trist, “Some of you now understand what that means.”


    He turned back to Trist, and knots of white flame locked onto Trist’s core.  “When I go,” the Angelus of Fire said, “the seal goes as well.  I have no more strength to lower the wall, and then raise it - only to hold steady.  The last of me will be spent doing what you seek.”


    “Then go to your rest,” Trist said.  “Is it not well earned, by now?”


    “You fail to understand, mortal child,” Madiel said.  “Without the seal, what will pass, will pass.  I hope you are prepared to fight.”


    “The daemons will be able to get into the city,” Trist realized.  “But it will take them time to get here.”


    “Less time than you think,” Madiel warned.  “Where you struggle to take your first steps, they have long ago learned to run.  And the seal does not hold only what is without - but also what was bound within.”


    “The daemons that destroyed Vellatesia three hundred years ago,” Trist said, with a sigh.  Of course.  How many would there be?  Two? Half a dozen?  A score?  “And they will all be free to leave, to escape out into the world.  But they will be weak, will they not?  Starved by the years?”


    “Like I was,” Acrasia whispered.


    “Weak, but still a danger,” the Angelus agreed.  “If not to you, than to any mortal they encounter.”


    “Then I will ensure that not a single one of them escapes this place,” Trist promised.  “Will you help me, Father?”


    “Aye,” Sir Rience agreed.


    “I might as well,” Sir Tor echoed.


    “Always, brother,” Percy spoke for the first time.  “Always.”


    Trist rose to his feet.  “Then we are prepared.”


    Madiel did not struggled to lower the seal; instead, it was as if the figure of fire let out a great sigh, relaxing its shoulders in great relief.  The wall of flame guttered just as the Angelus itself did, and a moment later, both were gone.  Now, the only light that spilled onto the ruins of Vellatesia was the light of the moon and stars, and close by Trist the feint glow of the ghosts who accompanied him.


    “May you find the peace you deserve,” Trist said.  Acrasia appeared next to him, now that the seal was gone, and the wind caught the fabric of her black dress and tossed it like a sail.  “Do you know what we must fight?” he asked, turning to his father and Sir Tor.


    “Starved and shrivelled things,” the ghost of his father said.  “They were afraid of Cecilia, for the most part.  She knew their names.  Bael, the Cat that Hunts in the Clouds.  Balan, the Three Headed Serpent.  Gusion, the Great Ape.  More, that I do not know.”


    “We hunt them,” Trist said.  “Do not let a single one escape the city.”  He lifted his sword and strode forward, into the ruins, with the three ghosts fanning out to his sides and the faerie behind them.


    It was Percy who found the first.  “There!” he cried, pointing to their left, where a shadow in the shape of a winged man dashed between one building in the next.  Trist’s Boon of Shadows served him in good stead, then, during that whole long fight into the heart of the city.  Faster than a man could blink, he closed with his sword raised to strike.


    The daemon had the form of a nude man with feathered wings, and a crown of bone that rose from his skull to wicked, twisted points.  The monster was emaciated, its eyes dull, and it raised a single thin arm to protect itself.  “Wait,” it croaked with a voice centuries unused.  “I can give you power, mortal,” it begged.


    Trist’s sword rose and fell, splitting the daemon’s core in half.  The knot of dull red threads, long starved of Tithes, uncoiled and were sucked up into Trist’s sword.  His arm shuddered as his portion of the Tithes passed into him.


    “Only three,” Acrasia complained.  “A poor meal, indeed, but one is yours.”


    “There will be more,” Trist assured her.  The clang of metal rang across from the other side of the street, where he saw his father, Tor and Percy now engaged with a beautiful woman, who desperately used a battered golden crown to knock aside their strikes as she tried to slip past them.


    “Fools,” she shrieked.  “I will paint the moon with blood, and you will regret this-”


    Too distracted by the three ghosts to see Trist coming, she collapsed in on herself with her head split in half.  Another surge of Tithes snaked up Trist’s arm, and a golden crown clattered onto the old stones and rolled down the street.


    The knights and the faerie fought deeper into the ancient city, slaying daemons as they went, until a great shadow passed between them and the moon.  Trist looked up, and recognized the shape of the great darkness in the sky, and gritted his teeth.


    Sammā?ēl the Sun Eater had come.