The Conversion Bureau: Walk by Sight

by Argel Tal

Rating: teen
Tags: Human, Sad, Dark
Length: 6438

A story of perception, redemption and cyborg gladiators in the TCB verse.

Sister Candle is a priestess of the New Gileadite faith who has devoted her life to helping the people of the badlands zones. But this wasn't always her life. Once she was a cybernetically enhanced gladiator, living an opulent life in the corporate zone when she wasn't shedding blood for the entertainment of holocast viewers. Then one day, she met a being she had always been certain was nothing more than a myth and everything changed. This is the story of that day.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2013-03-01 04:30:19 UTC

Walk by Sight

From the Author: This piece is light on ponies, heavy on me playing around in the thickets and brambles of the TCB verse with human OCs. It also contains my first stab at writing action scenes. If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, please visit my favorites list and try select a different, better piece of fanfiction to view

The warrior rained blows on her enemy, striking it with her fists, knees, and elbows over and over again, with no visible effect. Blood from her split and crackled knuckles mingled with the sweat pouring down her arms and shoulders, but with the siren song of rage playing in her mind the pain in her hands was as irrelevant as the burning of fatigue in her muscles. The stainless steel implants sutured to the back of her head hissed and crackled as they toyed with her neurological and endocrine systems, blanking out everything except the fact that her opponent was still standing. Heedless of the damage she was doing to her own body, she continued to pummel her opponent, the painful sounds of flesh colliding with metal ringing through the clearing.

“Sister Candle! SISTER CANDLE!” High pitched, childish voices cut through the cacophony of violence, causing the warrior to disengage from her current target to face them. The trainers had warned her that this could happen, that the fury granted by her implants would focus itself completely on the foe in front of her and leave her blind to those striking from the front or the side. Fists raised, she took one graceful, gliding step towards the tiny figures that had called out…and froze as conscious thought clawed its way through the soothing symphony of mindless wrath.

The three children who had wandered into her jury rigged gymnasium were likewise frozen, stunned at the rage twisting her features. Not one of them would have believed this snarling, bloody figure could have been concealed under the heavy robes and unshakeable calm of the New Gileadite priestess who instructed them in reading, writing, and matters of faith in the evenings when their chores were done. The raging stranger closed her eyes and took a deep breath, tension draining from her knotted muscles.

“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters and restoreth my soul.” the fighter recited, and then Sister Candle opened her eyes and frowned at the children.“What have I told you three about bothering me while I’m in contemplation?” she asked, her own guilt putting an even sharper edge into her displeased tone. She came to this place to blow off steam when the devils cocktail of nerve stimulation and chemical injections from her implants became too much to bear. Here she could wallow in the red haze, expending her anger on the heavy metal barrels she’d suspended from the petrified trees until she regained a measure of clarity. At such times she wasn’t safe to be around, not even for a child.All three of them stared slackjawed at her, but Jenna Riley, red haired girl instigator of most of the mischief the trio got up to, found her voice first.

“Sister, your hands! Are you all right?”Now Candle felt the results of her efforts, the bone deep throb of blunt force trauma blending smoothly with the burn of sweat salt on her opened cuts, but she throttled the pain down before it could show on her face. The three little terrors had enough of a shock seeing her in the midst of a venting session, after all.

“It looks worse than it is.” she told the girl. “There’s a bucket over there with some salves and bandages in it, would you mind getting it for me?” Jenna immediately set off for the indicated object, looking inordinately pleased with herself for having deflected the priestess’s outrage.

“You were knocking the mess out of them barrels!” blurted Dave Ramos, one of those unfortunates who, even though he subsisted on an allotted ration no larger than any other of the little freehold’s children, managed to have the sort of build that his devoted mother described as big boned. “Where did you learn to do all that?”

“And what’s that stuff coming out of the back of your head?” added Sean Caldwell, whose father had already started to shave his hair into the mohawk pattern that denoted a member of the freehold’s reclamation teams.

“David, your question is understandable. Sean, yours is a bit rude, and before I answer either of you I’d like a very good explanation of why you three felt the need to come somehow you’ve been repeatedly not to go at a time when you’ve been specifically told not to be there.” Candle answered, frowning at them again as she picked her discarded robe up from the dusty ground.

“Trader Becks came by, Sister!” Jenna put in, somehow managing to rattle the bucket she was carrying thunderously even though it contained nothing besides rags and two plastic cylinders of duraskin. “He says something’s changing the world, and it’s coming this way, and it’s going to kill us all!” A fresh pang of irritation, as substantial as anything the machinery bolted to her brain had ever conjured up, rolled over Sister Candle at the mention of Becks. Gileadite doctrine taught that even the vilest reprobate was worthy of the grace and forgiveness of God, but such dealings as she’d had with the wandering merchant had made Candle blasphemously certain that if the honored elders had ever dealt with Becks, they would have written in an exception solely for him. Oh, he didn’t delve into the mortal sins, no murderer, thief or rapist he, but the man was never happier than when he was spreading the news of someone else’s misfortune.

Becks would provide the grisly details of tribal raids, plagues, storms, skirmishes between freeholds, and similar catastrophes with a lip smacking relish, seeming to batten on the distress his information might arouse in his listeners. For all that, what he chose to pass on was usually accurate, if twisted towards the most pessimistic view of events possible.

“What did he say, exactly?” Candle asked, postponing the tongue lashing she had been planning to give the three of them. It was a bit flattering that they’d immediately sought her out in their fear and anxiety, although she wasn’t sure if it was because of her position as a priestess or the fact that everyone in the freehold knew she’d grown up in one of the fabela zones, and so was expected to know more of the wider world than the freeholders.

“He didn’t really know what it was, but he said the whole plains were changing into something else, and that it was steady moving this way.” Dave told her, staring up at her with anxious eyes.

“He said some of the Gearheads took a truck to go see what exactly was going on down there, and he watched ‘em with binocs from a ridge, and when they got to where everything was changing it tore the truck apart and all the people in it just melted!” Sean added, taking a bit too much relish in that last bit.

“Do you know what’s going on, Sister?” Jenna said. “Have you ever heard of anything like this before?”

“I can’t say that I have.” she told them, and their faces fell. Hearing their teacher admit there was something she didn’t know was almost as much of a shock and much more of a disappointment than seeing her as a frothing at the mouth berserker. “But even if everything Becks is saying is true, it’s nothing you three need to worry about.”

“Because God’s watching over us, and even if this whatever it is kills us all it’ll be okay because we’ll go to Heaven?” Sean asked sourly, and he was startled when the priestess laughed and tousled his single strip of hair with one hand.

“A bit sarcastic, but essentially the truth, Sean.” she said. “And do you know how I know this?”

“Because you’re a priestess and it’s your job to know stuff like that?” Jenna asked hesitantly.

“Not at all. The reason that I know this is because…well, it’s a long story, and it’s also the reason why I have these,” she tapped the steel plates protruding from under her close cropped hair, “and why I can do…this!” In one explosive motion, she lunged into the air, scissoring her legs to slam her knee into the nearest barrel in a flashy and theatrical move that would have sent her old trainers into apoplectic fits. Practicality aside, it served her purposes by taking the children’s thoughts off the distressing rumors Becks had spread and focusing them completely on her.

“I’d like to hear that story, Sister!” Dave said, with Jenny nodding her head in agreement, but Sean still looked skeptical.

“I don’t know…”Candle answered thoughtfully, rubbing her thumb on her chin. “There’s fighting, people dying…I’m not sure your parents would appreciate me telling it to you.”The hint that it was something his parents wouldn’t want him to hear was a bait set specifically for Sean, and he went for it hook, line and sinker.

“I ain’t scared of people dying and I like stories about fighting!” he announced, as the other two went into virtual paroxysms of pleading to get her to tell them the story right here and now. Smiling, Candle pulled her robe around herself and began to doctor her hands as her mind traveled back to a fateful day six years ago.

“This is a story about fighting and dying, men and monsters, but most of all, it’s a story about angels.” she began.

The crawler transport lumbered across the barren waste, a swarm of airborne camera drones following it like vultures trailing in the wake of a lion. The interior of the vehicle was crowded, and reeks of sweat, weapon-oil and somehow, even though the passengers are almost evenly divided between men and women, testosterone. Every one of them is a Contracted Sports Entertainer, and they have all killed quite a few things in the course of discharging their obligations to the Worldgovernment and the Six Hundred Families. It is, if not a respectable position, at least a decently compensated one. After all, it is thanks to the efforts of men and women like these that the ninety eight percent not employed by the Six Hundred are kept entertained and docile enough that dangerous ideas like “Who needs the Families, anyway?” never enter their mind…or at least, not in numbers large enough to amount to anything.

And it isn’t as if these are slaves and criminals, forced to bleed for society’s amusement. Every one of them volunteered for this position, one of the few open to those who aren’t part of the hereditary employee bloodlines, and passed a rigorous selection process before they were allowed to contract for the specialized training and neurocortical augmentation that a serious career as a sports entertainer requires. True, the implants are not technically mandatory, but considering the boost they offer in terms of pain tolerance, cardiovascular endurance, and so on, not signing up for them is considered to be a form of career suicide, as well as the more ordinary variety should you be matched against an opponent who has opted for the upgrades.

It is a dirty little secret that the implants also stimulate their owners into a raging frenzy during competition, but this also serves a purpose in cutting down on audience alienating tactics such as “playing it safe”, “feeling your opponent out”, or “sticking to a game plan” in favor of standing toe to toe and hacking and slashing away, which is always crowd pleasing. It is an even dirtier secret that sometimes the implants fire off outside of competition, with disastrous results for friends, family, or paid companionship. Even now, some of the athletes are drawing naked blades across shins or forearms, trying to use the pain as a focus against the infuriating buzzing in the back of their heads.

Ashley Deveers is one of them, drawing her left arm across the edge of her favored cherished poleaxe, a two handed monster of a weapon with an axe head on the front, hammerhead in the back, and a tapered spike surmounting the whole assembly. But the thin cuts aren’t bringing her the calm she needs right now, so…

“What do you think we’ll be up against today?” the blade thin blonde killer asks her…not friend; none of them are friends, not really, it’s too difficult to form any kind of lasting relationship with someone whose skull you might one day be called on to smash, but the sinewy Deveers shares a certain easy familiarity, borne of similar senses of humor and shared tastes in music, books, and men, with broad shouldered, dark haired Tanya Silverstein sitting across from her.

“At least we know it won’t be each other.” Tanya says, smirking. This is absolutely correct, the corporation holding their contracts has an express policy, born of bitter experience, of not transporting opposing combatants to the killing grounds in the same vehicle. “I heard Blackmesh put down a protest in Atlanta last week-we might be putting some dissies out of everyone else’s misery.”

“Even if that’s what it is, you should take it serious.” throws in mustachioed, shave pated Marcus Graves from the other side of the crawler. Graves compensated for early baldness by having his head electro shorn and growing the thickest, most heavily waxed set of facial hair he could. He also has a bit of a thing for Tanya AND Ashley. When informed that the only chance of anything like that occurring would involve every other man in the world dying in some horrible accident, his response had been to grin in what he no doubt thought was an endearingly roguish fashion and reply “So you’re telling me there is a chance, then?” But right now he’s serious…as serious as Graves ever gets, anyway.

“You two remember what happened to Braxton? Out there screwing around, and goes down to a..couldn’t have been over a hundred pound dissie with a rock. A rock! Pretty miserable way to go out, that.” he says.

“You know any ways to go out that aren’t miserable?” Ashley asks, then groans as she sees his face light up. When Marcus isn’t conscientiously trying to be a lecherous pig, he’s decent company. Sadly, that only encompasses about a third of the time he’s awake. “Shut up. Whatever you’re thinking about saying, just shut up.”

“Dissies would be a better fight than some of the stuff the gene-docs have been splicing together lately.” Tanya adds, grinning at the two of them. “Somebody should tell them that just because something looks cool or scary on a holocast, that doesn’t mean it can defend itself in a real fight.” Further discussion is cut off as the transport comes to a jarring halt and the auto lock harnesses keeping them in their seats disengage. Tanya makes one last check of the straps on the mace gauntlet enveloping her right arm, ensuring that the assembly of spikes and heavy steel plating is securely in place, and while Marcus doesn’t bother to check the twin machete like blades sheathed at his side, he does thump one fist against his segmented armored vest and whisper something under his breath. Now it’s time to pile out of the crawler, squinting against the sudden sunlight and grabbing their personalized helmets off the racks by the disembarkment ramps.

The open faced helms are designed more with an eye towards making sure the viewers at home can tell their wearers apart from each other than any actual protection, but they do offer a marked benefit over no helmet at all, so on they go.Tanya also grabs a shield from the equipment rack. Ashley’s polearm requires a two handed grip to wield, and Marcus favors being able to land a killing stroke with either hand, but Tanya’s preferred fighting style of closing the distance and battering her opponent at point blank range benefits from the extra protection the shield will provide. Then they’re filing out, all twenty of them, and Tanya frowns as she surveys the battlefield to be.

They’ve been dropped off on what was probably a beautiful stretch of beach at one point in history. Now the white sands have been stained red and black by pollutants and Worldgov only knows what toxins and poisons that were thrown around during the Scarcity Wars, and the ocean flaps sluggishly against the tainted shore, weighed down by reeking plant matter. So…a flat plain then. The sand is going to make fast footwork a bit tricky, but there’s no chance of an ambush, at least, and…no sign of what they’re supposed to be fighting. The crawler roars away in a cloud of exhaust, and she wonders if maybe they ARE going to be fighting each other. A violation of corporate policy like that is rare but not unheard off, and the same thought is obviously occurring to the others as they begin to warily stake out their own little segments of the beach, some of them already twitching and drooling as the neurocortical implants begin to fire. There’s no real unity in their group…everyone is guarding their own space jealously, ready to lash out viciously if anyone makes a move. Then Hayden, a bull necked brute carrying a net and trident, points up into the air.

“What the hell is that?” he growls, and Tanya allows one eye to travel along the line of his finger, keeping the other out for any indications of treachery from her companions. But no, there’s definitely some gleaming, metallic…something dropping towards them from the clouds. Immediately, fighters begin to encircle where the whatever-it-is is probably going to land. Falling dramatically out of the sky is going to look very impressive to the viewers watching at home, but when whatever this thing is lands it’s going to be off balance for a moment, and a moment is far too long against this crew of cybernetically goaded murderers. Tanya squints, trying to make out any details of the rapidly growing object, which is not made any easier by the amount of sunlight off of it, and then…

An explosion! A blinding flash of light and deafening roar of sound, the squeal of grav jets, a sensory assault that has everyone recoiling and looking away for just a split second. And in that second when no one can stand to look at the landing area, there’s a bell like clang! and when they do look back Death itself is in their midst. Oh, not as some black cloaked, skull faced figure carrying a scythe, this incarnation of the Reaper is clad in plate armor of gleaming white and burnished gold, with a countenance that is almost angelic in its beauty. In one arm, it holds a long, slender, slightly curving sword, and on the other a triangular shield that covers one side of its body from shoulder to ankle.

In every field of endeavor, there will be princes that rise above the general herd. Among those princes, there will be kings, and among those kings, an emperor. In the field of killing for the entertainment of others, this man, with his flowing golden mane of hair and his piercing blue eyes, is that emperor. Some say he started off as an ordinary Sports Entertainer, and showed such talent and promise that the Six Hundred plucked him from his trainers and outfitted him with augmentations and gene therapy above and beyond that available to the ordinary fighter. Others say that he took his first breath in one of the bio-labs whispers say the corporations still maintain, that he was crafted to be an artist of slaughter from the moment of his conception in an artificial womb. To the cheering fans in the fabela zones, he’s known as Aurazel, the golden angel of death. To those who share in his profession, he’s the closest thing to the devil that exists in this increasingly secular world.

The trio of blocky, stock figures that stand to the left, right, and directly behind him are an afterthought in comparison. The silvery automatons are objectively impressive, from the viewpoint of a robotics engineer or programmer, and the flails hanging from chains at the end of their stock arms are dangerous, certainly, but their only function is to guard the flanks of their master, robotic huscarls warding their liege lord as he butchers his way through a peasant levy. The gladiator drones to Aurazel’s left and right heft the steel plates attached to their non weapon limbs, and lock them against the champion’s own shield while the drone in the rear pivots its torso so its shield and weapon face away from his back. No matter which way someone tries to come at them, they’re going to be facing at least two defenders.

But for all the tireless power of his automated bodyguards and the enhancements to his own strength provided by the servo motors whirring at the joints of his armor, if they try and stand their ground they’ll be overwhelmed under a tide of screaming bodies. Already, men and women are throwing themselves towards them, their shock overwhelmed by the seductive screaming of the machines in their heads. So the four figures charge forward, moving with the perfect coordination that only machine intelligence and hours of practice can provide. They hit the frantic mob like a wedge driving into a block of wood, the interlocking shields battering human figures aside while Aurazel’s sword weaves a web of glittering steel. His bladework is overly complicated, incorporating spins, twists, and whirls that are unnecessary and a liability when fighting enemies who are trying their hardest to kill you, but the attacks come in with such breathtaking speed that it doesn’t matter, and blood sprays like mist as he connects.The lumbering diamond formation breaks free of the crowd, smashing all the way through and out the other side. Three of the berserkers are dead already and he’s just getting started. He pivots smoothly, preparing for another charge into the heart of the horde, and his guardians adjust their positions to match his with a ponderous grace that suggests extensive combat programming or possibly embedded quantum computing chips.

Tanya is terrified. Her implants are kicking the parts of her brain that spawn anger into overdrive and spiking her blood with stimulants, but the icy presence of fear thunders through her mind the loudest. She’s going to die here. She always knew it would happen one day…it’s part and parcel of being a Sports Entertainer, but she knew it like she knew the moon existed, it was there but it didn’t really have an effect on her day to day life. But Aurazel’s masterful skill, his cold, confident smile…she’s going to die right here, right now, and she’s just realized she wants very much to live. But the only way that can happen is if she kills him…and NOW the implants are doing their job, now the fear is drowned out by a rising wave of fury, but she can’t let it sweep thought away.

She thumps her shield against Ashley’s shoulder, and the wiry woman whirls towards her, teeth bared in a rictus grin of hate. For a second she thinks she’s about to have to kill the closest thing she has to a friend out here, but recognition flashes in the poleaxe wielder’ss eyes and she restrains herself from lashing out.

“We’ve got to work together if we’re going to kill these things!” Tanya tries to speak calmly, but the implants turn it into a spittle flecked bellow. Ashley is too wrapped up in her own frenzy to manage a coherent reply, but she does nod. Throwing themselves at the tight grouping of murder machines currently carving up their co-workers will just get them killed too.

“

I’m with you!” a distorted voice screams, and Marcus shoves aside an axe wielder running to meet Aurazel’s charge head on to stand by Ashley and Tanya. “Kill the damn drones first, THEN get him!” The three of them swing wide around the general melee, hoping to attack from an angle where they’ll face two of the drones instead of the monstrously skilled killer and a drone. Anyway, the rest of their group is crowding in towards Aurazel, driven either by unthinking wrath or a desire for the glory of bringing the champion down, so they couldn’t come at him right now even if they wanted to, although the way he’s thinning the mob out that won’t be the case for long.

One of the drones takes a swing at Tanya, but she catches the flail head on her shield, not straight on, the bodyguard’s weapon would tear through the piece of crap shield she’s got like paper, but deflecting it to the side, then swings her mace gauntlet not at the robot, but into the chain of the weapon, trying to foul it so that Ashley or Marcus can hit the thing’s vulnerable parts. It is capable of being damaged by the weapons they carry, it wouldn’t be much of a show if the thing was completely invulnerable, after all, but its weak points are few and will take some work to hit. The robot yanks her to one side, slinging her into attack arc of the drone on it’s left as it absorbs an attack from Ashley on its tower shield.

Its brother draws back a piston arm to end her life and she draws a breath for one last scream of hate and disbelief when Marcus throws one of his machetes at the optical sensor blatantly flashing in the one about to kill her’s “face”. It’s highly unlikely that the machete, not exactly designed to be used as a throwing weapon, would do any real damage to the thing, but it’s threat avoidance protocols are ironclad and instead of killing her it swings its weapon arm to parry the flying blade.

Everything is blurred around Ashley. The impacts of cries of pain and anger, the impacts of weapons against steel and metal…it’s all an indistinct mumble. Is she moving faster, or is everything else moving slower? It doesn’t matter. She sees Marcus throw his weapon, has a vague idea that she might need to help Tanya, but the drone she’s dueling is moving sooooo slow and she can see its  vulnerable knee joint so clearly...the hammerhead of her poleaxe slams into the delicate assembly with pulverizing force, and she can see the little bits and pieces flying away, and oh, good, she still has time, plenty of time, to stab at the one trying to kill Tanya with the spike atop her weapon as the one Tanya is entangled with begins to slump to the ground.

Tanya is dragged forward, into the iron circle, her gauntlet is still wrapped in the fallen drone’s flail chain, but the killing fury is driving her now and she strikes out with her shield at the back of Aurazel’s legs as he bends at the knee to drive another elegant riposte home and he’s stumbling, he’s out of the protection of his bodyguards, and like rats attacking a hound the remaining berserkers are on him, and NOW he’s fighting for his life, now all the arrogance, all the show offishness is gone and in its place is brutal, diamond edged perfection, using his shield and his heavy powered armor as weapons as his perfect swordsmanship becomes a brawl. Marcus is beside her, hacking at the thing that’s trying to hit HER with its shield, and now she’s loose, now they’re away from the crippled automaton, she sees Ashley burying her weapon’s axe blade in the bulky shoulder of one of the other drones, and Aurazel wavers…he actually wavers on his feet, he’s going to fall, then they’ll cut him to ribbons and she won’t die today after all, but like dogs protecting their master the two remaining drones surge forward, driving the warriors away from the corporate champion, blocking blows with their own bodies, their threat avoidance programming overridden by the commands to prevent him from coming to harm. Aurazel stumbles away from the melee, one more of the implanted’s head explodes thanks to a drone swung flail, and now the other two drones are down, vulnerable knee and elbow joints destroyed, and Aurazel sets himself to face those who remain, all by himself.

Tanya takes a moment to breathe, trying to access the situation, and all around her so many are dead. Her, Ashley, Marcus, Hayden, and a dark skinned man whose name she can’t remember are the only ones still alive, and Aurazel seems as fresh as when this fight started. They know…all of them know that if they give him the chance to recover, to catch his breath, they’re done, so Hayden, who for some reason has yet to cast his net in everything that preceded this moment, now does so with a roar of defiance, whipping the weights on its end towards the golden haired devil’s vulnerable face, and Tanya’s throwing herself forward with a scream of her own, gauntlet held high to strike him down so she can get back to her quarters, to her books, maybe place a holocall to her mother and sister, but that’s later, right now Aurazel has to DIE.

Only Ashley, caught in another of her dream like moments where everything seems to move in slow motion, is able to accurately follow what happens next. Aurazel stabs out with his sword, the blade catching in the net before it can wrap around his head and shoulders. His other arm, shield and all, swings straight up, pointing the entire triangular shield assembly straight at Tanya’s face, a feat only possibly thanks to genehanced muscles and powered armor, and stabs it forward, driving the shield tip into her skull with a sickening crunch. Agile as a dancer, he spins to avoid Hayden’s follow up stab with his trident and brings the shield that just killed Tanya down on Hayden’s shoulderbone in a savage, bone pulping chop.

Everything snaps into normal speed again and Ashley and the other two are moving forward now, that’s her…where her and Tanya friends? She thought they weren’t, but maybe they were, she never really had much to compare it with, she always meant to ask the other woman except now she can’t because that bastard…that BASTARD killed her and everything’s slow again. Marcus is the first to reach the bastard and he manages to actually parry a stabbing thrust with his machete, parry it and send a cut towards the bastard’s face, one of Marcus’s favorite bits of bladework, he keeps offering to teach it to her and she keeps telling him there’s no way she could duplicate that with a two handed polearm, and Aurazel slips his head to one side...how does he move that fast in that armor? It really doesn’t seem fair, and then he rolls his wrist over and drags the blade of his sword across Marcus’s torso, thing has to be monomolecule bladed, and all their weapons are machine forged, what a joke, and Marcus is down, he’s dead too, and now she is well and truly furious now.

Carl…that’s his name, isn’t it? He’s swinging his own sword, a two handed claymore type, and can’t he see what the bastard is going to do, can’t he see that…..and another slash, this one with an extra bit of twirl on it because the bastard is confident now, he knows he’s going to win, and now it’s just him and her and he’s turning, he’s sending a cut her way, but she can see the motors turning over in pauldrons of his armor, read his eyes where the blow is going to fall, and he may be devil fast even in that heavy armor but not as fast as her, oh no, that’s always been something she’s had more than everyone else, and she’s bringing the haft of her weapon to block and moving out of the way, and maybe he is as fast as her, almost as fast, or maybe it’s that bastard sword of his, because now his blade slicing through the synthwood shaft of her poleaxe and she pushes off with her feet and the steel bites into her shoulder, it would probably hurt if her implants weren’t burning a hole in her head right now, and then she’s tumbling, rolling along the ground, and she’s lost her weapon.

There’s another skip where everything is moving normal, just great, if she ever needed everything else to be slow it was now and isn’t that just how her life works, and she’s scrambling up to her knees, and he’s just standing there, smiling at her. Raising his sword, he points the top half of her poleaxe, the handle shortened until it’s just a hand weapon, and he waggles his blade, indicating that she should pick it up. And she does, holding it in one hand, and she’s running towards him, and he’s smiling still, and then her other hand comes up and a handful of sand flies towards his face. Ashley’s grinning, grinning so hard it feels like her face will split apart, because her trick worked, and then everything slows down, slows way down, she can see the individual grains hitting the bastard in the face, and she can see the clear, filmy lenses snapping into place over his eyeballs, and really? They really genespliced him so that he’d be immune to having sand thrown in his face? Oh, that’s fair. Really a fair fight, giving him better armor, better weapons, and then genesplicing him so you can’t even fight dirty. And the sword is coming up, and it’s not slow, not slow at all, and then…everything changes.

There’s a light, a light made up of every color of the rainbow, and she sees wings, and somehow she’s flying, flying up into the sky, and she can still see the wings and…it’s an angel. She is being carried by angel. What else could it be? The angel is small, a lot smaller than she thought they would be, and its arms are hugging her around her waist, and they’re flying. For a moment she thinks she’s dead, that the sword cut into her and the angel is taking her up to heaven, just like her dad used to talk about when she was a little girl, but she can hear the roar of wind in her ears and they’re dropping towards the ground now, and maybe the angel isn’t taking her to heaven at all, isn’t that a pleasant thought, and then she’s down in the dirt again, and her back feels like it’s been branded where the angel held her, but the angel lands in front of her and she gets her first good look at it.

Well, the old pictures got the wings right, and it is wearing golden armor, but that’s about all it has in common with how she expected an angel would look. It stands on four legs, and honest to God …she mentally edits that to honest to goodness, in light of present circumstances, it looks a lot more like a little blue haired horse than anything else, with a rainbow colored mane and tail, a pegasus? Isn’t that what they were called? And then she looks into its eyes and she knows she was right the first time, that she’s been saved by an angel. She’s never seen love and compassion like that, not in the eyes of any human, and she can’t say anything, can’t even tell the angel thank you, tears are welling up in her eyes and she needs to tell the angel how grateful she is but her throat is swollen, it won’t let her, and then the angel’s wings beat, there’s more light, rainbow light, and the angel is gone.

Ashley Deveers, former Contracted Sports entertainer, slowly stands up. Her back is still burning where the angel held her, burning right through her armor, but that seems like a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things. She doesn’t know, doesn’t have a clue why the angel saved her and only her, but she knows that it’s time to make some major life changes. She can’t go back to the fabela zone, not know, but she’s heard of the New Gileadites, how they dedicate themselves to the worship of God and helping the people in the badlands zones, they’ve got a couple of monasteries around here if the crawler dropped her off where she thinks it did, and they’re always looking for volunteers and converts. She checks the position of the sun and begins to walk east, not at all worried that she has no food, no water, and not really much of an idea where she is. You don’t get rescued by an angel just to die of thirst the next day, after all.

The children stared in silence as Sister Candle finished her story. “You really got saved by a angel?” Jenny asks, and Candle…she took a new name when she took final vow as a Gileadite, smiles and nods.

“Would you like to see the proof?” she asks, and then turns her back to them, slides her robe off, and lifts up her much patched shirt. There on her back, clear as the day she staggered into the Gileadite convent, are two perfectly matched burn scars, in the shape of tiny horse shoes. They’re a strange color, and no one she has met in six years has ever seen wounds quite like them, which surprises Sister Candle not at all, after all, angelic rescues aren’t exactly an everyday thing in the badlands, fabelas, or even the twofer zones. She lets her shirt fall and turns to face the children again.

“And that is why you do not need to be afraid. Because God does send his angels to protect his children, even the most wicked of them. If this thing that is coming across the plain comes here, even if it covers the whole world, I will not fear it. Because I know that when my life is at an end, the angel will come again. And this time, it will not leave me behind.”