I was born in Sin.
But I need not choose Sin.
These words inhabit my mind like demons and angels in constant battle. Of all my cohort of angelings—all five of us, readying for our walkabout—I suspect I am most likely to Fall.
I do not speak this.
Yet, somehow, Erelah sees it on my face. “Tajael, don’t worry. We’re all coming back from this. And making our vows then. Within a week is my guess.” Her voice is strong and confident, as always. She’s the most righteous among us—more Warrior Class than Protector Class—but I doubt she knows it. And besides, angelkind is at peace, and the warriors are dormant. Erelah’s strength comes from her patronage—a daughter of a True Angel of Light, according to the rumors, not a shadow angel or angeling rutting in Lust and seducing a human, as the rest of us were formed. Her wings flex snowy white behind her, and her toga gleams with the soft glow from the crystal walls of our Dominion. She shines with angel energy, more than the rest of us halflings, even if our wings are just as white. It’s her soul that’s most brilliant, a beacon of Righteousness.
Erelah is an angeling of light to her core.
I was born in Sin. But I need not choose Sin. The words have become a prayer.
“A week!” Sajit scoffs. “I would be back within the day if Markos would allow it.” Our faction leader, Markos, is the angel who rescued us all from the certain Sin of our births, whisking us away from the shadowkind who spawned us. His rules are not magical law, but they might as well be. None of us will return before the appointed time five days hence.
Sajit is in a pout over it. She’s tightening the bindings of her training toga more roughly than necessary. The white fabric glows and covers a minimum of her body for maximum flexibility in a fight. We’ve no need for armor. We are angeling—a mixture of angel and human, to varying degrees—and Sajit’s angel nature will protect her from any natural harm. It’s the unnatural harm—demons and shadow angels and their kind—which angelings need guard against on their walkabout. And there’s no armor against a shadowkind’s blade. But we must go forth and test ourselves against the temptations of the mortal realm before we can return to make our vows. Angelings of light are sworn to protect humanity, and we cannot serve unless we’re sure of our Virtues.
Sajit grunts frustration as she shoves her angel blade into its thigh sheath.
“Patience is a Virtue,” Halo whispers, so quietly I almost can’t hear her. I suspect it just slipped out, an automatic beatitude. Halo is almost reflexive in all the Virtues—Temperance, Charity, Chastity, Diligence, Humility, Kindness, and, most of all, Patience. Quarreling differs from the Sin of Wrath, but with Halo’s meekness, one would think they are the same. Patience has always been her strongest Virtue.
Whilst mine is Diligence. Perhaps. Such discernment is the purpose of the walkabout—for an angeling to discover the strength of their Virtues. Or lack thereof. Only then can they return to take vows in the most suitable faction.
“You should take your vow in Patience,” I say quietly to Halo as I secure my own angel blade—blessed by Markos himself and humming with angel energy—into its sheath. Markos’s faction is Chastity, but we are all free to switch. We could even stay in Chastity but make vows to a different angel, joining a separate Dominion in this nether space that’s set apart from the human realm and its temptations. Markos would take no offense. He expects us to discern and choose once we return.
If we return.
Erelah is ready, humming with energy just a bit stronger than the others. She flexes her hands as if impatient to put our training to use slaying demons. Not that demons plague humanity now, not like in ancient times. My cohort was only spawned twenty human years ago, but it’s been hundreds of years since a proper slaying. Although some angelings are still called to Guardian duty, on occasion, just in case.
Sajit is a picture of agitation, likewise ready to slay and return to the angel realm. Or simply bide her time among the humans, remaining in the light, resisting temptation, not succumbing to the Vices and Falling into shadow. As alluring as humanity supposedly is—none of us have seen an actual human, not since being taken from our mothers—I don’t think Sajit is in danger of Falling from Lust. For her, it will be Wrath. Or perhaps Pride.
A scowl flashes across her face and then vanishes—a silent and missed rebuke to Oriel, who is still, slowly and methodically, putting right the straps of his rugged training toga. The rest of us—myself, Erelah, Halo, and an impatient Sajit—are ready.
But it’s Halo who speaks. “Do you need assistance?” she asks Oriel. She means it with love. I can see it in the wide luminescence of her blue eyes.
“No.” He continues his methodical practice.
“Just magic it,” Sajit says, her frustration climbing up into words.
Oriel doesn’t answer, just wraps the last binding into place. He is covered more than the rest—rugged white-leather boots, a harness of similar white leather wrapped around his chest and bound with toga fabric, plus stiff gauntlets on either arm. He’s dressed for combat as if the entire ensemble might stop a shadow blade.
It will not.
Oriel swipes his dark hair back from his face. “I was practicing Diligence,” he explains gently. Then he frowns. “In Truth, I suppose I was delaying. I fear my Fall will come all too quickly once we’re outside the safety of Markos’s Dominion.”
My heart stutters in recognition—this is my fear as well.
Sajit snorts. “Hardly. You’ve yet to meet a risk you felt worthy of taking, Oriel.”
His frown grows darker. “There are no true risks in this realm. What temptation have you ever felt—”
“I feel the temptation now to prod you with my blade,” Sajit replies sharply. “Are you ready?”
But Erelah speaks before he can respond. “Oriel’s right. We haven’t faced any serious temptation here.”
“I’m tempted to skip our weekly Penance,” Halo pipes up cheerily.
“You hardly have need for Penance,” Oriel chides her, but again, it’s a Kindness, not a rebuke.
“I most certainly do.” Halo’s sunlight expression falls into seriousness. “I have wicked thoughts. Very wicked. You would be shocked to know my temptations.”
I’m intrigued enough to ask. “For which Sin?”
She pauses dramatically, looking at us each with those wide eyes. “Gluttony.”
A laugh seizes hold of us all, echoing off the tall walls of the training room. I grin wide at her. No angeling has ever Fallen from the Sin of Gluttony. And for a moment, the tension is released, and it is like all the times we bantered together before in training or in the gathering room while we were growing up together. Angelings don’t have family, not like the humans we study and protect when we come of age. Markos is our leader, not our father. Our cohort are our closest friends, not our brothers and sisters. But this… this laughter feels like the echo of a family I never had.
Yet when we depart, there’s no guarantee we’ll ever be together again like this.
“I am serious,” Halo attempts, fighting through her own laughter. “I have desires to eat nearly every day.” This bursts another round of laughter. We are all partially human—some more than others, depending on our lineage—but our angel natures reduce the need for human things like eating and sleeping to a fraction of what humanity requires.
Halo smile broadens, and I give her a wink. I see what she’s done, flushing us with the joy of laughter instead of the sadness of tears or the spoken-aloud fears of Falling. If only the ability to perceive the intent of angelings were a Virtue, I’d be guaranteed never to Fall.
“Well, if Halo can Fall from Gluttony,” Erelah says, still smiling, “then I am doomed.”
“Which one for you?” I ask.
She narrows her eyes as if contemplating the question. “Pride. I’ve always been more talented with a blade than you could hope to be, Tajael.”
“Truth,” I say, grinning wide again. “And I shall Fall from Envy of your superb demon slaying skills.”
“As is right and just,” she says solemnly.
This wrenches another chortle from me and the rest. Oriel leans on Sajit, fighting for breath from his laughter.
“And you, Sajit?” I ask, purposely tempering my smile. Perhaps she will be honest.
“Sloth, of course.” She scowls at Oriel and sloughs him off her shoulder. “I will lay about in my cell, indolent with too much sleep, and one day…” She flicks her hands, a smirk settling on her face. “Poof. I will go to shadow.”
Oriel has recovered himself somewhat. “I do not believe there is any poofing involved.”
“How do we know?” Sajit counters, and suddenly the mood of the entire group grows darker. “We’ve never been outside these walls.” She gestures to the softly glowing crystal of Markos’s Dominion. “All we know is what we’ve been told. The stories. The legends. The warnings. What is it really like out in the human realm? We won’t know until we get there. And then we’re on our own.”
What she’s saying is Truth. And it sobers us. Although we are leaving as a group, we will each pick a different part of the human realm for our walkabout. We will truly be alone among humanity.
“Markos wouldn’t lie to us,” Halo says softly.
And while I suspect that is Truth, one never knows with angels. “He’s told us what we need to know,” I say. Or at least what we need for whatever lessons he has in store for us. Angels are inscrutable at the best of times, even for an angeling like me, who has a dangerous Pride in my ability to read faces and intent. But angels are not earthly beings, and the form they take—including facial expressions and body language—is purely the form they wish you to see.
“I pray that it will be enough,” Oriel says softly.
A hush falls on the group once more.
No one has mentioned the Sin from which we all came. The one to which we are all most vulnerable in the human realm. Lust. We were raised in Chastity faction—it should be our strongest Virtue—but Sajit tells the Truth. We know only what Markos has told us.
Erelah lays a hand on Oriel’s well-clad shoulder. “You will return, Oriel. I have faith in you.”
He smiles gently. “You are born of an angel of light, Erelah. Your faith is like breathing. Unlike the rest of us.”
This wounds me, to hear it spoken aloud. And the look on Erelah’s face says it wounds her, too.
Oriel seems stricken. “I only mean—”
“No, it’s all right,” Erelah cuts him off. She squeezes his shoulder and releases him. Then she turns to the rest of us. “It’s proper to feel some concern. This is the greatest test of our lives. It is a test of our righteousness, and any one of us could fail. We could Fall into shadow… but we will not. Because we are angelings of the light, and we live to serve.” She makes a fist and holds it to the center of our small group.
My hand is first on hers, but Oriel and Halo quickly follow. Sajit waits, but then she clasps hard on the top of the pile. “We live to serve.”
Then she nods, just once, and twists away, disappearing in a flash of light. She has opened an interdimensional portal between Markos’s Dominion and the human realm and stepped right through. Gone. Until we see her again.
“I live to serve,” Halo says, and she’s the next to travel.
Oriel holds my gaze for a long moment. “I’ll see you at your vow-making,” he says calmly, and he goes next.
Erelah and I remain. She is my fast friend, more than the others, even from the time of our first lessons in the training room.
“You will come back, Tajael,” she says. It’s a command.
“I live to serve,” I respond.
And then she’s gone.
I wait a moment longer, gazing at the echoing heights of the training room, soaking in the vibrant hum of its walls, the clean, pure energy of its angel light.
Home. It’s the only one I’ve ever known.
I was born in Sin. But I need not choose Sin.
I turn, open an interdimensional door, and walk through to the world of Sin where I was born.