Treeshade 4: Lecture

I knelt comfortably in the shadow He cast.  My angelic sponsor, who today resembled an ordinary human male of middle years and swarthy skin, sat on a block of stone, of the same sort from which the walls around us were built.  All illusory, of course – my physical body wasn’t present, and this was just my dreaming mind projecting into the afterlife for my nightly visitation.

Still, I liked listening to Him talk.  He had a rich, confident voice.  Today, we were discussing some of the fault lines that were discovered growing active under the city, and what my role in the evacuations might be.

“Then, of course, the hospice is a sticking point, but the ill there must be rescued,” He said.  “The civic authority has a plan, but I think a veteran Paladin could be of use to them there to calm tempers and heal wounds.”

I bowed my head.  “So it shall be, then, sir.”

He nodded too.  “Good.  The hospice itself is nowhere near the walls, but the walls are so steady in the nearby wards that there is no real chance of anything short of a volcanic eruption taking them down.  Therefore, you can help to clear the roads.”  He opened His mouth to say more, but His head suddenly whipped to one side.  “Hmph.”

It used to creep me out when He did that.  It looked like a hawk tracking prey.  I looked, and I saw another angel, of the same sort as my sponsor, rise to Her feet and draw steel.  I glanced around uneasily as She shed Her rest form in a flurry of light and emerged decked in full plate.

“Uh…” I said nervously.

“You’ll be fine, little brother,” my sponsor said.  “Look closely.  This is a rare sight for mortals indeed.”

I did so, and I saw the faint turbulence in the empty, white nothingness of space before Her.  She set Her blade to a fighting stance and waited as the turbulence resolved into the faint outline of a person.

I started as realization struck.  There was no way I should have been able to see this.  The closest entrance to where my partner sits is over half a mile away, but I was watching this other angel prepare for battle as if it were out my porch window.  I blinked the sudden sense of vertigo away as my soul’s guardian waved a dismissive hand.  “Be at peace, little brother, I want you to see this,” He said firmly.  “Watch.”

The dirt outline of a person – skeletal and frail, but still undeniably humanoid once – took a few lurching steps forward, then fell to its hands and knees.  Some dirt knocked free from the collection that held it cohesive as it did so, and spilled onto the white ground.  The angelic warrior took a long, slow step forward as She cautiously approached, looking oddly eager.

“When a soul is tainted by the Dirt, little one, it does not instantly and irrevocably lose all that it once was,” He said to me.  “Not every time is all memory lost.  What you are seeing is one of your peers.”

My skin crawled.  “That was a Paladin?”

“And thus, knows that it is home.  It is beyond control.  It is a weapon,” He said gently.  I leaped a handspan as He rested a hand on my shoulder from His perch.  I looked over to see Him leaning forward, concern in His soft black eyes.  “Always care for your gear and your flesh, little brother.”

I looked back as the Dirteater – not a consensual one, apparently – collapsed its forehead to the ground, then began violently bashing its head on the white ground.  “You see, that poor soul was tainted by the Court of Oil, but died before it could be overwritten,” He said.  “But that means that while it is aware of its taint, so too is it aware that this is the last chance it will ever have to be repaired.  Or, at least, cleaned.”

The angel woman held Her sword out at the ready and slowly kneeled down beside the Dirteater, who stopped its bashings and looked up at Her.  Or look like it was looking up at Her, anyway.  When you’re eating Dirt, the eyes go first.  Probably for the best.  The angel didn’t touch the Dirteater – smart – but instead crouched beside it.  It craned its head about a bit, so it could clearly perceive Her.  It reached out desperately, and suddenly She was twenty feet back in a wave of wind from Her beautiful seagull wings.  She turned Her head and shouted something back through the door She guarded.

My eyes bugged out of my phantasmal head.  Out had stepped another angel, but of a clade so much higher than any I had ever seen that I felt very, very small.  He was tall, and the glow from His wings of slatted steel and the halo of light that hung from the air around Him hurt me to look.  My sponsor reassuringly squeezed my shoulder again as the towering pinnacle of divine power stepped forth from the door and took one look over the situation, reached down, shoved His bladed hand through the Dirteater’s forehead, and disintegrated it with a word of Power I am so very glad I couldn’t quite hear.

“And thus, since the soul consented to cleanliness and not to desecration, is the scale balanced, by returning it to the proper state,” my sponsor said calmly.  “In life, the soul can be so tainted that consent doesn’t matter, and all free will is lost.  If the soul dies in such a state, there is nothing to be done, but to shed a tear and harden the defenses, for another mote of Dirt has joined the avalanche.  If the soul is not fully tainted, and did not wish to be, then it can be saved.  Observe.”

The female angel’s form returned to Her rest form as Her plate vanished.  The intricate steel carvings of the higher angel glowed faintly as He communed with some entity even higher in the chain than He, then He clapped the smaller angel on the shoulder with a grave smile, and turned to walk away.

I looked around.  “Uh… where did the purified soul go?” I asked.

“Treeshade,” He said quietly.  I looked back to Him.  He looked at me solemnly.  “The body was too tainted to be restored.”

I hung my head.  “I see.”

“Do you understand why I allowed you to witness this, little brother?” He asked me.

I nodded slowly.  “I think… sir, I think you wanted me to take hope from this, but caution, too.  We’re sanctified, but not immortal.  But death isn’t hopeless.”

He straightened up.  “Very good.”  He glanced over His shoulder as the towering high angel walked by the door and cast a grin at Him, and then the light beyond the door returned to normal.  “Now.  The roads.”

We discussed and planned some more, my heart chilled by the display, but I awoke resolute.  It is good to never be alone.