“Summon your angels to war then,” said El, and suddenly beat his wings and launched himself into the air. A few angels who had made bold to swoop low got well clear of him. He flew back to the Fastness and landed upon a high battlement from which he could see all and all could see him. Below, the gate boomed shut. Edda and the other members of the Quest had been made guests within.

Defender of El led the charge, an echelon of warrior angels behind him. They wheeled down out of the blue sky in a wedge and came straight for Egdod.

“Fire,” said Egdod.

And there was fire: bolts of it stabbing from the tops of the Fastness’s walls and from embrasures farther down. It came from dark tubes of metal, each of which had a crew of souls to feed it, and as soon as all of them had been discharged, they set to work preparing them to fire again.

All of which was a detail little noticed since Defender of El and many of his angels had fallen to the ground and were lying dead or broken on the plain between the anvil and the Fastness.

Another rank of angels wheeled into position above, ready to renew the attack. Defender of El lay dead. All eyes turned to El, who hovered a little distance above the ground at the opposite end of the battlefield, near the wide bridge already carpeted in green and growing things.

“At your command, Lord El!” shouted an angel who seemed to have assumed command.

The same words were echoed a moment later by Sooth below. She had raised her sword as if to signal a charge.

El hesitated.

The ground was shaking, but El did not know it because his feet were not in contact with the Land.

The Chasmian vaulted out of the gorge behind him. No longer impeded by its massive shield, it lashed out with both arms and wrapped them around El’s form from behind. In an effort to escape the bear hug, El became mostly a thing of aura. The two forms became intermingled as they struggled and writhed at the brink; then, with the slowness of a great tree that has been cut through at the root, they toppled into the Chasm and disappeared.