A flash, and a video plaza beams into their collective skulls: the broad face of General Tsung, waxy with tension. Behind them the lights of the command center blink. “That warship is of a new configuration,” they say, straight to the point. “We don’t know what its capabilities are. It’s likely to have some surprises. Take caution, but use as much force as necessary, as fast as possible. There can be no losses today. Is that understood?” And while Misery returns an affirmation to the system, they continue: “What happens here, today, will define the direction of the war, and the future of the Faithful. Go with the Forge, and make good history.”

In the present, her mind a tornado and her body a weapon, Misery cares little about the shape of her life or the trajectory of its arc in future history books. What she cares about, what’s driving the engine of her heart, is the thought of her blades cutting through Heretic flesh. Adrenaline blurs the present into a series of snapshots. The archangel, a blaze of white in her vision, nova-bright in her consciousness. Getting closer. Then she’s climbing in, being swallowed, stone moving up her legs. The system’s heads-up display goes under, sucked in by the archangel. Misery dissolves into the ecstasy of connection. The delight of once again being one with the universe.

The archangel Misery Nomaki slices through the void, limbs fervid with power and the desire to tear into hir foes. The mortal human Misery might be subject to doubts and anxiety, but the archangel Misery Nomaki perceives the universe with absolute clarity. Zie has a single task to complete, and zie will see it done.

Ahead is the Heretic destroyer, a massive wedge of ultraviolet energy in hir awareness. A strange confection, working stone twisted and warped by human hands for human purpose. The archangel Misery can ignore the seraphim that accompany it—mere gnats, irritants better left to the pilots of Angelsteeth and their feeble human biology. The units swarm before hir: four from Xito Green-2, four from Jota Red-4, and the three from Ono Red-2. Among the last group is a brilliant, joyous core of destruction. The seraph controlled by Lee Alodia Lightning, liberated from its mortal limitations. The rest of the serving, the rest of Angelsteeth, does not know what the free seraph can do. The humans Lightning and Misery agreed this would be their backup plan, their great surprise, should things go wrong.