Lambholt, The Ulvenwald, Kessig, Innistrad

[deathsmajesty]

While Ignis and Jace followed the trail of odd stone outcroppings, people all over Innistrad were dealing with the madness infecting the plane - and sometimes giving into it themselves.



The scent of angel's blood. There was nothing like it in all the Multiverse: a biting bouquet, sweet and brackish, tinged with spice and sharp with power. The aroma met Arlinn's wide wolf nostrils as she raced up the sheer incline of a gorge toward the town of Lambholt under siege. She snarled at the smell of it, cursing. She hadn't been fast enough. She should have been the one to draw the blood, to fell the angel, to earn its wrath. She was the protector of the Ulvenwald.

Faster.

She had witnessed the mad angel's descent on Lambholt from afar; the divine being had dived down, past the rooftops and steeples. Cries of horror and flashes of light had followed. Moments later, the angel had surfaced, wings bloody and sword aflame, only to plunge in once more.

Though Arlinn hadn't seen all that had happened beyond the rooftops, she could imagine it well enough. There was only so much that mad angels did. They were broken, shrieking and maddened, crying out Avacyn's name as they careened through the sky. And where they flew, the wails of innocents, roars of flames, and cackling of corrupted beings soon followed.

The desperate trumpet of a cathar's horn - a Goldnight's, she knew the tenor - spurred Arlinn on. She summoned strength from the forest, pumping the thick muscles of her legs, pushing herself up the slope. Faster. But she feared it was already too late. Blood had been shed, and not just angelic. Human blood too. The cathars. Arlinn could picture them, holy weapons raised, magical invocations on their lips. But they would not be blessed with the power they prayed for; Avacyn was no longer answering human prayers.

How has it come to this?

She found the town of Lambholt ablaze, taking her human form as she entered the city The mad angel was not alone, twisted creatures followed in her wake. They had once been werewolves like her, she could scent that, but they were horribly, horribly wrong. Several of them had too many limbs, another had no snout but when it reared back, a gaping maw howled from its stomach. Several of them had already pulled down townspeople; one hunkered on an old man's head, slashing at his face from above with its wicked talons, while two others fought over the man's arm, several feet away. Another of the werewolves, looking more human than its kin, but just as twisted, toyed with a young man who was only barely conscious, scraping foul designs into his skin with its dirt-encrusted nails, letting just enough blood to keep him alive while causing just enough pain that he wished he was not. Their howls rang out above the crackling flames, their lungs unaffected by the choking smoke that had driven so many of the townsfolk to their knees. Arlinn hated them instantly, moreso when the mad angel's voice rose to join them in song.


"Monsters," she growled, stalking past the burning remains of an upturned carriage, fur rippling down her arms as her transformation began. "I will show you what it means to be a werewolf--" A whimper from under the carriage caught her attention, and she paused, kneeling in the dirt to look beneath it. A child, a little boy, was cowering under the carriage, arms protecting his head from the falling embers as it burned. Arlinn released her transformation immediately, reaching an arm into the carriage. She extended her fingers farther toward the boy. She had to hurry. "Give me your hand," she begged.

The child shook his head, carriage creaking above him. "The monsters, they'll get me with their claws if I go out there."

Arlinn didn't want to say that if he didn't come out he would meet a fiery death instead; she didn't want to frighten him any more than he was. "I know you're scared," she said, "but you don't have to be. I'll protect you." She reached again for his hand, but still the boy cowered.

"But you are just one person, and there are so many monsters. And an angel." He peered up through a slit in the wood as a fiery board broke away from the body of the carriage and crashed to the ground at Arlinn's side.

There was a horrific snarling from above her, and looking up, she saw an angel directly overhead. Her reddish-blonde hair blew in the wind caused by the flames and in her hands was a murderous-looking scythe. But rather than swinging it down at Arlinn with insane glee, the curved blade was caught in the abdomen of a leaping werewolf. "Be not afraid!" the angel called to her. "I am Sigarda, of the Host of Herons! My Flight still remembers what we are, who we are meant to protect!" She yanked out her scythe, pulling guts out that had already started to rot, but the werewolf barely noticed, trying to lunge at the angel and catch her throat in its teeth.

Beneath their battle, the carriage tilted. "Hurry, Archmage Kord!" Sigards called from above, then cried out as another werewolf slammed into her in midair, its weight bearing her down to the ground.

How does she know that name? How does she know me? No time for that, she had to focus on the rescue. "Give me your hand. Please." Arlinn stretched as far as she could manage, the tips of her fingers coming just short of the boy's elbow.

"You're an archmage?" the boy's expression changed from one of doubt to awe.

"I used to be," she said, bracing her back against the hot, sagging wood. Flames licked her clothes, singed her flesh, but she gritted her teeth and ignored the pain.

"That's something," the boy said. "All right." He moved cautiously, and ever so slowly. Arlinn held her breath as his small hand reached for hers.

The carriage groaned above them like a beast. Despite herself and all she'd been through over the years at the hands of the Church, Arlinn breathed out her own prayer. Please give me the strength to save this innocent child. Aloud she prayed for the boy, "Protector of our world, please see us safely to your sanctuary." The stirring became an overwhelming flood of holy power. As the boy's hand touched hers, Arlinn yanked him out from under the carriage with a divine might that sent them both rolling across the ground just as the carriage collapsed.

The angel Sigarda dove, shielding Arlinn and the boy from the fiery shards of wood and the werewolves who'd scented new prey. The boy wailed, in pain and fear both. "We're all right," Arlinn buried her nose in the boy's matted hair, breathing in the scent of his life. "You're all right." She rocked him, stroking his face. "I'm going to get you away from here now." She lifted her hand from his head and her breath caught in her throat. Her fingers had come away covered with blood. Her heart postponed its next beat; it refused to sustain her life until she knew that the boy would live. She searched his head for the source of blood, searched his shoulders, his neck. Nothing. But there was more blood. And then more of it. A drop of red fell on Arlinn's own hand. She looked up.

Sigarda was once again airborne, lurching through the sky with a werewolf on her back. It clawed at her hair and tried to bite through her wings. A second gave a mighty leap and bit at her leg, teeth finding purchase in her pure flesh. The angel screamed.


A drop of blood landed on Arlinn's cheek. She could smell it; the angel's blood smelled of the trees of the woods, the air of the heavens, and the waters of the sea. It was a heady aroma, heavy with holy power. It did not belong outside of the angel's body. She moved to help, calling to the angel in desperation, "Sigarda!" But then she remembered the boy, crouched in the crook of her arm. She looked down to him; angel's blood was smeared across his face.

"Save the child first, Archmage Kord!" Sigarda's voice boomed from overhead; it was a command, but it was followed by a softer plea. "Arlinn, please, save the child first."

It was all Arlinn could do to avert her eyes from the sight of the werewolves tearing into the angel's skin; if she watched a moment longer she would not be able to heed Sigarda's command. She offered her hand again to the boy. "Come with me."

This time he didn't hesitate. He let her guide him to the outskirts of town, running toward the heavy boughs of the Ulvenwald. Once, no force in existence could convince a resident of Lambholt to walk into the dark forest after dark, where werewolves stalked and geists were drawn to the warmth of the living.

But that was before the world had turned upside down, when angels had gone mad and werewolves - at least, the ones who hadn't been twisted by whatever obscene magic was causing all of this - became a secondary threat.

"Who was that angel?" the boy asked. "She was still good. She was protecting us."

"I don't know," Arlinn said, still internally reeling at the feeling of holy power that had arisen in her in answer to her desperate prayer. "She said her name was Sigarda."

"Sigarda," he whispered. "Do you think she'll be all right?"

"I don't know," she said again. I don't know if anyone is going to be all right after this.

[Adapted and HEAVILY modified from "The Archmage of Goldnight" by Kimberly J. Kreines. NFI, NFB, you know the drill. Sigarda first seen here and, more recently, here.]