Thraben Cathedral, Thraben, Gavony, Innistrad, Friday Night (Fandom Time)

[deathsmajesty]

The three fiends cowered before the angel like a stain on the cathedral floor. They averted their eyes, unworthy of her sight.

She knew they were not of this world, but, more importantly, she knew they bled. She could feel their heartbeats under their throats, at the tip of her spear. One more gentle thrust and she would unmask these demonic creatures, send them into the oblivion they deserve, and cleanse the world of them.

She was Avacyn. She was made to protect.

One of them, the creature in the blue cloak, pleaded with her. She was briefly surprised he could still speak after she had scourged him, but true evil was stronger than almost anything. As he spoke, she watched worms spill from his mouth. "Avacyn, this isn't you," he coughed, his claw holding his head. "You don't have to do this." The words crawled away into the shadows like centipedes.

Even more than her spear, her sight was her greatest weapon. Her eyes saw more than the humans could, more even than her fellow angels. She saw the angelic heralds in the stained-glass windows, how they bowed to her in deference. She saw the moonlight that followed her in her travels, even here inside the cathedral, and the white-feathered doves that scattered forth from wherever her feet touched earth. Most of all, she saw the squirming jelly behind the faces. She saw the revolting lies that hid, dressed in human form.

She alone existed to open them to the light of justice.

"You're ill, or misinformed," said another fiend, her long ears pulled back behind her head. Her eyes were empty sockets, and behind them all Avacyn saw was coarse black hair, writhing. "You're meant to protect people, not--this."

She pushed toward the long-eared demon with her hand, and her light blasted the demon back. She slammed against the wall, coughing, and the sounds that fell out of her became yet more bedraggled black hair.

"I am the bulwark against fiends from without," she said, aiming her spear at the coughing demon. The spear's points bent into a scolding finger. "I destroy wickedness, no matter its origin, no matter its form. I have seen you crawl across my provinces, slither into my church. But now I see you. And now you answer to me."

Avacyn called to the light, and it obeyed. A cold flickering manifested in her hand, and the shadows of her fingers fell across the trembling demons. "Finally," she said, "your corruption of Innistrad ends."

	Something stirred up on the roof. Avacyn looked up to see the skylight explode, a man crashing through it feet first. Tinted shards rained down into the cathedral, showering all of them, though the glass shards simply bounced off of the angel's skin. The man landed hard enough to crack the flagstones below him, but remained on his feet, sword in hand. He stood straight, his boots grinding glass, unhurt, his white hair barely ruffled.
	It was one of the bloodsuckers, and an ancient one. She recognized him, but could not quite bring his name to mind. It didn't matter, of course. He would die with the rest. "Stand aside, vampire," she said. "I will deal with you next."
	He did not move, save to square his stance a little further. His weapons was already drawn: a longsword readied in one hand, a spell in the other. "There's something wrong with you, Avacyn," the vampire said. "I've come to help."
	His mouth was a leech's mouth, the words bent around a bloody circle of fangs. The bloodsuckers were truly a stain upon the surface of Innistrad. "Do not attempt to stay my spear, bloodsucker, or you will feel it yourself." She could not quite recall his title, but she could see him. His face rippled with leeches, slithering just beneath the skin. He reeked of blood.
	"Avacyn," he said. "I need you to come with me down to the cellar. You'll see what I must do, if you'll just wait for a moment--" "My mission never waits," the angel spat, hurling holy magic at him, and it hit him full in the chest. And yet he continued to stand there, unmoved. "Avacyn," he repeated. "The cellar. We have business we must attend to."
	"Sorin, you can help her, can't you?"
	"Silence," he snapped, and the mortals jolted with the force of his voice. He turned to Avacyn again. "Listen to me. If you have some grievance with these, you may kill them before we begin." He glanced down to the man sprawled on his back and seemed to briefly reconsider, but then his face clouded with anger and he looked back up at Avacyn without amending his words. "But I won't permit you to leave this place until our business is concluded."
	Sometimes, our stories have to end, Tamiyo had said, and at one point, Ignis would have agreed with her. But now he knew that his story was still far from over. Grimacing through the shared anguish of Jace's pain, he pushed through it all to think, if he could just get up, while she was distracted....and then Tamiyo made her appeal, to no avail, and that confirmed it. They were beyond words and attempts to reason, except by one way... But Ignis fell back again with a groan, breath quickening, as echoes of mental torment rippled through his skull and burst open old wounds. His right hand twitched at his side. Noct. I could really use your help right about now. And for a moment? He thought it had worked. For a moment, he was certain his plea had been answered, as it had on Shandalar. But that was the thing with shattering glass; even outside of a muddled mind, it sounded almost exactly like the crystalline music of the Armiger. The glass showered around him like a broken hope. Warm blood welled up from his cheek, he could feel a familiar burning behind his eyes. But while certainly not the Last King of Lucis, it would seem that they were still being offered up...perhaps not help, per se, but...a much needed distraction. Sorin? Sorin Markov? You may kill them, he said, before we begin. Ignis' left hand groped at his side until he found one, a large enough shard of the shattered glass. He'd have to grip it tight to keep his hold on it, but he channeled his focus into that other, twitching, waiting hand.
	In the rafters high above, feathered wings rustled. The eyes of a dozen of Avacyn's blessed angels looked down on the tableau, flashing and beautiful like the stars at midnight. Including the most beautiful of all, her sisters. She found herself wondering something. An angel is made of goodness--but is goodness made of an angel's acts? She didn't know why that question occurred to her now and shook her head to dismiss it. "I warn you, vampire," she said. "These invaders are the foulest threat on Innistrad, but you are in danger of becoming the greater evil in my sight. Begone, or I and my host will strike you down." He stepped towards her in disobedience and she pummeled him with hallowed light, but again the spell did not harm him. He tilted his head, his eyes looking almost concerned, but his leech's fangs flexed, mocking her. Laughing at her. A sliver of doubt inserted itself into her mind--not that she would be defeated, but that she might have hesitated at the moment she released the spell. She might have prevented herself from striking him down. But why?
	Sorin took another step forward, so that his chest rested against Avacyn's spearhead. "Avacyn," he said softly. "You cannot harm me." He reached out to her. "And there is a reason."
	Avacyn desperately did not want to hear his reason. Did not want to hear another single word from his bloodied mouth. Instead she listened for the wings of the angels who perched in the rafters above, and felt their starlight eyes on her. Steeling herself in their light, she raised her spear-tip to the vampire and it curved into a blade of justice. The immobilizing light fell away from the other three foul creatures. Her angels and the sisters could handle them. She needed to focus on the vampire. Then these odd thoughts, these questions, this hesitation would be no more. "I will show you exactly what I can do, bloodsucker," she declared. "Angels, attack the interlopers! We will cleanse the holy church of this filth once and for all!" Eleven angels dove down from the cathedral's high ceiling, swords out, voices raised in holy song. "Now let us see who cannot harm who," she snarled at the vampire.
	Ignis, too, had been listening. Not just to the exchange, either, but to those wings in the rafters high above. Considering, calculating, trying to determine just what they might have to deal with, but at least it seemed, for now, he could put one factor aside, and leave Avacyn to Sorin, focus on the others. Which....well, the others would be focusing on them, it would seem, regardless. And this whole time, he was waiting for this moment, when Avacyn gave her orders and the angels rushed in. Bucking off the floor, kicking his legs up so that he'd flipped into a crouching position, he listened the the rush of their moment while the crackling of lightning charged through his left hand and into the glass shard; in his right, shot out sharply to his side, the Katana of the Warrior formed again, seemingly glowing even brighter with its blue haze for the denial of getting used earlier. One more moment, and he felt he could determine the angels' trajectory his way, and he pulled back his left arm to send the electric bolt of glass flying to greet at least one of them. He followed through on the momentum of the toss to put his hand behind him for leverage to push himself up, leading with kicking legs, and wasting no time in thrusting the sword upwards. If his timing, if his calculations, were correct, it would hopefully find a body. Either way, he was pulling the sword back and swinging again, flowing into a rhythm that would keep him moving until he could determine the next target.
	There was a screech and a loud thud as the electric comet of glass ripped its way through one of the diving angels. A second cried out as the katana thrust up into the side of her neck, veering off and crashing into a stone column. Two down, nine to go. Jace remained on his knees, his hands on his temples, and one other angel's eyes glowed blue for a moment, ramming herself into another of her sisters, fouling her wings and dragging her downwards. The blue was gone a moment later, but the damage was already done as they fell. Tamiyo was hastily reading from another scroll, and the floor's flagstones were removing themselves from their mortar and flinging themselves at the incoming army. Two angels landed to either side of Ignis to flank him. They had no weapons, but their graceful hands were crooked into talons meant to rend and tear.
	Sorin stood there under Avacyn's onslaught, watching as every thrust, every blow was turned aside at the last moment, seemingly of its own volition. "Avacyn," Sorin said, his voice like quiet thunder, "I am your creator. You cannot raise a hand to harm me."
	The words stabbed at her. They were just sounds, just vibrations in air. But she felt them like a carver's knife. Like an inquisitor's brand. The words felt old, as if they had been chiseled somewhere inside of her, dust gathering in the troughs. But now the dust floated away, and she saw him. He was Sorin, of the Markov bloodline. His mouth was not round like a leech's--she didn't not know why she perceived him that way before. His white-within-black eyes and high cheekbones were not unlike her own. He was her creator; she was made in his image. The truth of it was plain to her now. As she saw him, she saw herself. He was the reason she existed. He was there when she had been created, the man who had stood over her that first instant when she came into being. It was he who had imbued her with her mission. Her creation had happened here, in the deep reaches of this very cathedral. She knew now that he made her, Innistrad's divinity, for one purpose. She was Avacyn. She was to protect. To root out threats to Innistrad. To answer the prayers of the innocent, and to strike down those who would torment them. To protect those who would otherwise be devoured by the shadows of this world. "You are my creator," she said. "Yes." "Then you must be good," she said.
	Movement was key. While Sorin and Avacyn spoke, Ignis had to remind himself to not let himself get distracted by the words they exchanged, especially when he had to focus on this. So he let that, for now, fall to the wayside as he kept moving, considered his marks. How were Jace and Tamiyo faring? Did he care? (Yes). Did they need his help? (Probably not). He felt the angels on each side of him, closing in. And while they might not have had weapons other than those industrious hands, he still had a few more. In nearly the same motion it took to disperse the katana, his arms crossed in front of him, and when he pulled his knives from their sheaths, it would hopefully be right into the guts of the angels descending on him. He wasn't going to wait around to make sure, of course. One quick slash out to unsheath his knives, one quick motion to pull them back out and closer as he dropped back into a roll to disengage. And if that initial unsheathing hadn't slashed them, then surely his rush right back to them the stab down into their shoulders and back would...
	The angel to his left had been slightly closer than the angel on his right, and so his dagger had slid deeper into her abdomen, leaving her bent over and choking as the blade had punctured flesh and organs. Her sister had gotten away with a mere cut - deep and bleeding, though hardly fatal - and reached out with a cruel claw to rend him even as he dodged away. But one of Tamiyo's flying stones had smashed into her hand, shattering bone, and another had done the same into her choking sister's skull. "Just the right!" came Tamiyo's cry to let Ignis know where to focus as his blades flashed out, severing wing and spine. Multiple illusory Jaces darted about confusing the remaining angels as Tamiyo's flagstones shattered bones and sliced through wings.
	There were five angels remaining, all of them injured, the cathedral echoing with the sounds of battle. But in the center, the drama between maker and angel continued to play out. "You are the source," Avacyn continued. "Of me. And therefore. Of goodness." Avacyn's creator's smile was gentle, showing just the slightest edge of fang. "That's right, Avacyn. And so that you can be the best you can be, you must join me. Come." He reached his hand out to her, smile falling slightly as she hesitated to take it.
	Avacyn looked at the three people she had battled tonight, still in the thick of a battle with her sisters. They looked as fiends to her even now, but also like a woman and two men. Mages. Mortals. Their blood had been spilled in her cathedral; she could smell the tang of copper on her blade. But this could only be so if they were wicked. If she had struck them down, then what could they be but monsters? An angel was made of goodness--was goodness made of an angel's acts? Her creator regarded her, eyes cold as they scrutinized her face. She could see his pulse in the pale skin of his neck, the vein beating with someone else's warm blood. She was Avacyn. She was to protect. But Images whirled around her. I Villages burning. have Innocents slain. not A mother, crying over her child. protected. She had set those fires. She had slain those innocents. She'd been created as a defender, as a protector--and yet that protector had brought destruction. And she was not only a protector, but a symbol. An entire church had grown up around her--but the church had kindled a zealous hatred, and her power had fanned those flames. What did it mean to be good? Was goodness made of an angel's acts? She looked at her creator and tilted her head at him. She'd been made, but imperfectly. With flawed sight. She was not a protector at all, but a danger, a weapon for those who would wield her to harm this world. "You," she said. She squared her shoulders toward her creator and flexed her pinions. Moonlight gathered on her body. Her skin glowed, and she could see doves flying in the cathedral around her. It was clear to her now what she must do. Sister, I need you. The last of her sisters, the greatest. Her own creation. The twelfth who had remained in the rafters while the other eleven had come flying down. "Avacyn," Markov said, his voice low, a predator's tone. "Scion of Markov," Avacyn announced, raising her spear. Its blades curved and warped to jab at his chest. "You have allowed this to happen."
	"You should be careful what you say to me, child," Markov growled. "I am not your child," Avacyn declared. "I am your creation. You are responsible for everything I am capable of. I was made for a purpose, and your purpose was impure. Sorin Markov, I condemn you as the greatest evil of this world." "You've fallen out of line," Markov said through his teeth.
	"Wait, Sorin," Tamiyo cried. "You must listen to me. The consequences for the plane—"
	The remaining angels withdrew. For a moment, it almost felt like a relief. But like the water recedes as a herald of a tsunami's approach, so too did the angels back off to give room to the last. Once there had been four sisters. And then, only three: Sigarda, Bruna, and Gisela; the fourth slain by Avacyn herself. Now there were only two: Sigarda and Brisela, the latter created by Avacyn by magics best not thought about. Brisela landed heavily enough to crack the flagstones, a huge abomination formed of twisted flesh, writhing tentacles and feathered wings. The monstrous angel's two heads uttered a discordant wail that stabbed their ears and upended their equilibrium. Tamiyo clutched at her ears, and Jace staggered backwards into a wall. The remaining angels raised their voices in song, uncaring or perhaps unaware when the monstrosity swept one of its thick lower tentacles forward, crushing a singing angel into the ground.
	*Ignis, you need to see this!* Jace 'shouted' into Ignis' head, followed by an image of the twisted creation in front of them.
	Loathe as he would be to admit it in any other circumstance, Ignis, hunched over and reeling from the piercing assault on one of his most reliable senses during a fight, was incredibly grateful to Jace in that moment for the sight of the grotesque being. Because while his skull was ringing at the skin-crawling symphony it created, that glimpse provided at least something else to focus on to show him where to go, what to do, even where to strike, perhaps. Two heads, two blades...one heart, maybe? Well, there was only one way to find out. With a shake of his head, he pushed past the pain of their screaming in that familiar way he pushed through that sometimes still lingering pain that stole his vision so many years ago. *Thank you, Jace,*, he thought back, whether the other man was listening or not, and then charged forward, leaping up with one last push of whatever energy that still remained within him, the crackling of lightning on his blades reduced from where they'd been before the assault, sputtering slightly, the sparking with a shove of whatever he'd had left inside of him as his voice lifted up to meet their wail in a shout of his own as he brought them stabbing downward into creature's chest.
	One of the angel-thing's impossibly long arms lashed out to bat him aside, but more of Tamiyo's flying flagstones peppered the limb and fouled the blow before it could land. The two heads opened their mouths to wail again - one mouth just a gaping cavity in the creature's neck - but the sound was cut short as Ignis drove his knives down into its torso - though its inhuman twisting drove the crackling blades into something like a shoulder where at least three arms converged on the creature's left side. In response, the angel brought its other arm up and slashed a half-dozen finger-claws at him, looking to rake along his side, a tentacle as thick as his waist slamming towards him as well.
	Meanwhile, Avacyn and Sorin continued to ignore this, their full attention on one another. "Why would you allow this?" she asked. "Why would you make me this way?" Her spear pressed against his chest, scratching the armor. Markov sneered. The blade in his hand flashes in the light from the rafters. "Avacyn, come down to the cellar," he said. "Let us discuss your creation." "You created me to ensure that all wickedness meets its demise," Avacyn declared. "Prepare to meet yours." She lunged with the spear, using every bit of her divine strength. And yet still the blade missed his chest, and she fell past him. He lashed out at her with draining magic, but she managed to turn in time to deflect it away. Angelic claws reached him, channeling light into the blow. They connected, but only raked sparks across his armor. He swung back, batting the angel with the flat of his blade, strong enough to rattle her ribcage. "You were made to be loyal to me," Markov spat. "You can't harm me." "It seems not," Avacyn conceded. "But they can."
	The remaining angels stopped their singing to swarm Sorin, eyes full of madness, mouths open now to scream in bloody defiance. He barely had time to shield his face before they crashed onto him, their graceful hands tearing at his skin and hair, anything they could reach. But he fought back, and his blows were terrible. He impaled one angel with his sword and sliced through the wing of another, dashing her to the floor where she lay, shattered. He flung another through a column, turning the masonry to powder, then snatched the fourth by the neck as she attacked him with furious claws, buffeting at his face and shoulders. Avacyn willed her strength to that last angel, but it was too late. Her essence flowed into him, dark liquid strands from her eyes and mouth into his own. She seized into a hunch, like the rictus of a crow, before falling limp in his grip. Without another thought, he discarded her body to the side, where it lay akimbo on the floor like a broken doll. He turns to his creation, his leather torn and his chest plate raked open. The angels had weakened him, but he was far from defeated. He tapped the tip of his sword on the marble floor. "This changes nothing, Avacyn," he said.
	In response, Avacyn put her spear-blade against his neck...but she could feel it resist harming him. Even leaning into it, it simply failed to cut him. So instead, she focused on his face, reminding herself that he was not a vampiric noble, but a horror. A monster, a blood demon, a leech. And, suddenly, she saw him anew. His eyes became mouths, ringed with teeth. His face was a flimsy mask. He was her creator, yes, but he was the embodiment of evil. "Avacyn—" he began through a leech's mouth, and she slashed her spear through his neck, this time cutting deep enough to hit bone. He roared and leaped back, grasping his neck. Rotting ooze gushed from between his fingers, turning to sickly fungus on the flagstones that wriggled and writhed and oozed.
	"She's gone mad!" Jace yelled over the din of the fight with her final sister. "The static in her brain--it's affecting her perceptions!"
	Avacyn ignored his lying tongue. She had never seen more clearly - and even so, it was the Markov that she needed to pay attention to. He leapt for her, sword aimed at her heart, and the blade sparked along her spear as she parried. She pivoted to strike him, but she had to duck his claw, and the blow severed tendons in her wing. When she lunged to push light through him, it was met with a blast of blood magic that scattered her spell. She shrieked and dove into him, breaking a column with his body, crashing him through glass and splintered wood until he was shoved against the wall of the cathedral. The monster's head tilted and she could hear bone crack against bone. His neck wound began to scar over. The mouths in his eye sockets drooled words. "Avacyn. I must do this." "And I, this," she snarled, and she sank her spear through the gap in the monster's chest plate, so deep that the blade hit the granite of the cathedral wall on the other side. He roared and she was blasted backwards. Markov clutched the spear handle and yanked out the blade, and for a moment she could see the slimy animal that must serve as his heart. Squirming lampreys flowed from the wound. He dropped the spear and his own sword, and they clattered alongside one another. He clutched his wound closed with one claw. "You are lost," he said. "You can only see me as a monster now, and that is why you can harm me." "You are a stain on the world," she told him, rising up, battered and hurting but not yet defeated. "It is only now that I am able to see that clearly."
	"Gone mad?" Ignis couldn't help but sputter, wiping the blood from his chin while swallowing more down; while he'd been able to avoid too much battery at the hand (well, tentacles) of the monstrosity thanks to his quick feet and easy jumps and flips, his attempts at avoidance in the meantime hadn't all been successful. He imagined he was looking pretty worse for wear, but certain nothing he couldn't still push through. (Though probably not for long). (No. He couldn't think of that.) "I fear it's been that way for quite some time," he added, another murmur, mostly to himself, as he sucked in a breath and focused on getting back up to his feet. Pushing through the pain to charge forward, daggers charged with lightning yet again and thrown toward the creature before him, and as he rushed the gap, he pulled his katana out of the ether once more to better target slicing off those flailing limbs giving them so much difficulty.
	Brisela was also showing signs of wear: long gouges down her sides that dripped acrid ichor that hissed and ate into the surface of anything it touched, burns, frostbite, keraunographic markings left from lightning. Illusory versions of the three 'Planeswalkers' darted around the room, distracting the creature's attention and causing it to strike out with its heavy tentacles at images that popped like soap bubbles when struck. The problem was, as always, when Ignis attacked, centering all of the creature's eyes and attention onto himself. Even Tamiyo's flagstones couldn't compare to the damage that Ignis was causing--or the pain. His katana sliced through one flailing tentacle, and Jace yelled, "Look out!" as a gout of stinging, acidic ichor gushed from the end. Ignis managed to dodge to the side, more likely due to his own skills than Jace's poorly-worded warning; his katana gleamed in the light again and again and again, and three more tentacles fell. He dashed towards a fourth--only to step on a flagstone just as Tamiyo lifted it with her magic to fling at the monstrosity before them, leaving him off-balance... And Brisela raised one giant, clawed hand to strike.
	Above and unaware of anything beyond their own titantic battle, Sorin and Avacyn grappled, clamping their hands into each other's shoulders. They slammed each other through pews, lifted each other up into the rafters, fragmenting the beams, their struggle clouded with plaster dust and feathers. Avacyn scraped at his jawing face, shredding the flesh, and saw that the wounds were not healing immediately. Sorin grimaced and suddenly locked his claws onto the angel's upper arms, pinning her as she thrashed her wings to keep them aloft. His muscles were steel, and bending her arms behind her back, dislocating a shoulder. He'd been holding back before, but no more. This was his true strength. He bit her neck, and the pain was like a thousand innocents screaming, a thousand pleas for aid, a thousand prayers she would never answer. Her blood pumped at her throat, drawn by suction. When they fell, it was not from gravity, nor from a weakness in Avacyn's wings. They fell because he drove them down, his strength slamming her from the height of the Cathedral down to its floor. Through its floor.
	At the same time something else shattered through the cathedral's much-abused roof. As the fused angels crooked their fingers to stab through Ignis' chest and pull out his heart, a beam of light shot through the roof and the broken rafters, aiming directly for the distorted creature. "Stop!" A voice like a song of glory. "HELLO, MY SISTER," the angel-thing said in a horrific double voice that echoed with the resonance of untold eternities. "You are no longer my sisters," the pure, clear voice responded. The voice belonged to an angel holding a scythe, the weapon's head was styled like a heron. Though he could not see her, Ignis could recognize the voice, though he'd heard it only once before, granting Liliana a day's grace before swearing to hunt her down for her necromancy: Sigarda, Champion of Light. The one angel that had stood with humanity during Avacyn's madness.
	While the sound of Brisela's reverberating voice still felt like something diseased and infectious digging deep into his skull, Sigarda's voice following it felt immediately like a balm. Yet again, a moment of reinforcements at an opportune time, and strange tides did indeed bring unexpected allies, but it also brought, hopefully, a distraction. Rarely one to leave an opportunity unseized, Ignis took the moment of Sigarda's arrival to pull himself back. A heartbeat, maybe two, to consider: was this best left between the angels, as he thought it best for Avacyn and Sorin's attentions to be focused on each other? Or did he just wait for the right moment to get in a more definitive blow? He started moving, carefully, around behind the angelic monstrosity, to determine when to strike, if his strike would needed. Just a few heartbeats. Lest there be no more heartbeats to count by.
	Jace and Tamiyo scrambled towards the hole where Sorin and Avacyn had fallen through the floor. Distantly, their voices floated up to them, bits and pieces of their continued conversation. "You should...this place...where you were made." "...you made me what I am." "Let me...my child...cleanse your mind...proper instrument of virtue...make you anew." "...am not the daughter you want...battle again and again...no monster's instrument...I will not be altered." "No, no no, you mustn't!" Tamiyo yelled down to them. "You don't understand what she is doing! She is the door and it must not be opened!"
	Of course, however much of that interplay that Ignis, Sigarda, and Brisela caught was debatable. Even as Ignis crept around the monstrous form of the fused angels, the once-sisters continued speaking, Brisela's voice a cacophony in their ears. "YOU SHOULD HAVE ANSWERED WHEN WE CALLED." "So I could be part of this 'great work'?" Sigarda replied. She was buying Ignis time to get into position, time for whatever was happening in the basement to reach its end. "YES. THE GREAT WORK NEARS ITS COMPLETION." The angel-thing reached both of its enormous claws toward Sigarda, and four smaller hands close to its chest reached out as well, like a baby reaching for her mother. "YOU CAN'T HURT US NOW, SISTER."
	Sigarda raised her scythe, which caught an errant beam of moonlight through the shattered roof, and seemed to glow. "I must," she said, and she swept the scythe in a huge, deadly arc across her sisters' arms and chest. From the hole, Jace was yelling something about the Eldrazi, about finding another way. "Your work here is finished, sisters. You have become what we were meant to destroy."
	But one of those huge, strangely bifurcated arms snatched Sigarda out of the air. She gasped in horror as the big hand carried her struggling form to the strange, glowing maw at the angel-thing's chest, where the four smaller arms wrapped around her in a horrific embrace. Long tendrils of flesh wriggled out and coiled around Sigarda's arms, tying her in place. "WE WILL BE TOGETHER AGAIN," the fused angels crooned in a mockery of affection. "THERE IS ROOM HERE FOR YOU AS WELL, SISTER."
	Now, Ignis thought, but he also thought he might be too late, while also trying desperately to not get distracted by the murmurs and shouts from the hole surrounding the interplay between Sorin and Avacyn, Tamiyo and Jace. Now, he thought, less a directive to action and more of a reminder: deal with this now, that later, whatever that remained to be dealt with. He was here because he could not risk losing Innistrad. Not now. Not yet. Tamiyo seemed to think that, without Avacyn, then Innistrad would fall. But he'd lost one world before and managed to get it back. It wasn't over yet. But the fewer elements, the better. He heard the sound of grappling; he thought, suddenly, of Ravus, whose daemonic form he hadn't seen, but it didn't take much to imagine it wasn't too dissimilar to what Jace's vision of Brisela. Idle thoughts, perhaps, but bolstering, and finally causing him to spring into motion again, plotting where to slice his blade to the best effect: down through one shoulder, deep across the back to the other, dragging it down there and then, finally, a sharp stab up through its thick neck, a grunt as he flicked the blade up to cleave through the conjoined heads. There was a quip there to make about a splitting headache, but somehow, he wasn't sure it would play as well to the current audience as it would the one he was used to. Gods, what he wouldn't give to have them here with him now...
	The twin heads bellowed in agony, before one fell silent forever, neck severed and bleeding slowly out. "No..." the other head cried, its voice lost without the resonance of the other. "Sister...no..." The angel craned its remaining head, staring at Ignis with half a face. "You separated us...how could you...we are--" Ignis never got to learn what they were. His katana drove through bone and flesh, killing the first and slicing through the already-dead second as he finished the deadly arc. It twitched and writhed. Its monstrous claws flailed about, trying to reach behind it to where Ignis had landed. Wings buffeted the air, and the tangled mass of tentacles that had been the angels' legs grasped at nothing. Sigarda burst out of her sisters' chest smeared with blood and ichor, like an abhorrent birth, and crashed to the ground. Moments later, the mass of twisted flesh followed, curling like a dead spider on the ground. It was done.
	For a long moment, Sigarda just stared at what was left of her family. First, there had been four. Then three. And now just her. Avacyn had taken all of her sisters from her; Bruna and Gisela had been gone long before this human had cut them down. "I thank you," Sigarda, the last of Innistrad's archangels, said to Ignis. "Not only for saving me, but for bringing them the only peace they could--" Her voice was swallowed by the anguished wail that pulled itself from Tamiyo's throat, resolving in a single word, "Don't!"
	Below them, Sorin was staring at his creation with eyes that were darkened with mingled grief and fury. The grief for what he must do. The fury for the one whose fault this all was. Liliana Vess. "You are my creator," Avacyn spat at him. She truly did not understand what was coming next, what he had promised to do in order to gain Olivia Voldaren's aid. "You must know the way of this world. What cannot be destroyed must be bound." Sorin yanked his sword from the stone floor, turning away even as he did so. It was bad enough that he had to act, he could not bear to also watch. His words were quiet as he clarified what must come next. "But Avacyn...you can be destroyed." One of the damned interlopers above, the Moonfolk woman, cried out to stop him, but he ignored her. His voice rose up in ancient words, words of a ritual performed in reverse, words of a gift being revoked. He heard only Avacyn dropping onto the unyielding limit of the cellar floor, smelled only the ash of some nearby smoldering. Looked only at the shadow on the floor under his feet, the shape that marked her first moment centuries ago.
	For a moment, all sound ceased. Then, as the ashes that were all that remained of Avacyn's unmaking drifted slowly to the ground, a helix of golden light streaked skyward from the remains of the Cathedral, punching yet another hole through the roof, and illuminating the sky with its brilliant glow. Innistrad's final ward had fallen. Those who were attuned to such things felt the lifting of the last shred of protection like heavy plated armor removed from a soldier after battle. And with it, the world was left naked and vulnerable. Only this time the battle was not over. It had just begun. The ground beneath their feet shifted. The plane began to pulse, seizing with tremors, like a chain of explosive reactions thudding deep under the surface and echoing through the night. Even the great stone edifice of the Cathedral buckled, sending the less surefooted sprawling. Sigarda took to the air and Tamiyo grabbed Jace by the cloak to keep him from toppling head first into the cellar. The soratami was moaning softly to herself, "Oh no oh no oh no oh no..." "Are you quite all right?" Sigarda asked. In response, she simply raised her arm and pointed, drawing the attention of three out of the four of them to a section of wall that had fallen in the quake. Purple clouds roiled about and streaks of colored lightning raced across the sky. Far in the distance, off the coast of Nephalia, flying creatures far too large to be birds were illuminated against the cloud cover, circling about in a crazed, aerial dance. Jace reached out with a mental hand, looping Ignis in to also bear witness. And then, when the clouds parted, they saw her, already moving towards the High City. Emrakul.

[Cut up, turned into paper dolls, and then laboriously stitched back together from "I Am Avacyn," by Doug Beyer. Masterfully played with the wonderful chef_chocobro, who deserves all love and praise. NFI, NFB, OOC is wonderful. Warning for body horror and obviously for length, but y'all knew that already. Directly follows this, next post is here.]