Liliana Vess Defiant Necromancer

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 had it come to this? )

"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.]