Angeldown

[warcode]

The Angeldown had not changed since the last time Cassiel had seen it, a vast field of scorched earth and stunted plants like a sea, scattered with the massive skeletons of fallen angels. Here a skull the size of a house lay half sunken into the ground, its teeth exposed and gleaming and black flowers blooming in its empty eyesockets; there an outflung arm lay like a bridge made of ivory, black claws still contracted around the rusted shell of a human anti-angel cannon. There were human corpses too, slowly turning to bone-dust under the weight of years. They lay sprawled across their weaponry, inside the jaw bones and rib-cages of angels where they'd been half-eaten, and no few had fallen at the hands of their own kind after they'd been ensnared by angelsong and coerced into turning on their comrades. Humans avoided the area now, just as the beasts did, so that there was never any birdsong or noise among the rustling dead grass, just the wind whistling through empty bones. Even the sunlight seemed dimmer here.

Cassiel did not know any of the long decayed corpses, at least not outside of the history songs sung of their glory. Se had been only a fledgling during the time of the battle, not understanding the howls and laments of the returning soldiers or the keening wails of abandoned mates. Se understood only that something had gone terribly wrong when hir maker landed heavily at their eyrie, armor rent and bloodied, and brushed past hir for the first time ever without a greeting song, great wings drooping into the dust and sand.