Ignite: The Archangels Chronicles

A broken warrior looked up from the blood caked mud she was kneeling in and mumbled hoarsely " Let her go."

A thick rough palm met her cheek and she spit out the blood warming her mouth as the drunk bastard laughed. The woman shifted her eyes to the little girl; she was so delicate, so innocent. She looked like a rabbit caught in a snare with its c.h.e.s.t hammering and eyes wild, frightened.

"You have been stirring up quite a mess for my guards, thirty dead and more to find, I suspect." This time the woman spit in his face and seethed through closed teeth; " I am no one's slave."

"Well, I won't risk another one of my men's bones being broken while trying to tie you to the flogging pole again, instead this child shall receive your punishment." The bastard was smiling, enjoying the suffering of these people, especially the battered women's.

She bowed her head, arms going slack in their chains. "No, I will not fight. Just let the girl go, she has done nothing." The warrior knew he had her; that she couldn't let an innocent suffer in her place.

So the women let them drag her to the poles, her ragged boots falling apart as they roughly scrapped across the ground to string her up. The commander ripped her bandeau from her body exposing her tender b.r.e.a.s.ts to the biting wind. The Commander sneered in disgust, ordering for thirty three lashings, one for each sentinel she killed trying to escape, and three more for spitting at the commander.

Her anger lasted through the first ten lashes, at fifteen her back was in bloody ribbons, at twenty five they started scraping bone. Through it all she did not scream once.

The commander sauntered over and stopped right in the puddle of blood forming beneath her and pooling in front of her. He chuckled and said "you are a fool to think that I would bargain with a slave." He turned around and said to the guards holding the little girl " String the child up across from her and make her watch." Then he turned back to her "maybe you will learn your lesson now."

"No. NO! LET HER GO" she screamed as the sentinels dragged the child by her arms. The girl couldn't have been more than ten, whimpering, tears streaking through the grime caked on her little face. Her small legs couldn't keep up and she ended up tripping over herself.

The bleeding, broken women began thrashing frantically, violently against the chains holding her to the flogging pole. Something had snapped inside her, a need to protect filled her so violently she ripped free of her chains

and then she felt it....

That white hot rage that has been building inside her; felt it course through her body to her fingertips.

It felt like lightning ripping across her back as her old blood, her ancestors blood, finally broke free.

The next thing she knew was a world on fire. The sentinels holding the child shrank to their knees holding their heads and screaming in agony until blood pooled from their eyes and ears before their body crumpled to the ground.

Azreal smiled slowly, and then everything went to a sweet soothing black.