The Angelic Conflict (Extended Published Version)

Untitled Part 9

THE DEMON and its squad started watching over the girl in 1996 B.C.E., around six thousand years since the Restoration of Vilon and Rakia, the heavens that composed the conceivable universe. It all started, like most births in a modern civilized country in the twentieth century, in a hospital room.

I can't promise you anything, but if you do well with this one, you have the chance to be promoted, these had been the words of Colonel Azon. It was what the Corporal had constantly thought of as it watched a woman lay in a bed, perspiring, panting; its seven hundred fifty-sixth human had just been born.

"Where is she?" Ruth's voice was weak though she longed to demand. Every last ounce of strength in her feeble body had been sanctified to the birth of her firstborn.

Her husband reached a hand to her, cleared the stray strands of hair from her forehead sheening and shining in sweat, and kissed her cheek, assuring her, in a much apologetic manner and at the verge of tears, that she would see their daughter soon.

Goh snickered. "Another false promise hung in the air."

A shadow that only the spirits could see drifted through the room, enveloped the soul of the woman, and vanished; and with that the woman breathed her last. The Corporal, followed by its demons, traversed the hospital walls to enter the nursery— to the whimpering baby girl. A circle of five elect angels surrounded her. At that time her mother's prayers were still fresh and immediately powerful.

Goh swiftly flashed by the girl and stole a kiss from her nose.

The angel Mikiy'h immediately hacked Goh's chest with its sword. "Don't you dare touch her!"

Goh falls back, still smiling despite the pain. It then winced at Mikiy'h and held its chest. Another scar to keep soon from the Sword of Truth. "What? I just can't wait to be its keeper!" It could not help but chuckle as a nurse rushed in. The girl had wailed upon its touch.

Here El-Shädda emerged from amidst the opposition. The Corporal knew the angel well. The demon and El-Shädda had been assigned to the same human more than a dozen times before.

Only one instance had been retained in the Corporal's memory, though— the time when they both kept custody of this divorced man who went out to the streets every single day to share how to be part of the 144,000 people to enter paradise. He had acquired a liver disease, needed blood transfusion, and visited the hospital only to refuse the aid of the medical staff, eventually to die. Die with the belief that piety was the ticket to enter the Kingdom of the Almighty. He now burns in Hell, waiting in inexplicable anguish for the Great White Throne, where the good deeds of the faithless will be flaunted yet will not save anyone, not even themselves.

The Corporal remembered it most because it was one of its few victories. So many other fallen angels win hundreds of battles each day; yet the Corporal lost so much. What a very unlucky demon it seemed.

El-Shädda nodded at the Corporal and extended an arm for it to shake. The demon did not take it; instead immediately unsheathed its sword and struck El-Shädda right in the chest— at its breastplate cluttered with rubies and sapphires and diamonds. El-Shädda brought up its parma equestris of Prayers.

"Curse you, El-Shädda!" The Corporal exchanged strikes with the angel. It wanted all of them to suffer— all those who had decided to stay at the side of the Enemy— all those who did not know what it felt like to be trapped in an initial decision.

Their duel marked the beginning of a new lifetime— of a new little war amidst the universal invisible warfare.