Angel Fire (Immortal Legacy Book 1) - Ella Summers

1

Archangel's Daughter

A white flash of lightning lit up the stormy sky, and for a brief moment, its thunderous boom buried the cacophony of the raging battle between the forces of heaven and hell. Funny how something so mundane could drown out something so divine.

From here on the grassy plains, I could not see the battle between the gods’ Legion of Angels and the demons’ Dark Force, but the song of metal and magic rising from the battlefield could be heard from miles away. I had followed those belligerent booms all the way from Ruin, a Frontier town about twenty miles back. I’d run the whole way across the gloomy countryside—mud and puddles beneath my feet, swirling storm clouds above my head.

Hard, needle-sharp rain bounced off my poncho. Sludge stained my boots. The mushy, water-logged ground continuously collapsed under my feet, and I couldn’t see much past the curtain of rain—but it wasn’t all that bad. Since joining the Legion of Angels, I’d been through much worse than a rainstorm. At least I hadn’t met any monsters on this trip.

And the end of this rainy run was close at hand. I could see it now, lit up like a night light in the darkness. I was coming up on a large war tent. A pair of wings, the emblem of the Legion of Angels, was printed on the canvas exterior. Here was where I’d find the officer commanding the Legion’s army for this battle against the forces of hell.

I stopped in front of the tent and drew in a deep breath before I entered. The sweet aroma of pine needles hung in the air, coupled with the scent of slowly-decaying plants. A pack of wild wolves had passed through here yesterday, but the battle must have scared them away. I could still smell the beasts, just as I could smell the blood on the battlefield so far away. Supernatural senses were just one of the magic powers you gained when you joined the Legion of Angels.

My breath froze in the chilly air. A few miles down the road, the countryside was experiencing the height of summer. Back there, the scorching heat was frying the dry grass like an egg sizzling in a pan of hot oil. Here, on the other hand, the manic weather was only a few degrees short of this rainstorm transforming into a snowstorm.

We had the monsters to thank for the wild, unpredictable weather. Out here on the plains of monsters, the laws of nature no longer applied.

I strode into the Legion tent. It was dry in here—and warm too, thanks to the magic fire burning inside an enormous iron cauldron. A few paces from that cauldron, a man dressed in a black leather Legion uniform stood inside a magic web of glowing dots. It was a map of the Legion’s battle with the Dark Force. The man was studying it closely, his forehead crinkled in concentration as he tracked his soldiers’ progress.

He looked up at me in agitation. My arrival had clearly disrupted his concentrated strategy session—and the fact that I was tracking muddy footprints into his clean, dry tent was not endearing me to him either.

“Captain Walker,” I said.

The name on his jacket read Walker. The emblem pinned to his chest, the symbol for telekinesis, or Psychic’s Spell, identified him as a sixth-level soldier. A captain.

Captain Walker frowned at my squelching, muddy boots. He was clearly not at all impressed by my arrival. His uniform was spotless, his face clean and freshly-shaved. Not a hair was out of place on his head. The brown hairs were perfectly combed and closely-cropped; I bet that if I’d measured them, I’d have found them all to be precisely the same length.

The Captain had wide shoulders and a tall, upright stance that bespoke confidence. Even beneath all that leather, I could tell his body was muscular. The Legion’s training was rigorous, but he’d clearly added some extra training of his own on the side. So he was ambitious. He wanted to do that little bit extra to move up the ranks faster. And his plan must have been working out perfectly for him. His eyes shone with the sort of easy arrogance bred by continued success.

His war tent exuded the same unwavering duty to orderliness. And then I’d arrived, dripping and dirty, leaving wet, muddy footprints all over the tent’s clean interior.

“Sorry about the mess,” I told him because, yes, I did feel bad about dripping raindrops everywhere. But it wasn’t