The First Person Goes South, Taking Something They Shouldn’t Have

Part 2 of 3 of a multi-part prompt that I made an homage to Ian Tregillis's latest angelic noir novel, Something More Than Night.

Gabriel gave me that look he has, you know, the one that begets fusion and melts crusts of planets. I didn’t like that look.

“Sir?”

He put a talon on my shoulder or what would have been my shoulder if I actually had shoulders. His mere touch buzzed through me like lightning cutting through atoms to make ozone.

“We need you to infiltrate the Deeps, Thuriel. We must have the first strike.”

I’m not much of a hard hitter by way of angelic beings, I’m more of a weaver of mathematical improbabilities, so Gabriel’s words unnerved me. They caused a gaping maw of fear to open in my representation of guts, but I plastered it over with indignation.

“Uh, why me, Boss? I don’t even own a flaming sword.”

Gabriel reached into robes glowing with the light of a thousand dying planets and withdrew a sword swathed in flames brighter than the plasma in the center of a baby star.

“Here, take mine.”
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