Page 49 of The Fulbourn: Pitch & Sickle

Giants formed from the egregious, treacherous union of purebred and angel.

Lusus naturae of both worlds.

They had no right to exist.

No right to threaten Arcadia as they did.

If any of the Nephilim had taken after their sire more fully, the Severance War would have been over before it began.

Elyssiam victorious.

But the battle was not over. Thank the gods.

Vassago punched his vestige at the air, screaming his rage, his delight, his never-ending hunger for the chaos of war.

This one small victory made him ravenous. Stoked the wildness within to lofty heights.

He was so very close to the Elyssiam border. Just beyond the Lethe lay the quagmire of emptiness unclaimed by either Elyssiam or Arcadia, a land of neutrality where every sorry bastard who found himself there fought alone, for his masters would not step foot in that place.

But beyond that…beyond that lay the Exarch’s throne. Where Azazel watched for Arcadia’s armies.

Vassago’s flame pulsed.

The angel did not search for a lone Dominion who had abandoned his legion and ignored his commanders and their carefully laid campaigns to stalk Arcadia’s furthermost boundaries.

Azazel’s eyes were turned to distant skirmishes and focused on greater assaults.

Vassago listened to the last of the Nephilim’s death screams on the wind. His flame was alive and roaring within, goading him on.

Cross the river.

Seize the throne.

He ignited.

Vassago leapt from the cliff. Incandescent savagery held him aloft, soaring him towards the enemy line.

And the angel was right there. Rising up from below, appearing in his path.

Trying to stop him.

Vassago swung.

Seraphiel screamed, words that burned up before they could reach a Dominion who refused to bow to his master. The inferno built between them, entwining, one and the same. Vassago drank in the angel’s rage, and its taste was strikingly familiar to his own. The firestorm between them fed upon itself.

The beast within was crazed, blazing with discontent. But its frenzy perplexed him, even in the midst of madness. For he thought, for a moment, that the wildness did not seek to devour the angel but rather kneel before him.

The Berserker Prince would not kneel.

He whipped the flame into a firestorm. His vestige an aureate curve, seething with a lust for destruction.

Seraphiel was still shouting, raging so his words might be heard. And this time,thistime they were.

Heed your master. Stand down. Destroy the prince, destroy the life I gave you.

What followed was called out in the language of the Seraphim, bringing forth a surge of powerful magick.

Seraphiel loosed his halo’s wrath upon the errant, rebelling daemon. Vassago swung around, throwing himself from the line of fire. He did so too slowly to escape fully intact. A grievous agony blazed at his back, one that should have ended him at such close quarters.