Descent of Angels by Mitchel Scanlon

create a golden age. We will make the world anew. Does that sound a noble aim to you?’
    ‘It does, my lord,’ said Zahariel, the words coming out as a reverential whisper.
    ‘An aim worth committing our lives to?’ asked the Lion. ‘I raise this question, here and now, because of your youth. It is the young who will build this future, Zahariel. You have shown promise. You have the potential to be a true son of Caliban, a crusader, not just against the beasts, but against every other evil that ails our people. Does that seem a worthy purpose?’
    ‘It does,’ Zahariel replied.
    ‘Good. I am glad. I will look to see how you perform in the years ahead, Zahariel. As I say, I think you have potential. I will be interested to see you live up to it. Now, you have been kept from your duties long enough, I think.’
    The Lion inclined his head, as though listening to the slight sounds drifting from the forest below. ‘I should return also, it is not good form if I am away for too long. People notice. My place in the Order is as much about forging bonds of brotherhood among the knights as it is being wise and canny in matters of war.’
    A moment later, the Lion was gone, disappearing into the tower like a banished shadow. There was nothing showy or contrived about this sudden disappearance, for the habits of stealth simply came easily to Lion El’Jonson in a way that only a man who had lived alone as a youth in the forests of Caliban could know.
    With the Lion gone, Zahariel looked at the stars high overhead.
    For a while, he thought of what the Lion had said. He thought about the stars, about Terra, about the necessity to build a better world on Caliban. He thought about the golden age that Jonson had promised.
    Zahariel thought about these things, and knew that with men like Luther and Lion El’Jonson to guide them, the Order could not fail to achieve this Utopian vision of the future.
    Zahariel had faith in the Lion.
    He had faith in Luther.
    Together, these two men – these giants – could only change Caliban for the better. He was sure of it.
    It occurred to Zahariel that he had been blessed with good fortune of the kind few men were granted in their lives. No one could choose the era in which they would be born, and where the majority of men struggled through times not unlike the times their fathers had known, Zahariel had been lucky.
    As he saw it, he had been born in an age of great and momentous change, a time in which a man could be part of something bigger than himself, a time when he could devote his efforts in line with his ideals and hope to make an achievement of real significance.
    Zahariel could not see precisely what the future might hold, he could not see his destiny written in the stars, but he had no fear of what it might be.
    The universe, it seemed to him, was a place of wonder.
    He looked to the future and was unafraid.

SIX
    T HE CRUSADE AGAINST the great beasts was to continue for another year before the last bastion of monsters was ready to be assailed. The dense, tangled and lethal forests of the dark Northwilds remained to be purged of the monsters, yet this was the one place the warriors of the Order and its allies had not yet entered.
    In part, this was due to the due to the difficulty of mounting any organised, systematic hunt within its depths. Much of the forest was so dense as to be virtually impenetrable to riders, and even the hardy warriors of the Ravenwing would not ride within such places unless called to do so by their masters.
    Settlements existed within the Northwilds, heavily defended villages with high walls built upon great rock plains or within the depths of wide hills, but these were few and far between, and populated by resentful people who bemoaned their lot in life without ever daring to improve it.
    In truth, the real reason the crusade had not yet ventured into the Northwilds was the antipathy of the Knights of Lupus.
    A knightly brotherhood known for its scholars and