Fear Not

In the long ago, in time that was, before the quarrels and strife of recent centuries:

The new Archbishop of Banor had been raised to her position through promising a tremendous plan to defeat Calabia. Seven times in the centuries Banor had tried righteously to conquer Calabia; seven times the bloodlords’ military superiority and judicious political alliances had rebuffed the crusades. Eight is not an auspicious number to the Numielites of Banor, but the Archbishop made grand promises, much grander than any portents allowed for.

The Archbishop’s tremendous plan was this: she prayed to Numiel to send angels to free all the food from the stockpens of Calabia, so that the food might rise in revolt and Banor might sweep in as conquering heroes.

And so the Archbishop’s prayer went up the celestial bureaucracy of Numiel’s demesne. It may actually have reached Numiel, or it may have been intercepted by an archangel, saving Numiel’s attention for more important matters – it is difficult to imagine what might have been more important to our god’s attention than this, but little do we know of the bureaucracy.

It is known that someone at or near the top received the prayer, and answered it by delegating, sending an order back down the celestial bureaucracy. It is not known why the order was passed on by all the ranks of angels – perhaps the might of Calabia was respected even in the heavens, perhaps the bloodlords’ intertangled political alliances extended even there, perhaps the difficulty of the task was generally recognized by the host, perhaps Numiel’s ineffable designs simply called for it to be so.

Eventually, the order wended its way to an inexperienced junior angel. His complete true name is not known – it may even have been erased from reality as a consequence of his actions – but history knows the angel in question as Arossiel. Arossiel had little experience with humans, but he was eager to prove himself to his superiors, and so he volunteered to take on the task of freeing all the food of Calabia as Banor’s army approached, rather than passing it on as all above him had done.

In the stockpens of Calabia, there was a food who was a human woman. Her hair was black and short, and her skin was pale as teeth, and the name that she was called by her friends, and that we call her today, was Lily – the overseers had a different name for her, or more precisely an alphanumeric code, the specifics of which are of little importance and have been lost to us.

It came to pass that, as Lily was getting ready for sleep in the stockpen, this celestial angel Arossiel came to her, a frightful whirlwind of wings and eyes, shining hot and brilliant like the midday desert sun, intoning in a terrible and awful voice, “FEAR NOT”.

Utterly disregarding Arossiel’s perfectly clear instruction, Lily gave a terrified squeak and dropped her hairbrush.

The angel had little understanding of mortals, but it was quickly becoming clear they cannot follow simple instructions, so he pondered for a moment, then did his best to tone down his terrifying affect somewhat by mimicking Lily’s humanity, folding in wings over eyes and shining less radiantly.

He was between Lily and the door, and there were no windows in the stockpens that one might dive out of, so she could not flee; she could only cower in terror.

Arossiel began apologizing and begging Lily’s forgiveness, “Terribly sorry, please forgive me; I did mean it genuinely: fear not.” He began to sense that his holy mission to free the food and raise them up in revolt was already going poorly, barely having started at all. He shrunk down further, modulated his voice and his apologies, trying to calm and soothe this petrified human.

After many long minutes of his apologies, Lily came to more thoroughly grasp that this unfamiliar creature was not there to hurt her. She grew less terrified and more curious, eventually opening a dialogue with a befuddled, “What…?”

Just the same while, Arossiel began to panic about how far behind he was already running on his mission. The armies of Banor were thundering towards Calabia, and he hadn’t even freed a single food. It was taking this long to get her mood barely back to where it started before he showed up. Still, he tried, “It is very important: I need to rescue you, and you need to rise up against your overseers. You and all your friends.”

A dozen problems with this request flashed instantly through Lily’s mind, and she protested, “I have three friends. Together, we have…” She looked around for an example, then picked the hairbrush off the floor and brandished it like a weapon, “Not much more than this. The overseers have… even if they didn’t have swords, which they do, they’re a lot stronger than any of us.”

“You outnumber the overseers ten to one!”

“Yeah, and they could take ten of us each even unarmed. We’d be torn to shreds.”

Arossiel examined Lily’s human arms and legs, consciously recognizing for the first time that she was, unlike an angel – or for that matter a vampire like the Calabian overseers and ruling class – not equipped with much in the way of natural weapons, defenses, or abilities. He grew crestfallen; he had been so confident that he could pull this off, but his unfamiliarity with human anatomy was proving to be his undoing. It was far too late in the mission to requisition incandescent holy arms and armor with which to equip a myriad of humans. “Oh.” His light grew dim and his many wings drooped.

Lily, native to the stockpens, was intimately familiar with despair; she could recognize it easily, even in an angel. She sat by Arossiel and reached out to touch him. Where some of us might have criticized, might have scolded him for not thinking his plan through, Lily had more kindness in her heart than we do. She was still not clear on the exact nature of Arossiel’s mistake or the extent of his inexperience, but she intuited the general shape of the error and said, “It’s a mistake anyone could have made.”

Arossiel remained filled with doubt and despair, but Lily gradually calmed him with soothing words and gentle touch. At this point, he fell in love with this individual human, and with humanity itself, seeing here the best of it in her. Still, he realized that he would not be able to convince a myriad of food to rise up in revolt if he could not even persuade one that it was possible. So it was that Arossiel stayed with Lily that night instead, a more pleasant experience all around, and she taught him much about humans and what he would need to know to actually help them.

Battle was soon joined in the fields of Calabia, and the Archbishop’s armies soon lay derelict and ruined. The fate of the eighth Banor invasion of Calabia had been decided before it began.

Arossiel the angel fled Calabia with Lily. He fled from his duties and from Numiel’s service; he fell from grace and lost his wings – though it’s unclear just how literal the histories are on the point of the angel’s wings and the loss thereof. The two wandered the world together for at least some decades.

After Lily’s death, Arossiel continued to wander, now alone. More learned and exalted theologians than I have debated important questions about Arossiel’s angelhood, his true name, and his place in history. However, I insist that he never truly escaped his nature or his love of humanity, because it is known that he helped to solve mortal problems wherever he went, helping humans without the direction or blessing of his celestial former superiors. We have records of good works perpetrated by Arossiel dating at least a century from the day he met Lily in the stockpens of Calabia, before he falls from the pages of history.

Today, Arossiel is generally reckoned among the saints, though he has long been deemed ineligible for official ecclesiastical recognition.

From the Hagioigraphy, chronicle of the lives of Numielite saints by Dord the Tall, Archbishop of Shell, written some eight hundred years after the events described.