Between the old man's neck and the blade is the crow, first to be cut through. It shatters when impacted, fibreglass and silicon crunching into fractal patterns, blue light spilling out in the microseconds before its power source shorts out. It offers no resistance and the blade continues -

On to nothing. The old man is gone. The wreckage of the crow scatters across the dirt and campfire, little more than a twist of machinery and the eerie ringing of a dropped bell.

*

Some miles away a Cherubim turns to whisper in the old man's ears. Culture has come a long way from the days when it was considered an aspect of God - the body of an infant and the face of a mature man, with a shock of red hair, rosy lips and an a golden trumpet. It's eyes, too, have the same circuit pattern that once marked the crow.

Here the old man does not wear the ragged cloak of a wanderer; he wears the simple black robe with white collar that marks a Catholic priest. His beard, brow and grim expression are unchanged from when he negotiated with Ivar. He listens to the whisper of the mechanical Angel, reading from a book that resembles a Bible, until he is interrupted by a laugh.

"Caster!" roared a man who was more kin to the Heavens than angels. "How fares your attempt to betray us?"
Fox ears twitch mirthfully. Cyanis, nocturnal sunglasses finding valid use here in the radiant presence of her Servant, grins and elbows the warrior angel in the side. "Don't be like that. He thought he was being sneaky."
"I was not attempting to -"
"Please," laughed Archer. "I have been in enough sieges to have a sense for these things. Someone always breaks when life and death is on the line - and you were never a man of faith, were you Caster?"
Caster snapped shut his psuedobible and turned to face Archer. "I chose my battles well enough to never require it."
"You played it safe," drawled Archer. "I don't need to know your name to know that. You radiate cowardice and failure, nothing dared and nothing gained. It's why you can barely manage that parlor trick of yours while I..."

Archer raised his hands outwards. The expansive gesture took in the hundreds of siege engines, vast catapults, trebuchets, ballistas, and blackpowder bombards that gleamed in angelic gold and spectacular engraved detail. The machines moved miraculously into position, wheels grinding and turning as ranges are taken and parabolic arcs calculated.

"... I wrote my name in the ruins of a civilization," said Archer. He grinned and looked at Cyanis. "Master. Permission to open fire?"
"Do what you want," said Cyanis, sipping a boba tea through a plastic straw. "I'm not your dad."
"Hah!" said Archer. "Then I call on you, O Father Who Art In Heaven! Grant me victory in this new crusade!" He spread magnificent angel's wings and pointed at the distant, flickering campfire. "Siegeworks of Antioch! [b]Fire[/b]!"

*

A distant rumble like thunder.

A shadow over the moon.

Darkness enveloping the stars.

Ivar looks up from the ruins of the crow to see an impossible sight. It was no longer air that filled the sky: It was stone. A mountain's worth of stone in the form of a thousand boulders, all coming crashing down from above like meteors.