Arcane Exfil-Chapter 55: What the Lord Wills (2)

Arcane Exfil-Chapter 55: What the Lord Wills (2)

So Warren had found God in the field, not the pew. That added up; career soldiers who ended up genuinely devout could usually pinpoint the second they’d changed. More often than not, their Damascus moment happened in the figurative foxhole – under fire, when survival stripped away everything else and left faith bare and real.
Ethan leaned back into the couch. “Yeah. I’m all ears.”
“It was six years ago that I marched with a squad to Coramore. We were sent there on account of shipments – wagons of mana crystals, potions, and grain far beyond a small town’s need. We traced them to their source and found the foul energies plain: cult work. A cell had taken root there – men who gave themselves to the devils with full consent, and gloried in the service. They knew whom they served, and delighted in the blasphemy.”
Warren’s tone carried venom, the same caliber of hatred he’d heard with only one other person – Gideon Vale. After the warehouse, he couldn’t fault either of them. He also couldn’t pretend he was immune, either. Whatever patience he might have preached before, he found himself nodding along.
“The outer watch was slight. We cut them down with spell and steel, yet one lived long enough to ring the bell – and with that, our quiet ended. We pressed through tunnels, Gideon and I at the vanguard, four others securing the flanks. The reek of their rites carried from a great chamber ahead – resin, blood, and ash.”
Funny how the mind worked – think of a man, and suddenly there he was in the story.
Ethan had to confirm. “Gideon… Vale? The interrogator?”
Warren gave a small nod.
Huh. It was strange to picture them fighting side by side. Gideon all fire and vengeance, Warren a blade honed to prayer – different tempers of steel that somehow swung in the same hand. Or maybe Warren wasn’t always like this.
“With great bloodshed we pushed through to the chamber where all the stores had been brought. Their summoning circle was cut deep, the blood fresh upon the stone. I knew then that they had hurried the rite when the bell was rung, slaughtering their own to see it through. Their aim had been a Dread Lich, yet what stood half-wrought before us was a Phantom Lich. The working was flawed, but not so flawed as to spare us.”
A Lich. He hadn’t needed OTAC to teach him what that meant; pop culture had done that years ago. But OTAC had really hammered in the threat level – apex undead, Level 16
minimum
. A Dread Lich sat even higher, around eighteen, maybe nineteen.
But a Phantom Lich – that was new. The Phantoms he knew were incorporeal shades, hard to hit and harder to pin down. They were dangerous because physical weapons could hardly touch them, outside of destroying whatever vessel anchored them to this world.
Combine that with a Lich’s intellect and necromantic power, then leave the summoning half-finished? It was something caught between worlds, neither fully here nor gone, and that made it dangerous in ways even OTAC hadn’t put in a manual. Unpredictable.
Warren pretty much confirmed the trajectory of the story. “We struck down the remnant and turned our fire on the circle. Then the surge came – mana like a blade through the air. I loosed my shot… and Edmund knocked the barrel aside. His eyes were tinged with blood, and that was evidence enough; he had been possessed by the lich. I confess, in that moment my mind was stripped of all recourse – for our surest strength had become our greatest peril.”
He paused, probably thinking of how to put things – or how to put his feelings back down.
Warren pushed forward. “He wrenched the weapon from my grip. Before I could recover, he struck me full in the breast and cast me back, away from my rifle. The demon would have ended me then, but Vale was upon him.
“They had crossed blades a hundred times, but this was no spar. Vale knew Edmund’s measure better than any of us, for it was Edmund himself who had taught him the blade. Yet even that availed him nothing. Every guard he set was broken. Strength, speed, every advantage lay with Edmund now, and it was but a matter of time before Vale was cast down.
“Croft, Fairley, Brenner – they were no cowards. Each man closed as trained, but nary a stroke found its mark. The strength was all Edmund’s, and more besides; he had them bested in every art – blade, spell, and shot alike. Edmund stood as though crowned, the master of every hand set against him.
“By then I had regained my feet, and with them my weapon. The others yet lived, but none could stand – each cast aside, broken. Edmund turned from them and fixed his eyes upon me. There was no mistaking his intent.
“I had time for but a single shot before he would be upon me. I had my choices: fire upon the Phantom Lich and
trust
it might suffice, or strike at Edmund and
know
that it would suffice. Thus, I set my aim on him. Duty was plain enough: the squad, the mission, the realm.
“Behind me Vale shouted: ‘Kill him!’ And by duty, he was right. To strike Edmund then would have ended it. Yet I did not.
“I could not. Instead I prayed – first in truth. Not for victory, nor for my own life, nor even for the mission. I prayed for Edmund. I begged that he be delivered; that his soul be spared; that this thing’s hold be broken. I begged as a drowning man begs for air, with all that was in me. If Heaven would answer but once, let it be now.”
Warren’s words hit like a punch – not just for the desperation, though that landed too, but because Ethan knew that feeling. He knew that hollowed-out place where nothing was left to throw at the problem except everything he was.
He’d been there once – in the middle of the Nevskor fight, pulse hammering and rage running hot, begging God to let Miles breathe and move and fight. It hadn’t been a prayer for victory or even for his own life; it had been for Miles alone.
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“I offered no mana, wrought no spell. I had nothing but the plea itself. Thus did the mana leave me – unbidden. I had not willed it, yet I felt it drawn forth, as by a hand not my own. It left me hollow and spent, yet I knew it was not wasted.”
“Edmund staggered. His advance faltered, and what came from him then was no demon’s cry. It was his own voice, ragged, fighting to be heard. Black smoke poured from eyes and mouth; the stench of it filled the chamber. The thing was being cast out.”
“I give thanks to God for it. I had no strength left, no spell upon my lips – only the plea. And He answered. The hold was broken, the creature’s power spent. In that moment the others rallied, and we purged the lich.”
“When it was done, Edmund yet lived. Broken, aye, but freed. I thanked God that the shot had never left the barrel. Vale did not thank Him. In his eyes I had gambled all our lives on sentiment – and had Heaven not answered, he would have been right.”
“We had been alike once, he and I – quick to hate the cult, quick to call for judgment. Coramore ended that. He went on in that hatred; I could not. I had seen what it made of a man.”
So that was the break between them – Warren turning to redemption while Vale… He’d been wrong that day. Maybe that’s what really ate at him.
“So I sought proper teaching – of the faith, and of holy art. I had done the thing before I understood it; I would not remain in ignorance. And there, in the reading, I came upon the word that made sense of it: ‘The Lord is not slack concerning his promise… but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.’ I had not prayed for triumph, nor for doom, but for a man to be spared and turned.”
“That was the lesson I took from Coramore – that holy power does not answer a man’s wrath. It answers what the Lord wills, and His will is toward repentance. I had prayed not to strike Edmund down, but to see him freed, and God granted it. From that day I sought to understand what had been done through me, and to set my hand to it rightly.”
Ethan knew what that meant. “What the Lord wills.”
Warren nodded. “Aye. If you pray to harm, He will not heed you. But if you pray in keeping with His will, the power will attend it.” He gestured to Ethan’s hand. “Try again.”
Ethan lowered his head and let his mana settle into a steady draw. Mack’s face came to mind – not the mask he wore for everyone else, but the hollow underneath.
“Lord,” Ethan began, keeping his voice steady, “I lift up Mack to You. He thinks he’s too far gone – that what he’s done, especially with that kid at the warehouse, puts him beyond Your reach. But You’re the God who renamed Saul the persecutor as Paul the apostle. The Enemy’s telling Mack he’s crossed some line You won’t cross to bring him back. That’s a lie from hell, and we both know it.”
The uncertainty that had dogged him before was gone. The words ran straight this time, unbroken, like something had cleared the line. And somewhere in that sudden clarity he felt the shift; the weight wasn’t on him anymore. The Holy Spirit had taken it, and that knowledge put steel in his spine.
He bore down and kept going, “You left the ninety-nine for the one. You ran to meet the prodigal while he was still far off. There is no ‘too far’ with You – only ‘come as you are.’ Lord, he did what had to be done with that possessed child. It was mercy – terrible, necessary mercy. You understand better than any of us, having sacrificed Your own Son.”
Ethan paused to take a breath – this was hitting harder than he’d expected.
“Please don’t let Mack drown in this like Judas did. Let him weep like Peter and be restored like Peter. Show him that the difference between Judas and Peter wasn’t the sin, but whether they could receive forgiveness. Break through whatever lie he’s believing about being unredeemable. Remind him that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Not after we cleaned ourselves up. Not after we proved we deserved it. While we were still Your enemies. If You could reconcile us then, You can reconcile Mack now. Give him the faith to believe that. In Christ Jesus’ name, amen.”
The mana didn’t slip away this time. It tore out of him in a single, clean pull – like a snapped shot on a perfect trigger. White light flared in his palm, sharp and pure, nothing like any working he’d ever trained with. It burned bright for two heartbeats, maybe three, then vanished.
Ethan exhaled quick, almost laughing.
It worked
. And if it could happen once, it could happen again.
The thought barely had time to land before the next question hit: what did it actually do?
Warren must have read it on his face, because he answered before Ethan could speak. “When the mana leaves you so, it is no waste. It means the Lord has taken the offering and has set His hand to the matter. You may not see the work at once – oft it is hidden, or comes in ways you did not expect – but be sure of this: He has heard, and He has answered.”
He stood. “Come. There are men in the infirmary who have need of you.”
They left the church. Warren led them through the grounds to the infirmary – to the ward where the Kidry victims lay.
Knowing they were there, being treated, was one thing. Seeing it was another. Four rows of men lay still, alive but gone, comatose.
Warren stopped at the head of the nearest row. “Would you try?”
Ethan knelt and prayed. “Lord, these men were freed from their captors but not from what was left behind. Whatever chains still hold them, please break them. Whatever darkness lingers, please drive it out. If it is mercy to let them go, then take them home. If it is mercy to wake them, please wake them. Deliver them from this halfway death.”
The warm mana pooling in his palm vanished with that same flash of light – the unmistakable sign of holy magic at work. But nothing happened. The man on the cot didn’t even twitch.
Ethan stayed there for a beat, hand still on the blanket. It hit harder than he thought it would. He knew it didn’t mean he was unsuccessful, but still…
Warren must’ve read it on his face. “Tell me, Walker. When a man plants, is it by his planting that the crop grows? When a man waters, is it by his watering it springs?”
Ethan let out a short breath. He knew this one – 1 Corinthians 3:6. “‘I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.’”
Warren gave a soft smile. “Aye.”
That was more than enough to keep Ethan moving. He went to the next bed, and the next. Each prayer pulled a little more from him, steady as a slow bleed, until his head started pounding from exhaustion and his knees ached from kneeling. He kept going anyway; if this was planting, he wasn’t about to stop halfway through the field.
By the last row his hands were shaking. He reached for a mana potion on a nearby stand, but Warren put a hand on his shoulder.
“You have done enough for today. Come again on the morrow, if you will, for every prayer is counted, whether or not you see the fruit.”
“Will do.” Ethan stood, heading for the door. “Thanks again, Graves.”
Warren gave a nod. “Go with God, Walker.”

Chapter 55: What the Lord Wills (2)