“It still feels impossible,” Farah said for what might have been the fifth time in the last hour, her voice filled not with doubt but with sincere wonder. She held the small rectangular device Umbra had reluctantly allowed her to examine, turning it over carefully in her hands as though it were some delicate relic unearthed from an ancient ruin. “How can such a thing exist? So much knowledge, contained within something so small. It defies reason.”
Umbra allowed herself a tired smile, though it did not quite reach her eyes. “Well, my darling, most everyone here would say precisely the same about magic. To them, this is not sorcery, but science. It is the result of technological processes working at a microscopic level, things too small to be seen with the naked eye. Tiny currents. Signals. Engineered materials. Innovation here might stagnate from time to time, slowed by politics or greed or simple complacency, but it never truly stops. Someone is always building something smaller, faster, more efficient.”
Farah considered this carefully, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Then is this world a utopia?” she asked after a moment. “Surely with so much information at their fingertips, with such miraculous devices in every hand, this must be an ideal world. Ignorance could not thrive here.”
Umbra let out a long sigh, one that carried far more weight than the question deserved on the surface.
They had chosen to walk back toward the city rather than request immediate transport. Time was precious, that much was undeniable, yet Umbra had justified the decision to herself as tactically harmless. In truth, she simply wanted a few uninterrupted hours beside her wife. She had not slept properly since three days before their assault on the Witch’s castle, and though her divine physiology prevented true collapse, exhaustion lingered in her bones and behind her eyes. The steady rhythm of walking, with Farah at her side, was grounding in a way she desperately needed.
They moved along the main highway between Upper Hutt and Wellington City, the broad stretch of asphalt mostly clear due to the ongoing evacuations. The air carried the distant hum of vehicles and the faint scent of heated tar.
And now she was explaining smartphones. Again.
“How does the air smell to you?” Umbra asked instead of answering directly.
Farah paused and lifted her chin slightly, drawing in a careful breath. Her expression shifted almost immediately.
“Acrid,” she said slowly. “There is a sharpness to it. Is there toxin in the air?”
Umbra gave a small, humorless hum. “More or less. Much of this world relies upon fossil fuels. They are a source of energy derived from the remains of plants and creatures that died millions of years ago. Their bodies were buried, compressed, transformed. Now they are burned to power vehicles, factories, entire cities. It is dreadfully harmful to the atmosphere over time. The air grows warmer. The seas rise. The oceans themselves grow more acidic. In a slow, quiet way, it is poisoning the world.”
Farah’s wings drooped slightly, the tips brushing the air behind her in a subdued arc. “And they continue to use it?”
“They do,” Umbra replied. “Because it is convenient. Because economies depend upon it. Because change is difficult when comfort is involved.”
She gestured vaguely toward the distant hills. “This particular nation is comparatively peaceful. It has little strategic value to the greater powers of this world. It is remote, geographically isolated. Major conflicts are unlikely to reach it. Its relevance lies mostly in select exports of unusually high quality.”
Farah glanced at her. “How high?”
Umbra’s mouth curved faintly. “The inexpensive cuts of meat enjoyed by common folk here are superior to what is served at royal banquets in many other nations. The livestock is well fed. The land is fertile. Standards are high.”
Farah’s eyes widened in theatrical shock. “You exaggerate.”
Umbra attempted to laugh, though what emerged was more of a low, rasping chuckle shaped by a throat that had endured too many battles. “I do not. Should the opportunity arise, I will take you to dinner somewhere respectable. I suspect many establishments would be overjoyed to serve an angel.”
Farah’s expression shifted into something more thoughtful as she studied the passing landscape and the distant outlines of buildings.
“What about you, my dearest?” she asked softly.
Umbra arched a brow. “What about me?”
“If people love angels here,” Farah said carefully, “how do they regard you?”
Umbra’s gaze drifted forward again. “People love angels,” she repeated, neither confirming nor denying anything further.
Farah’s eyes narrowed in suspicion, and a familiar spark of fierce devotion ignited there. “I will make everyone love you,” she declared with quiet intensity. “If it is the last thing I do.”
Umbra’s expression softened, the exhaustion in her features easing just slightly.
“I require only your love,” she replied gently. “The rest of the world is welcome to pass me by.”
They walked on for a while longer, Farah took in the sights now that she was not in quite a rush and Umbra was happy to tell her about the place she’d come to love living in.
When they reached the town proper, there was actual foot traffic ahead. Most walked in a big ark, eyes bulging as an angel and a creature from a horror movie seemed to talk and ignore the world around them, others stopped and stared, pulling out their phones to take pictures.
They came to a gradual stop along the footpath, stepping out of the center of the road and giving space to a pair of military vehicles that were rumbling past at reduced speed. The early evening light stretched their shadows long across the pavement, Umbra’s massive armored silhouette swallowing Farah’s smaller, radiant outline whenever they overlapped.
Umbra reached down to her belt and unclipped the handheld radio that had been issued to her earlier. It looked almost comically small in her gauntleted hand, a blocky black device with a short antenna protruding from the top.
She pressed the button along the side and brought it close to where her mouth would be beneath the helm.
“This is Umbra,” she said evenly. “The Witch escaped, but her spawn are slain and purged. Over.”
Farah tilted her head slightly as she listened to the faint crackle of static that followed.
“Is that English?” she asked in genuine curiosity.
Umbra gave a small nod. “Correct.”
“It sounds… strange,” Farah continued, her brow creasing. “Like a thousand dialects smashed together..”
Before Umbra could elaborate, the radio sputtered back to life.
“Copy that. Return to the warehouse. Over.”
Umbra did not hesitate. “Understood. We’re on our way. Over.”
There was a brief pause before the reply came again, this time edged with confusion.
“We? Over.”
Umbra’s unseen smile was evident in the faint shift of her posture. “You will find out,” she replied, and released the button before any further questions could be asked.
She clipped the radio back onto her belt.
Farah’s gaze lingered on it. “Why does that one look different from the smart box device you showed me earlier?” she asked, referring to the phone she had examined with such fascination.
Umbra gestured for her to walk again, and they resumed their steady pace toward the city.
“It is a short-range radio,” Umbra explained, slipping into the patient cadence she used when teaching. “It transmits and receives signals through waves that travel through the air. Those waves vibrate at particular frequencies. If two devices are tuned to the same frequency, they can communicate directly.”
Farah listened intently, though her expression suggested she was attempting to visualize something fundamentally invisible.
“A phone can use similar principles,” Umbra continued, “but it is far more complex. It connects to towers spread across the land, which relay signals to one another. It can also connect to the internet, which is a vast, global network of machines exchanging information constantly. The radio, however, is simpler. It is durable, inexpensive, and designed to function reliably in harsh conditions.”
“I see,” Farah said politely.
Though her face showed that she did not, in fact, see.
Her attention shifted suddenly past Umbra’s shoulder. She slowed slightly and pointed ahead.
A woman standing on the opposite side of the pavement had stopped entirely. She was staring at Farah with wide, tear-bright eyes, her hands clasped tightly together beneath her chin. Her lips were moving rapidly, though no sound carried across the distance.
“What is she doing?” Farah asked quietly.
They passed the woman, who had now bowed her head.
“She is praying,” Umbra said. “In many traditions here, angels are believed to be messengers of God.”
Farah blinked. “Singular?”
“Indeed,” Umbra replied. “A few of the dominant religions in this world center around a single, supreme deity.”
Farah’s wings shifted slightly, unsettled by the idea. “And what is this God doing,” she asked slowly, “to allow the world to be poisoned? To allow suffering? If they are singular and supreme, do they not have the power to intervene?”
Umbra was silent for a few steps, the distant noise of traffic filling the space between them.
“Good question,” she said at last, and there was no mockery in her voice, nor any dismissiveness. Instead there was a kind of tired honesty, as though she had wrestled with the same thought many times before and had never quite found an answer that satisfied her completely.
“There may be a difference,” Umbra continued slowly, choosing her words with care, “between what this world calls a god and what Ganymede understands divinity to be. The faiths here speak of a singular, all-powerful being who created everything and governs all. Yet I have seen no evidence of such a presence. No manifestations, direct interventions, nothing measurable that I have ever seen.”
She glanced sideways at Farah as they walked, her heavy footfalls steady against the pavement.
“I cannot place my faith in something I cannot perceive, especially when I must rely upon that faith to survive. On Ganymede, I know the Triumvirate exists. I have stood in their presence and I have felt their power. They gave me a quest, and they supported me in it. There is no ambiguity there. No need to speculate.”
Farah listened quietly, her earlier indignation softening into contemplation.
Umbra let out another quiet sigh. “In the end, it does not truly matter what people believe, at least not in a cosmic sense. Belief does not alter the structure of reality. However,” she added, her tone shifting slightly, “what does matter is perception. And you, my dear, will be perceived as something intimately connected to their object of worship.”
Farah absorbed this without visible distress. “I see,” she replied thoughtfully.
They walked a few more paces in silence, the city skyline slowly growing larger ahead of them.
Then Umbra stopped abruptly.
Her posture stiffened, and horror dawned on her face.
“Oh,” she said quietly.
A beat passed.
“Oh no.”
Farah’s wings lifted slightly, feathers bristling in instinctive alarm. “What?” she asked at once, her voice tightening. “What is wrong?”
Umbra turned her head toward her with visible hesitation. “When our appearances begin circulating across their global information networks,” she began carefully, “when images and recordings of you descend from the sky, radiant and unmistakably angelic…”
She trailed off.
Farah blinked. “Yes?”
“There will be,” Umbra said slowly, with the resignation of someone delivering unpleasant but inevitable news, “a great deal of inappropriate artistic interpretation.”
Farah’s brow furrowed. “I do not understand.”
Umbra made a vague gesture with one gauntleted hand, as though attempting to physically shape the concept into something less dreadful.
“This world,” she explained, “has… tendencies. When something is admired, idolized, or considered beautiful, many individuals will create images, stories, and other materials of a highly intimate nature featuring that subject.”
Farah stared at her.
“What is ‘highly intimate’?” she asked, the innocence in her tone almost painful.
Umbra hesitated, clearly weighing how to phrase this in a way that was both accurate and not catastrophically blunt.
“Pornography,” she said at last, “is the creation of explicit material intended to provoke certain… physical reactions.”
Farah’s eyes widened slightly. “Physical reactions?”
Umbra cleared her throat awkwardly. “Desire. Arousal. It is meant to stimulate.”
The angel went very still.
“I forget,” Umbra muttered, almost to herself, “how comparatively restrained Ganymede is in such matters. Earth is… less so.”
Farah processed this information in visible stages. Confusion gave way to dawning comprehension. Comprehension gave way to horror.
“They would create such things,” she asked slowly, “about us?”
Umbra inclined her head a fraction. “It is statistically inevitable.”
Farah’s wings flared in sudden indignation, a faint shimmer of divine light rippling along the edges of her feathers.
“That is outrageous,” she declared. “I am a sacred servant of the Triumvirate.”
“Yes,” Umbra agreed dryly. “That will not stop them.”
Farah’s expression shifted from outrage to something dangerously resolute. “I will smite—”
“You will not smite anyone for drawing,” Umbra interrupted gently. “No matter how… creative. There might even be a story about us. Many do love their stories about inhuman women.”
Farah folded her arms tightly across her chest, clearly scandalized. “This world is deeply strange.”
Umbra allowed herself a low, rasping chuckle.
“That,” she said, “is the most accurate assessment you have made all day.”