There was a thunderous clap and whoosh from behind. Then the sound of something falling at high velocity.

  Perelli blinked, his heart quickly hardening, bracing.

  Whumph!

  A 105mm artillery shell slammed into the earth behind the Black Sun, engulfing the void in a storm of mud, smoke, and light. The shockwave rippled through his mindspace, and Perelli flinched instinctively but when he opened his eyes again, he was no longer in darkness.

  The infinite black was replaced.

  In its place stretched a charred, misty no-man’s-land. Broken trees stretched into the horizon. Barbed wire tangled like old scars across cratered, trench-scarred terrain. Machine guns rattled in the distance dotted by rifle volleys, and mustard fog hugged the ground, swirling in the trench-riddled chaos of the Meuse-Argonne. Ghosts of war drifted among the shattered terrain, his memories both perfect and imperfect.

  And ahead of him, rising through the smog like an scar upon reality, was the Black Sun.

  Still grotesque, but more monstrous now, its many eyes dripped blood, its teeth gnashed and snapped ravenously.

  Perelli stumbled, the sound of distant screaming echoing in his ears. A field hospital. Blood on the bandages. Men gone in an instant. Gas bubbling skin. His breath quickened and his heartrate spiked. His HUD beeped a warning as it detected stress far beyond his normal baseline. He never thought he'd be back here again.

  “Agh,” he whispered. “Not again.”

  He clutched his head as the memory hit him like a shell. The searing cold. The wail of men who'd realized they were about to die. A sudden, sickening smell of blood and damp wool.

  He fell against the raised siding of a trench, desperately trying to focus himself.

  “Worm,” the Black Sun gurgled, voice thick with amusement. “You brought me to your battlefield... but you forget. I thrive in suffering.”

  The tentacles surged forward, sweeping through the lines like a tidal wave of rot. Shadowy soldiers, the scuffed memories those he couldn’t remember exactly, raised their ghostly rifles, black silhouettes against a bleeding sky. They fired, and their rounds tore into the beast, slowing it, harrying it.

  The remembered ones held the line. The Buffalo Soldier’s Chauchat chattered defiantly. The machinegun occasionally jammed; such a piece of shit the French machinegun Perelli recalled. But the U.S went into the Great War without any machineguns to speak of, so they had to make do. The trenchcoat Marine hurled a grenade into the maw. The Springfield-wielding Doughboy stabbed upward into a tentacle with his bayonet, yanking the blade out with a practiced twist.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  The Black Sun absorbed the assault, then retaliated a gout of darkness exploded from its body, dissolving silhouettes like paper to a wildfire.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The remembered soldiers staggered. One fell. Another was lifted and hurled into a crater.

  Perelli tried to conjure as much as much as he could into the fight. A biplane tore through the mist at low-level, machineguns chattering as it made a strafing run against the Black Sun.

  Perelli rose, chest burning. He labored to breath, but he shouted a defiant battlecry and raised his rifle.

  He fired. One, two, three shots. The last piercing an eye, splattering black fluid across a ruined field gun. But the rifle turned to ash in his hands. His will faltered. The nightmare pressed in.

  The Black Sun loomed, tendrils poised to strike.

  Then, a sudden brilliance cut across the battlefield like a rising dawn, whisking away the mist and smoke.

  A figure descended from the sky, borne on wings of radiant flames. The brilliant light tore through the clouds, revealing her in pieces. A breastplate that shimmered like a dying star, a sword forged from the lines of constellations, her eyes aglow simultaneously with empathy and fury. It hurt to look at. Worse than the Black Sun. More terrible. Time stopped in her presence.

  She landed beside Perelli in the mud, unbothered by the filth. Plate sabaton remained immaculate despite the muck.

  "You are not alone," the angel said. Her voice was like a memory wrapped in thunder, he understood but did not comprehend her words. It was more of a feeling being laid unto him than direct communications. “You burn, Perelli. But no soul can fight this war unarmed.”

  She knelt and placed her palm over the knife on his belt. The small punch dagger wasn't even that special. He got it from a supply request when he first joined the Vanguard. When he learned he'd be fighting vampires, he etched a crude cross onto it; thinking this would bolster its power. It always seemed to. Now the blade morphed in his hand.

  A whisper of golden fire passed from her hand into the weapon. Runes bloomed along the steel, words in a tongue Perelli didn’t know but understood. The same feeling he got when she spoke.

  Guide. Defend. Endure.

  "What are you?" He wanted to say, but the angel heard his words before he could speak them.

  "I am Deliverance. The Servant and the Seer. I guided your soul into the light. And I guided you to the Vanguard. I guided you to this fight." She gestured around her. "I am not supposed to be here. But as long as I am, I need help. I need direct agents, willing and true, to help me on Earth. You Leader-Commander is one" She explained. "Now, I need another."

  “Rise,” she said. “And be my sword. My paladin.”

  He did. The knife glowed like a diamond caught in sunlight. When he gripped the hilt, it pulsed. The short, barely 1" blade quickly lengthened into a full saber unlike anything he had ever seen. It was reminiscent of a cavalry saber, but with less of a curve and a longer blade. Double-edged. It felt perfectly balanced, light in his hand but capable of putting significant weight into any strike. A new resolve swelled within him. His heartrate slowed to its usual icy beat.

  Time unfroze.

  Perelli moved, a blur through the muck. He hurled himself at the Black Sun, slashing through barbed wire and into the beast of the black. Where the blade struck, flesh burned. The tentacles recoiled, hissing and smoking.

  The remembered soldiers rallied, spirits rekindled. Bayonets flashed. Rifles cracked. The silhouettes returned, clearer now. They poured fire into the wounds he created.

  The Black Sun roared, but its cry was hollow.

  Perelli leapt high, blade raised. The angel's voice echoed behind him like the trumpet at Jericho.

  He plunged the blade into the center of the thing's forehead, into the darkest eye.

  Light exploded outward, a pillar that pierced the clouds and parted the fog of memory.

  The beast convulsed, shrieked, shattered. In a thunderous clap it was gone.

  All that remained was wind. And silence.

  The battlefield began to fade.

  The soldiers disappeared into mist, taking the Argonne with them.

  The angel stood alone with Perelli in the quiet dark.

  “You're not whole,” she said gently. “But you’re not broken either.”

  He looked at the knife-sword in his hand. The light had dimmed, but not gone out.

  He nodded but did not know what to say. What to even do. Before the power of the angel, he felt like a small boy standing awkwardly. “Then let’s see where this goes.”