Eagle — Vladimir Duran

Before the Blood Ocean and the Fall that came after, the Harrower Knights, the Deathwings, ruled the sky. Sent on a grave mission in the midst of a desperate battle, one Knight will find her moment. With the fate of her legion and a city hanging in the balance will she be able to seize it? In an age of Heroes how do you rise to the top? You do what no one else can do.

Excerpt

Wings of Harrowers sketched the rough sphere as they desperately fought for their lives. Fought for victory. Demons by the score flew in clots like locusts, smashing into the darting V's of fire. Sometimes the V's pulled out, sometimes not. Huge arms of the sooty black stains pulled out of the surface of the battle and arced back into it with crushing force. There was a shadow moving through the sphere. Like a worm in an apple, ripples of fleeing V's followed wherever it went.

Victory it had to be. If they failed, this army's next attack would fall on Avalon. That could not be allowed to happen. The other legions were pinned down in another theater or war and the regular army in Avalon was still licking their wounds from their last battle. They could not hold against this force.

Summoning the visor of her armor back up her green eyes disappeared behind an expressionless mask. The plates that formed it slid over her face to form a smooth only slightly curved surface, broken only by the crimson lenses of her eyes. Readouts from the battle appeared at the edges of her vision. Aided by the augmenters on her belt, Lore drew deeply on the Reigh and her hair caught fire. Pulling her bow from one of the tesseract pockets in her belt. Silvered and knife edged at the ends it had no bowstring until she drew the invisible line to her cheek. The Harrower felt the tug on her mind as the string came into being. A bowstring of the mind, an arrow of will, her first instructor in the wizard bow had said to her.

“Draw.” She commanded over the orator and her wing drew with her. Harrowers needed no command to fight. They had their bows out before she spoke. Concentrating beyond the silvery bow marked with birds she focused her will to destroy. An arrow of crimson light flared into existence between her fingers.

“Release,” She commanded and let go. With it flew all her determination that these things should die and be no more. Ten other arrow of crimson light flew after it. Lore focused harder and her arrow multiplied, becoming two, then three, then four. Before slamming into the back of a clot of flying demons she had made a full dozen. Combined with her wing, more than a hundred arrows tore that clot from their sky. A cloud of ash was all they left behind.

But there were thousands of such clots and destroying one was no great accomplishment. Taking pot shots was not the reason her Fell Lord had sent her wing to breach the surface of the battle. They had a specific mission and it waited for them below. Theirs was the happy task of pulling the worm out of the apple.