The Hammer of War, Chapter 62

Name: Amir Azad
Title: War-Summoner
War Points: 15,000

STR – 88(300)
DEX – 80(300)
VIT – 202(300)
—

Raynare’s screaming started about fifteen minutes after Sindaris went downstairs.

It was a raw, ugly noise. Wet in places. Hoarse in others. Sometimes it cut off like someone had hit mute, only to come back lower and rougher, scraping its way up through a throat that was clearly not okay with the abuse.

It echoed through the concrete and steel of our reinforced “monster room” hallway, crawled through the vents, and slid under the door into my bedroom. The condo’s walls did a good job of drowning out the city. They didn’t do much against a Fallen Angel discovering what a Haemonculi considered “fun.”

I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, hands folded on my chest.

I didn’t feel anything about it. Not anger. Not satisfaction. Not even pity.

She wasn’t human.

That was the line. My line. I’d drawn it early and I hadn’t moved it since.

Humans, I’d bend over backwards for. I’d swim through oceans, storm dungeons, blow out my lungs and bones a dozen times over. I’d catch them off rooftops and buy them new lives in countries they’d never seen. They were mine to protect. 

Everything else? Devils. Vampires. Fallen Angels. Whatever the hell crawled out of the dark and decided people were prey?

Different category.

I pulled a pillow over my head when her voice jumped another octave. It muffled the worst of it, but not the texture. That still leaked through—the sobs between the screams, the ragged gasps, the short bursts of frantic pleading.

Sindaris answered once.

Just once.

The screaming went on.

Alexandra didn’t complain. If she slept, she did it like an Inquisitor on campaign—half-awake, one eye on the door, one ear on the noise, waiting for an actual problem. A tortured Fallen Angel in the basement didn’t qualify.

Eventually, the sound changed.

It lost some of the teeth. Faded into whimpers. Then into low, broken sobs. Then into nothing at all. Silence settled sometime near dawn, thick and sudden.

I lay there, watched the pale early light bleed around the edge of my curtains, and listened to the new quiet. The city was still asleep. My body felt rested, even though I hadn’t technically slept much. Custodian augmentations were great like that.

After another few minutes, I sighed, swung my legs off the bed, and stood.

“Guess that’s that,” I muttered.

A hot shower later, I padded barefoot into the kitchen. The condo smelled like coffee and toast. Alexandra sat at the small dining table, already dressed, coat hung neatly over the back of her chair. A laptop sat open in front of her, its screen filled with text in three different languages and a map of Korea dotted with red pins. She was on her third cup of tea; I could tell from the stack of used bags in the saucer.

“Morning,” I said.

She glanced up, gave me a short nod. “Morning. You look surprisingly rested, considering.”

“She’s not human,” I said, heading for the counter. “Noise is just noise.”

Alexandra’s organic eye crinkled. The cybernetic one gave a faint whine as it refocused. “Good. I would’ve been disappointed if you’d tried to go down there and ‘talk it out’ halfway through.”

I snorted and grabbed the frying pan. “Please. I’m not sentimental.”

“Mm,” she said. Didn’t argue. That was nice.

I cracked eggs into a bowl, whisked them, and threw some butter into the pan. The sizzle filled the kitchen. The normalcy of it felt… weirdly grounding. Demons, vampires, Fallen Angels, Chaos dungeons, Khornate bosses—it all blurred together. Standing there making breakfast in a Seoul high-rise almost felt stranger.

The elevator at the end of the hall dinged.

No one used that elevator except us, and even then, only when we were going to the underlevels. The condo itself was keyed to a different shaft entirely. Two seconds later, I heard the heavy magnetic lock on the basement access door cycle open, then shut again.

Sindaris walked in like a cat that had found a new favorite toy.

She wore her human guise—charcoal skirt, black blouse, long dark coat—but there was a looseness to her posture now that hadn’t been there yesterday. A kind of satisfied roll in her shoulders. Her hair hung perfectly straight despite however many hours she’d just spent elbow-deep in someone else’s anatomy. She didn’t look tired.

If anything, she looked energized.

“You were busy,” I said.

“My lord,” she said, bowing her head slightly. “I am pleased to report that the subject is… completed.”

“Completed,” Alexandra repeated, closing the laptop halfway. “We’re calling her a ‘subject’ now?”

“She ceased to be a person the moment she fell into my hands,” Sindaris said lightly. “Now she is a work.”

I slid a plate toward Alexandra—eggs, toast, a couple strips of bacon—and started on another for myself. “So. How’d it go?”

Sindaris’s eyes brightened. “Exquisitely.”

Of course it did.

“I had thought,” she went on, stepping further into the kitchen, “that these Fallen Angels would be crude things. Broken soldiers. Cheap copies of a higher design. But Raynare is… fascinating. The structure that allows her to manipulate Light is not purely physical, nor purely spiritual. It is a braided organ, overlapping both. A lattice.”

She lifted her hands, fingers sketching shapes in the air. Even here, she moved like she was operating on reality itself.

“I unraveled it,” she continued. “Carefully. Thread by thread. I learned how it grew, how it folded when she fell, how the betrayal of their god left scars in places nothing mortal instrumentation could find.”

She smiled, sharp and delighted. “I can replicate it.”

Alexandra’s brows lifted a fraction. 

“Replicate,” she said. “As in… make more.”

“As in,” Sindaris said, “with the appropriate raw material—flesh, soul-echo, a spark of borrowed luminosity—I could grow my own strain. A breed not beholden to Heaven, nor Hell, nor the Grigori. Fallen in shape, winged in form, but tuned from birth to one master.”

Her gaze slid to me. There was nothing subtle about it.

“Tempting,” I said, plating my own breakfast. “Very tempting. We’ll talk about your little angel farm later.” 

I jerked my chin toward the hallway. “What about Raynare herself?”

Sindaris’s smile flattened into something more professional. “Reshaped, inside and out. Her bone lattice was… messy. Inefficient. I corrected that. Her musculature had wasted slightly from her earlier beating, so I restored and improved it. There were old scars all over her body. I cleaned those. Her wings, once they re-manifest, will be stronger than before.”

“And mentally?” Alexandra asked. No preamble. No warmth. Just the question.

Sindaris clasped her hands together in front of her. The motion would’ve looked humble on anyone else. On her, it was more like a surgeon about to present test results.

“She remembers everything,” she said. “Her life before the Fall. Her time in Grigori. Her little games with the humans. Her humiliation at the hands of that other Fallen and again at yours. She remembers every second on my table.”

“Good,” I said without thinking. “I want her to remember why she’s here.”

Sindaris nodded, apparently pleased. “However, I have… smoothed certain responses. The raw trauma has been folded. It remains, but dulled, as though viewed behind glass. It can motivate, but not paralyze. More importantly—”

She tapped her temple with one pale finger.

“—I have re-centered her axis. Her self-preservation, her ambition, her fear, her desire for validation… all of it now turns around one fixed point.”

She looked at me again, eyes bright.

“You, my lord.”

Alexandra’s tea cup paused halfway to her lips. “Explain.”

“Her loyalty to him is absolute,” Sindaris said. “Not the brittle fanatic’s devotion that shatters when reality refuses to match the fantasy. This is layered. Redundant. If she doubts, it loops back. If she rebels, it hurts. If she considers betraying him, that thought leads into a dead corridor where the only available exit is renewed obedience.”

She adjusted her sleeve, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle. “She can still think. She can still speak with her old sharp tongue. She can still hate, covet, and preen. But those impulses now detour through the question: ‘Will this please Amir?’ If the answer is no…”

Sindaris let the sentence hang, her smile widening just enough to show teeth.

“Pain?” I guessed.

“Discomfort,” she corrected. “You asked me not to break her completely. I did not. But she cannot raise a hand against you or your chosen humans without suffering. Her instincts will steer her away long before it reaches that point. I also removed… certain impulses regarding gratuitous cruelty toward mortals. You may reintroduce them later, in a controlled fashion, if you wish.”

I took a bite of egg and chewed, thinking. The taste was… fine. My mind was elsewhere.

“Is she going to function?” I asked. “Or is she just going to sit in a corner and shake?”

“She will function,” Sindaris said. “She is, as you humans say, ‘traumatized beyond all belief.’ But trauma is simply memory with too much weight. I redistributed that weight. You will see. She will still be herself. Only… oriented properly.”

Alexandra finally sipped her tea. “You turned a sadistic, treacherous Fallen into a loyal attack dog.”

“Aesthetic attack dog,” Sindaris corrected. “I improved the symmetry in her face. Her previous incarnation had a slight imbalance along the jawline that offended me.”

I couldn’t help it. I snorted. “Of course it did.”

“Where is she now?” Alexandra asked.

“Sleeping,” Sindaris said. “Her body needed rest. Her mind needed… silence. I have sedated her gently. She will wake in an hour or two.”

“Good,” I said. “We’ll meet her then.”

I slid into my chair, set my plate down, and finally dug in properly. Butter. Salt. Heat. My body didn’t need the calories as much anymore; augmentations and VIT took care of a lot. But food was still food. Still comfort.

Sindaris took the empty seat opposite me, folding herself into it with a practiced, predatory grace. Alexandra shut the laptop completely and set it aside, giving our newest monstrosity her full attention.

“Try this,” I said, nudging a plate of toast toward Sindaris. “You ever had human breakfast?”

“I have eaten many humans during breakfast,” she said.

“Bread, Sindaris,” Alexandra said flatly. “He means bread.”

“Ah,” Sindaris said. She picked up a slice between finger and thumb, inspected it like it was an artifact. “How quaint.”

She took a bite.

Her eyes widened a fraction.

“It is… simple,” she said slowly. “And yet…”

“Tasty?” I supplied.

She chewed, swallowed, and gave a tiny nod. “Pleasant.”

“Congratulations,” Alexandra said dryly. “You’ve discovered toast.”

“Far more nutrition than corpse‑starch ration bricks,” I added.

Alexandra’s gaze snapped to me. “Corpse-starch is a myth. The Administratum only—”

“Grinds up the nameless dead and turns them into bars for the underhive,” Sindaris cut in, voice sweet. “No myths there, little Inquisitor. I’ve dissected enough lost voidships to know the taste of your Empire’s charity.”

Alexandra’s jaw flexed. “The Imperium, for all its flaws, is still the shield of humanity—”

“—A rusting shield,” Sindaris said. “Held by a senile bureaucracy and a corpse wired to a chair.”

“Watch it,” Alexandra said.

Her voice was calm. Her eyes were not.

Sindaris tilted her head. “

You bound me, my lord,” she said, not looking away from Alexandra. “Does that binding extend so far that I must pretend the Corpse‑Emperor is not a pathetic joke?”

“Knock yourself out.”

“You ran to Commorragh because you couldn’t stop carving poems into reality with your own souls,” Alexandra said. “And when it all went wrong, you abandoned everyone who couldn’t pay the toll.”

“Efficiency,” Sindaris replied. “We shed weight that slowed us down. You, on the other hand, strap weaklings to the prow of your ships and call it nobility when they scream.”

I ate and listened, half amused, half… weirdly reassured. Them sniping at each other meant things were normal. As normal as they ever got in my life now.

“The Imperium endures,” Alexandra said. “Ten thousand years without falling.”

“Without changing,” Sindaris shot back. “You stagnate. Rot in place. You raise your children to worship a corpse and call it stability. At least we have the decency to admit we live on cruelty.”

“Yeah, you’re really honest about all those screaming pits,” I said. “Super transparent culture.”

Sindaris smiled, unbothered. “Thank you, my lord.”

Alexandra stabbed a piece of bacon like it had personally offended her. “We fight for humanity’s survival.”

“You fight to maintain your own power within a decaying machine that eats the very people you claim to protect,” Sindaris said. “If not for my lord, you would have died with your precious rosette clutched in your hand, surrounded by the ashes of a thousand worlds and convinced it was all worth it.”

“And you,” Alexandra said, leaning forward now, “would still be carving your poems into screaming skin, wondering why the galaxy hates you.”

“I don’t wonder,” Sindaris said. “The galaxy hating me is proof I am doing something right.”

“Ladies,” I cut in. “As entertaining as this is, I’m trying to eat.”

They both looked at me.

Alexandra exhaled, sat back, and took a measured sip of tea.

We finished breakfast in a thicker kind of quiet. Not hostile, exactly. Just… loaded. Occasional barbs still slipped out—Alexandra muttering about xenos degeneracy, Sindaris making pointed comments about ‘mon’keigh wastefulness’—but it stayed below knife level.

By the time I rinsed the plates and stacked them in the sink, my internal clock told me an hour had passed since Sindaris left Raynare sedated.

“Think she’s awake yet?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sindaris said immediately. “Her breathing pattern changed twelve minutes ago. She has spent the time testing her bonds and discovering they don’t exist anymore.”

“Ah,” I said. “Good sign?”

“For me,” she said. “For her… debatable. Come. You should see your new pet.”

Alexandra rose as well, picking up her bolt pistol from the table and holstering it under her coat out of sheer habit. “I will observe.”

“Observe,” Sindaris repeated. “Of course.”

We descended.

The elevator to the underlevels hummed quietly, the kind of industrial sound most people would never hear in an apartment building. The doors opened onto the reinforced hallway—smooth concrete, overhead LEDs, heavy doors inset with steel and arcane reinforcement both. I kept my [Blank] at a comfortable low simmer. No need to drown the whole floor in null. Just enough to keep anything we kept down here from doing anything stupid.

Sindaris led the way to her new laboratory.

It still smelled faintly of antiseptic, burned ozone, and iron. The walls were lined with equipment that had no right to exist in this world—tables that adjusted their shape on command, racks of tools grown from polished bone and glittering black metal, tanks that held liquids which changed color when you looked away. A few surfaces still had faint, dried smears on them, but nothing fresh. Sindaris kept a clean workspace. You had to respect that.

Raynare sat on the central table.

No chains. No clamps. Her legs dangled over the side. Bare feet. Her toes flexed, testing the air. She wore a simple long shirt that fell mid-thigh—black, because Sindaris had taste—and nothing else. Her hair hung around her shoulders in dark, tangled waves. Her wings weren’t out, but I could sense the space where they’d be, folded tight into whatever sub-dimensional pocket Fallen Angels used as a coat closet.

She was staring at the floor when we walked in.

Her shoulders flinched once—tiny, involuntary—when the door hissed open. Then she looked up.

Her eyes found me first.

Something in her face broke and reformed in the same heartbeat. Relief, raw and desperate, flashed through her gaze, followed by shame, followed by something that looked a lot like… joy.

That was new.

“Lord… Amir,” she said.

Her voice was hoarse. Not from screaming tonight. From everything before that.

She slid off the table too fast, almost stumbled, and then caught herself. Her body remembered balance even if her brain was still catching up. She walked toward me in small, hesitant steps, like a stray animal unsure if it was about to be kicked or fed.

When she reached me, she stopped exactly three feet away. Her hands twitched at her sides, curling, uncurling.

Up close, the changes were subtle but obvious if you knew what to look for. Her posture was straighter. Her jawline was a little more symmetrical. The faint asymmetry in her cheekbones, the thing you wouldn’t notice unless you were obsessively staring, had been corrected. Her skin—where it showed—was flawless. No scars. No discoloration. The glint in her eyes looked sharper, brighter, like someone had turned up the resolution.

“Raynare,” I said. “How do you feel?”

She swallowed. Her throat bobbed. “I…”

Her gaze flicked, unbidden, toward Sindaris. Pain stabbed through her expression, fast and electric. Her pupils shrank. Her shoulders hunched the smallest amount.

Then her eyes jerked back to mine like they were on a leash.

“I feel… scared,” she said. The words tumbled out in a rush. 

“And small. And ashamed. And—” she stopped, lips pressing together hard. “But… I also feel… safe. With you.”

Nonhuman. Ew.

“I see,” I said quietly.

Alexandra’s eyes narrowed slightly, watching every micro-movement, every twitch. Sindaris just looked smug.

“Do you remember who you are?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. No hesitation. “I am Raynare. Fallen Angel of the Grigori. Former servant of Kokabiel. I have killed humans. I have broken hearts for fun. I have betrayed allies for nothing. I have failed… many times.”

Her hands clenched harder.

“I remember dying,” she whispered. 

“Twice. Once when that man—” she shuddered, “—speared me through on orders. Once when your hammer hit me. And I remember… the table. The knives. Her.”

She couldn’t stop herself from glancing at Sindaris again. The look she gave her would have burned a hole through most people.

Sindaris smiled back, bright and pleased. “You were very educational.”

Raynare flinched, then drew in a sharp breath and forced her attention back to me. She physically turned her head away from Sindaris, like her body didn’t trust itself to look in that direction without consequences.

“But it doesn’t… crush me,” she said. “Not like before. It hurts. But it’s… far away. Like watching someone else in a mirror.”

I looked into her eyes and saw something that disturbed me, which meant that Sindaris was really good at her job. 

Devotion.

Terrifyingly pure devotion.

“I belong to you,” she said softly. “Don’t I?”

An attack dog. I could arm her with some crazy weapon and have her throw herself at my enemies for me. Perfect.

“Yes,” I said. “You do.”

“Raynare,” Alexandra said from my left.

Raynare’s gaze flicked toward her, then immediately back to me, as if checking if it was allowed. I gave a tiny nod. She turned her head properly.

“You understand,” Alexandra said, “that if you ever harm a human under his protection, I will end you. Quickly, if you’re lucky. Slowly, if you’re not.”

“I… can’t,” Raynare said, voice thin but firm. “She made sure I can’t.”

“Even better,” Alexandra said.

Sindaris stepped around the table, circling like a proud sculptor showing off a finished piece. 

“Her Light-channeling lattice is intact,” she said. “Improved, even. With practice, she will strike harder and faster than before. I also added… a small trick.”

Raynare stiffened at the word “added.” Her fingers twitched.

“A trick?” I asked.

“A limiter,” Sindaris said. “She cannot fully manifest her power unless it is in your service. If she tries, it will hurt. If you ask, it will sing.”

Raynare’s eyes shone with something dangerously close to hope. 

“If you tell me to fight,” she said, “I will. As hard as I can. As long as I can. I… want to.”

Her voice cracked on the last word. She swallowed it down.

I studied her for a few breaths. The tremor in her hands. The way her shoulders tilted toward me unconsciously. The flash of hate when she glanced at Sindaris, smothered beneath the enforced loyalty. The underlying arrogance that hadn’t gone anywhere—just been given a new direction.

Same Raynare. New orbit.

“All right,” I said. “Then let’s start simple.”

Her spine straightened.

“Raynare,” I said. “From now on, you don’t touch humans without my say-so. You don’t hunt them. You don’t feed on them. You don’t do whatever it was that you freaky assholes used to do with humans.”

She nodded quickly. “I won’t. I swear. On my wings. On whatever’s left of my Grace. I won’t.”

“You’ll work,” I said. “You’ll spy. You’ll fight. You’ll listen when Alexandra tells you something. You’ll tolerate Sindaris poking you if she needs more data.”

Raynare made a strangled sound at that last part but nodded anyway. “Yes. Yes, my lord.”

“And you’ll learn,” I finished. “How to be something more than a weapon with a pretty face.”

Her mouth trembled into a small, bitter smile. 

“I don’t know if I can,” she said. “But… if you want me to, I’ll try.”

“Good,” I said. “Then welcome to the team.”

I stuck my hand out.

Her eyes widened. She stared at it like it was some holy relic. Then, slowly, she lifted her own and placed it in mine. Her palm was cool and dry. She gripped harder than she needed to, like she was afraid I’d pull away if she didn’t hold on.

Behind her, Sindaris watched with amusement bordering on glee. Beside me, Alexandra’s expression stayed guarded, but she didn’t object.

“Come on,” I said, releasing Raynare’s hand. “Let’s get you out of here. You’ve had enough lab time for one lifetime.”

She nodded, relief and dread and devotion flickering across her face in quick succession.

Sindaris stepped back and gestured toward the door like a hostess inviting a guest into a fancy restaurant.

“After you,” she said sweetly. “Try not to trip. It would ruin the posture I gave you.”

Raynare shot her a look that could have curdled steel, then turned and walked toward the exit. Her steps were still a little unsteady, but her back was straight. When she passed me, her shoulder brushed my arm—deliberate, seeking contact. She didn’t apologize.

I followed her into the hall.

The lights overhead hummed softly. The world outside the lab felt… different. Less heavy. Less saturated with chemical and pain.

Raynare paused just past the threshold and drew in a long breath, as if the recycled air of the condo hallway were the freshest thing she’d ever tasted.

“Where… do I go?” she asked quietly, looking back at me.

I met her eyes.

“Up,” I said. “We’ll figure it out from there.”

And together, we stepped into the elevator.