Yes, Flowers. Surprised?
Saminga will be, too (presuming that he ever gets its
new status through his head). Well, 'surprised' is
the wrong concept. Try 'incandescently furious',
instead: Bataan is a textbook case of what happens
when you don't guard your Tethers against Word-shift.
It started so well, though (at least from the point of
view of the Prince of the War): a combination of a
surrendered garrison, an occupying army from a nation
that never signed the Geneva Convention and tropical
weather resulted in thousands of deaths. By the
standards of World War II, this wasn't an extremely
bloody action, but the sheer indifference of the
Japanese Army for the lives of their Filipino and
American captives sparked the formation of a small
Tether to Death. Saminga, naturally, stabilized it
right away (he expects that these kinds of atrocities
will result in Tethers, and can never understand why
they usually don't) and appointed one of his Djinn
(Krastai) as Seneschal.
Needless to say, Krastai never saw her Superior again:
in his special idiotic fashion, Saminga lost all
interest in the Tether (it was very small, after all)
after that. The Seneschal pretty soon discovered that
getting any backup was pretty much a lost cause, too.
To be fair, nobody ever expected that the Tether would
be seriously assaulted: besides being small, it wasn't
very useful - too many quirks to it. Anyway, what
could happen?
Well, what could happen would be that the Bataan Death
March would become a horrible example on why humanity
needed a Geneva Convention in the first place. What
could happen would be that the people of the
Philippines would commemorate the holiday, solemnly
walking along the same path that saw the deaths of so
many brave men. What could happen would be that those
that recreated the March would come away with a quiet
determination that this sort of thing couldn't be
permitted to happen ever again. In other words, what
could happen would be that the Word would shift away
from Death - and have the potential to shift towards
either Just War or Peace.
Michael and Novalis flipped a coin for it - literally.
Novalis won. Within six months, she had the Djinn
Seneschal eating out of her hand. It wasn't hard:
Novalis let Krastai scream for help - and would you
believe that the Prince of Death ignored her even
then? Faced with that kind of indifference, coupled
with a growing disillusionment at the methods of Hell,
the Djinn was teetering towards becoming Redemption
material anyway. Having Novalis around to talk to was
significant, too: it's hard to be nasty to the
Archangel of Flowers. Once all of this had been
settled, Novalis yelled for Michael to handle the
Redemption while she put the final touches on
hijacking the Tether - which is why there's a Tether
to Flowers out there with a Cherub of War as the
Seneschal, insane as that sounds. Apparently, it was
the only way to ensure a clean transformation from
Infernal to Divine (that's why they call
ineffability).
Nowadays, the Tether - well, it's still small, but
it's a lot easier to use. It's centered on the worst
part of the carnage (although it may shift soon to the
places where the ceremonial walk begins and/or ends).
Its Seneschal is a lot happier, too: Novalis may have
her faults, but failure to provide proper support is
not one of them.
Crystal, Cherub of War
Crystal really likes being an angelic Seneschal:
instead of being stuck on the side of a road in the
middle of the tropics with no company, she's actually
busy now. The Host is taking advantage of the new
resource to increase their presence in the
Philippines, and the Tether is pretty much open to any
angel that needs it. Crystal maintains her Tether by
helping coordinate the annual pilgrimage on it: by
now, she's practically running from behind the scenes.
She's even made inroads in helping the numerous
ghosts associated with the Bataan Death March move on
to their final rewards (something that endears her to
her new Superior).
Nope, Saminga still hasn't popped in to see what went
wrong. It's presumed that he's just assumed that the
Tether was destroyed. Any intelligent Prince would at
least have checked by now, of course: also of course,
no one has ever accused Saminga of being smart.
Crystal keeps hoping that he'll show up someday,
though: knowing the Prince of Death, he'll probably
think that he'll be dealing with a Flower-child, and
will thus get the shock of his life when a grinning
Archangel of War comes down to answer the call for
help...
Bataan Death March Road Tether: Average (7
Word-Forces, standard Flow, Celestial Harbor,
Friendly).
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