Free Descent of Angels by Mitchel Scanlon

out in fear and he spat blood as he pushed against the stinking ground and lifted his head.
    Though his vision swam crazily, he saw Eliath finally drag himself from beneath his dead mount and Nemiel pick himself up from the beast’s blow to drag himself behind another tree. Attias had snapped from his horrified paralysis and had ridden his horse into the trees, the beast lumbering back towards the tasty morsel of boy and horse.
    Zahariel used the tree next to him to haul himself to his feet, feeling a screaming pain in his twisted leg. He searched the ground for his fallen weapons, eventually spying the gleam of sunlight on the steel of his sword. He couldn’t see his pistol, and had no time to look for it.
    He grimaced in pain as he swept up his sword and limped towards the clearing, as the beast’s jaws snapped out and bit Attias’s horse in two. The boy flung himself from the saddle just as the monster struck, and landed with a thud on a fallen log, rolling over it, and flopping to the ground in a heap.
    Zahariel’s armour hissed as breaches in its structure caused it to fail, the mechanisms of its protective systems grinding and seizing. The full mass of the plate began to weigh heavily on him, and he grimaced in pain as the plates at his hip settled on his hurt leg.
    ‘Spread out!’ shouted Zahariel. ‘Get to the trees and spread out! Don’t bunch up!’
    More pistol shots boomed, and Zahariel saw Pallian run forward to drag Attias back to the trees. The beast leapt over the dead horse and its beak shot out, catching Pallian by the shoulder and wrenching him from his feet.
    The boy screamed as he was lifted high into the air, but his screams were cut short as his arm and most of his shoulder was bitten through. He fell, trailing a drizzling arc of blood from the ruin of his body, the curve of his arm moving down the beast’s throat with a horrid peristaltic motion.
    Blood geysered from Pallian, and his screams filled the clearing, as the agony overcame the shock of the wound. The beast turned its head back to the fallen boy, its wing-claws slashing twice. Pallian screamed no more.
    Zahariel cried out as Pallian was dismembered by the beast, and stepped into the clearing, his vision blurred with tears of pain and terror. He raised his sword and held it unsteadily before him as he faced the monster that he knew would kill him.
    He knew that fact with cold certainty, but he could not allow others to suffer and die without at least trying to save them.
    ‘Get away from them, you bastard,’ he snarled. ‘These are my friends and they’re not for the likes of you!’
    The beast looked up, and though its eyes were empty and cold, Zahariel could sense its monstrous hunger to kill. Beyond even what it needed to feed and survive, this creature needed to inflict pain, and took some primitive enjoyment from the act of slaughter.
    The beast turned from Pallian’s body and let loose a tremendous roar as it saw Zahariel advancing towards it, his sword aimed at its heart. The beast’s wings rippled, and Zahariel knew what was coming. He brought his sword up as the creature’s right wing slashed towards him.
    He swayed aside and swung his sword around in a downward arc that chopped into the wing where the claw began. Milky blood sprayed, and the claw was shorn from the beast, as Zahariel’s leg finally gave out beneath him and he dropped to one knee.
    The beast howled in pain and drew back its injured wing, its jaws opening wide as it prepared to end his life. A shadow moved beside Zahariel as the beast lunged forward. The sight of its thousands of teeth filled his vision.
    Even as he smelt the rankness of its gullet and saw the scraps of flesh stuck between its teeth, a silver steel blur slashed over his head, as an armoured figure rode past him with a thunder of hooves and a mighty war shout.
    A long, heavy-bladed sword stuck edge on into the beast’s mouth, the wielder’s strength and the beast’s momentum driving