• The predawn light began to peak over the mountain tops as the small black van drove every closer towards its target.

    “You know that this isn’t going to be easy, Axel.”

    “Like they ever are.” he began tapping his foot in frustration, “If my parents knew what I was about to do, they’d have a heart attack and try to crucify me, Iris.”

    “The key word there is if.”

    His mission was simple just like all the others he had been given since he was employed by his benefactor, restore balance to the unbalanced. Ever since the restoration of magic to the modern world, the mancers were being nothing but trouble. Divine or infernal, it didn’t matter. Their magic would always end up causing serious repercussions no matter what they did. They were all unbalanced and they all had to be dealt with.

    “Why did they have to pick him, of all people, to be an angemancer?” Axel sighed as he tossed a newspaper onto the floor of the van, only to be picked up by Iris.

    “Priest Miller cures a patient of cancer on death bed. Priest brings a child back to life. Priest Miller finds peaceful end to the fighting in Iraq. President Bush has a heart attack and dies in his sleep.” Iris read the headlines out loud, “Sounds too good doesn’t it, Axel?”

    “If only they were divine favors, then I’d be fine with it.” He said as he brushed his moonlight hair out of his eyes, “but it isn’t, it’s just the servant of an angel misusing his gifts.”

    “Would you rather he’d be an infemancer and having to deal with a chaos induced berserker, again?” Iris said tossing the paper out the window.

    He said nothing and just watched as the papers floated away in the breeze as they drove. The paper moved with the breeze, but also against it. It was balance pure and simple. Not good, but not evil either. Just like how humanity was supposed to be, but ever since Mount Olympus was reopened… balance was a blessed thing.

    “The Vatican should be coming into view soon, so I suggest you get ready.” she handed him his gloves and his trench coat, “That should do it, or would you prefer a weapon this time?”

    “I am a weapon, Iris.”

    As the van approached the Vatican, ink black clouds began to gather against the coming dawn. They rays began to shine red as the sun began to rise higher into the morning sky. Looking up, Axel smiled. “Seems like a proper greeting.”

    Iris just sighed at him, “Keep your mind on the mission; he won’t go quietly and you know it.”

    “Yeah, yeah.” and Iris rolled her eyes as she closed the door to the van.

    Before him stood the giant doors and pearly white pillars of the Vatican where his target lay. Walking in he was met by three guards, big, burly fellows with a disposition that would make a hardcore Satanist look like Mary Poppins.

    “Hello fellas,” Axel said, “I don’t suppose you will make this easy for me to see your boss will you?”

    “Name?” the first asked, rubbing his left hand into his right palm.

    “Your momma.”

    “Name?” He said once again restraining his animalistic rage, a slight vein beginning to bulge against his muscles.

    “I’m Neal Hurston and I was born in a cabin over fourty…”

    “For the last time, what is your name before I beat your skull in with my fist!”

    “What’s yours first.”

    Tired of his antics, the guard put all his weight into a punch headed for Axel’s face; it never hit home. Axel moved aside at the last moment and had dodged the punch and watched as the grunt’s spine exploded from his back, showering the other two with bits of bone and splats of blood as his own fist protruded from a fresh, gaping hole through his body.

    “I guess I put too much into that one.” He sighed and pulled his right arm out of the man’s body, his coat sleeve ripped showing off his feather pattern tattoo. Then he put the man down, Axel folded his arms and closed his eyelids, as he spoke to him “Rest in peace.”

    By this point, the other two had fled leaving his pathway to the priest he sought unhindered. The hallways of the Vatican were large and had the air of the ancient around it. The floor had been worn by hundreds of years of walking and the walls eroded by words spoken for no one else to hear, and after a few minuets of walking, he arrived at the priest’s bedchambers.

    “By the grace of God himself, may what I am about to do be forgiven.”

    Slowly, he opened the doors and stood at the foot of Priest Mathew Miller’s bed and began speaking. “I know you can hear me, angemancer. You’ve upset the balance of nature, and for that you must be restored to balance. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

    Stirring, Priest Miller rose from the bed and laughed. “What do you think gives you the right to judge me, God’s chosen, as unbalanced?” He pulled back his sleeve to reveal the same feather pattern that was on Axel’s arm, “I’m just like you, but I help people. What’s wrong with doing that?”

    Axel sighed and tore the other sleeve from his coat revealing a black thorn pattern tattoo, “No angemancer, I’m balanced. I’ve been sent to have you judged and I will restore the balance you disrupted.”

    Quickly attempting to escape, Miller began to bargain. “I will forgive you if you leave now. If you come any closer, God will condemn you to Hell and I’ll be judged a martyr!”

    “I will not be swayed.”

    With that response the priest lunged at Axel, a knife brandished and glowing softly with an angelic enchantment. Axel made no movement as the knife sunk into his chest. A soft sound of flesh being rend emanated in the room as Miller continued to stab his judge. The movements stopped as Axel grabbed his arm shattering the bones into dust as the priest screamed, his own wounds already healed. Crumpling before Axel, he began to beg and attempt to repent for his misdeeds before breaking down.

    “Why… Why won’t you die?” Miller began to weep.

    “The shadows hunger for the balance you took from them Miller. Let them be your judge and I’ll do the same when my time comes." Axel said as his arms began glowing, "Let balance be restored." thrusting forward his arms pierced the frame of the man as a shower of light and shadow ripped through his body, leaving nothing but the echo of a scream. “I don’t die, because I can’t yet.”

    Axel then reached into his coat for a small vial and splashed holy water against the bed and sighed, "Hallowed be thy name."