Insert clever title here (Minibit)

Mara gasped as Dante pulled her back by the bundle around his shoulders and followed him out of the door. she winced as the blade thudded into the man's foot, but she pushed her sympathy away. This was no time for sympathy. She helped support him as they hurried towards the door, and she tugged it open and half shoved him outside. She was close behind him. She started back towards their haven, then stopped. She could hear him scambling towards them behind her.

"We can't lead him to the barn!" She hissed to him as she tugged him to a stop. "Where do we go?!"
 
Dante felt fortunate the Half-Angel - possibly in a fit of piety - had pushed him ahead of herself into the outside door. That was where he'd dropped his pitchfork crutch from earlier. He grabbed it now, as their opponent hobbled through the kitchen doorway on his knees, leaving a trail of blood like an unholy snail.

-

Roden's face was curled in a snarl that was almost inhuman, and flushed a dark red shade under his untrimmed beard. He gripped his hatchet in one hand while the other clutched the kitchen doorframe, attempting to pull him upright. Stars danced in his rose-tinted vision, and he blinked rapidly as he groaned, trying to clarify the image before him. As it came into focus, his jaw dropped as if a taut string had been cut loose, and he fell back on his rear, sending his feet splaying out before him - the knife still gruesomely embedded.

Light from outside filtered around an angel with outstretched wings; her holy aura seemed to expand and magnify the light thruought the room her body was composed in a defensive stance, her hair was dirt-streaked and tousled, and fell wildly about her head. Behind her rose a silhouette of black, tall and sinister, with two red eyes seeming to glow from the depths.

He blinked, and gaped, his mind's gears slowly turning until they clicked on the words of the prophet who had days before made his pilgrimage through that part of the borderlands, talking about the new rise of Man, the power of heaven and hell alike in Man's newly immortal hands; and the sacrifices which would bring this miracle about, coming before Humanity together as lambs to the slaughter. And now here he was, a human as devout to the cause as any, with the very prophesied keys to humanity's freedom before him.

"Monsters!" He screamed, pointing a bloodied finger at them, his lips curling up around yellowed teeth in a lunatic's grin. "Y-you're both gonna die!" Laughter interrupted his words as blood spurted from the knife wound and oozed from the smaller cuts.

-

Dante had been going to finish the human off with the pitchfork when the human seemed to space out for a second, returning to reality in a state of delusion.

"Let's go" he reiterated, tugging at the back of Mara's cloak as he started back out the door; if they hurried, they could get enough of a lead that the wind would marr their tracks. That was assuming the barn didn't also belong to this loon.
 
She stared at the man with wide eyes. His words, his crazed laughter, the manic glint in his eyes; they scared her. She stepped away from him and followed after Dante, one hand tightly on his arm. Her mind was swirling. Humans were terrifying creatures, that was certain. And every one of them wanted to kill her and Dante. Such animosity and hate, it was something she couldn't wrap her mind around. She ignored trickle of blood oozing from the cut on her arm, it was only a slim cut, and looked over at Dante. "Were you hurt?" She asked him.
 
"Yes, but that was a while ago, Angel-face, try to keep up!" Dante returned, limping but still keeping pace. His injured knee wasn't one hundred percent yet - he'd need proper rest for that - but having something to lean on helped immensely.

Once they were out of sight of the house, he slowed the pace. "At any rate" he said, "we can't stay in this section of the borderlands now that you've gone and set an angry mob on us" he continued without leaving room for objection "unfortunately we'll never make it across the waste on our supplies, and going back to town is suicide, so I guess we're heading for Agni."

He couldn't help but shiver as the name left his lips. Agni, also known as the City of the Lamb, was a district of New Heaven, stretching magnificently from the earth to the sky in gilded towers and Pearly temples. The city had no gates or walls, and needed none, the whole place was full of angels; no human or demon blood dared to get close. The borderland townships occasionally got hit for "blessed ones", whose souls were taken back and absorbed into the city, but not in any devastating number. For the most part, the Angels and their swords stayed in Agni, and the world's rejects lay low in the borderlands.
 
Her eyes widened and she tugged him to a stop. "Agni?! Are you insane?! Neither of us would make it through there! You're a demon, and I"m a half breed dressed as a human that can't fly!" She pointed in the general direction of Agni. "Do you realize that they don't use stairs in a city where everyone can fly?! If you didn't fly we'd be trapped at the lowest level with no way out, and if you did fly we'd be killed in an instant. How do you suggest we get through there?"

She glanced behind them to check for the human. "Let's get back to the barn so we can collect our thoughts and figure out where we're going. Or at least get out of sight, before that madman starts following us again." Started to walk again, thoughts swirling in her head. Agni. The City of the Lambs. Her mother always spoke of that place with reverence. It was one of the first cities after the fall of heaven. It was just an outlying city now, not the largest or the most beautiful, but it had been the first.
 
"You think I'm excited about this?" Dante retorted, speed walking behind her with a hitch in his step. "But we have dusty water and inedible grapes, an angry mob in the way of any result, and way too much desert to cross for us to" he stumbled, leaning on his pitchfork a minute, breathing hard "go any other direction."

Looking up, he saw Mara was still walking, and so he continued hobbling after her. He opened his mouth to argue further, but found he lacked the breath for it.
 
Mara realized that in her anxiety she was leaving Dante behind, and slowed so he could keep up with her. "There has to be a better way." She said quietly. "Some other way to get out of the borderlands. Humans seem to move in and out easily enough, and we can at least both simi-blend as humans."
 
"We're not human" Dante muttered, only partly to himself As he hobbled behind her.

"I don't think we should stay in the barn" he added after a minute. "If the horde has calmed a bit we can take breaks and skirt around town to the badlands, there's some caves and whatnot there."
 
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