If I have not written in some time, it is because all available Guardians have been pressed into service hunting Pestilences. What nasty, feverish creatures they are, breathing foul contagion into the springtime, dragging their fingers across throats, clouding heads and chilling hearts. In the last week I must have located three dozen of them, but there always seem to be more.
I asked Orison if these creatures always travel in packs, if the Enemy saves them up and then lets them loose in a great mass, for how else could there be so many all at once? But Orison says no, that there are no more of them than there are any other kind of the Fallen.
“Pestilences gather energy bit by bit in normal times, stealing it by way of a cold here, an allergy attack there,” he explained to me. “Then, when they have gathered enough, they use it to create something new and deadly and spread it in a great burst. They are cunning and clever, and single-minded in their hate. What made them so effectual at curing disease they now use for the opposite purpose.”
For this reason I have been worried about Brid—it hurts her to think that these creatures who are undoing so much of a Healer’s good work were once Healers themselves. She asks me to confide in her about what the hunt is like, but I cannot bring myself to do it. I can’t lay that weight on her.
It is frightening to consider what we might be capable of if we fail to resist evil.
The hunt is going well, if I can say that about an endeavor that leaves dozens of angels exhausted and sick at the end of every venture. The Cherubs are worst off, of course, but even we scouts are bearing our share of the pain. I now am intimately familiar with the feeling of fever, of straining breath and tight throat and heavy muscles, but worse is the soul-sickness. The fear and sorrow pressed so tightly down into the base of oneself, unable to make any difference under the weight of weariness. But the Healers are tireless and determined, tending to us as well as their human charges—they are truly an inspiration to all of us. We go back to Earth renewed, and every time we do the Enemy is fewer.
We will put an end to this. Soon the world will be well again.