What do you know of Goblins?

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑣𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑜𝑒𝑑 𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑎𝑙𝑒; "𝐴𝑙𝑙 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑚𝑦 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒, 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑠𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑙𝑎𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑚𝑦 𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑠."

This was maybe the third, thirtieth, three-hundredth loop now, paranoia about a body and soul invading traveller had… backfired, spectacularly, again.

Arthur staggered but half a step into the heart of the reactor, radiation battering and seeping into his mutated flesh and bone - it was a poisoned heatwave he was forced to swallow. He braced whilst he shot whatever Techrot shambled its way toward him with their gargling, stuttered voices, and he was - not content - but accepting of the fact that he could die here again. Just one more loop, one more death, one more failure, one more year of waiting to die.

Chorus screams split the rancid air from his flank, and his stomach churned because he knew exactly who had broken orders.

"Stay topside, be a medic, help the civvies."

He glanced behind him to see a blur of white and viridian, her mouth closing and wings wide as they beat against the fetid air. Stupid woman, he thought - not caring about the fact he had apparently volunteered himself to be her meat-shield with the way he stood in front of her. Her gaze was a balm to his soul, and as much as he wanted to hate it - he needed to see her alive, because his comms were dead, and the only proof anyone survived was her.

"I'm sorry I'm disobeying orders, Lieutenant," she snapped, ere continuing; "Going in alone was-"

"A stupid choice," he finished for her. Stupid woman, reassuring him to the point of near tears - her wings outstretched and hands glittering. What use was an angel so close to hell? His face scrunched in a flinch when she used his title, softening for a spell only to watch her pale feathers catch the diseased crimson light before it was drowned by the glow of her summons.

The Ophanim sang in such a harmony that gave him the vaguest semblance of hope, drifted outward in obedient emerald halos whilst their mechanical hymns swelled around her. "This isn't a drill, Angel," he coughed, snapping his eye to hers. "Comms are silent. Amir- Aoi."

A pause followed.

Then the wail and gouging scrapes in metal came.

A lashing trinity of tails cracked, and gaunt Techrot legs skittered across the surface of the bomb as it yowled, tilting a diamond-shaped head in jittering turns, Angel froze. Wings locked at their full span, her fingertips guttering for a moment as she caught whatever breath she could in the noxious chamber - she'd not done that since she saw what a roadside bomb did to her Lieutenant's friend - what it did to the man that laughed, once. A freckled nose scrunched ere she screamed herself upward. A gentle well of green coiled beneath Arthur's feet that cooled the fallout under his skin, one eye flicking to the soft circles that made it all bearable. For one brief, crippling second, she was perhaps untouchable and all the monsters in the room were a witness to her glory. Angel, his idiotic half-saint, half war-thing that was haloed in emerald and ochre, casting judgements unto the weary beasts and murmur below.

The Babau convulsed under such joined attacks - a beautiful display of a seraph and her zealot purging what was unworthy. It was fine. Good. Hope that this loop had something triumphant in its end, they gave their lives over, and over, and over to stop this.

A stutter.

A fracture into a dozen overlapping voices, each one caught in a failing transmission that failed to pass through her throat. Her midsection bloomed vermilion and black, before she was tossed at the control room viewport with a macabre snap. The cries wheezed in her sternum whilst her hands scrambled at her bleeding gut. It skittered over to her - why did the Techrot revel in this, in dismantling her wings piece by piece, peeling them from her spine with a wet and methodical patience? She screamed until it cracked the glass behind her, enough until her eyes burned malachite in their sockets, enough to make the beast disaggregate at its seams and take the sound with it.

He stumbled, choking on his words however broken they were.

"Perse-" The name was swallowed down. Gone. He lurched toward her like she was the only person he had to see live through this - legs buckled, a palm cracked against the window to keep himself from going down entirely. He lugged her upright by whatever he could reach, her eyes were wet and had almost dimmed entire, just left a bluish green - human - without a semblance of her jade light behind them. Each inhale rattled like old coins, heaving with the effort of a breath that kept nearly not arriving.

She stammered his name, face scrunching and softening whilst she trembled. It rang in his ears, he didn't want to hear it.

"Don' fall… asleep." He ebbed in turn, smoothing her wing from her face with the last of his gentleness.

"Lieuten-Lieu-Lieutenant"

"Keep talk- keep talking."

"Arth-Arthur."

"'m here, Angel."

Coward. Call her name, you did in the army, you did in the ICA before you called her Angel. You've said it before, ten-thousand times in your head and under your breath across maybe ten-thousand fucking loops and you can't say it when it's the only thing left to give her. Coward.

The word wasn't a kind thing, it came the way the radiation had - merciless.

You're going to watch her die again. You're going to watch her die and you will not even give her name back.

Porcelain fingers found his hand and closed around his digits with a strength that was dying quicker than she was. Bruise edged lips parted as her body convulsed… and she smiled. Not her usual one, the cute one that had her feathers fluffed with an upturn to her lips that spread soft and contagious, it was the smile of a punchline gained a second after everyone else and found it funny regardless. She tried to shape the word. He already knew what it was.

"Shut…" He wheezed "Not- not allowed."

She trembled in turn, staring at him. as his forehead knocked into hers.

"is- an order, Angel."