Often the forces fought for what they believed was their rightful place. After the fallen departed into vagrancy and emptiness, their war never really ended; although we had been received into His sight. Reward for servitude and love, not derision and perdition. My brethren were not so willingly dissuaded from their meritorious, even at times zealous; faith. The others, ostracized to dwell in this, your world; such as it is. Their war began anew, on new fronts. This time the ends were not blessedness or favor, but something far more fragile; more susceptible to temptation. Governed by its own passions, its own motions of appetite and personal gain. The commodity of course; the human soul.
We would fight no more with spear and sword. There are, however, men of the utmost indelible character. Who live their faith. God protect them.
They are our agents, blessed with inextricable judgment, inexplicably gifted with instinct, a sixth sense as it were. Indeed, we fight no more. The war has become an attrition of seeking the virtuous, and inspiring them for His work. The darkness contains all the accouterments of deception and loss, and we fight those who would influence a man of worth unto his own destruction.
They are hunters. They never sleep. They walk when witching hours rise, and the thralls linger in the shadowy doorways. They now carry our swords for us, walking these harrowing wastes, lands devoid of virtue. Beacons these men have become, and their light enrages a demon. They immolate the trespassers of the virtuous, dispelling their plots, and opening mens’ eyes to the spirit-frequented world between us and Heaven. They merit all the auspices of grace in the act of their duty, and the world can not know them.
Haunted by their anonymity, many are alone, and the hunt alone can sate them, and ease their burden. Their blessed gift carried like a curse. Do we place our hope in these; and carry our comfort, our consoling arms unto them in their loneliness? The very least we ought do is show them thanks. Although their faith requires no vision to instill their hearts with feats and deeds noble and virtuous. Their service unseen and deniable from a lack of presence or apparent entry, and evidence lacking.
Cornelius is one of their kind, we watch over him. Although, he seems the most capable of great virtue and influence. Moreover, he denies his brightness, and like many of us, hides a darkness and fights with all his will. He will need our aid. Barring prohibitions from the Master most high; we best watch him well, for the greatest of us was the hardest to fall. Man still has not learned this well. Often the hunter is a man (or woman) of the Church militant; drawn like fireflies into the warmth of God’s vision through sleep and grace. They seek nothing, save humility and inner stillness. The angels show them their paths in due time.
Rather, lifted up thus, they portend the finality of their purpose, and drive them to merit; filling their hearts with hope. When the new agent awakens, they are disturbed, for certain; as seeing an angel is apt to do. Unable to know how to conceal their new grace, manifold instances they clothe themselves to ignore their gift. Soon, their task intersects their fate, or inadvertently they find themselves forced to defend against tormenting. Hell is nothing if not unrelenting, and will shred a man’s mind and wrack his faith; bathing his sight with visions of vacuous, absent souls.
Only those secured in faith, and the strong, resist despair. The fallen carry no qualms, and by any means seek to deter, contort, or otherwise remove an agent from this battle. Upon their utterance though, defensible is their position. Words have their own power. Recognized by the minions of Hell and the vampiric soul draining undead who inhabit man’s dominion and the abyss below it; whereupon uttering them, invoking their ancient influence, contorts the faces and confounds a follower of the Dark One. Many hunters can sear a demon with engulfing light. Holy and in its purest form; a demon can not remain, and consumed by it, can be returned to the inane pits to despair in its own failure and denial of the true Master.