Man, I am so going to hell. If not for all the other reasons (which, if you're a Catholic like I still tell people I am, can mean simply being alive), just because of everything I've thought up about angels. I mean, there were groups of people who thought it was a sin to even NAME the angels, and I've expended many brainmeats on thinking up all these quirks and so on, as though it were a species or race (which I suppose they technically are, but not in a traditional Biblical sense, if you know what I mean). I don't even think I can fit everything I've thought up into Claris (which is one reason why I'm doing this little extra thing I mentioned earlier... >_>). A few days ago I was thinking about battle behavior.

Obviously, I tried to make it clear in the story that angels prefer to fight aerially, for several reasons. The most obvious is that when you're up in the heavens then you don't get human beings involved or property destroyed, so Holy Wars can be conducted out of the seeing range of humans. But also, angels have their nerve centers on their backs--where their wings meet one another. Hitting the nerve center is somewhat akin to kicking a guy between the legs, except that the pain is increased by a fairly large factor. It can paralyze them for hours (while it usually only paralyzes a guy for a few minutes XP). Basically the equivalent of going for the jugular. Stroking it and touching it gently is considered taboo, also, because that would feel very nice. :3; Additionally, the only way to really kill an angel (and even then, it's not entirely certain.. angels are hard creatures to kill) is to cut off both of his/her wings. Since, in aerial fighting, the wings are constantly in motion, it's difficult not only to strike them but even more difficult to hit that sensitive nerve center, protected as it is by the beating wings.

Battles between angels in air usually end when one angel is able to weaken his opponent to the point where they have a hard time keeping aloft. At this point the angel will attack one of the wings in order to disable it, then kill their opponent by cutting off both wings (or however many they have--obviously it's more difficult to kill angels like Cadmiel, who have four, or angels like Metatron, who have six--you'd have to cut off all of them). It's considered incredibly cruel to let an angel live one-winged. Not only does it -hurt-, but they can't fly any more, and wings never grow back. Additionally, once one is gone, the angel in question can't hide them any more. So, they can't get back to Heaven because they can't fly (and even if they could, they would be ostracized as a freak) and they can't really live on Earth either.

Cadmiel, being a general, has been in a great deal of battles and has never let an opponent walk away with one wing.