Velvet looked at the envelope Madam Dorna sent back. She had put only 20 auris inside to not arouse suspicion from her.

“If I sent a hundred, she might just become paranoid and refuse to use it… But 20 should be fine, and it’s enough for a while.”

Opening the envelope, a letter awaited her.

Velvet, you should save the money for your expenses. Still, the pipes will be fixed, don’t worry about that.

She still had the remaining 980 auris, so Madam Dorna’s worries were of no concern... She couldn’t tell her that, though.

Everything is fine here.

Be well. Dorna.

“That’s good.” Velvet said. Then, she went to bed. It was still day, but there was something she wanted to try.

…

The dream was dark, but Velvet expected that.

Looking towards the chained man, she tried to speak.

“Lothrigern.”

Nothing happened. Well, she still had the other name.

“Andras Apolyon.”

The chained man shook. Then, everything went red.

…

Velvet woke up in pain, as if she had been sliced in pieces.

Rolling out of the bed, her vision was tinted red.

She touched her face, feeling blood coming out of her eyes.

“What did you do?!” She heard Hyde screaming in her head. “You’re on the verge of losing control!”

Between the blood in her eyes, she could see her skin breaking up and unfurling, as if turning into the pages of a book fluttering in a hurricane.

Velvet pressed with her fingers the pages that were turning around in her face, ‘closing’ it, taking deep breaths. With the other hand, she picked one of the empty bottles that she used to carry the ink for the charms, making the dripping blood fall inside.

“She is speaking…” She tried to ignore the new voice in her head.

Half her face and body had become paper-like, and the blood coming out of her eyes felt like ink.

“Get out of the hat and bring me papers.” She used the Apathy part of her Paradigm to block the memories of the dream, breathing steadily to stop the loss of control.

Hyde put a few blank pages in front of her, asking about what the hell she did.

“I mentioned Andras name in the dream, then, everything went to metaphorical hell.” Talking over Her voice, she felt the ‘pages’ slowly going back to becoming her skin and meat, closing in on themselves.

She let out a breath. Her voice stopped.

Hyde stopped panicking, now interested. Still, he waited for Velvet to recover control.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The blood that had fallen out of her eyes seemed to swirl inside the bottle, changing from red to dark blue with star-like specks.

It was a high quality magic material, so Velvet didn’t want to waste it.

The ‘pages’ that her skin had become also were good material, but ripping them would rip Velvet’s own skin, so, unlike the already spilled blood, that shouldn’t be touched.

Feeling her body going back to normal, she let out a sudden laugh.

“I did it! The first step! He looked at me! Hahahaha!”

“Are you insane? You almost had a full breakdown!”

“Ah.” Using some magic to put the blood that spilled out inside the bottle, she started rummaging through her suitcase. “Yes, yes, I blocked those…”

The thing that she saw before waking up, the red light.

It wasn’t a flash, it was just something reacting and becoming visible.

She barely looked at a part of it before it became impossible.

But she was a knowledge mage. She never forgets.

That part she managed to see, she remembered it fully. But, were she to unblock these memories, she would lose control again.

So, she picked some non magical ink, grabbing a paper of the ones Hyde brought, and, piece by piece, slowly unblocking a small part of the already small memory, before blocking it again and doing the same to another, she drew in different pages, sometimes drawing them in reverse, or only the vertical lines in one page, the horizontal in other and the curves in another, stopping every time she felt one page was getting too intense, until she managed to map what she saw.

Once she was done, she let her body flop on the floor, too drained of energy to even climb to the bed.

At least there is a fancy carpet under me. She mocked, thinking about what she had seen.

A part of a magic formation.

A magic formation that responded to the use of the name Andras Apolyon.

If she had to guess, she would suppose it was a sealing formation, at the minimum, made to keep the chained man in place.

It was a very powerful formation, just taking a glimpse of it almost killed her.

So, she was sure it was made by the Father of Hell.

The symbols that made it were unknown to Velvet, not recognizing any of them, not even some similar ones.

“Hyde, do you know any?”

“No. It’s… very high class. But you can break them down in simpler spells. They can be usable that way.” As a knowledge demon, Hyde had grown over the initial scare, now also wanting that juicy, juicy information.

He even picked an empty page on his own, doing his best to break them into usable sigils.

“This one, it looks like a complete one, but we can break it down into five separate seals, like this…” He drew five different symbols. “I don’t know what they do. We may need someone to try them.”

“Oh?” Velvet grinned at him. “Baraviodos would cry about it. You really are a demon, aren’t you?”

“Lust demons are too emotional. Knowledge demons are only interested in the discovery of unknown things.” Velvet felt Hyde’s greedy, eight eyed gaze upon the pages.

Well, that worked great for her. A cooperative demon worked better than an uninterested one.

“This one… It seems like it's done halfway… Did you try other names?”

“The fairy one Gertine gave me, but it didn’t do anything.”

“I’m sure some other names from Them may cause a reaction.”

“Do you even know any other name?”

“No.”

Both of them kept a few seconds of silence, before going back to the previous theme.

“Causing trouble in the airship is not a good idea, and it also can make us targets of revenge.” Velvet said. “I don’t know what the Mergifari’s Big Market has to offer, but maybe opportunity arises.”

She wasn’t planning on asking Gertine for help. She never told Irsen Kartal nor Baraviodos about her dreams, only Hyde and Madam Dorna knowing about them.

The reason was simple, even if she didn’t know what it was, maybe others did, and that could go wrong very, very fast.

So she preferred to take baby steps on her journey, and not get in a mess because she confided in the wrong person.

“Hyde, this is our first step. We are a million times further than before.”

“I wouldn't say a million, if that’s a full formation made from Him, it’s not even a one percent.”

“How much is a million multiplied by zero?”

Hyde did not answer.

“See? I’m right. We were at zero before. So, if we are now at one, or at zero point zero zero zero one, we are still a million times further away from before. Or a billion.”

“We have reached infinity today Hyde!”

“You’re making it sound way bigger than it is.”

“Hyde. How much is infinite multiplied by zero?”

“...”

“Answer me Hyde. Spiders don’t play dead.”

“Demon spiders do.”