Noth was a bit apprehensive about his angel’s words. He trusted her, sure, but he didn’t really feel like anything about him had changed enough for him to suddenly be able to do something that seemed so awe-inspiring. How could it be that such amazing teleportation could be possible? He’d never heard of a single person with such an ability before. The closest thing he’d ever heard of was a small handful of high tiered [Wizards], who were able to teleport within eyeshot at best. It was unfathomable that he would be allowed to just utter a word to his angel and suddenly be somewhere so far away.
And yet, despite the way his rational mind was busy disbelieving it, the teen was already positively giddy from his building anticipation.
“It’s true? You’re sure this’ll work?”
When Serris nodded Noth had to keep himself from doing something odd with his hands in his excitement. If he didn’t calm down, he was liable to screw everything up, and at the worst that could mean getting horribly lost or even breaking precious bracelet. The teen did his best to soothe his errant breathing, schooling his features into a more determined look, and concentrating on the task at hand. And yet, as the words commandingly came out of his mouth, a grin still snuck onto his lips.
“Take me to the capital’s cathedral!”
With a loving smile on her face, the angel spread her arms and flared her wings. They both suddenly wrapped around the teen, the wings seeming to have grown impossibly large enough to truly surround him, and somehow he felt well and truly engulfed in the feathers and hugs. It was a decidedly ticklish feeling, as her wing’s many feathers repeatedly brushed against his exposed skin and hair in irregular intervals. Just when Noth thought that he might squirm and let out a small chuckle, Serris’s feathers and arms retreated, revealing an entirely new location than where they’d been standing only moments ago. With a victorious huff and a satisfied look on her face from a job well done, the angel triumphantly rose her arms into the air, her wings spreading high along with them.
Noth looked in every direction, noting their location. They seemed to be in some sort of alley between two buildings, and all in all it wasn’t too awe-inspiring of a sight, but even just the bricks on the walls next to them seemed of a far better quality than anything in the one town he’d been to. The alley was shockingly clean, and though the street looked well-worn and a bit in need of a scrubbing, it still didn’t seem dirty by any standard. And the small peek of the main street his eyes could make out…
The teen’s feet were carrying him towards the beautiful vibrant buildings he could just barely make out before he even knew what he was doing.
His breath caught when he finally made it out of the alley and onto the main street. It was absolutely amazing how colourful and lively everything was. The buildings may have looked like they’d been there for a long time, but by no means did they look old. Every store and home were decorated with different whimsical colours, from reds to blues to purples to greens- Everything was a rainbow assortment of beautifully painted walls and roofs. Some of the sidings of businesses even had their own lovely artworks or murals painted and built into them. Even the street itself seemed to have beautiful scrawling patterns placed onto it. And amongst all this colour and life, the only building devoid of any hue at all was the one that he had come out of the alley next to; The church of capital, the home of the pope.
It was an exceedingly large building, so large, in fact, that it took up almost the entire block in length. It had beautiful steeples, and many bells adorning them. The many spikey bits atop the rooves seemed as if they were trying to reach to the God-dess itself, like they were seeking a closer connection. But the most eye-catching feature of the great marble coloured cathedral had to be the many reliefs that were built into its outer walls. Many different depictions of the God-dess were carved into the walls, all of them standing side by side with their eyes firmly closed. There was an old man with a cane, a young woman holding a basket, a tiny boy carrying a ball, a middle aged cobbler man, and many many more, all superbly made out of what seemed to be pure marble, to match the rest of the church's colouration.
Noth’s curiosity of course made a bid for him to ask Serris if any of these forms shown were truly how the God-dess looked, but he didn’t allow the impulse to come to fruition; This was no time for such idle chatter. He was looking at the building that housed both his greatest enemy, and hopefully his most important informant. This was the time to get serious, lest he somehow manage to fail at his reason for coming here and fall into the hands of the pope’s lackeys. The look of wonder and enchantment sadly bled out of his face, instead being replaced with a visage of great resolve.
“You’re sure it’s safe to go in there?”
“But what about after? What’s to stop him from attacking me on my way out, once all that official business is done?”
The angel slowly twirled and floated in the direction of the church’s entrance, looking back towards the teen with a mischievous face as she went.
Serris’s conspiratorial wink wasn’t lost on Noth in the least. So all he had to do was stall for enough time to teleport back out of there? That fit in almost too perfectly with his plan to question the prophet and finally get some answers. His eyes scanned over the graceful form of his angel. Was she truly ok with all of this? She’d seemed so scared and miserable about it all before, so why was she suddenly so… okay with everything? Was it all just an act, or had something transpired outside of his view again? The teen had to suppress a sigh at the fact that he might never get to know the answer to his question, yet again. But what was the point of looking so deeply into all of this? Serris was his angel, his partner. She was already a piece of him for years now at this point. What merit was there to questioning her actions now of all times? Why not just believe in her choices and see where the almighty angel had decided to take him? She’d already done so much for him, now wasn’t the time to be second guessing her reasons for it all. Instead, he'd listen to what the prophet had wanted to tell him about his angel, and see if any of the new information he learned would convince him to change his mind about her.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
~~~
The reception given by the church to Noth was lacklustre, to say the least. On the surface the priests who interacted with him had all seemed to be doing impeccable jobs, and yet there was still the lingering feeling of distaste in their every action. Perhaps their tone would be off, or they’d do their utmost to refrain from ever being too close to him. At times they’d shoot him sidelong looks when they thought he wouldn’t catch them. It was all such easily noticeable signs, that the teen couldn’t actually believe that they thought they were being stealthy in the slightest. He was used to such treatment from overly superstitious and ignorant people, there was no way that he was simply going to let some kind of reaction to their pettiness show. Instead, Noth focused his efforts on keeping to proper church etiquette, something he hadn’t really gotten any practical practice on yet, and trying to keep his features schooled in a commanding and disciplined look. He wouldn’t give the silly priests a single extra point to try and nitpick him on.
It would have been a lot easier of a task to perform without an angel throwing a small fit beside him, though.
Serris had a tirade of nasty looks, words, and actions to perform on her hated victims. Of course, she never let them hear or see her, but her small pranks of vengeance did, in fact, affect them. The way that the two priests that had been escorting him kept tripping, dropping their candles, suddenly getting cold chills, and having their small priest headpieces get knocked off, was quickly creating a misunderstanding. Clearly the highly religious priests would take these unlucky incidents to be caused by being near such a hated and forsaken being like Noth, and slowly their reactions to him changed from plain disdain to fear of being anywhere near him. It had the desired effect of making their glares and disrespectful actions stop, but it also had the unintended and yet still quite nice effect of making them hurry along at an almost unsafe pace. Because of their fearful rushing, Noth finally made it to the prophet’s rooms nice and quickly, and the two priests beat a hasty retreat, scurrying away as if their lives were at stake.
Noth thought that he should probably scold Serris for making people’s already dreary misconceptions of him even worse, but… Well it was hard for the teen to really care enough to want to say anything about it to her in the first place, so he quickly let that idea go.
Before he could even knock, a deep, reverberating voice summoned the teen into the room. Noth did his best to straighten up and look like he belonged there, and then smoothly opened the door and strode inside. But something strange happened when he fully entered the room; The bond inside of him suddenly grew hazy. He reflexively looked back at the doorway where Serris had last been next to him, but the angel was nowhere to be seen. Noth anxiously took a step back towards the threshold and leaned his head out to look left and right down the hallways, but there was still no sign of her. The bond they shared had always given him some vague notion of her location all these years, and yet suddenly that feeling had completely vanished, as if he had all of a sudden lost one of his major senses. Even on the few occasions where his angel had gone inconspicuously missing, he’d never felt such a loss before. He’d still at least been able to tell that she was somewhere, just hidden from view. And yet now… It was like she didn’t even exist.
In a panic, Noth opened his mouth to try and call out for Serris, or perhaps make a wish to see if he was still connected to her powers somehow, but before he could figure out what words to say, the booming voice that had summoned him into the room in the first place cut him off.
“Stop your panicking, boy. Your angel may have gone to the God-dess’s side, but she will be returned to you quickly afterwards.”
The teen looked in the direction of the deep, wise-sounding voice. Tucked away in a corner of the dimly lit room, a dark-skinned old man covered in far too many robes was sitting at a small table and drinking tea. His eyes were closed, and yet he accurately beckoned Noth over with a wave of his hand, and pointed towards an open seat across from him. Noth cautiously made his way through the almost too dark room, stopping at the table and yet refusing to sit. He looked down untrustingly at the man who was casually pouring him out a cup of tea, and his words tumbled out with a suspicious tone.
“Why is my angel gone?”
“The God-dess decided to take her away. It was the best way to make sure that your angel wouldn’t end up attacking me at some point during our little talk, after all. She has no power over the mortal realm up there, so I should be perfectly safe. Please, try some tea.”
Noth didn’t like how casual the prophet seemed to be about all of this. They were talking about otherworldly holy beings, should he not be a bit more solemn or reverential about it? And yet, the teen couldn’t bring himself to voice his opinions on the matter. How could he suddenly let his pickiness get in the way of finally learning the answers he’d been waiting years to hear? With a sigh, he roughly sat down and took his cup of tea. As he politely took a sip, he was shocked to find that the flavour of the light and watery looking tea was actually rather dark and odd, and when he looked back up from the cup, the room had suddenly been filled with a pale yellow light, illuminating every nook and cranny of the previously dim premises.
“Forgive me but I needed you to be able to see, so I put a little something in our tea. The caretakers here are not allowed to view some of the tapestries in my room, and since I’m blind I have no need for anything to light the place to begin with.”
The teen would have been absolutely furious with the prophet’s trick, had he not already been so absolutely fascinated by the sudden change in his vision. Perhaps it was a novel and unharmful enough trick that he could let this one slide. He sipped a bit more of the odd tasting tea to see if it had any further effects to it, and when he put the cup back down, the old man was standing up and slowly swaying his way over to one of the many tapestries adorning the walls.
“You can see this one now, correct? It should have a depiction of many different angels on it?”
As he said, it indeed did depict a number of differently coloured angels wearing much the same robes. They all seemed to have very similar looks to Noth’s angel, and although none of their faces were truly discernable, they all had easily noticeable different hairstyles with their own unique colours to them, and different wing colours that seemed to match their hair. Noth was absolutely enthralled with looking at all the many different angels that the tapestry was showing him.
“Tell me boy, what kind of angel do you think you have?”
The question seemed odd to Noth. Shouldn’t the prophet who knows everything know what kind of angel Serris was? Worried about where this was going, and second guessing his own words, Noth meekly replied.
“...An angel of mercy?”
The old man’s hand reached up and pointed to a particular angel, one with a pale yellow colouration, and long, flowing hair that came down to her hips.
“And is this what your angel looks like? This is the form that all angels of mercy come in. The God-dess can be quite uniform and uncreative with its angels, you see.”
Noth was confused. That was clearly not at all what his angel looked like. The hair was much too long, much too straight at the ends, and the colour of its features just weren’t nearly rusty enough. Not to mention that its hair didn't start out in a white gradient, like Serris's did, and was just the same colour the whole way down. Well, it was true that she’d never once said aloud that she was an angel of mercy, but what else could she have been? In his confusion, Noth's eyes scanned rapidly over the tapestry, until it finally fell on the image of a different angel, one that was depicted a fair distance away from all the others. Noticing that the teen’s eyes had finally rested upon a particular angel, the prophet sighed and began to slowly make his way back.
“This one’s going to take a little bit of explaining, my boy.”