I was listening to the surreal conversation between White Flower and the crazy black angel. Ice cold fear and certitude were gripping my heart. Certainty of what's going to come. There is no way I could stop this monster.

“White Flower, if we leave this thing here, it will destroy everything it can.”

“Yes. It intends to kill for as long as he will have energy, and I intend to be as far away from it as possible. We need to lay down somewhere in the other corner of the world until it dies, or your flesh would just prolong the inevitable.”

“Oh, fucking fuck! Do you think that he can do that!? But what about the deal?!”

Not only that he will be a walking disaster, but I risk becoming his emergency food reserve.

“He will try to find a way to survive as long as possible. His problem is that only one teleport costs more energy than one of your feet contains. He would need one hundred Cala to get full again, and he cannot eat so fast. Even if he doesn't do anything, he consumes energy. I hope he does not get the idea of making a lot of supplies. If he would know there are very few magical creatures here, we might get into trouble.”

“Oh fuck! I hope he cannot hear you!”

“No. Anyhow the equation does not work in the long run, else there would be black angels living in other zones, not only around their shrine. That must be their temporary survival trick but not more.”

That gave me a ray of hope. I hope White Flower's assumptions are correct. I would have breathed deep if I had been in the lead.

“Good to know that. So he will kill hundreds here and die? Thousands? How long can he stay active?”

Instead of speculating, she asked him directly:

“When you move away from the shrine, how far away can you go? There is a huge area that is black angels' area!”

“That is because we can go for days without connection to the shrine. I can cover a lot of territory in one day if I teleport every now and then.”

“For days?”

OK, the worst assumptions are confirmed, the beast will survive long enough to inflict significant damage.

“Oh yes.” - he pointed at the flesh he had gathered - “Unfortunately, this does not add much, but it is still something. And the taste is ok. It will sweeten it for me, thank you!”

The taste is ok! Oh, fucking fuck!

While I was ruminating on his words, White Flower surprised me again:

“You know something? I can offer you a better solution!”

He raised a brow looking at me.

“A better solution? To what problem?”

I was now free, standing in front of him, and he was back at his chewing at my former foot. Now the toes were on the row. The other pieces of meat were aligned on the improvised table: another foot, two hands and a lower abdomen with two complete legs. Acid was spilt everywhere, but he didn't seem bothered by it, even if I had to heal from time to time my aching soles. It all made a weird, sick and ghoulish scene.

“I'll pack these when I go!” - he said as he saw my glance

As if I would worry that he would be wasting those precious things! He had delicate traits and a relatively small mouth, but he had no problems taking small bites from the flesh and tendons, which were incredibly hard. Hardened by magic. Now he started to chew on a piece of even harder bone.

I fought against the instinct that was telling me to run away.

“To your 'dying here' problem.” - said Flo.

He shrugged, unimpressed:

“My dying here? That's a fact unless you can open a portal which I do not think you can. Do you know the way back to the other world?”

“Yes, what do you mean? Why don't you leave as long as it is still possible?”

"I know a little about black angels, trust me. I have an idea."

Trust me! Fuck, I feared she would say that. I do not trust him!

It was impressive to see how simple and serene he took the fact that he was condemned to die unless you understood that he was not human. No, he is a fucking black angel, a killing beast that would gladly attack a superior power just to inflict some casualties. The more, the better.

“I don't know the way now, but I may learn it tomorrow. I will be looking for it. You can petrify yourself, isn't it?”

He nodded cautiously.

“Yees?”

“You could petrify yourself; I would bind the statue to me and move it to the ethereal space. So you will travel with me and be invulnerable. If and when I get to the black angels' zone, I would put your statue there and wake you up.”

He stopped chewing for a moment and watched me. His face displayed surprise:

“You can do that? Put me in the ethereal space? You would do that for me? No tricks?”

“Yes, I can. No tricks!” - nodded Flo.

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He seemed to consider it.

“What would happen if you died?”

White Flower shrugged.

“The statue would come automatically in the real world. In such a case, you would need to put a trigger on you to wake you up; I would probably no longer be able to do it before.”

“Yes!” - he nodded - ”I can do that. You could also feed me, and I could stay by you if you can find it tomorrow?”

Oh fuck. I was afraid he would say something like that. White Flower kept her cool:

“That was a way of speaking, you know that. It would probably take a long time to find the way, tomorrow or one year from now, who knows how long. Having you by my side will be a problem. Feeding flesh is just the minimum subsistence for you, but not enough to keep you fighting, isn't it? Your aura is powerful and can be felt over a wide range; we'll get attacked because of it. So we'll have to fight. How? That would consume your energy faster than you can replenish it. Besides that, the machines that were used to bring us to this world would be destroyed by your aura. So we cannot use them to get back. It worked when you were inside the boy, in the background, not leading the boy, but as soon as you came out, your aura was unleashed. I can control my aura and see if I can use them. I am offering you the best option to survive.”

He was now chewing on the last toe, my little toe, from the right food. I was watching it with some kind of regret. He did not seem to be convinced by Flo's arguments. Flo continued:

“They have many terrible weapons here. Even if you think you can try to hide and subsist, I don't think I'll survive if we stay together, so it will end the same way but a little later. I can hide by myself much better without you; I was caught because I made an error that I will no longer make.”

That seemed to convince him. He nodded:

“You may be right, probably it is my best chance to relink to the shrine.” - he watched me for a couple of seconds without saying anything, then continued - “I don't see a reason why I should not accept this deal. In exchange, I can offer you free access to the black angel zone to scavenge what you need if you help me get there. I promise you that no black angel will attack you while I'll be by your side, and I'll stay there as long as you will want me until you get your fill. Do we have a deal?”

He needed to offer me something, and it was no small offer. There are always things to scavenge from their area.

“Deal!”

“So be it.” - he said and nodded in a kind of majestic way and, at the same moment, swallowed the last pieces of my former toe. I was watching how it went down along his neck with mixed feelings.

He cleaned his mouth with a swipe of his backhand, spread his wings, lowered his head, watching me intensively as if to check how impressed I was and slowly petrified himself like a giant gargoyle. A shiver passed through my spine.

I could not believe what I saw. Was the nightmare gone? Just like that? Or was this some kind of another sick joke?

“Oh, fucking fuck! You did it! Flo, you are the best! I cannot believe it!”

She sighed, looking at the dark grey statue. I wondered:

“I suppose you do not intend to keep your part of the deal? Let's go from here!”

She shook her head:

“Oh, but I will. I don't know what trigger he has for wake-up or what other spell he put on himself. It can be proximity to me, for instance. Best we do as I've said, we put him into the ethereal space and try to forget this ever happened.”

"But, but, what if he wakes up in one day, or two days from now?"

"Not in the ethereal space. He cannot navigate that space; it has different rules. Nobody went alive in the ethereal space and came back."

“So we simply forget him?”

“Time has no relevance for him in this state. If by chance, we get in the future in their zone, we need to remember to put him down. That could even save our life. Now let's put this sorry story behind us.”

She put her hand on the statue, which became slowly transparent and then faded from view. A wave of glacial coldness gripped my heart.

“What the fuck? What is this?”

“Remnants of his aura. It will dissipate.” - she sighed - “Now maybe we can look for Cala's inventory, or was everything melted in that acid bath?”

“Probably, they would have retrieved everything before.”

She nodded and spread her wings. Yeah, I have wings, and they work!

“I think so too. Probably they undressed you completely before putting you in that casket.”

I flew from room to room, searching, my aura fully unleashed. I could 'see' clearly through the walls, even a level up or down. I could distinguish even further, but that did not have the same clarity.

The mana sight helped even more than the real view as the light was minimal, only a kind of emergency lighting was still working, and even these lamps were blowing up as I progressed. Leds. They used fucking leds for emergency lighting.

Yes, I could make light, but that would give me away, and mana sight was good enough.

The sight was depressing. Dead people everywhere. Some were only shadows on the walls, having been pulverized by strong dark magic blasts; others were simply butchered; only one of his clawed fingers was enough to decapitate a human.

Shocking to see the area he went through in those minutes when I've fought the acid inside that casket. He probably had an eye on me and knew I would survive, so he was confident in keeping his part of the bargain while unleashing mayhem around. For whatever reason, it is important for them to keep their part of the deal; this thing is ingrained in their dna, if we can talk about dna in context with these magic beasts.

Even if now, when I think back, he was at the time not linked to any deal as I have not said I accepted it. Fuck, I must give credit where credit is due; he came to help me supposing that I'll accept his deal. He could have washed his hands and let me die. Yeah, black angels do have some kind of weird notion of honour.

As I ruminated about the black angel, walking through the many rooms, I suddenly realized something strange: nobody came to check for victims and try to rescue survivors. Did he really clean up the whole site? Where and how far was the next 'help'?

A couple of times, I've heard some noise and moaning. There might be some survivors that I did not discover yet. That or maybe something else. There have been several caskets like mine, and more people who had been kept in a coma to be interrogated were probably waking up. The black angel had not killed them. I don't know what I should do with them? I need to think about it, but first, let me get my things. It was good that Flo was in the lead, as her mind was clearer than mine. The whole atmosphere, the whole site, was freaking me out. The faster and further I get from this site, the better I would feel.

Finally, I found the area where my items were kept. Everything was there, even additional items that I did not know. As I took my belt in my hand and was thinking if to search for a passing outfit, a sense of urgency nagged at me. It was too quiet.

In the end, irrational fear won over me. I bound the belt directly on my skin in a hurry and pulled everything I could inside my inventory without checking, and left with a beat of my wings. I knew the way towards a window, placed a hiding mirror over me and flew out.

As I arrived at a hill dominating the valley, I stopped and looked back at the compound.

I breathed deep in and out.

Free! I was free!