Mercury and I walked out of the forest to sirens going off. Aw, come on man.

“Brother!” Pelias yelled, riding up. He was decked out in full armor, “There’s no time, Aphrodite is in danger!”

Shit, I hadn’t even had three months of break.

Mercury sprinted off. I whistled sharply. Pyro ran up.

“Sorry for lying, we’re headed straight for danger,” I said, panicking, “Mercury! Get on and lead the horse.”

Mercury glanced over as Pyro ran up. His feet shifted, and soon he was behind me.

“Hya!”

Pyro sprinted, and I spoke quickly.

“The moment I dismount you are to go straight to the Fae Realm, do you hear me? Do not try and stick around!” I ordered Pyro as he galloped after Pelias’s horse, listening to Mercury’s nonverbal orders.

“How far away is sunrise? Is it indoors?”

“It’s outside, an hour till sunrise,” Mercury said, “Brother! Report!”

“An angel suddenly appeared and tried killing Aphrodite! Thankfully her friend was there to protect her, but he won’t last long! We need to hurry, brother!” Pelias called over.

I sighed, giving out orders, “Desmond, lead the other vampires and prevent that asshole Orion from killing anyone. If any professors are around, help them keep her safe. Everyone who survives if Aph lives will get a cup of my blood.”

Pelias was readying himself for combat as Mercury and I followed him. Mercury was a mage, so he didn’t need to prepare much.

Soon we came upon a very, very bad sight. Three people with wings were fighting those around them. It wasn’t just Orion that had come down.

Obsidian wings and dark eyes looked over, almost bored as his hand snapped out, sending vampires flying back. Orion.

Desmond was busy attacking a man with golden wings, hair, and eyes.

Mercury and I leapt off of Pyro, who thankfully ran off the moment we left his back.

“I’m giving him so many apples after this,” I promised.

I sprinted forward, my signature diamond-obsidian sword appearing.

“Code black. Angels are attacking a student. I repeat, code black, angels are—agh!” The professor who was speaking got their throat slit.

I shot healing spears their way. Orion was the danger. I stared at him. How long would a true name last on an angel?

I didn’t dare think his name until he looked away from me to combat three vampires that were tearing at him.

“Orion de’ligo Remnant, so I order upon your true name, stop!”

Orion’s eyes widened. Immediately two angels appeared before me.

My eyes widened. Healing magic sprang up before I knew whether I was injured or not. I was healing my neck, a sword still in my stomach.

Blood spilled from my lips.

A roar shook the ground, brilliant white claws tearing through the angels attacking me as Jerald landed.

He remained in dragon form. I healed myself, reaching out and healing anyone else I could, vampires included.

“To the vampires, don’t die in the sunlight,” I said, coughing up the remaining blood as someone pulled the sword from my stomach.

Looking up, I met fierce bronze-golden eyes, beautiful wings that stretched out infinitely only giving the angel before me an even more beautifully vengeful appearance.

Raphael turned quickly, using the sword and his wings to slap one of the angels away.

“They’re after Aphrodite,” I called out.

“They’re after you too, after what you just did,” Nocta yelled back as he sprinted forward, “Don’t suppose you know any other angel’s names, eh?”

I didn’t respond, sprinting forward the moment I could. Healing spells shot out at the various vampires and professors that got hurt.

The two angels were focused on defending against the vampires.

Looking around, I realized Orion was undefended. Sprinting forward, my sword swung out. I grimaced as it bounced off of Orion’s skin. I stood there dumbly for a moment.

“You think of me often,” Orion said, breaking my shock. His voice was monotone, expression unfeeling.

I scoffed, looking around for ways I could help. It seemed I could only heal people. So I did, I sprinted around using the movement spell Nocta was currently using, dodging angelic attacks and skating around.

Aphrodite couldn’t die here. Women were important in this world, especially those in line for succession of a crown.

Would the king force the Fae to fight in a war if his only remaining daughter died? He’d be able to force their hand, and then it would be another apocalypse once the other realms got involved.

Shit. Shit.

“F—“

A gloved hand wrapped tightly around my mouth.

“No need for that,” The Fae King said before I could even finish his title, let alone start on his true name.

Instead of helping, he pulled me away from the fight. I struggled against his hold. Next to him, on her knees, was Aphrodite. Her eyes were wide, hands covering her face as she cried uselessly, just watching what happened.

My magic snapped out, healing people. I struggled against the Fae King’s hold.

“To think I would be forced to not only spare your life but to save it in order to maintain the bond between my people and the elementals,” The Fae King scoffed.

Jerald and Raphael were both people who had survived to the end of the apocalypse, but Orion wasn’t the strongest angel, just the leader of angels.

Gabriel, Ir-something, and three others only mentioned a few times in the books were the strongest. Orion didn’t bring two of them here, did he?

Fuck. Fuck.

I tried escaping his hold to call out, to try and help somehow, outside of just shooting healing spears at people, but I couldn’t.

The Fae King’s arms were unmoving as he held me, hand remaining forced against my mouth.

Preventing me from calling out to my vampires. Preventing me from using his true name to force him to go on the offensive so people wouldn’t die. Preventing me from helping.

I had to watch, just as Aphrodite was doing.

Everything was chaotic. Raphael was attacking the golden angel as they flew around, both of them yelling at each other in their celestial tongue.

All of the vampires were buying time, but the Fae King’s hair was glowing golden. The sun was rising, and after three seconds of intense fighting, Desmond growled.

“Retreat!” The Vampire King snapped, reaching out.

I met his burning red gaze as he took Aphrodite, sprinting away.

“The vampires have the target! After them!” Orion barked out.

Next to me, Raphael crashed, blood covering him. I reached out with magic, but angels were made of grace, not flesh and bone. It was as effective as me trying to heal a water elemental using fire.

I struggled, whimpering.

The crimson-winged individual landed on Raphael, reaching out. My struggles increased as the angel held an orange-haired vampire by the throat. Fred.

My screams were muffled, but they were loud enough that the angel looked over.

“It is said you are good at healing. Let us see if you are better at healing than this scum is at dying,” The angel commented, a chain of grace tying the vampire to the ground.

My healing spell pulsed to life, the Fae King ignoring my struggles, holding me. What was he doing?! He needed to focus on keeping Aphrodite alive!

If anyone was going to be more important to the king, it was his actual daughter! Not a walking corpse!

Tears burned at my eyes as the vampire screamed the moment the sun hit him. I healed the burns. Raphael shifted, glowing golden blood dripped from his wounds. Wings reached up, and the vampire stopped screaming, instead whimpering and sobbing as he curled under the protection.

My screams stopped as I struggled. Jerald had chased after the angels, so it was just the injured and us.

“Interesting. So you can out-heal the curse my father put on those pathetic and greedy monsters,” The Fae King mused.

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“Mn,” I grunted as the Fae’s grip tightened painfully on me.

My magic reached out, healing everyone I could. Nocta, Dawn, Uran, and Herald slowly got to their feet after I finished, several students also getting up.

They walked toward me.

“Where did they go?” Herald asked, eyes moving from me to Raphael.

“The basement,” Raphael managed, unable to stand.

I wish I could heal him, I mourned. Magic was just energy, same as grace. I wished I could just convert it.

Maybe the god of magic would know? I had nothing better to do than pray.

Dear God of Magic, I really want to heal a friend, but he’s an angel. Is there a way to convert my energy into grace?

I closed my eyes at the lack of response, crying. Would he die?

Before I could fall too deep into the depths of my sorrow, a giant, burning golden spell more complex than anything I’d ever seen appeared in my mind.

My eyes opened, dazed. I kept the circle in mind. Half my remaining magic, I instructed. It wasn’t great, but it was enough, and the giant circle appeared, compressed beyond belief. I reached out toward Raphael.

My fingers brushed his wing, ignoring his flinch. I couldn’t heal him with grace, I didn’t know how, but giving him grace wouldn’t do him bad.

I poured what little I had into it, hoping to see his wounds close. Some of them did, the major wounds remaining open, if a bit smaller.

Glowing light still dripped from his wounds, but he looked a lot less worse for wear.

Thank you so much, I thought as the spell reached its end. The image in my mind disappeared. The spell disintegrated, too complicated to keep up after the reference burned into my mind left.

Raphael didn’t look like he was dying, anymore, and he shifted. His wings wrapped around the vampiric student, arms reaching out. The angel vanished.

All that was left was me, Orion, and the Fae King.

I stared at the angel some fifty feet away. Reaching up, I tried pulling the Fae off of me. I didn’t succeed, his arms and hand remaining tight.

…

Blood slowly soaked into the grass. The sun was rising behind me, lighting Orion’s form up. His eyes reflected the light as he stood there, remaining stopped.

“She simply ordered you to stop attacking, did she not?” The Fae King suggested, voice wry.

Orion looked less like a statue almost instantly. His wings shifted, and he walked closer. More tears fell from my eyes as I watched him walk toward us.

He stopped about five feet away from us, eyes remaining focused on mine. His head didn’t move to face me, so it looked like he was looking down his nose at me.

“I do not believe you are capable enough to “make me your bitch”, as you put it. Maybe you should have used my true name to force my loyalty,” Orion said.

I stared up at him. Why would I care about something pathetic like his loyalty? So long as he stopped attacking people, why would I want anything to do with this righteous bastard?

I guess it made sense he was a narcissist. I doubt someone like him could ever begin to believe that anyone could care less about them.

“I am fully aware that the majority of people do not spend their days thinking of me,” Orion answered, “However with how often you think of me, it is hard to believe you “could care less”, as you claim.”

I thought about what he said. Well I only really cared about him because he attacked people I cared about, right? I don’t think I ever thought about him alone, as a person. I always just thought about him while connecting him to others. So if he just stopped attacking them and stopped sending people after them to try and kill them, I’d not really think of him ever again.

So I guess he was right. I cared about him because he was a threat. The moment he stopped being a threat was the moment his name never appeared in my mind again.

I focused, staring into the angel’s obsidian eyes.

I felt kind of bad, if only for a very small moment. I mean I kind of forgot angels could hear my thoughts when I thought of them by name. Dude must have been annoyed that he was getting slandered for shit he hasn’t even done yet.

Now that he’s attacked some innocent—if attractive—person, though, he deserved it. I didn’t feel too bad.

Orion stans with their “oh but he’s actually really kind and heartfelt” could go fuck themselves. I don’t care how sensitive a snowflake Orion was, literally every other surviving character was better.

Even Percival, the most hated character as shown by a poll, was more competent.

What sort of stupid asshole comes down to kill someone, gets convinced by oh you don’t even know her, give her a chance, and then falls in love like literally every other person on the planet? Dude fell for a honey-pot after going there to destroy the honey-pot.

Was like a squad of flies going toward a Venus fly-trap knowing full well what it was and then still landing in the sweet nectar, getting eaten.

…

I stared at Orion, my thoughts going quiet after my internal rant about him faded. Silence stretched on.

I mean I really liked him at first, too, which only made him more disappointing.

…

Birds chirped, some flying overhead, their shadows flicking across the ground.

“You are mean,” Orion said after a long moment of us staring at each other quietly.

The man’s obsidian eyes didn’t move from mine. His void-like hair and the feathers of his wings rustled slightly in the wind as he stared down at me.

“…”

Guilt twisted inside of me. Yeah, I guess hating someone because they’re incompetent is kind of really mean. Now I felt bad. Like I’d kicked a wet puppy with the sniffles.

The Orion stans could still go fuck themselves, though.

… Well, what now? Now I just felt guilty and stupid, because I was hating someone more competent than I was for being incompetent. Like a peasant with gambling issues hating a king for mismanaging the country’s finances.

It wasn’t like I was better than him. I mean I wasn’t going to fall in love with the useless and pathetic, if beautiful, Aphrodite, but honestly that’s a very unanimous weakness amongst pretty much everyone. Except me.

Except that I couldn’t kill her and literally just defended her, so really I was just as bad.

Damn.

I kind of missed when I could at least pretend to be competent.

The Fae King’s arms relaxed. I scrambled away from him as he spoke, “It seems the fight is over.”

“Who won?” I asked, turning around.

The Fae King was gone, though. I sighed, looking back to Orion. He was gone too.

Glancing around, I stared at the blood-soaked grass. Well. Hopefully it was time to go get cups for the surviving vampires. Turning on my heel, I wandered around, lost.

I didn’t recognize any of the Academy buildings as I wandered around. Glancing around, the entire area seemed to be a ghost town.

“Uh… if anyone willing to help out can hear me, um, I’m lost?” I called out, glancing around.

No one appeared, and I sighed. How was I supposed to heal people if—

My eyes squinted as sudden light appeared, hand raising.

“We will stop attacking Aphrodite and return to the Astral Realm for the next thousand years, please, help,” Orion begged, covered in the glow of the fellow angels.

Tears glowing white dripped from his eyes, not mixing well with the golden glow of angel blood.

My eyes widened, “I can’t—“

“I watched you heal Raphael! Please. I’ll do whatever you ask me to, I’ll call you master, just save them,” Orion begged.

Shit.

Without thought, I reached out. My magic twisted into Orion, dragging his grace out and into the forms of his friends. I didn’t heal them much, not quite trusting Orion’s words.

Soon, still severely injured, the angels were no longer actively dying.

My magic retracted from Orion’s form, Orion collapsing and crying silently.

I left him behind, covered in glowing blood that tasted like spring. Where were the others? I had to heal them.

“No one is in danger of dying,” Orion claimed, voice back to its monotone.

I sighed, glancing back to see them gone. I doubted that. The silence echoed. I glanced around the empty area.

“Both Jerald and Story are able to hear me, I think, right?” I muttered, “I guess if he’s right then they wouldn’t feel the need to come get me.”

An insane giggle escaped someone, sending shivers down my spine.

“You really are a goddess, healing angels so casually.”

I looked over, seeing a man with hair as red as mine. My hair was on the darker spectrum of blood-shade, but his was on the fresh-from-the-artery scale. Mint-colored eyes focused on me.

Jester.

Jester was a special character, I mused, staring at him. He was special because he wasn’t a person. He appeared whenever and wherever he liked, and was one of the people that even the author seemed to not know much about.

This was because Jester was what was referred to as a reaper. He loved watching murder, the bloodier the better, and he went on vacation in five years to watch the apocalypse after killing Rowan and Pelias in battle.

That meant he was here on business, sent by Death.

Death was one of the two primordial gods. Death was God with a capital g. His reapers were all much more powerful than any lesser god.

“Oooh~,” Jester grinned, his teeth sharp, his eyes carrying the Origin of Insanity, “Looks like you know me.”

I swallowed, glancing around. No one would be able to help me if he was here to kill me.

“What does He want with me?” I wondered, looking back at Jester.

“You do not belong here~,” Jester practically purred, his voice melodic as he skipped toward me.

I didn’t bother trying to back away. I was terrified, but I knew all backing away would do is give him satisfaction. It was Jester.

“I know,” I said, “What are you here for?”

The Jester.

“Oh?” Jester vanished, his voice appearing in my ear.

I flinched heavily. I fell in my attempts to jolt away from him, heart hammering. I stared up at him with wide eyes. Jester. He was grinning down at me, body twisted unnaturally.

“I like it much more when souls try and act brave,” Jester teased, “After all,” He vanished again.

I closed my eyes in disgust as his tongue dragged along my face.

“I can taste fear~.”

The unhinged man sounded like he was enjoying himself just a bit too much.

That was what I liked about him, though. Combined with my limited knowledge about him and my adoration of his character, I found my fear fading as I grinned.

My Jester.

Reaching out, I found myself tackling him. I laughed, the sound as giddy and unhinged as his had sounded.

Jester was here! I didn’t have time to fangirl when I was dragged off at the Garden Party, but I definitely did now. It was JESTER!

Jester’s smile was gone as he stared up at me, eyes wide.

The origin of chaos, the inventor of insanity, the reaper under Death, the most feared reaper! The epitome of competent. Beyond that!

“So, Jester,” I said, leaning down, the joy unavoidable in my voice, “What does your master want from me? Or did you just come to have fun?”

Jester wasn’t my favorite character. That was true. Even I had to admit it.

That was because he had a special little box to the side of my favorites. He was hardly a character, after all.

Most if not all of the information I got from him wasn’t even in the story. Jester wasn’t mentioned much, only having a scene or two where he killed off characters if they got too OP.

I DM’d the author for more information about him, though. Thousands of DM’s until I finally got a response.

Jester is Death’s favored. Even the author admitted she feared Jester.

“Oh,” Jester said faintly, swallowing as he stared up at me, clearly caught off-guard, “Well hello, um.”

The more uncomfortable Jester looked, the more relaxed I got. Soon my nose was almost touching his, my grin as wide as it would get.

I really wanted to kiss him.

My entire face ached from how hard I was smiling. He wasn’t my favorite character, but I loved him so much.

Who wouldn’t love a competent man who enjoyed every second of his life? Who found thrill in every single job he did?

“Hi,” I greeted.

Jester disappeared. I got up, glancing around. Standing up, I hummed, tilting my head when he didn’t reappear.

“So he was just here for fun,” I wondered, grinning.

Interesting.