image [https://imgur.com/DlRPnCe.jpg]

When I finally woke up, Yamin was still diligently working at translating the demon book. She’d extended the cabin table between the two rows of seats to increase her productivity, all the while she sipped away at a pitcher of coffee.

I wasn’t the first to wake up and discover her like this. Marek, Miss Lauri and Uncle weren’t in the cabin. Apparently they were off somewhere in the train, making arrangements for where we’d be staying while in the capital.

“Good morning, sweetie,” Yamin tore her gaze from her notes and waved at me.

Her notes looked like something daddy might leave lying around after a science experiment of his. Messy and illegible. But I guess somehow this made sense to her.

“Did you translate all those pages?” I asked.

Her head curiously tilted, as if what I’d said confused her.

“How did you know I was translating the book?”

She was quite surprised to learn that I’d been actually listening in on her the whole night. What came as more of a shock, in my opinion, was that she’d managed to stay up so long. Coffee must have been one heck of a drink!

“Can I have a sip?” I asked her, but she lightly slapped away my hand.

“Coffee isn’t for little girls. It’ll stunt your growth.”

Coffee wouldn’t stunt my growth, I didn’t think. Was that even a real thing for humans? What chemical in it would even cause that?

“So, what did you learn about the book?” I asked.

“Well, most of what I’ve been able to translate is pretty interesting…” she pointed to the night hag page. “From here to here is a description of what a night hag is. And from here to here, it explains their powers.” She gestured to a few different blocks of text, giving me details that I confirmed after doing battle with dozens of these skeepy things.

“So it is like a compendium,” I said. It reminded me of the compendium I had in my own systems.

“Yeah,” Yamin nodded. “There’s definitely more to it than that though. But I need a break.” She closed up the book and placed it back in her bag, then stepped out into the train car hall and stretched out a bit. “Gosh, I’ve been up all night and don’t even feel tired.”

I’ll bet. She was sleeping through the whole demon lord fiasco. Lucky her.

Was it really lucky though?

I stepped out into the hallway next to her and mimicked her stretches. First we both stood up tall and lifted our hands up as high as they could go. Then we both bent down low and touched our toes.

“Morning stretches are really good for you,” Yamin said, tilting her body from side to side. “Especially after an all-nighter…”

“Indena does these too,” I said. “I caught her punching a tree one time.”

“The poor tree…” Yamin snickered, turning toward the cabin to notice Indena had taken over an entire row of seats, still snoozing away. “Hey, why don’t we get something to eat?”

“Sure!” I got really excited. I hadn’t eaten in a long while, so food sounded super duper delicious.

She took me into the train car behind ours, one that had a fancy food bar set up in it. A few people were dining in here, just enough to give it a cozy feel.

We both ordered waffles off the menu. The difference between our two meals was that mine included bacon and eggs, and a big glass of orange juice. Her’s had salad and toast with jam.

She cupped her hands and tilted her head down to pray before we feasted. I did the same.

“Dear Lord Deus, we are thankful for this food we are about to receive,” Yamin said in an almost song-like chant.

“We’re very grateful,” I nodded.

“You feed the birds of the air, and you feed the fish of the sea. We are thankful that you provide for us even more.”

“We’re very thankful, yes.”

“Please let us never forget how you provide for this world, or let it all be taken away from us so we may be humbled.”

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“Very humbled… yes.”

“So be it,” she concluded her prayer.

“Amen,” I concluded as well.

I expected Yamin to be smiling when I opened my eyes, but she held her chin up and looked at me all confused.

“Is something the matter?” I asked.

“You didn’t say ‘so be it’ like you're supposed to at the end of a prayer.”

Oh, her church did say that an awful lot when praying. It didn’t seem natural to me though, so I didn’t use it.

“I don’t really feel like saying it like that.” I shook my head and started eating.

Yamin’s face erupted with shock and she let out a gasp. She gripped tightly to her star shield necklace, bringing it close to her lips. The words she uttered into it were too quiet to hear, then she kissed it.

“Maybe don’t say that to anyone else,” she breathed out as the twinkly necklace fell back to her chest.

“Why?”

The air around her turned serious, drowning out any of the things going on in the background.

“Pretty soon, this world is going to know you as the Eighth Star Angel.” she lowered her voice, trying to get it lost in the indiscernible chatter of the train car. “That’s a big deal, Yalda. You’ll be the most powerful person in the whole church. So you need to be careful what you say or you’ll divide people.”

I stopped munching on my meal and put down my fork. My brow lowered as a show of concern.

She was referring to the Eighth Star prophecy. God had promised long ago that when the Devil returned from being sealed away, an angel would be sent down from Heaven to defeat him once and for all. Since that promise was made, humanity has awaited the arrival of the eighth and final arc-angel.

All signs were pointing to me being that very angel.

As far as I could remember, I wasn’t sent from Heaven at all. In fact, it was quite the opposite. My home was in the center of the planet, so I came up to them, not down. Even still, the humans were convinced that it was my destiny to save them. And to be honest, it wasn’t at all in conflict with my prime directive.

Daddy warned me that one day someone evil would come, and I’d be the one to defeat him in order to protect humanity.

With the prophecy and my prime directive aligning scarily well, it almost seemed like the Eighth Star really was me. Could it all have been a coincidence, or did God really plan this whole thing out from the start? Regardless, nobody else seemed to fit the bill so well.

Since I was going to take this title, she was right. I needed to present myself in a certain way, or it would cause a lot of issues with the people who venerated me.

“I guess…” I wasn’t happy to have to adjust something so natural, but I could at least speak like them in public. “I just don’t really know if that feels right or not…”

Yamin looked on me with sorry eyes, clearly not satisfied with my submissiveness.

“You know something? You inspire me,” Yamin said. “All the things you’ve done up to this point have shown you're special. You’re my Eighth Star, even if things didn’t happen the way scripture said they would.”

Hearing her say that was a huge encouragement, but scripture was something rigid, wasn’t it? Things had to happen exactly like they were written.

“But if it doesn't happen like it does in scripture, how could it be referring to me?”

“When the demons first attacked, I was pretty shocked because I wasn’t sure they really existed until then. I always thought they were symbolic of our internal battles with sin, but I guess I just lived a pretty sheltered life.”

I think I saw where she was going with that.

“You think that parts of the Eighth Star’s prophecy are symbolic?” I asked.

If that was the case, it was entirely possible that it was referring to me. Or at least, I just happened to be the best candidate.

“I don’t know,” Yamin shrugged. “All I can say is that you need to follow your heart on this one.” she pointed to my crystal heart. “Say whatever you're going to say. Do whatever you're going to do. If it’s put on your heart to say amen, or whatever, then you do that.”

That was an order I was more than happy to follow.

“Amen to that!” I cheered, raising up my orange juice. Yamin did the same with her coffee.

*Tink!*

We both tapped our glasses together and took a sip of our drinks.

While we were cheering, a woman came running in from the door opposite of the one we came in from.

“Excuse me…” she was running up and down the dining car trying to get someone's attention, but nobody seemed interested in hearing what she wanted to say. “Please… Won’t somebody listen to me?”

Her thick accent definitely made her stand out among everyone else. It wasn’t one I’d heard since coming to the surface, so I wondered where she was from.

Yamin stood up and walked over to her.

“Is everything okay, ma’am?” Yamin asked.

“I can’t find my baby,” the mother said. “I… I don’t know where he went. I’m so worried.”

Oh no! A baby went missing?

Well, the good news is that he couldn’t have gone far. This train is only so big and moving pretty fast. Unless he managed to jump off the…

Oh heckin’ nuts! This could be really bad!

We asked her to explain what happened, so she started telling us the story.

“We’ve been on the train all night, so I decided to close my eyes for a few seconds. When I woke up, he was gone, and…”

The story was pretty simple. But her franticness was even easier to understand. A mother missing her child honestly was the only explanation we needed to get our butts in gear and start searching.

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