"Vastoria!" He called out to her in the Heavenly land devoid of all life.
"Throne!" Her distant voice echoed from afar.
Though he had to make a blind landing due to all the White Monster's Apostles surrounding them, Throne had still managed to gauge the accurate distance between him and the ground to secure a clean and, more importantly, safe landing. Alas, he could only manage that much, for they appeared to have been separated by a huge wave of goat skull people. All of whom, mind you, utterly despise the scent of non-slumbering angels.
"So, if you don't mind me asking—What exactly's stopping you from spreading those wings of yours and just flying back up to safety?" He asked the obvious with an adequately snarky tone.
"I can't!" She shouted.
"Why?"
"I...!" She panicked, "I don't know! For whatever reason, even though I'm commanding them to flap, I'm not moving at all!"
Immediately, though he didn't want to admit it to her, Throne understood what had occurred. As the one more experienced with making plenty of mistakes during his nigh endless cycles of flying, many a times did he make similar crash landings to that of Vastoria's just now. In those moments, though, he could open his Eyes to see what had happened. A seraphim's wings aren't attached to them, but rather float auspiciously near their backs. Thus, they are prone to flying off on their own if too strong of a force hits them. In this case, he understood, she most probably lost them and has to find her wings in the endless sea of White Monster Apostles before she could regain her flight.
"Good news and bad news." He floated just outside of the Apostles' reach, "I know what happened to your wings, and it's not permanent."
"Oh, so two good news!" She smiled.
"So you're not even listening to me at all." He groaned, "You lost them, and due to the situation, you'll probably only find them after being put to sleep by the Apostles."
"...So two bad news?" She guessed.
"Dear Gods..."
She was still acting unserious about it, but this situation was extremely bad for a plethora of reasons. Before they could reach it, the Shrine that is, they fell among the thousands of Apostles and Vastoria lost her wings. Picking through them, his options were extremely limited and both very difficult to accomplish—Either he finds Vastoria and flies her off to the Shrine, or she finds the wings and reattaches them. Again, they both have to keep their Eyes shut the entire time, lest they get put to sleep by the White Monster's Apostles.
"Remind me to tie you up on a leash the next time we try this." He smirked, gritting his teeth all the while, "Really, a dog would be more well-behaved than you."
"I am NOT a dog!" She found the half-joke offensive, largely due to the fact it wasn't a full joke, "Just come down here and help me! ...Ack, hey!"
"Vastoria?"
"It...!" She pushed one off, "It grabbed my arm just now! S-Stop it!"
As was stated previously, the White Monster and its Apostles do not target seraphim by themselves, but it's a different story if seraphim enter their line of sight. In other words, Vastoria was in even direr straits than they had originally surmised. These things will stop at nothing to get her Eyes open, be it peacefully or forcefully.
"Tch, duck!" Throne ordered, flapping his mighty wings to blow the crowd away, "What's the status?"
"S-Still here..." She weakly raised her arm, "That wind force was incredible. You did the same to Migu back then..."
"Still got her on your mind, huh." He carefully touched down, "Ack, to be young again."
"You said that with a scornful tone, though?"
"I meant what I said." He sighed, "Alright, is this you?"
"Mn..."
"Is it, or is it not?" He asked.
"...You're doing this on purpose." She pouted.
"Oh, am I?" He kept poking around before getting a stern slap to the face, "Ow."
"Touching a lady there is very inappropriate!" She reprimanded him.
"Oh I'm sorry, was I touching your no-no place?" He raised an Eyebrow.
"I never in a million years would have assumed you to be a pervert, Throne." She glared, making sure to keep her Eyes from opening accidentally.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"I dunno what you're talking about." He kept acting dumb, "But somehow, I feel like you deserved it for making me go through all this trouble."
"Just shut up and fly us up." She complained.
Doing as he was told, he flapped his wings once more before the Apostles got back up on their feet. Suddenly, the White Monster contested this idea by playing a familiar trick from before. Namely, voices formed all around them, all mimicking the female seraphim's very own.
"Throne, you there yet?!" One called out to him from below.
"I'm still down here!" Another did the same.
"Hey, you didn't grab the wrong person, did you!?" A third one joined the discordant choir.
Indeed, he was once again disallowed from leaving the premises. His adversary was a most cunning one indeed, and Throne knew that there was a pretty significant chance that even now, he wasn't holding the real Vastoria's hand.
"You trust me, right?" The voice he previously lifted up with him asked, "The White Monster has the ability to mimic voices."
"Yep, I know." He thought up a solution to this issue quickly enough, though.
Hastily, he put his face up to the ladylike hand, so that nothing else could be seen apart from the White skin on it. This way, even if he opened his Eyes, he would not see a single goat skull in his field of vision. But that still wasn't gonna reveal what he wanted to make sure was the case. Even if the skin was there, it's already a known fact that the White Monster can and will mimic any angel's body part to further trick its prey. He needed more proof.
"E-Ew! Something slimy just touched the back of my hand!" Vastoria's voice was irked by this, "What was that!?"
"Hmm, I see." He nodded after closing his Eyes again, "My golden tongue is the only thing that can "feel", if you recall."
"Ohhh, good thinking!" She excitedly praised him, "So now you know I'm the real-oop!"
Immediately, without a second thought, he dropped the White Monster Apostle. How did he know the one he picked wasn't the real Vastoria, then?
"If you really were Vastoria, you wouldn't have reacted to me licking you." He clicked his tongue, "Angels and seraphim alike feel nothing but numb in the White parts of their body."
Thus, be it due to his quick thinking or rash actions, he successfully continued the search for his friend without having been tricked.
----------------------------------------
***
----------------------------------------
"Now where is she...?" He looked around as if his Eyes haven't been closed the entire time, "Okay, I got a better idea than whatever the hell I just did."
Descending down into the endless pit of Apostles once more, he immediately got surrounded and before long, his wings were torn clean off by the horde. This was, however, all part of the plan.
"Now then." He clapped his hands as if to get everyone's attention, "I'm helpless and I can't fly. What's stopping you all from prying my Eyes open?"
Though seemingly counterintuitive, what with purposefully putting himself in danger and all that, he did account for the worst case scenario. One thing that should be noted is that you cannot be put to sleep if you aren't looking directly at the White Monster's face. In other words, by getting every Apostle nearby to pile up on him, he had placed himself in a position where all he could see when opening his Eyes was the cloudy ground below them.
"Even still, though, gotta remain careful." He noted, "Just for safe measure, my Eyes should only be barely craned open."
Inching forward from underneath the dogpile, he kept scanning the ground under him until he stumbled upon someone who was standing up on two legs. This was another way to single out the real Vastoria from the fakes, because if he made himself the target, then obviously all of the Apostles would be inclined to attack him. Thus, logically speaking, the only person that's passively standing on both feet then must be Vastoria. Alas, actually finding her under such hard to see through conditions wasn't as easy as he made it out to be.
"Vastoria, if I grab your leg, don't get scared!" He shouted through the thousands of mimicked voices.
"I won't!" They all replied in unison.
"Let's hope that's the case..." He groaned as he continued shimmying, splayed out on the ground.
Moving under such pressure made even the lofty cloud floor feel like he was being squished by a vice. If he had even a single external golden part, he thought, then he would surely be in a great deal of pain. Ironically enough, though he most despised his gilded tongue, he was quite thankful for it this time. Finally though, after shimmying on the ground for what felt like way too long, he stumbled upon a pair of feet that were standing up straight. They were turned to the side, meaning whoever they belonged to wasn't focused on him, the only one still awake apart from Vastoria herself, hopefully. Resolutely grabbing hold of them, he heard a pitiful yelp.
"Eek! Get away, get away!" Her voice cried out.
"Didn't I tell you to not scream, idiot?" He chuckled.
"Throne, is that you!?" She worried, "I'm totally surrounded by them! The Apostles, I don't even think I can breathe through them!"
"Alright, try and push through." He explained, "But don't you dare open those Eyes, you hear me!?"
They were completely surrounded on all sides, with the entire crowd of them practically remaining stuck to their bodies. Neither seraphim had their wings with them, and they were both desperately keeping their hands over their Eyes, covering them so that no Apostle could pry their Eyelids open and have them sent back home. For such a hopeless situation, one would even assume it'd be better if they just reset here and tried again in the next cycle, but giving up would be too much of a waste for them. Even now, as Throne desperately clung to her ankle, the only proof he had that Vastoria was truly real this time was pretty shaky. Just a few words and a hunch, nothing more to work off of. But it was his best shot yet. All he had to do was believe, which frankly if you asked him, he very much despises having to resort to.
"I think I can... almost..." She finally managed to escape from the crowd, "There! I made it out!"
"Good job." He lightly tapped her on the leg to signal he was still holding on, "Keep running, we don't want them to surround us again."
"Get up, then." She refused to run until he did so, "You don't need to hold onto my leg anymore. You're slowing us down."
"Just run, dammit!" He ordered, "We're not getting another chance like this!"
Silently, with a rather scornful expression on her face, she kicked his hand off with a brisk kick. Opting to run away on her own in a random direction, she had seen right through the trick.
"Throne would've insulted me more for getting us into this situation..." She nodded, still keeping her Eyes firmly shut as she escaped by herself, "And you are not him."
For his sake, she hoped, he better still be awake. She no longer had the safety of the sky to rely upon, so until she either got jumped by another pack of Apostles or she made it to the Shrine by herself, she would have to continue the rest of her journey completely blind.