Chapter 15 - Ciel

Lazar tested the name. It suited her, despite the demon clearly having come up with it on the spot. “Why did you save me?” he asked. One of his hands absentmindedly moved to his chest, where the fallen marking rested hidden beneath fabric. “You could’ve eaten me as well.”

“Yeah, I could’ve.” The flesh eater sat back, leaning on her arms which were placed casually in the leftover pool of blood and minced flesh. “But you’re more useful alive than dead. Besides,” she added with a chuckle, “there’s plenty of food sources other than the rarest type of fallen.”

Lazar ignored the food comment. “How so?”

“I’m heading to Elysium.” The demon’s voice was blunt, not a shred of hesitation or doubt in her words. Lazar blinked, his thoughts temporarily grinding to a halt as he processed the information. The flesh eater pointed a bloody finger at him.

“I’ve got some unfinished business to take care of. Scores to settle, that sort of thing. Problem is that wall. I could probably break through, but I’d really rather not have all the guardians on my ass the second I show up.” She grinned. “That’s where you come in. I’m gonna need you to open the gate and get us in without alerting the whole realm. Would save us both a lot of trouble, at least until they notice us.”

“You want to ascend up to Elysium,” Lazar repeated.

“Yep.” She pronounced the ‘p’ with a pop. “There’s someone I need to pay a visit. An old friend.” Her golden eye gleamed, and Lazar paused. It was perhaps the most amount of emotion he’d seen from the demon so far, and even then it was only present for a second in that uncanny gold before it settled into its usual disconcerting hollowness.

The fallen seraph frowned. He had no doubt, from the sharpness in her smile to that gleam, that Ciel didn’t have good intentions for the realm. Demons didn’t often manage to ascend up to Elysium, but the ones who did always caused catastrophic damage. Each time the guardians had to be called to deal with them, and those demons almost always targeted the Light.

His mind flashed with images of the floating islands, the clear sky, picturing them destroyed and stained with blood. He imagined white wings ripped to shreds, marble pillars shattered, the guardians wounded.

Lazar exhaled, loosening his grip on his halberd. The action didn’t go unnoticed.

“That bothers you.”

He frowned. “Of course it does. It’s my home.”

“Is it really, though?” Ciel raised an eyebrow, nodding her head at his wingless back. “You were cast out, right?”

Lazar found he couldn’t respond to that. It was true. He gripped the fabric over his mark, squeezing the cloth between his fingers. All the guardians had been there, circling the chamber with cold eyes. He remembered the weight of magic holding him down, and he remembered that distant, hazy figure above, waiting on the throne. The Light hadn’t moved a finger, but there was no need to. Her presence and silent observation said enough. Julius’s judgement was a reflection of her will.

There was no rational reason to still be attached to Elysium. He himself was trying to ascend back up, after all. That alone would cause damage once he fell. His own presence would be just as, if not worse than the demon in front of him’s, considering that tears to the Void couldn’t be mended.

He’d told himself that he only wanted to find answers, but he hadn’t considered the consequences. Or maybe he had understood, subconsciously, what he would really be doing by returning to Elysium. It was difficult to be sure of things now, caught up in such unfamiliar circumstances with no expected actions and feelings, no routines to fall into.

All he knew was that whenever he remembered falling, the cold feeling in his chest grew and twisted.

“Is that why you were sealed in that stone? A seraph did that?

“Sealed is a bit dramatic.” She shrugged. “Nah, it wasn’t a seraph. One of the other demons thought I was a problem or something. I happened to be weakened and wasn’t paying attention, then next thing I know, bam. Rock. Bad luck if you ask me.”

Lazar stared at her, and the demon raised an eyebrow.

“Hey, no need to look at me like that. It’s true. Now, how I got weakened is a little more interesting, but, frankly, you don’t need to know that part.”

The seraph studied the flesh eater, considering. Whatever the truth of her motives were, they sounded personal, personal enough that she had almost certainly been to Elysium before. Perhaps she’d managed to ascend up to the realm in the past, then been wounded and cast back down into the Abyss. Her “visit,” then, would be an act of vengeance at having her power stripped away. Much like what had happened to him.

Lazar’s eyes landed on the left half of her face, the mass of golden eyes obscured by her hair, and he tried to remember if he’d heard of a demon like her who had ascended up. They were rather rare, after all.

As much as he racked his memories, however, he couldn’t recall one. But then again, depending on how much time she’d spent in that stone, it could’ve been long enough ago that he wouldn’t have heard about it.

“Well, as much as I love all the attention, I think it’s fair for me to ask you some questions too, fallen.”

The address stung more than Lazar would like to admit. He simply nodded, keeping his face expressionless.

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“Did you fall on your own, or did one of the guardians sentence you?” The demon leaned forward a little, her smile sharp. “Or maybe even the Light herself did?”

Lazar’s eyes drifted over to the halberd still resting on the ground in front of him, silver gleaming amidst dark petals.

“...one of the guardians,” he admitted. The fact that Julius had been newly inducted made the sting worse. Sentencing him to fall was probably one of, if not the first official act he’d done as a guardian.

“Ah, the old classic. Well, that’s more interesting than getting injured by a soul eater at least. As I like to say, if you fall, you might as well fall hard.”

“I suppose so.”

Ciel was silent for a moment, and when Lazar looked up, she was studying him closely. That golden eye of hers looked particularly unnerving. It was such a clear and pure color that it looked out of place.

“There’s more to it, isn’t there.” She smiled, but it didn’t seem malicious. “There’s a part you’re not saying. What’d you do to get the guardians’ attention? It must’ve been pretty bad. The Light doesn’t like sentencing seraphs, you know. Damages Elysium’s reputation.”

The question echoed the soul eater’s. Lazar closed his eyes, exhaling, his mind flashing through the days, months, years leading up to his fall. He didn’t know what he’d done, but surely there was a reason, wasn’t there? There had to be, because if there wasn’t, then that meant Julius had betrayed him for nothing.

He hadn’t even spoken to him beforehand, a tiny voice in Lazar’s head said. If their positions were reversed, Lazar would’ve talked to Julius about whatever he’d done first before resorting to such drastic measures.

The fallen seraph opened his eyes again, and the cold feeling grew. Maybe he’d overestimated the extent of their friendship. After all, at the end of the day, he’d been a mere servant. Maybe Julius had never thought of him as anything else.

“You said you needed me to open the gate,” Lazar said slowly. Ciel nodded, and he met the demon’s eyes.

“And in return, you’ll help me ascend up?”

“That’s the deal, yeah.” Ciel leaned forward. “Look, I’m not saying we need to trust each other. Pretty sure the Oblivion and Cycle would spontaneously combust if a demon and seraph started having faith in one another.”

Lazar felt himself smile at that, and the demon continued.

“As far as I’m concerned, this is just a mutually beneficial arrangement. All we need to believe is that both of us’re better off keeping the other one alive.”

And he did believe that. Lazar believed the flesh eater in front of him would genuinely do anything to reach Elysium and accomplish her goals. And he himself, he realized, was the same. He was taught to think about the objective first and foremost, and he knew that realistically, he would have a much better chance at surviving if he took the demon’s offer.

“Alright,” he agreed. “We can help each other.”

The demon’s face broke out into a sharp grin. She rose to her feet, her massive height more apparent than ever as she loomed over him and held out a bloody hand. Lazar stared at it for a moment, noting the bits of flesh still caked under her fingernails. He raised his own hand, and after a short pause, he shook the demon’s hand firmly.

—

Lazar frowned down at his wound, touching the tender skin around it. He didn’t remember where he’d gotten it—probably during his fight with the soul eater. He tugged the bandage back down, tightening and retying it. The result was much neater than it had been before.

(“You really can’t expect a demon to be good at stuff like this, you know,” Ciel had said. “I did a pretty damn good job if you ask me.”)

“I think,” he said slowly, “If I’m careful, there shouldn’t be a problem with continuing.”

The demon snorted from where she was lounging on a flat stone. Even the rocks here were covered in flowers. She’d finally washed the blood off her hands in the main cavern water, then dried her hands by using some of the flowers as a rag. Some leftover blood had left black petals stained red.

She sat up, reached out a newly washed hand, and tapped his back. Lazar flinched, less so because of the touch itself and more because he’d spun around into a guard stance on instinct, successfully pulling every one of his wounds in the process.

Ciel raised an eyebrow.

“Either you’re really bad at assessing injuries, or you’ve got no self preservation skills.” She cocked her head. “Maybe both. Anyway, considering you collapsed, I say we wait it out another day before we start moving again.” She flicked a petal off her coat, letting it drift back down to the ground. “Lets me digest things a little longer, too,” she added with a sharp grin.

Lazar conceded that waiting was probably the smarter move, even if it did nothing to soothe his growing antsiness. Clearing his throat, he decided that if he couldn’t move, he might as well make plans.

His eyes darted over to the narrow exit leading out of the space they were resting in. He couldn’t make anything out but darkness, and he wondered how deep into the cliffs they were and how much further they’d have to travel to reach the other side.

“The realm gate is beyond these mountains, isn’t it? Do you know how to get there?”

“I’ve got an idea, yeah.” Ciel knocked on one of the glowing cavern walls, and the red light didn’t waver. “A good deal of stuff’s changed since I was stuck under that rock, but the gate location’s always the same. Should be at the bottom of a ravine, smack dab in the middle of the Abyss. This cave system will take us to the other side, then we just have to go down and we’ll end up there in no time.”

Lazar nodded. It was a bit hard to judge distance, with the clouds obscuring most of the light pillar he’d seen, but he suspected that once they exited this mountain range, they would be close enough for the atmosphere to be noticeably denser with essence. He had no intention of delaying their escape from the Abyss, which meant he needed to ensure his soul was strong enough for ascension by the time they reached the gate.

His grey eyes landed on Ciel. Demons were capable of ascending the same way as humans did, but they had other methods of strengthening their souls beyond training their magic. Devouring souls would naturally allow them to absorb some of the essence, and soul eaters could ascend simply by devouring enough.

There was less information about how flesh eaters did it, but Lazar was fairly certain that it wasn’t all too different. The physical body also had some amounts of essence in it, even if it wasn’t nearly as concentrated as the soul’s. A flesh eater would need to consume far more to ascend, but it was possible.

If he was correct in thinking that Ciel had already managed to ascend to Elysium once before, then she would already know exactly what was necessary to do it again. Lazar was better off worrying about himself.

Settling into a more comfortable position, his still sore back against the wall, he closed his eyes. It still felt wrong, too hollow without the threads of essence pushing against his consciousness, but that was something he was going to fix.

He thought back, remembering the sensation, the thread-like presence of essence. He reached out, attempting to reconnect to that feeling. There was a brief moment when it felt like he could almost do it, when he felt a twinge of warmth rise before it fizzled out. He kept trying.

He stayed like that for a long time, silently working to build his soul into something a little more whole again.