Chapter 42 - Alaric

Lazar could feel Matilda and Madeline’s eyes watching them, but he kept his own gaze focused on the man standing in front of them. Up close, Alaric was quite tall, with broad shoulders and a strong frame that easily lent him an imposing aura. The man’s sheathed sword was visible just in the corner of Lazar’s vision. He knew if he turned his head a little more, he’d see his halberd still propped against the furthest wall.

“Can’t this wait until after dinner?” Madeline asked, turning her head between the two parties nervously. Matilda shot her sister a disapproving frown, which the younger sibling ignored.

“Worry not, this won’t take long. I only need to confirm a few things.”

Lazar exchanged glances with Ciel. The demon had to slouch to keep from hitting the ceiling, and now, she raised an eyebrow. Her posture remained lax, containing the casual, subtle watchfulness that the seraph had learned to identify, and she didn’t seem more tense than usual. Lazar nodded slightly. So far, Alaric seemed sincere.

“Of course,” the seraph said. “We apologize for intruding. I know our arrival was sudden.” He kept his voice steady and polite, a bland tone he’d learned to use in unfamiliar situations. From his experience, it was often the safest bet.

Alaric’s brows raised a little, but the rest of his expression remained stoic.

“Matilda tells me you claim to be refugees from the north. From what I understand, you encountered Madeline in the forest while hiding from the riders, and she escorted you here. Is that correct?”

“It is,” Lazar confirmed. Alaric hummed thoughtfully.

“I see. Could I ask what your relationship is? Are you refugees from the same area?”

At this, his gaze shifted from Lazar to Ciel, then back again. His eyes, Lazar noted, were a little harder, a little more wary when he studied the demon.

The flesh eater snorted. “We don’t have one.” She shrugged. “We ran into each other on the road and figured we might as well stick as a group. Strength in numbers and all that.”

Alaric’s gaze sharpened. “You didn’t know each other beforehand?”

“Nope.”

The man’s dark brown eyes settled fully on the demon now. “And you’re a refugee as well?” His tone remained impressively even, betraying nothing. Lazar watched the flesh eater warily, but she didn’t so much as pause before responding.

“Nah, I’m not.” She grinned. “I’m a mercenary.”

One of Alaric’s hands twitched, drifting closer to his sword. Ciel raised her hands placatingly.

“Don’t worry, I’m not part of any of those factions or whatever.”

“That’s not possible.” It was Matilda who spoke up this time from beside the dining room table. Her blue gaze was sharp. “Even the most lenient groups wouldn’t tolerate an unaligned agent in their territory. The refugee story was at least more rational.”

Lazar used the opportunity to cut in.

“She deserted.” He kept his voice slow and quiet as he thought through his words. The lies came surprisingly easily. Speaking the truth was a tenet of Elysium, but then, he supposed he’d broken that one many times in the past—in the white marble hallways of the Andire manor, in front of the trial stands the day after he’d killed the nearly fallen boy.

Lazar felt eyes turn in his direction. Sharing a brief glance with Ciel, the seraph continued. “It…we had a few encounters with her old group on the road.” He paused to give the words time to sink in, and in the moment he was glad for their tattered, dirty clothes. They would lend more credence to the story.

“The last time we saw them, we were barely able to fight them off. That’s when I took the halberd.” He nodded at the weapon in question. Sooner or later, he suspected Alaric would ask about it. Even if he didn’t recognize its origin, it was clearly high quality, and this would provide an explanation for why he would possess something of its caliber.

Lazar lowered his head, bowing a little. “We apologize for our deception. We were worried we wouldn’t be allowed inside Carran, given the possibility that Ciel’s old group is still following us. It was easier to say she was also a refugee.” He straightened again, but kept his voice quiet and passive. “We don’t mean to bring this village any trouble. If you’d like us to leave, we will.”

Only once he was done speaking did he let himself raise his eyes again. In front of him, Alaric looked thoughtful, dark brows furrowed. While the wariness hadn’t entirely dissipated, his hand had moved away from his sword. To the side, Madeline frowned sympathetically, but Matilda was more difficult to read. Those blue eyes remained cool and distant. At the very least, she didn’t outright reject the notion.

Alaric opened his mouth to respond, and Lazar braced himself for the man to ask about his own origins like he had with Ciel. Alaric paused, gaze shifting over to Matilda, then back to the seraph. His jaw closed, and he frowned as though considering something. Finally, to Lazar’s surprise, he simply nodded.

“I see. I’d like to know more about your travels, but I’ve held up dinner for long enough. We can speak again another time.”

Lazar furrowed his brow. “You mean..?”

“You’re free to remain in Carran for as long as you wish. We would be remiss to turn away travelers in need, though you’ll need to find a place to stay.”

“You can stay here!” Madeline piped up. She smiled brightly even as Matilda raised an eyebrow.

“And I get no say in this?”

“It’ll be fine, they’ve got Alaric’s approval,” Madeline insisted. “Besides, they can stay in Elliot’s room.” Her warm brown eyes widened. “Please? We can’t just turn them away.”

Matilda snorted in faint amusement. “Fine,” she said, and Lazar suspected she would’ve agreed from the start and had only been teasing. Madeline beamed. Giving her sister a swift hug, she hurried over to the table, pulling out the chairs and rearranging the dishes to make more space.

Lazar moved to help, but before he’d taken a step, Alaric interrupted him.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Wait. While you’re here…” His voice trailed, and he reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a small cloth drawstring bag. The seraph caught it instinctively, and the sound of metal clicking together confirmed its contents. His eyes widened a fraction. From the weight of the bag, there was quite a large sum of coins inside.

“We can’t possibly accept this,” the seraph began. A hand landed on his shoulder, and his muscles tensed on instinct. It was slight, the reaction largely kept under careful control. Based on the way Alaric frowned, however, he’d noticed.

“Young man,” the human said, his deep voice slow and steady. “Carran is a welcoming place, filled with kind souls. It’s my hope that you and your companion will be able to find comfort here.” He released Lazar’s shoulder and stepped back. “My apologies for startling you. Now, I’ve kept the two of you from dinner for long enough.” He nodded and turned towards the table, where Madeline and Matilda sat waiting, without a second glance back.

—

Lazar held a small square bronze coin closer to the flickering lamp. Lit by soft candles, the contrast between light and shadows made the room feel at once larger and smaller than when he’d been there earlier in the day.

The surface of the coin was dull, littered with small scratches that told of countless changes in hand. The seraph carefully dropped it back into the pouch, and it landed with a clink. Now that he’d opened the bag, there were even more coins inside than he’d initially estimated.

“Well, that went pretty damn smoothly if I do say so myself.”

Lazar turned, and the wooden chair beneath him creaked a little as he moved. Ciel was lounging on the bed, arms behind her head and lazily peering up at the ceiling. The seraph’s eyes darted over to his halberd propped against the desk. The warm hues of the candles bounced oddly over its silver surface, and his own warped reflection curved around the metal. They’d given it back to him right after dinner.

“…I suppose so.”

Ciel raised an eyebrow. “You don’t sound too happy.”

The seraph frowned. “I’m just a bit wary. I don’t imagine you fully trust anyone here, either.

The demon grinned, flashing her teeth. “Oh definitely not.” She pushed herself up so that she was sitting on the bed. She hadn’t bothered to remove her shoes or wipe off her clothes, and stray flecks of dried blood and dirt were already streaked over the blankets. “But hey, they’re fine with housing us and giving us a bunch of money they probably can’t afford, so I say we take the gifts while we’ve got them.”

Lazar chuckled. “Well, I won’t argue with that.” He carefully set the bag down on the desk and turned around fully. “I do think they’re largely sincere, and they certainly seem like kind people.”

“But?”

He paused, frowning a little as he thought. “Alaric didn’t ask me for my background.” He remembered Matilda talking to the man beforehand, how both of their eyes had darted in his direction. Alaric wouldn’t have needed to ask for his origin if he already thought he knew.

“I believe they may know more than they’re letting on. That, and…” His voice trailed, remembering the look Alaric had given him after giving him the bag. His brows furrowed and he shifted in the chair. “Alaric’s eyes looked…pitying.”

It was the sort of look he hadn’t received in a long time. When he was young and small and couldn’t fly, sometimes the other servants he crossed in the halls would shoot him a sad smile or a sympathetic glance. A few had even helped him dress his wounds back then. But as he grew older and increasingly distant from the rest of the manor staff, as he developed his fighting skills and became known as Julius’s personal guard, most stopped meeting his gaze at all. The few times he did catch a stray glance, the emotion there was an entirely different one.

Ciel snorted. “Big blow to your pride or something? Didn’t think you had much of an ego.”

“I’m not used to it,” Lazar admitted. “And I don’t see much reason for it.”

The flesh eater stopped mid sentence. She leveled him with a long, unreadable look. That golden eye reflected the dancing candle flames, even as their own surface remained flat. Finally, she shrugged.

“Well, I say you play it up. It’s awfully useful when folks pity you, and between the two of us you’re a much better fit for the role.” She snorted. “I’m not the kind of person people tend to feel sorry for, if you know what I mean.”

Lazar didn’t think he fit into that role very well either, but he sensed that it was pointless to argue. He scanned the room slowly, listening to the soft crackling of the candles. His eyes would continuously dart over to the small gap beneath the door, checking if the dim light from the hallway torch ever changed or was blocked. It remained steady, and he didn’t hear any creaking floorboards either.

The seraph closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, focusing on the faint warmth in his chest. He pictured strands of essence, and when he opened them again, the thin, silvery strings wove across his vision. He felt his shoulders sag a little in relief. A small, irrational part of him had feared that, once he turned his essence perception off, he would somehow lose it again.

The strands themselves were a little thicker than the wispy strings of the Abyss, but there still wasn’t a particularly large amount of them. More than the average place in the lower realm, but less than there’d been by the realm gate.

In this case, the looser essence would actually be beneficial. In order to ascend from the first plane to the second, a soul had to be strong enough to cast a spell. Seraphs had no special name for it—there was no need when learning to cast chants was simply an ordinary part of growing—but humans referred to it as the origin spell. This always manifested as a basic blast of primal elemental magic, and it would also reveal a soul’s innate affinity. The process of achieving an origin spell was often the first major hurdle that humans faced on the road to ascension.

After building enough strength in the soul to be able to manipulate the essence strands, humans struggled most with learning how to absorb the essence into their soul, shape it, and cast it off into a tangible effect. For people like him and Ciel, who already knew how magic worked and how it felt, he hoped the process would come faster. That way they could leave this plane quickly and move onto the second, where the threshold for ascension would become much more difficult to reach.

“Meditating?”

Ciel’s rumbling voice broke through his thoughts. The demon was still sitting on the bed, legs crossed, an eyebrow raised. Lazar nodded.

“Yes. I’d like to reach the point of ascension as soon as possible.”

Ciel hummed and rose. The seraph watched curiously as she grabbed one of the candles placed around the room, eyes narrowing for a moment as she looked around the space. She was searching for the area with the most concentrated essence, Lazar realized. Sure enough, she soon strode over and set the candle down on the floor, right at a spot where four different strands crossed into a small knot of concentrated essence. The fire served to highlight that point, and the string of essence tied to that candle joined the knot as well.

The flesh eater plopped down on the ground, the floorboards creaking a little beneath her, and raised an eyebrow. “What? I need to ascend too, you know.”

“I didn’t realize demons meditated the same way.”

“Call it a mage thing, not a demon thing.” She shrugged. “After you hit the first plane, the whole consuming method doesn’t work as well on its own anymore. Course, it definitely still helps,” she added with a chuckle.

After a moment of consideration, Lazar rose from his chair and settled down on the floor across from Ciel, the candle and strings of essence separating the space between them.

“After we purchase supplies tomorrow, we can return to the forest for a few hours. There should be plenty of animals and hybrids inside, perhaps a few pure ascended demons as well.”

The flesh eater was silent for a few moments, studying the seraph. Then, a slow grin spread across her face.

“You just want to fight something, don’t you.”

“I’ve been a bit antsy since ascending,” Lazar admitted. “And it’s good to stay in practice.”

Ciel chuckled, the sound a low rumble reverberating throughout the space, but she didn’t say anything else. The amused glint didn’t disappear from the demon’s golden eyes.

Lazar shook his head and concentrated again on those strands of essence, steadying his breaths and focusing his senses until there was nothing but the strings. Carefully, he willed one to move closer, reaching out with his soul. It remained still, but he hadn’t expected to succeed so easily.

The seraph settled into a more comfortable position and repeated the process, over and over again. In front of him, the candle flame continued to flicker.