Chapter 44 - Familiar Form

Lazar pressed a hand down against the cool earth, his eyes narrowing. The barren field surrounding the realm gate was hard, but a few faint dips and tracks were visible on its surface. The seraph rose, tracing the other marks left behind by the demonic horses. They streaked across the plain, vanishing beyond the skyline.

“Those’re from those riders, right?” Ciel’s voice cut in. The flesh eater peered down impassively at the marks. Lazar nodded, shifting his gaze to the forest. The barren branches and crooked trees looked unchanged from the day before. He closed his eyes, silently pulling on his soul. When he opened them again, thin strings of essence curled around the trees, threading through the forest. There was noticeably more here, close to the realm gate, compared to within Carran.

“Based on the direction the wolf came from yesterday, I believe the demon hybrids may originate from deeper in the forest,” Lazar said as they moved closer to the tree line. Ciel hummed, her axe resting haphazardly across one shoulder.

“Better hurry up if you want us back before the sun goes down.” She squinted into the trees, and Lazar suspected she had opened her essence perception as well.

The seraph reached into his newly bought bag, pulling out the old scraps of fabric that they’d collected from the Abyss alcoves. Now that they had proper bandages, they were no longer necessary. He handed a few to the demon.

“To tie on the trees,” he explained. “So we don’t get lost. We can take them down when we return.”

“Not a bad idea.” Ciel wrapped the strips around her forearm.

At this point, the shadows had already begun to lengthen, crossing over the hard ground in a rough pattern of lines and corners. Rustling branches sounded wherever the wind touched, and Lazar silently slipped the cloth away from the top of his halberd. Perhaps it was counterintuitive, but the added uncertainty of the surroundings, the way his senses sharpened and remained on alert the further in they traveled, was comforting in its caution. Here was a place to direct his energy.

Up ahead, Ciel roughly looped a cloth around one of the higher branches, just above a patch of pearly white moss. Lazar’s eyes traced the trees around them, following the swaying of shadows.

And then, he saw it. A disturbance in the rhythm of the forest.

His body moved seconds before the snarl rang out beneath the canopy. Lazar lunged forward, halberd swinging. The silver metal cleaved down into the creature, and Lazar recognized it as belonging to the same species as the wolf demon hybrid they’d first encountered. It landed in a twitching, bloody heap, but Lazar was already turning away.

A mass of red eyes peered out from within the shadows of the forest, flashes of smooth fur interspersed between demonic features.

One’s flesh bubbled, rising up and down continuously. Another’s tail was replaced with a long tendril, an eye gleaming on the end. Lazar’s hands tightened around his halberd, and Ciel spoke aloud the words they were both thinking.

“Looks like we found the whole pack.”

The demon hybrids pounced. Lazar ducked under gleaming claws, many times longer than an ordinary wolf’s. Digging his feet into the ground to stabilize himself, he brought his halberd up just in time to block another swing with the shaft. The metal rang, the sound clear and sharp.

This wolf was almost entirely demonic in appearance, body a twisted mass of limbs, only its face untouched. Lazar stared into those flat eyes, and the flesh around the creature’s back rippled.

Metal screeched against sharp claws as Lazar pivoted, slamming the blade of the halberd into the creature’s torso before its flesh could finish warping. It collapsed to the ground, but the undulating didn’t stop. Lazar didn’t think, simply flipping his halberd around and stabbing the tip straight down between those uncanny eyes. He felt it sink past hard bone, then pierce the soft brain below.

A growl sounded from his back. Low, right, Lazar thought. He kicked his leg out, and he felt it make impact. A sharp stinging ran up his calf, and something warm trickled down his skin. The wolf must’ve managed to claw him before it was forced away.

In the back of Lazar’s mind, he could hear more snarls, the sound of squelching and bodies being slammed into trees and earth where Ciel must be. He didn’t focus on it, though, his senses honed in on the last three demon hybrids in his area.

These three took a slower approach, not pouncing immediately like the others had. Instead, they circled him, muscles rippling with every movement. Lazar held his halberd up in a ready position, eyeing them as they approached. Across his vision, strands of essence wove around, and he instinctively tried to pull at them. In the heat of battle, he didn’t have the same single minded focus as he did while meditating, but his sharpened, alert senses seemed to make them more tangible like this, more familiar in their use.

The wolves continued closing in, and the seraph’s scanned them rapidly. One was small and lithe, two extra legs growing from its torso like an insect’s limbs. The second was the largest, massive and cloaked in a shell of matte white bone that contrasted with its dark fur. The third stayed the furthest away, a long snake-like tail swaying behind it in preparation.

The small one moved further and further behind him, its footsteps light and nearly silent across the ground. Lazar subtly adjusted his stance.

The moment the wolf disappeared from his peripheral vision, he moved.

The seraph rolled forward, and he heard the wind whistle above him as the creature lunged. The cut on his leg stung, but his eyes were trained on the third wolf, following the movement of its snaking tail as it barrelled at him.

The seraph barely managed to jump away in time, and the ground cracked from the tail’s impact. He brought his halberd down, slicing straight through the appendage. He heard the wolf howl, but he was already spinning towards the smaller one, just barely blocking its jaws from closing around him. Its teeth snapped around the metal, clenching around the shaft and hanging on with a vice grip no matter how hard he jerked the weapon back.

In the corner of his eye, he saw the larger wolf run towards him, jaws wide open.

At the last second, Lazar yanked his halberd back, swinging both it and the smaller wolf straight into the large creature’s waiting maw.

The jaws snapped shut, and blood squirted out from between its sharp incisors. Lazar gritted his teeth, struggling to pull the end of his halberd away. Those red eyes stared at him, and he brought up a knee and slammed it under the creature’s jaw. It was just enough to loosen the hold of those teeth, and he pulled back, not wasting any time to dig his blade into the demonic wolf’s neck.

Lazar didn’t let himself rest just yet. The third wolf stumbled towards him, its tail wounded and bloodied, twitching in jerking, unsteady movements. Lazar swept his halberd low in a wide arc, bringing the wolf crashing into a nearby tree.

The bark snapped and branches fell around them as the creature was crushed into the trunk. The cut was rough and messy, and a strange gurgling sound rose from the wolf’s throat. It was drowning in its own blood, Lazar realized. He stepped forward. Another strike, and it finally fell limp.

Around him, the flashes of movement disappeared. Lazar exhaled, realizing just how quick his breaths had become. The strings of essence were sharp in his vision, and he turned off his perception of them before the slight dizziness in his head could grow.

As the adrenaline left his muscles and his grip on the cold metal loosened, the seraph took in his surroundings.

The ground, formerly barren, was now strewn with blood and chunks of flesh and scattered fur. If one didn’t look closely, they might mistake them for strange rocks, rises and dips in the stony landscape.

Lazar stared at the cuts piercing the bodies of the corpses, eyeing how rough their edges were, how they stretched in uneven, crooked lines. Messy. The seraph stared down at his free hand, opening and closing his fingers.

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It was as he’d feared. He was getting sloppy, too high strung and reliant on instincts. His brows furrowed, unnerved.

The sound of cracking wood interrupted his thoughts. Lazar’s head snapped up.

A few feet away, Ciel dug the blade of her axe into a wolf’s open jaw, forcing the edge down its throat. Red stains and motionless corpses splayed the ground around her, the flesh eater moving with a violent ease as she finished off the last of the creatures.

She shifted stances, bringing the axe up in a defensive hold before rushing at the final remaining wolf. Any suspicions that the demon might not be familiar with the weapon vanished. She moved with an ease that spoke of years of experience, as familiar and in sync with the axe as she was with her flesh warping. That, however, wasn’t what made Lazar freeze.

It was more than just experience. The way she held the weapon, her stances, her swings. Though her fighting style was rougher and more wild than he was personally used to, there was an unmistakable, trained foundation there.

A memory rose to the surface.

—

“This way!”

Julius’s voice rang with excitement as he ran down the white halls, patchy wings bouncing a little with every movement. Lazar hurried to follow the boy, his own eyes shifting uneasily, darting between marble columns for anyone who might be watching. Despite the openness of the manor’s architecture, he knew there were all too many places to hide.

Up ahead, the younger seraph turned a corner and ducked under a large archway. Lazar slowed down, eyeing the entrance carefully. He knew the training grounds, well acquainted with its smooth ground and circular layout. He could picture the weapons rack when he closed his eyes, callused fingers twitching at the memory. The place was always quiet when he was there, always oppressively silent. But that day, a crowd waited, gathered around the perimeters.

Unfamiliar seraphs stood on the sidelines, a few sipping tea and exchanging small talk while others watched the ongoing spar with rapt attention. There was some sort of event that day, Lazar knew. That morning, Lord Andire had slammed open the door to the servant quarters and stared down at him with cold eyes.

“You are to complete your tasks in silence. I will not see or hear a word from you today.”

And indeed, since that morning, Lazar hadn’t seen a trace of the man throughout the manor. It was at once relieving and terribly nerve wracking.

Julius’s face popped up in front of his vision, the other seraph’s expression pulled into a frown. He pulled on Lazar’s sleeve insistently.

“Come on,” he said with a huff. “We’re gonna miss it!”

Lazar eyed the crowd, shifting his weight. Though nothing had happened in a while, the whip scars on his back seemed to ache like phantom wounds.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else today,” he said carefully. Julius just rolled his eyes. After those initial months following their first meeting, the boy had quickly lost his shyness. Most of the time Lazar found the younger seraph’s newfound energy charming, but in cases like these, he wished as much as he dared to that Julius was a little less stubborn.

“It’ll be fine, stop being such a worrywart.” Julius tugged his sleeve again, and with a final hesitant glance around them, Lazar slowly followed. In the end, there wasn’t much of a choice in the matter.

Julius pulled them behind one of the pillars encircling the space, and to Lazar’s relief, no one batted an eye at the sight of them. Settling down in the shadows of the pillar, Lazar carefully peered out.

High up in the crystal clear blue sky, Lord Andire and a seraph Lazar recognized as Sir Angus sparred. Sword and axe clashed, sparks flying with every blow, every impact. Massive wings flapped and twisted sharply, their bodies weaving through the air with a weightless, effortless freedom that took Lazar’s breath away.

They used no magic, only their weapons, but even so the power and skill of the former seventh guardian and the current eighth guardian was apparent. Lazar could barely follow them with his eyes, his head moving up and down rapidly with every clash in a desperate attempt to keep up.

Beside him, Julius’s green eyes shone in the light, fixed on the spar and following the arcing of sword and axe with an awe-filled fervor.

“...Do you think I’ll be able to do that someday?”

His voice was quiet, sounding much closer to the shy seraph Lazar had first met who’d hidden behind his mother. Lazar studied him closely, grey eyes shifting between him and the spar. Finally, he spoke, and the words were sincere.

“I’m sure you will,” he said.

Julius beamed.

—

The last wolf demon hybrid fell to the ground in a heap, and Ciel straightened. Dark, viscous blood ran down the blade of her axe, and she swung it carelessly back over her shoulder. The flesh eater turned, raising an eyebrow when she caught sight of Lazar.

“Something on my face?” she joked. “Other than the blood.”

Lazar frowned, his eyebrows creasing. When he spoke, he chose his words carefully.

“Your form. It’s… familiar.”

Ciel flicked off a few stray clumps of fur that had stuck to her clothing. She didn’t react to the seraph’s comment, expression unchanging and body language as relaxed as ever.

“Yeah?”

“It looks like the technique taught in Elysium.”

At that, the flesh eater snorted. “Really now. You’d think they’d’ve updated it or something.”

She didn’t deny the statement.

“It’s different from the more modern styles taught,” Lazar amended. “But it’s similar to the way Sir Angus fights.”

A brief silence passed. Above them, the sun had fully disappeared below the horizon, leaving a few lingering streaks of crimson that flared into violet at their ends. The forest darkened, shadows overtaking the ground entirely, and the light of the realm gate seemed brighter than ever.

Finally, Ciel smiled.

“Yep,” the demon drawled. She cocked her head, the axe shifting with the movement. “I learned how to use this thing in Elysium.”

Lazar blinked, processing the information. He hadn’t expected such a straightforward answer. Ciel raised an eyebrow.

“What, is that such a shock? It’s not like you didn’t already know I’ve been there before.”

Knowing the demon had managed to ascend up to Elysium was quite different from the knowledge that she’d apparently been ingrained enough into the realm’s society to learn to wield an axe there, Lazar thought. He’d never heard of such a thing; the only demons who entered Elysium were the ones who forcibly invaded. The seraph studied the flesh eater carefully. Had she disguised herself as a human while she was there?

“I wasn’t aware you were there for so long,” Lazar said slowly. Ciel chuckled at that.

“Believe me, I know Elysium very well.” She grinned sharply, golden eye seeming to glow in the dim evening light. “I’ve probably lived in Elysium even longer than you.”

‘Lived in,’ Lazar noted. Not simply passed by or reached, but lived in.

The flesh eater turned around, casually eyeing the dead corpses surrounding them, her gaze tracing the cuts keenly. She then glanced over in the direction the wolves had come from.

“Looks like you were right about those things coming from deeper in,” she remarked. Lazar followed her gaze, but by then, it was too dark for him to see much further into the trees. Those crooked branches cloaked everything from view, obscuring what lay within.

“...Indeed.” His brows furrowed, and he glanced up at the sky. If they didn’t return soon, it would be nightfall by the time they reached Carran. They would need time to clean their clothes and weapons as well, lest they draw needless suspicion and concern.

“We can return here tomorrow,” Lazar decided. “We’ll move deeper into the forest then.” Ciel just hummed in agreement.

The seraph turned, moving to take down the cloths they’d tied around the branches. His leg stung a little, and he remembered the cut on his calf. It didn’t feel particularly deep. He’d bandage it once they were closer to the village.

Behind him, Lazar heard rustling as Ciel moved down to one of the corpses, likely to devour it. A few telltale squelches confirmed his thoughts.

The fabric slid free, and Lazar rolled it up and placed it back into his bag to be used again the next day. He turned back to the corpses. Under the darkening sky, they looked like little more than shadowy lumps, limp bodies that could be mistaken for anything.

For a brief second, an image of bloodied wings and unseeing green eyes flashed in his vision. Lazar’s fingers tightened around his halberd and he shook his head, pushing the images away. In the corner of his eye, Ciel was still crouched by one of the corpses, blood trickling down her forearm. The seraph’s gaze lingered on the flesh eater for a moment before moving away.

There was still much he didn’t know or understand, Lazar thought. Grey eyes landed on the realm gate, staring into its constant, blinding radiance.

This was only the beginning.