Chapter 47 - Instability I

The threads of essence looked thicker under the pale blue sky. The cool colors breathed a new life into the landscape, at once brightening the spaces between the trees and also making them appear starker, their edges more harshly defined. Lazar attempted to stretch his perception farther. A few fainter, nearly invisible lines of essence were visible in the light—thin wisps that bended easily when he focused on them.

The seraph exhaled and shifted his attention to another strand. He could get it to jerk almost immediately, but longer attempts at moving them were still unsuccessful. Still, based on his speed of progress so far, he would be able to move a strand of essence enough to bring it into his soul and cast a spell very soon.

Lazar frowned, carefully eyeing the gaps between the trees for any living creatures. The sound of footsteps made him jerk around, and he turned to see Ciel, her axe now in tow, striding forward with an eyebrow raised.

“What, those trees start dancing or something? You’re staring awfully hard.”

“I was practicing my essence manipulation,” Lazar said. “I’m progressing more quickly than I expected.”

“Yeah? You don’t look too happy about it.”

The seraph shifted, pulling the cloth cover off his halberd in a smooth motion and storing it away. “I find it strange that I haven’t heard of another fallen ascending back up the realms like this, especially when relearning magic hasn’t been too difficult so far.” His brows furrowed. “I can’t help but feel like there’s something I’m missing.”

One hand moved unconsciously over to his marking, still the same size as it had been when he’d landed in the Abyss. He’d taken to checking it every morning and night, and the longer he went without those inky lines expanding, the more uneasy he got.

“To be fair, most folks who fall probably don’t know magic.” Ciel snorted, casually flicking a few pieces of lint off her clothes. “Especially not as well as a seraph would, and like I said, fallen seraphs’re pretty rare.”

Lazar nodded slowly. That was a possibility; it was true that he hadn’t heard of another seraph falling, at least not during his lifetime, and he guessed a majority of those who fell were sentenced. In those cases, the fallen would typically immediately land in the Void, with no chance of returning.

He frowned. He still wasn’t convinced that was the sole reason. There had to be something else going on that kept fallen from rebuilding their souls, and he suspected he would find out sooner rather than later.

“How far along is your essence manipulation?” Lazar asked Ciel. The flesh eater shrugged, the movement casual and unbothered.

“Can’t move the strands quite yet. I’ll be able to once we’re done hunting today, though,” she added with a grin. “You close to the origin spell?”

“Decently so,” the seraph said simply. The demon just hummed, taking a step forward, a stray branch cracking under her feet. Lazar silently pulled out more of those fabric strips and handed half to Ciel. He took a second to study their location in relation to the previous night, then turned to begin heading in the direction they’d last gone. Since they were starting earlier in the day, they’d be able to make it much deeper in and perhaps find the root of those demon hybrids.

Under the clear sky, the woods somehow felt emptier, more lonely despite the added brightness. The contrast between the soft gradients above and the harsh, barren land was ever present as they made their way deeper into the forest, a brisk breeze pushing at their backs. Lazar’s eyes were constantly moving, searching for movement, but so far there were no signs of life.

“Hey, you’re a wind affinity right?”

Lazar turned and glanced at the demon. “I am,” he said slowly. “I don’t remember mentioning it.”

“Relax,” Ciel said with a snort. “I’m pretty good at guessing.”

That made Lazar’s eyebrows raise slightly. “I didn’t think there was a way to tell.”

“Sure there is, if you know what to look for. Take it from your elder.” She tapped her forehead, a few stray hairs falling back and revealing more of the other half of her face. “At some point you just start to know.”

“Could I ask what your affinity is, then?” After Lazar voiced the question out loud, he realized he was genuinely curious. He knew Ciel had known magic prior to ending up back in the Abyss and then being sealed by Cassius, and she must have been advanced, too, to have reached Elysium.

The demon met Lazar’s eyes, not speaking for a moment. Then, a wide grin spread across her features.

“Guess.”

The seraph frowned at that. “I’m not sure I—”

His voice cut off, grey eyes shifting to the side at the faint, distant sound of flapping wings. He stopped walking, and he heard Ciel still as well.

Further into the trees, he could see a few white birds, many times larger than normal. They were gathered on the hard ground around a patch of that pearly moss scattered throughout the forest. It was hard to tell details from a distance, but on one bird in the perimeter, he could see clusters of lime green eyes swiveling in different directions. The sound of flapping rose again as another bird fluttered its wings, and he could see long white bones jutting out between silky fathers.

More demonic hybrids, it seemed. But unlike the wolves from before, these didn’t seem inherently aggressive. A few turned their way, multicolored eyes staring in their direction, but they didn’t move towards them or make to attack.

The seraph frowned as he studied them. The birds jumped around a little, walking along the ground, but though quite a few flapped or spread their wings, none of them flew.

He eyed their distorted wings again, wondering if their demonic features had interfered with their ability to fly. The second bird with the long bones was the most active, continuously beating its wings and attempting to lift off the ground. Despite its best efforts, it failed again and again, its white feathers scattering and falling across the barren earth.

Lazar’s grip around the halberd tightened, the sight making something in his chest twist.

“Ciel,” he muttered lowly. “How much more do you need to consume before you reach the essence manipulation threshold?”

The demon glanced in his direction, eyes sharp as she studied him. Finally, she raised an eyebrow. “Well, those birds do look pretty big,” she drawled.

Lazar heard the demon shift, raising her axe off her shoulder. The seraph stared at the demon bird hybrids a little longer. The one with the long bones turned around, attempting a different direction. He waited, readying his halberd. The second those wings lifted, he surged forward.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Feathers fell, the cluster of birds scattering as the silver blade carved straight into those wings and sliced them off. Dark blood stained the ground, and Lazar felt the halberd catch a bit on hard bone, its cut jagged. He didn’t stop, simply thrusting the tip forward into the creature’s head, piercing through its skull until it fell limp against the ground.

White blurs flashed by in his peripheral vision as the rest of the creatures attempted to flee, all of them remaining grounded, wings fluttering desperately and without success. Ciel’s axe came slamming down into one, bisecting it before she moved on to the next.

Lazar adjusted his hold on the halberd, inhaled, and lunged at another.

Killing the rest of the demon hybrids was a quick affair. A simple matter of swinging and feeling the sharp metal cut through another body. There was almost a mindlessness to it, and after so long in the Abyss, where nearly every fight had felt like a life or death situation, the swift easiness of the “fight” felt odd and foreign. Uncomfortable.

The last bird fell, and Lazar slowly lowered his bloodied halberd. Around them, the ground was littered with torn white feathers, steadily soaking into the growing pools of blood. Many of the birds had been reduced to nothing more than a few scattered lumps of flesh, amorphous and unrecognizable.

The seraph vaguely noted Ciel digging her axe into the ground, then crouching down by some of the pieces. He stared down at his hand, noting the faint tension still present there. He frowned, squeezing his fingers into a fist. He’d hoped that strange antsiness would have faded by now, but it seemed like it was still present. It was getting harder and harder to ignore.

A squelching sound caught Lazar’s attention, and he turned to see that Ciel was standing at her full height again. Her left arm was raised forward, and the flesh around her forearm had been morphed, extending and twisting down to the ground, a gaping mouth with sharp teeth at its end messily tearing into the corpse. She raised an eyebrow when she noticed him watching.

“What? There’s a lot of pieces.”

If he’d been more careful, he could’ve killed the demon hybrids much more cleanly, Lazar thought. He turned, moving to a nearby corpse and carefully dragging it over to Ciel. It left a dark red streak across the white moss as he moved it.

“Here, I’ll gather them closer.”

The demon snorted at that. “Aw, how sweet.”

The flesh around her arm rippled, and a second arm shot off from the one already devouring, branching into a new, waving limb that extended down until another mouth snapped around the new corpse. Lazar turned and moved more, simply kicking and pushing the smaller lumps that were too small to drag over.

Once he was done with that, he leaned against a bare tree, waiting for the demon to finish eating. He took the chance to practice his essence manipulation again. The strings weren’t necessarily denser here, but they were longer, looping between branches and trees in more complicated shapes. The seraph focused on one passing over the ground in front of him, reaching out with his soul and willing it closer.

The silvery string lurched, curving and curling towards him, and his brows furrowed in concentration as he attempted to coax it closer. The essence strand shook a little as it inched further, its movements smoothing out the more Lazar focused.

When it was half an arm’s distance away, the tension in the string released and it fell back into its original position, and Lazar took a deep breath, suddenly much more tired than before. That one had been the closest so far, he thought. One more push and he’d be able to bring a strand into his soul.

Though he was still suspicious of the lack of other ascended fallen, the idea of being able to use magic again, of once again being able to feel essence in his soul, was exciting. It would only be for the brief moments before casting a spell, but a little bit of that pervasive hollowness would be gone. Soon, he would be able to shift the breezes again. To feel the wind as easily as his own breaths.

“Okay, I’m done.”

The seraph raised his head to see Ciel shaking off her left arm, the extra appendages gone and the skin there rippling just a little as the muscles finished smoothing back over. Around them, the large corpses and pieces were gone, though a few scattered bits still lay strewn about the blood soaked moss.

Lazar nodded and straightened, stepping forward and tying a cloth to a nearby branch to mark their location. He glanced up at the sky, the sun only just reaching its apex. “We should still have plenty of time before we need to return,” he said.

“Sounds good.” Ciel yanked her axe out of the ground, shaking it to get the dirt off. She paused, eyeing first the mess left on the ground and then the seraph. Her golden eyes gleamed.

“You know, I haven’t heard you say the passing prayer since Nero.” She cocked her head. “You’d think demon hybrids would be a little higher up on the sentience list for seraphs than those mindless demons in the Abyss, but hey, maybe Elysium praying rules’re different.”

The words made Lazar freeze for a second. He slowly turned around again.

“I…No, you’re right.” He shook his head, releasing a long breath. “I’ve been forgetting to. Thank you for reminding me.” Something else he was slipping with.

The seraph stepped closer to the corpses and clasped his hands together, mouth instinctively forming the words of the passing prayer as he thought of both these birds and the wolves they’d killed the other day. Ciel watched silently from the side for a moment before speaking.

“You know, that was mostly a joke. You don’t actually have to do that.”

“Perhaps not.” Lazar finished the prayer and lowered his hands, moving to grab his halberd again. “Still, I feel better doing it.”

“Why?” The demon’s eyes were sharp as she studied him. “I heard you dropping the Light’s name.” Her golden gaze moved to his empty back, ripped of its wings and indistinguishable from a human’s. “I doubt you still believe in all the stuff Elysium’s been saying, after the whole falling thing.” She gestured vaguely in his direction.

She wasn’t wrong. After setting his mind on returning to Elysium and facing Julius, he’d wondered whether it wasn’t simply the Light, but his overall understanding of the Cycle that he should reconsider.

“That may be true,” Lazar said slowly. “I suppose it is strange.” He frowned, trying to find the right words. “It’s difficult to explain, but I feel like I’d lose something important if I stopped.”

Golden eyes remained steady. “Your connection to Elysium?”

The seraph shook his head. He’d already come to terms with losing that. “No, it’s…something else. I’m sorry, I know I’m not making much sense,” he added apologetically.

The flesh eater was quiet for a few moments. Then, she swung her axe back over her shoulder, resting it there, and shrugged dismissively. “Eh, I guess it doesn’t really matter.” She turned, squinting into the forest. “Anyway, we might as well keep going. Turns out those birds weren’t quite enough.”

Lazar nodded, glad to leave the topic behind. Adjusting his hold on his halberd, he stepped forward, continuing further into the trees.

—

After another hour had passed, they saw it.

Its appearance wasn’t sudden, as had been the case for the wolves and the birds. Rather, Lazar had felt a growing weight in the air the longer they walked, one he couldn’t seem to shake off even when he turned around and saw nothing behind them. Its presence was as heavy as a gaze and even less tangible.

Around them, the trees grew increasingly dense, trunks climbing higher and higher and the canopy of branches thickening until even the light of the cloudless sky couldn’t penetrate through. The forest was once again left half cloaked in shadow, and it was between those tall trees that the creature appeared.

Deep black eyes. Sharp, fanning antlers.

At first glance, it looked like an ordinary deer, but then its size became apparent. Even from far away, Lazar could tell the creature was massive, nearly the size of a hill and dwarfing even some of the neighboring trees. Its antlers were thicker than many surrounding trunks, and the eyes alone were easily the size of a human head.

The creature stared at the two of them, perfectly still, with four dark eyes. They didn’t shift or blink, but remained trained on the two of them, uncanny in their lack of movement. Impossible to look away from.

Lazar stopped, and he heard Ciel do the same. The demon hybrid continued to stare, still remaining in place.

The seraph tensed, fingers clenching around the halberd as he met those flat eyes. He waited for it to move, for it to attack, for it to do something.

And then, several moments later, the creature simply turned its head, antlers brushing against neighboring tree branches, and it silently moved deeper into the forest, steps graceful and smooth as it faded into the shadows.

Lazar watched it go, the line of tension in his body still taut. Based on the direction it was walking, it seemed like it was moving towards the center of the forest, the same place they were.

He shifted his gaze, meeting eyes with Ciel. The demon simply nodded, and he turned back in the direction the deer had disappeared. The seraph stepped forward, and he felt his foot sink into softer ground.

Despite its size, the creature had left only the faintest traces of footprints behind. They were just enough for the two of them to track as they continued, making their way into the heart of the forest.