Alyssa saw her first member of the Astral Authority two weeks after encountering Iosefael.
It had started out as a normal day. In the morning, she picked up a fresh batch of potions to be delivered. Some, she had even made herself. The Observatorium had ordered a small shipment of Tzheitza's counter-demon potion. They had wanted some months ago, but Tzheitza and the Pharaoh had denied them, citing a scarcity of resources. Iosefael donating a whole sack of feathers alleviated that scarcity enough for her to offer some of the concoction. The extra material also allowed her to start up a dozen more experiments all at the same time, which Alyssa had assisted with, learning more about potionmaking in the process.
In addition to the delivery, Alyssa spent some time perusing the tomes and scrolls of the Observatorium’s library. She didn’t take to the task with all that much enthusiasm. It was just a case of not knowing what might work on angels that kept her from being fully invested in research. Spectral Chains worked, so it stood to reason that other spells would work as well. Iosefael had agreed to being a test subject, though she reserved the right to veto anything.
Iosefael hadn’t let Alyssa use an Annihilator on her. Neither of them were sure that it would work, but she hadn’t wanted to take the chance. Same with a Spectral Axe and a few other spells. If anything had a chance to work, Alyssa assumed it would be a Spectral Axe. It and Spectral Chains had the commonality of being Death spells with Spectral in the name. Finding more was her current goal, along with anything else that seemed like it might affect Divine beings.
Irulon had offered a few spells that Alyssa was going to try next time she met up with Iosefael. And she had pointed her toward the proper section of the Observatorium’s library.
Alyssa hadn’t stood idle with Tenebrael’s magic. Tenebrael’s miracles couldn’t be used to harm humans, not that Alyssa had really tried so far. But Iosefael had taught her a few tricks that might get it to work against the Astral Authority.
Unfortunately, Adrael’s staff was still inert and would stay that way. If Alyssa tried to connect herself to the Archangel, things might be different. For the time being, it still worked as a shield against magic. That alone validated its existence. If only Tenebrael had dropped off a weapon for Alyssa to use. But then again, Alyssa hadn’t ever seen Tenebrael actually pull one out. Adrael had used the staff and shield. Iosefael wielded a spear and sword.
Perhaps Tenebrael had nothing but her own magic to get by. Magic that Alyssa could now use.
And it all required prayers to the stupid angel.
Requests, Alyssa had decided to call them. Just to avoid calling them prayers if anyone asked.
After finding a dozen relatively advanced spells to take a snapshot of during the post-delivery Observatorium crawl, Alyssa packed up and headed out. Irulon hadn’t shown up today. The regular, non-princess students always gave her looks. She didn’t leave because someone glared or looked like they were thinking about making conversation with her. That was definitely a contributing factor, however.
Even with the Taker gone, Alyssa felt like she had a lot of enemies that she really didn’t need to rub off on anyone else. And if demons or angels decided to have a little war around her, others would easily find themselves caught in the crossfire. Irulon had wound up with a staff stabbed through her back because of that.
Leaving so early in the day provided a perfect opportunity for Alyssa to engage in her new favorite pastime.
Brakkt wasn’t in the stables when Alyssa arrived. Three of the draken were missing as well. Izsha, however, was right where she expected. Unwrapping a small hunk of meat that she had purchased on the way over, Alyssa tossed it to her favorite dinosaur. “You want to go out today?”
Izsha didn’t need asking twice. After chomping down its food, it moved right to the saddles and even helped Alyssa get the harness in place with its teeth holding it steady. Ten minutes later, Alyssa was out, flying across the grassy hills next to the lake. Her house and the portal next to it shrank into the distance as Izsha and Alyssa charged toward the forest beyond the lake. Musca and Dasca came along as well, though neither had saddles or a rider.
Being with the draken like this was surprisingly fun and freeing. Alyssa could almost forget that fake angels might show up at any time and decide that they didn’t like her glowing eyes. She could ignore the fact that the palace burning down in her absence was a mildly credible threat. The nobles pulling their support, instigating unrest, or inviting attack and sabotage were distant concerns out in the middle of nowhere.
The air in the city of Lyria wasn’t polluted like modern cities were. But it did have a certain smell to it. Especially in the less wealthy sections. Even with magically enchanted cesspits that tried to contain the smell until ‘gong farmers’ could get around to emptying them into the river outside the city, things weren’t perfect. Though it wasn’t all bad. There were apparently several ordinances and laws dealing with waste disposal. The streets around the buildings were the responsibility of the occupants. Failure to keep the area clean resulted in onerous fines.
Like the IRS of America, the waste management services were not to be messed around with. Even Waters Street had kept their area tolerable.
Beyond the occasional odd smells around, it was a fairly noisy city too. Obviously it didn’t have jackhammers tearing apart streets, emergency vehicles blaring their sirens, motorcycles revving their engines, or assholes playing music from their cars loud enough to wake the dead. The sound of wooden cart wheels on cobblestone paths and crowds of people in the busier streets still made more noise than one might expect.
Out in the forest south of the lake, there was none of that. The air was pure and fresh. She was the only person around for who knew how far. Despite their size, the draken were predators that didn’t make much noise even while charging at speed between the trees. The wind in her ears was a bit much, but even that was a natural kind of sound.
While it was late afternoon at the moment, Alyssa discovered that there was nothing she enjoyed more than the smell of the forest at the crack of dawn. She wasn’t quite sure what it was about that particular time, but something about it just made her feel so comfortable and relaxed. It wasn’t bad now, of course, but it couldn’t compare to early in the morning.
For the most part, Alyssa let the draken do whatever they wanted. She was along for the ride. As long as Izsha avoided low branches, Alyssa was perfectly happy to simply sit and de-stress. The draken were happy to run about to their hearts’ content.
After an hour, Alyssa spotted a draken that wasn’t part of her party. A few minutes after, she found Brakkt sitting with his back to a rather large stone, cooking up some kind of woodland creature that might have been a squirrel. Or a rabbit? It was a bit hard to tell. Between the fire, the way it had been skinned, and the shriveled appearance from being cooked, it really didn’t look like anything Alyssa was familiar with.
“Howdy,” she said, sliding from Izsha’s back as the draken came to stop next to him.
“Howdy?”
“It’s a greeting from my home. Well, it doesn’t get much use anymore outside of certain regions, but my dad always said it. And doesn’t this kind of thing just make you feel like a cowboy?” she said while waving her arms between the little cooking fire, the woods, and the draken.
“Cow… boy?”
“You know… never mind.” Sighing, she took a seat next to him. It was a bit warm still to be sitting next to a fire, but not so warm that it felt like a sauna. The rest also gave her a chance to stretch out. Riding the draken was fairly comfortable all things considered, but it did lock her into position for a while. Not to mention the stress on her thighs from clamping onto Izsha. Since riding them regularly became a habit, her muscles had gotten their due workout just from that. “Didn’t expect to find you out here,” she said after stifling a long yawn. “I mean, I figured you were out here because of the missing draken, but it is a pretty big forest.”
Reaching forward, Brakkt pulled the stick from the ground, twisted it, and planted it back where it had come from so that the other side of the squirrel could get some time facing the fire. “They probably smelled it and wanted to come see if they could steal a bit.” He glanced up to Musca, who was staring straight at the half-roasted critter. “Go find your own. There’s plenty out here.”
The draken made a warning trill, but a glare from Brakkt silenced it.
“They’ve been living in the palace for so long, they’ve forgotten how to hunt. They’ve become fat and lazy.”
Musca made another noise. Indignation? Offense? Whatever the noise was, it was clearly displeased with Brakkt’s comment. With a small huff of hot air, it turned and stalked off.
Brakkt just chuckled as he watched Musca. After a moment, he turned to Alyssa. “You want some? Should be almost done.”
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“Implying I can’t hunt?”
“Can you?” he asked, eyebrow raised at her smile.
“I mean, I know the theory.” Turning a carcass into meat was, as she had thought when she had very first arrived in this world, not a part of her skill set. But she still didn’t think it would be that hard a task. Killing something to eat was probably more of a trial than chopping it up into edible chunks. Or, as Brakkt had done with his squirrel, she could simply roast most of it all at once.
Or she could just go fishing again. She knew how to do that well enough now.
It did smell good, surprisingly. Not like a steak or hamburger, but not bad. She had never tried squirrel before. At least, not that she knew of. Who really knew what some of those innkeepers were putting into their meat pies. Having seen Sweeney Todd, she would be lucky if squirrel was the strangest of foods she had eaten here.
Still… “I think I’ll pass.” Although she had lived in this world for a few months now, she was still very much a modern girl. Seeing her food in such an… unprocessed state was just a little off-putting. Fish was one thing, but… “Maybe next time? I wasn’t planning on staying out here all that long anyway. My mother and I were going to meet up later tonight for a little while. Kasita as well, once Tzheitza lets her off customer duty.”
“Ah.” He stood, stretching as he moved. “I suppose I should get back soon as well.”
“Don’t pack up on my account. I’d feel bad if I made you go back early. I’m well enough acquainted with the portal and the palace to find my own way.”
“We all have our duties to attend to.” Bending, he picked up the stick the squirrel was on and took a large bite out of its side. He chewed and chewed and turned and spat. A big hunk of something flew off into the woods. Bone? Fat? “Bit sinewy,” he said, taking another bit. “But the meat is quite tasty.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” The squirrel was really too small to share even if she did want some.
As he finished it off, he swept his leather boot over the fire pit, filling it in with the small mound of dirt and snuffing out the flames. Apparently having had enough, he tossed the scraps to Ensou, who had been sitting nearby. The blue-grey draken chomped down on it, stick and all.
Placing his fingers to the sides of his mouth, Brakkt whistled. The sharp cry echoed off the trees.
The scattered draken returned. Izsha hadn’t gone anyway, but Musca, Dasca, and a few others whose names Alyssa wasn’t quite sure of all trotted back.
“I’m quite glad that portal exists,” he said as he hopped onto Ensou’s back.
Alyssa did the same to Izsha. “Handy, isn’t it?” she said as they started heading back toward the portal.
Without any obvious command from Brakkt, the draken moved at a leisurely pace. Something that allowed an easy conversation between him and Alyssa. “Being able to come out here like this whenever we want is… quite a nice experience. Though having the Observatorium’s administrators and brightest students hovering around it every other day is a bit more irritating.”
“No progress in replicating it?” Alyssa doubted it would be possible given the portal’s origins, but really, what was different about what she had done versus what the spell cards did? They were both prayers to Tenebrael. Her version was just slightly more complex, both in the geometric shape of the spell and the words spoken.
“You would have to ask Irulon. She’s the head of their little task force.”
“Yeah. I’ve hardly seen her for these past two weeks because of that.”
“Hm. I believe my father intends to ask you for a favor. Having another portal between Lyria and the Fortress of Pandora would be an invaluable tool for resupply and reinforcement. In both directions.”
“Well, I can try. But that’s all up to Tenebrael.”
“I’ve mentioned as much. Even knowing it might not work, he has started construction on a building outside the city that might serve as a housing area for a portal. A place to use as a local defense if Pandora is overrun; we don’t want monsters having quick access to the center of the city.”
“Makes sense.”
“If it fails, if you can’t make a portal, I believe he intends to repurpose it as housing for friendlier monsters. Fela, the draken, and any other unconventional allies we may decide to invite in. A way to keep them out of the city in the hopes that some tensions die down. Though, as part of her job, Fela will likely still be roaming the streets every day.”
Alyssa nodded. It was surprising that such a thing hadn’t already been done for the draken. Then again, they really hadn’t been allowed outside all that much before. Only for the occasional short trips like the one Alyssa and Irulon had undertaken.
It was a wonder they weren’t all fat or atrophied. Or both.
Still, she was glad that they had the portal now. Its presence was even better than her original plan to get them exercise by running around outside the city. Of course, because they could disappear from the palace at will without even leaving it, they weren’t paraded around the city. The people of Lyria would never grow used to monsters if they never even knew that they existed.
But, until the heat from Fela died down some, it was probably for the best.
As they exited the forest and returned to the wide open lake near her home, Alyssa spotted something in the distance. A bright light in the sky, well below the sun. At first, she thought it to be a simple trick of the light. Perhaps sunlight reflecting off a particularly mirrored portion of the rings that surrounded the world. But it moved. It zipped around in the distance like an overly bright firefly.
It was that movement that made Alyssa nervous.
Iosefael had said that the Astral Authority were not humanoid like most angels. They had not been crafted to be so. They all had distinct shapes that, while different from each other, would be instantly recognizable as divine beings. Alyssa hadn’t been quite sure what that was supposed to have meant, but she had been on the lookout ever since that conversation for anything that might count as divine.
The glowing light just above the edge of the horizon might very well have been nothing.
To be on the safe side, Alyssa called out to Brakkt. “Stop! There’s something there.”
Perhaps due to some trust that had built up between them, Brakkt didn’t argue in the slightest. Neither did the draken. It took a moment to retreat back to the treeline around the lake, but once they were there, Alyssa hopped from Izsha’s back. Her binoculars were always in her little satchel and today was no different. Whipping them out, she focused in on the bright dancing light on the opposite side of the wide lake.
Iosefael had been right. There was no mistaking that thing for anything but a divine being. Even with all the monsters on Nod in all their shapes and sizes, she doubted any could generate that exact warmth of a light. With normal angels, they had halos that they could put on for that kind of light. Disk-shaped rings with gaping holes in the center that floated above their heads. Most modern depictions of angels in fiction and illustrations used that same ring.
This member of the Astral Authority didn’t have quite the same thing. Rather than a hollow ring, it had a large dinner plate of a halo that stretched from wing to wing. An aureole almost identical to the one Alyssa had shaped for herself while addressing the people of Teneville. In her case, the shaping had been deliberate. An attempt to replicate holy figures in old classical paintings. But now, seeing the same radiance and glory coming off this divine being, she couldn’t help but wonder if those paintings hadn’t been based off a creature rather like this one.
Of course, the rest of the creature was entirely alien. Despite having taken a few art history classes that had covered plenty of religious artworks, she had never seen anything quite like this creature. It had feathered wings, just like Tenebrael or Iosefael, though pure white in its case. But that was where the similarities ended.
This thing was just eyes. A hundred eyes in a misshapen sphere, all fighting each other for dominance. They bubbled out, moving like someone blowing on a straw dipped in a pool of soapy water. One large eye would pop, only to be replaced by a dozen smaller eyes that began expanding until they too popped. It churned Alyssa’s stomach to watch, but she imagined it would have been far worse if the eyes hadn’t been empty. There was no blood or guts splattering about with each pop, at least.
That was it. Wings. The old-fashioned halo. Eyes. Every angel Alyssa had encountered so far had been female. Or at least feminine. This thing wasn’t even in the same ballpark.
As it swiveled around the portal, Alyssa spotted one more feature that she had missed earlier. A face. Or perhaps a mask? It looked like it had been carved from stone. White marble or maybe a polished porcelain. It was roughly human, but androgynous. She wasn’t quite sure of its purpose, other than perhaps giving anyone speaking to it something to speak to. It really didn’t look like a natural part of the being at all. In fact, as it flittered around the portal, Alyssa was sure that she could see eyes beneath the mask bubbling and bursting like all the rest.
“What is it?”
Alyssa glanced to her side. Brakkt had dismounted as well to watch with her from behind a wide tree. He wasn’t wearing his helmet at the moment, so she had a clear view of his face. More specifically, she could see his violet eyes watching the distance. They moved about, but not randomly. He was tracking something. “You can see it?”
“I see a light. It’s too far to see more.”
Eyebrows raised as high as they would go, Alyssa handed over her binoculars. “I’m surprised you can see anything at all. But I guess it isn’t really an angel—”
“Eugh. What is it?” he asked again, this time with far more disgust in his voice. From his tone alone, she knew that he could see all the bubbling eyes.
“I think it is a Kindness. A scout and observer for the rest of these fake angels.”
“So what do we do?”
Alyssa didn’t have an answer for that question. It had been an inevitability that the Astral Authority would discover the portal and Teneville. But neither she nor Iosefael had any idea what to do when that happened.
Her hand drifted over to her pistol. She could kill it. There was just the one. With the tips Iosefael had given her, she had no doubt that she would be able to kill it. If she did kill it, it would likely delay the Astral Authority. Maybe only a day, maybe a month. It was hard to say. Their methods and operational procedures weren’t things that Iosefael had experience with.
If she killed it, it would delay whatever plans the Astral Authority had. But it would also likely garner their direct ire. As much as she wished it were the case, she couldn’t be on guard one hundred percent of the time. She had to sleep, after all. Not to mention other distractions.
So Alyssa moved her hand away from her pistol, content to simply watch.
The fake angel zoomed about the house and the portal for the better portion of an hour. Alyssa could tell that the draken were getting restless, but both she and Brakkt remained behind the tree, alert the entire time. No other Astral Authority angel ever appeared.
Just as Alyssa started wondering how long it would remain around, the Kindness backed away. It drifted higher and higher into the sky, keeping its mask locked onto the portal.
It passed in front of the sun, making it difficult to see.
A beam of black-white light intersected the sun.
Alyssa pulled up her binoculars, watching a smoking trail of divine mass fall from the sky. Wings burnt, mask cracked, the Kindness slammed into the hillside at the edge of the forest. The water of the lake rippled from the impact.
“Tenebrael,” Brakkt said in a hushed wisper.
Alyssa nodded slowly. That black light was Tenebrael’s signature color. It could only have been her. But… following the trail of the beam, she had a feeling that it wasn’t Tenebrael herself. It had come from the statue.
Clenching her teeth, she looked back toward the hillside, watching for any sign of movement. Aside from dust settling around the crater and a column of black smoke, there was nothing.
“Great. What now?”