Requiem 24

Aclysia was looking at the sky. Standing at the outskirts of the crowd, her gaze aimed eastwards. If Apexus was to fly to this place, he would have to come from that direction. Her own wings twitched whenever she saw something as little as a bird. If Apexus was coming, she would have to intercept him before he could bother the Cardinal and get himself into trouble.

“…in faith, we are all brothers and sisters. All petty squabbles are put aside, be it just for the day in which we honour the potential of us mortal races to ascend and take an earned spot amongst the gods…” the Remezan’s speech continued on.

It was a good one, Aclysia found. Well trained, delivered by an austere man with genuine convictions in a manner that was convincing, but not preachy. However, it would have taken a fantastic speech to take the metal fairy’s attention from the promise of being reunited with her beloved slime. If only he showed himself sooner.

‘I don’t know how much more I can take,’ she thought, folding her hands in front of her chest as if she was going to let out a prayer. Knowing that she could soon meet him again put Aclysia’s body on edge. Everything in her was longing for his presence. To be next to him, around him, just to see him, and touch him if possible. A pure desire for nothing but love. It put a worse strain on her than any stress of the past days.

At the very least, that stress didn’t threaten to shut her down. Mehily had been friendly enough to share her mana, so Aclysia was now at her peak power, without the need of devouring any life. A luxury that she was thankful for in this difficult time.

The speech of the Cardinal wrapped up and Aclysia’s heart sank when the broad man got off the podium. All that anticipation seemed to collapse in on itself like a failed soufflé, leaving a metal fairy that was too shaken to even cry. Had Gizmo been lying to her as well?

As the metal fairy stayed focused, Remezan stepped onto solid ground. ‘Where is Evmeria?’ he thought. The Inquisitor missing was noteworthy, given her constant presence around him, especially during events such as this. Given her zealotry, she attended speeches like this without fail. Either to comment on their lack of iconography or to praise him for an argument of faith well delivered.

Wherever she was, he would find out soon. For now, he had done his due as Cardinal. It was time to return to the church and relax in the security of the seal staying strong. His steps carried him back up the path he came. People shouted his name, applauded, even as the crowd slowly dissipated and went back to the festival proper. With every step he took, he grew more relieved.

Just as Aclysia grew more hopeless. Her eyes darted between the sky and the Cardinal. She was taking a risk now, standing amongst fewer and fewer people, but she could not forego the possibility yet. Maybe he was crawling onto the plaza after all? It wouldn’t have been a less stealthy entrance, a massive slime with wings was impossible to overlook.

In that assumption, she and the Cardinal were both wrong, operating on old information.

“Sorry… excuse me…” Remezan turned his head to see a tall person approaching him. He was wearing a dirty, brown robe that was clearly too small for him. A massive hunchback was straining that fact further, pulling the edge of the robe up to the knees and the sleeves close to the elbow. It revealed his hands and feet to without hair or nails.

His face was mostly hidden. A hood was pulled over his head and bandages wrapped around what was there otherwise. What peeked out was a pair of catlike, blue eyes and a pair of lips and the underlying teeth, sharp and complete in their whiteness. The bump of the nose was completely covered. He was a man of brown complexion. Not overly dark, but like a man that had worked in the fields for the entire summer.

‘What a poor soul,’ Remezan thought, thinking him to be some sort of torture victim from some distant tragedy. It could have been, that he was a natural humanoid, created by a god with a very odd idea of beauty. Perhaps he was a crossbreed of two races, that was also a possibility. In the vast expenses of the Omniverse, very few things about humanoids were written in stone. They had whites in their eyes, they had at least two legs and feet and they walked upright. That and the arrangement and shape of their reproductive organs was about the same. Aside from that, things varied massively.

Still, this man exuded a very odd aura. The Cardinal couldn’t quite place it, but it was unlike a normal man and felt distantly tragic and torn. Different natures seemed to clash inside the man, forcefully harmonized. Clearly, he was torn by something and in need of guidance. Which made Remezan feel twice as bad about having to tell him off.

“I have no time for you,” he told the man as he marched on. “Feel free to follow me to the church, we can talk there, once I am ready.”

“Been… told you can give me thing… is tradition if I approach you after speech,” the man spoke in a slightly incoherent matter, but moved much more fluidly than his hunched form would indicate. “Sorry, worded that poorly.”

Remezan ignored him and kept walking on. The man tried to come out of the little crowd that remained, but the Cardinal’s guards stepped in between and blocked his path. From the sidelines, keeping her head lowered, Aclysia watched this entire thing. That man seemed familiar somehow but she could barely hear what was said.

“Listen, please…” the man tried to avoid a confrontation with the guards, stepping left and right, always getting blocked. The armoured bodies also blocked Aclysia’s sight, but she was almost certain now. “Need your attention. Gizmo said…”

That caused the Cardinal to stop in his tracks. He knew that name, knew what connection implied. He turned and the guards parted. Not wanting to take any risks of any of this reaching anymore ears than necessary, Remezan grabbed the man and dragged him out of the thinned-out crowd. “Who are you?” the basic assumption was obvious, but the Cardinal needed to ask, since there was no translucent skin to be seen.

“Apexus,” he answered, somewhat afraid now. The slime blinked a few times, trying to calm the Cardinal. Not that he knew anything about the religious man, he just felt strong and his hand around Apexus’ arm was like an iron claw. “I want to see…” it was at this point that Apexus looked at the crowd behind the Cardinal and saw a woman fly at the two of them. “Aclysia.”

Before Remezan could ask any more questions, a mindlessly happy angel interrupted his interrogation.