"HOLY FUCKIN' SHIT! AN ARCHANGEL?" Ravenna jolted in her seat at six o' clock that evening when Israfel told his circle of friends about the chance encounter with Aelaria Törmund as they munched on triangular pieces of dinner bread. Aelaria of the forest. Aelaria, the lady of the woods.
"I wish I was there," Ravenna confessed on, "the only other angel I've seen is my mum. And I don't really remember her. Plus back then, she wasn't glowing or anything—she was hidden from me. I'd love to see me some bright, sunny, holy being." Rafel noticed she left out Aariel, the guardian Virtue he had murdered. It was on purpose.
"If it makes you feel better, Aelaria told us we may summon her to our plane. All of us who watched her transform." Rafel offered, too glad to see how joy sparked in Ravenna's and Rosa's eyes.
"It was really beautiful. She was," Aya added. "I don't even know what to call her at this point: Aelaria? Annabelle? I don't know. Because she was each one of those names she mentioned—and more.
A thousand and one lives she said. I'm just glad Anna found a better place after the fire."
"Me too." Corazón put in from the rear flank of the longtable.
The canteen was packed. And Erika and her Pynks were parked close to Rafel's table; she sent him little finger waves every now and then. Aya's hard purple eyes related back to her every time. The Student President eyed the stunning succubus. All the while, Rafel was unaware of this secret battle.
One would think that as fellow members of the [Children of the Crow] clandestine society, the girls would put their differences aside. But apparently, not when it came to the handsome Apollyon.
The brethren of the Filii Corvi might not sell out another kin of the Crow mask, but when they were outside that ancient athenaeum of their meeting place, frenemies they became; it helped keep the enigma of their society. Aya Naamah of the [Sapphire Succubi] and Miss President Burgess weren't about to become friends—even though they secretly worshipped the same Archdemon.
"Ugh!" Ravenna planted her elbow on the steel table. "Why does nothing this interesting happen for sophomores?"
Aya chuckled and buttered up another bread slice for Rafel. He went for the mug of warm milk. Not tea. Milk, laughing to Ravenna's comical face as he did. She was cute.
"Pray tell, is this milk thine own?" He lifted up the skylight mug to Aya.
"Only the best for my Dominus." She smiled back, lowering fresh toast to his dinner plate. Against the option of waffles in pickleberry jam, Peitho had earlier on advised Rafel to keep his meal regiment light, since he had voluntarily taken a break from his virginal [Blood Bearers]. Yes, virgin blood these days was pricey. But it wasn't the money that stopped Rafel.
When had it ever?
He grinned over the cup's rim at his [Bond], her fair yellowbone skin delectable under the lighting of the wide cafeteria. He said of her milk, "Then I shall gladly taste from thy bosoms."
"Ohh stop it, you guys." Ravenna scrunched her nose, but she was only half-serious. She tossed Aya a crumb of corn grain. "And you, you slut. You're so shameless."
"No, no. It's not that—not what you're thinking anyway." Percival finished his sandwich with a gulp. He explained he had being dragged into an after-party at Sigma House by a bunch of buffed bros, where he had ingested 'shrooms that looked like alien dicks. And on and on. The night ended with him being too high to do anything about the bunch of groupie girls that swamped him there.
"—they won't stop calling me MOTHER FUCKER, you know; not motherfucker like the cuss but Mother Fucker like the dude who shagged his mum. I'll never live this Oedipus shit down." He groaned into his hands. "Oh. And some broad stole my watch. A Van Imperia standard easily worth—"
"Fifteen hundred gold on the open market," Cora completed for him. "Bitch!"
Percival was just about to say something else when the lights in the whole cafeteria briefly dimmed. Different student Years raised their heads from dinner trays. Lights always flickered when something was awry. In the brief moment of darkness, just for short meagre seconds, whoosh!
Rafel and all his friends were consumed in a mammoth nimbus of shadows. The umbras stole them like the nimble fingers of a night robber. Curling like frothing waves of a tempest, the shadows rolled away, dissipating with them it. When it vanished with another eerie whooshing, they did too.
The lights brightened again. No one sat at the longtable.
"Weird." Erika said, was all she said, before flipping her marigold hair and going back to sharing gossip with fellow Pynks.
Rafel had no control of the rolling shadows. In the noir disposition, he was just about to summon a burst of [Hel Spark] to illuminate the thick darkness when the umbras fell away, from him and his friends. Percival fell to the ground in recoil of sudden reanimation and vomited his entire mayo sandwich. Bruna keeled over and patted his back.
The friends were in a new place.
It smelled thickly of incense. Of worship candles. The arcane mana fueling normal magical orders of the academy was greatly reduced here. Rafel could sense it. Or correctly, not sense it. His own Mana Core, dulled.
The room had a rotund feel. There was holiness in the air, but it was spooky. Torches hung off the cold walls and the floor under Percival's retching frame was greystone. The pillars were dark and the statues robed in mystery. Orange light casted the place like a forbidden hearth of a Hag's cottage.
It was the foggy incense that gave the place away.
"What is this place?" Percival rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. His soft eyes peered into the darkness. Israfel took a step forward from his friends group.
"A place where demons fear to tread."
Cora materialized two balls of luminous light in her hands and sent them floating out to disperse some of the darkness; the shadows seemed to nip at her lights. Looking around with intelligent blue eyes, she stepped forward too and said, "Aye. Israfel's right. 'Tis a holy place. I sense the relics imbued into the walls. This is a sanctum."
Just then, a new wisened voice entered the fray.
"Apologies, good friends for the abrupt summons. Welcome to the Martyr's cathedral."