Uploaded: 13 Jan 2014
Against the backdrop of a pained sob, a solemn figure stood in a forest, white—as if he were made of pure light. His body illuminated the empty forest. His black eyes swallowed the scene around him—patches of dead, colorless plants. Streaks of chaos still clung to the air. A demon bled here. The Great Spirit flicked out his wings in disgust, unsure if he was more repulsed by the intrusion of a defiler on once sacred ground or the defeat its guardian by a mistake of creation. The figure lifted a dead leaf with the tip of his spear, lifting his eyes he spoke to his master,
“Forgive me, I have failed in my duty,”
The voice was frail, and broken, and the image of the forest suddenly felt far away.
“It was not by your failing,” the voice of an old man answered, “but by the will of the gods that you live. The task they ordained you is not yet done.”
The words echoed through the gilded halls of the palace and settled on the shoulders of a young woman bearing a thin, golden crown. A man, not yet old, stood behind her with hunched shoulders and heavy grey eyes, speaking in a hushed tone as the woman, it seemed, had lost herself in the raindrops running down the window.
“My Queen, your enemy is not the council. Neither is it the temple. Not when demons roam free. Not when our world stands to be torn apart. We must have faith in him…”
The creak of a door cut through the man, leaving Sewell to stand in his place. Sable blinked up at him as she adjusted her attention outward. Avi stepped in after him, looking ruffled and glaring down at her. She grinned up at both of them as she shut her notebook. Sewell’s eyes slid over it on their way to meet hers. Avi leaned against the doorframe with his arms folded, “I will not be summoned on the whim of some mortal girl. For your sake, this better be worth my while.”
Sable did not attempt to answer him, but pulled a few loose pages from her notebook and held them out. Avi beckoned them forward and the papers pulled themselves from Sable’s thin fingers and floated over to the demon who unfolded his arms to snatch them from the air.
Here seemed to be a contract of sorts, in which there were some tasks Sable would like help in accomplishing in exchange for something he thought he would like to have. Specifically, she seemed to have a good number of people that would need to be killed with various levels of subtlety, and in exchange for his aid she offered the whereabouts of the current incarnation of Ilaria Amello.
Avi calmly folded the papers and stuck them into an inside coat pocket. Sable sat patiently looking up at him, hands folded over her notebook. Avi could see Sewell let out a yawn from the corner of his eye. Clearing his throat, his flicked his gaze between the two of them. Sewell was moving about the room in disinterest and he could see how he might be unreliable in this. There were things he didn’t have patience for and sneaking about was one of them. Avi straightened himself and looked Sable squarely in the eye, “You, human,” Avi spat out, “No, even the other humans see you as lesser. You, lesser human, dare think you can call me here to be subservient to you. You think I’m some common sprite you can summon up to do your chores?” Avi pulled the papers from his coat and unfolded them. “You’re an insolent little thing and someone ought to teach you your place,” he waved his hand over the last page and shoved them back into the open air where they made their way back to Sable’s lap. Avi turned to go, stopping to cast a look back at Sewell. “And you! You used to be above this sort of thing!”
Sewell only shrugged.
Avi let out a snort and stepped out of the room. He was gone. Sable smiled, examining the papers. There was no signature anywhere on the paper, but there was drawn, in what appeared to be red ink, a group of complicated markings inscribed within a circle of letters belonging to a language Sable did not know. But that didn’t matter. The demon left his sigil and so agreed to help. She looked up at Sewell who was now standing behind her.
“You could have been a bit less coercive, I think.”
Sable shrugged. She probably could have, but in the end, this way took less time. She set her notebook on the table next to her and stared blankly at the floral wallpaper plastering the wall across from her. The light dimmed and the walls rebuilt themselves out of black stone to better echo the whimpers of the man wrapped in bandages. A priest leaned over him. She shook her head and a masked man knelt before the same Great Spirit seen in the forest. This made Sable frown. Drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair, she looked behind her for Sewell, but he was gone. She could see him in the upstairs library regarding a shelf of books with cool disinterest. He folded his arms and turned to look out the window. He was restless. So was Ansel. He spent much of his day pacing the house. But Tristain would still be two days in getting there.
The next thing she knew, Sewell was gone from the upstairs library. His decision to leave was so sudden that it made Sable jump from her chair. She could not see where he was going, presumably because he did not know where he was going. Tapping her foot in agitation, she set off for the kitchen. Ansel had cast an enchantment on Bartholomew that was a little too strong, so the Irvine’s butler sat slumped and glassy eyed at the kitchen table, and Sable was obliged to make her own tea. She made sure to stick out her tongue at the old man while doing so.
The house was quiet that day with Sewell being out for most of it and Ansel passing his time playing with his pocket watch. Before, Sable would have been glad of having been left alone with herself, but now it seemed that she somehow developed a tendency for loneliness and being left alone with herself made everything feel so far away that she was afraid she would never reach the things she needed in time. The tea began to whistle. The angelic spirit reached out to the man lying in bandages:
Arden, get up.
