The sun had transformed from a distant celestial body into a personal adversary. It was a relentless, burning eye in the sky with every step away from Varnmoor's shadow… its gaze felt more like a physical weight. For Aamon, the faint sting he'd initially felt sharpened into a persistent, searing pain... Where the light touched, his skin prickled and flushed light red, as if the very air were slowly sandpapering him raw. Demons were creatures of the Abyss… they were not meant for the open road under the midday sun.
He tried to hide it, to march on with the same determined stride that had carried from hell… but his body betrayed him. His breath grew ragged and steps faltered from a confident walk to a pained shuffle. The magnificent bat-like wings that usually rested with a subtle powerful tension against his back now drooped. The bat-like wings' leathery membranes seem too heavy to hold aloft… The world, so bright… too vast… and too loud, was overwhelming his senses. Aamon's sensory assault was far worse than any physical battle.
Ciel, walking a half-step behind him, the change in his demeanor. She saw the way his shoulders hunched, not in fear but in acute discomfort. She saw the slight tremor in his clawed hands and the way he flinched from a particularly bright patch of sunlight dappling the path. Her own existence had been one of silent observation… of learning to read the smallest signs to avoid pain. Right now she sees his...
Without a word, her small hand came up and tugged gently on the edge of his velvet sleeve… He stopped, turning his head with a slight and weary motion. Her empty eyes weren't on his face; they were scanning the rocky embankment to their left. She pointed, a single… deliberate gesture, toward a dark fissure in the hillside… the narrow and promising mouth of a small cave.
Relief… immediate and profound, washed over him. He didn't have the words to thank her, so he simply nodded. Aamon's movements are slight, as he lets her lead the way off the path.
The cave was small, little more than a hollowed out pocket in the stone… but it was a sanctuary. The moment they crossed the threshold, the oppressive heat lifted, replaced by a blessed and damp chill that raised goosebumps on Ciel's arms but felt like a balm to Aamon's slightly scorched skin. The only light was a faint grey glow from the entrance, and the only sounds were the distant call of a bird and the slow, rhythmic drip of water somewhere in the deep dark.
Aamon practically staggered to the rear wall and slid down it… collapsing onto the cool and sandy floor with a long ragged exhale. He leaned his head back against the stone, hissing softly as the chill penetrated the heated skin of his shoulders and back. The faint, acrid scent of his own sun scorched flesh mingled with the cave's deep, earthy smells of moss and wet rock.
He looked utterly miserable… His ruby eyes were half lidded, their usual bright glow dimmed by exhaustion and pain... His pristine suit was smudged with dirt from the cave's walls. Aamon held his arms out, staring at the inflamed, reddened skin as if he didn't quite recognize his own body.
"It… burns,"
Aamon finally murmured, the words are a rough confession in the quiet. It was more than a physical admission. To aamon it seemed the entire world outside his cell was designed to burn him in one way or another.
He flexed his fingers, watching the movement with a detached fascination. The memory of the swordsman's blade warping against his skin flickered in his mind. His blood had done that… his very nature had repelled the steel made to hurt him. He looked from his hands to Ciel… a silent, bewildered question in his gaze. He was a creature who could shrug off a sword stroke but was laid low by the sun.
The frantic energy of their escape had bled away, leaving behind a deep, bone tired stillness. The immediate danger was past… The road to Mavis Village, with all its unknown perils and promises, could wait. Here… in this fragile pocket of peace and shadow, there was finally room to breathe, to process the violence they'd fled, to give voice to the confusion that hung between them. The silence now was not one of emptiness, but of anticipation.
"Oh! I have a wonderful idea. Would you... would you like me to teach you magic? My mother said sharing knowledge is the best thing ever... She was very kind and very smart. She was able to teach me over four hundred spells, and I remember every single one!"
Aamon's beamed causing his tail to wag… For a fleeting second, his expression was so bright it seemed to chase the shadows from the corners of the cave. Then… a memory… cold and deep, flickered behind his eyes. He remembered what the queen said his mother was… succubus of the abyss… The smile didn't vanish, but it tempered, shifting from innocent excitement to something more determined, more focused.
Ciel stared at Aamon, she didn't know its source, but she recognized the act of setting something heavy aside; it was a motion her own soul knew well.
His question hung in the air between them. Would you like to learn magic? It was not a question that had ever been offered to her... Choices were about which wound was preferable, which hunger was more manageable... They were never about… creation.
Her mind… a fortress built on rules of survival, scrambled. Magic was a force for those with power to wield, for those who were already whole... It was not for broken things, for creatures meant to serve and suffer.
Yet, the part of her that had begun to unfurl in the warmth of the inn… that had learned the taste of kindness, now stretched toward the possibility. It was a terrifying reach, like a limb long bound finally testing its strength… fearing it would snap.
She looked down at her own hands that knew only how to scrub, to mend, to endure. Could they truly learn to hold light? be able to shape energy? The doubt was a cold stone in her stomach.
But then she looked back at Aamon, the earnest hope in his eyes seemed to believe it for her. She found, to her own astonishment, that she wanted to believe it, too. Not for power… not for revenge… but for the simple staggering fact that it would be hers.
Ciel's voice came, it was quiet… but it did not waver. It was a statement of fact.. no… a vow whispered to herself as much as to him.
"Ciel… would like to know magic. She doesn't know any. Ciel can learn though."
She met his gaze, her pink sapphire eyes holding a newly kindled spark.
"Yay! I'll teach you everything I can… cough…cough… My mother said there are three languages I can do: Abyssal for us demons, Aetherial for the holy, and Hearth-Syntax. Anyone with the mana affinity can do Hearth-Syntax…. It'll be like a game!"
Aamon rose to his full height, his massive wings stretching to fill the cave's mouth before settling against his back. The brief shadow of remembrance was gone… vanished like smoke… even the wounds from the earlier commotion had sealed over without a trace. His focus was now absolute… a bright, sharp thing.
He reached for Ciel's hand, his touch surprisingly gentle as he turned her palm upward towards him. Aamon inspected it for a moment, his head tilted... The skin was no longer calloused and rough, but smooth, a quiet testament to what he has done for her. Not just maid dress, but healing of physical history… of her suffering without her even fully realizing it.
Satisfied, he gripped her hand a bit tighter. "Perspicio Visum," he commanded, his voice resonating with a power that made the air hum.
A brilliant spark of light ignited at Ciel's core.... It flared for a heartbeat before shooting through her veins, like a living map of luminescence visible beneath her skin. It was not a harsh light but a soft and internal radiance that traced the pathways of her very being.
Aamon leaned closer, his demonic ruby eyes wide with genuine astonishment.
"Wow… It has two colors."
Aamon's tail began whipping back and forth with such excited energy it was a blur of spikes. The professional detachment vanishes into pure wonder. The light within her wasn't a single hue, but an intertwined duality... Threads of deep, abyssal violet… a color that spoke of endless depths and potent shadow that pulsed alongside shimmering strands of crystalline blue and swirling, airy silver.
"You can use abyssal, also wind and ice magic from the Hearth-Syntax language. Ciel… you're amazing!!"
The bone rings on Aamon's fingers jangled in an excited, rhythmic chatter as he pointed from the deep violet light to the shimmering silver and blue.
"Ciel... not know she could use magic. Can Aamon teach? Ciel would like to learn ice."
For the first time, the dullness that often clouded Ciel's features was chased away by a new, sharp light. She looked up at him, and in her pink sapphire eyes was something fragile yet unmistakable: the first flicker of hope.
"Deal!!! Put out your hand and say… Ignis Globus…."
The air in the cave grew cold. Instead of fire or ice, a darkness pulled from the abyss coalesced above his palm… It wasn't a sphere of flame but a javelin of pure, transparent ice, its edges so sharp they seemed to cut the very light around them… its point deadly enough to pierce stone.
"So what do you think, friend? I'm so cool…"
Aamon said triumphantly, holding the glistening weapon aloft… Ciel looked from the impossible weapon to her own hand, her shock settling into a firm, determined resolve.
"Ciel will try…"
She said, her voice quiet but steady. She put her hand out, focusing all her will. The abyssal words were guttural and alien on her tongue.
"Ign..ia Globpus…" she attempted, the syllables fracturing. She took a breath, trying again. "Ignes Glinbus…"
Each attempt was a butchered translation, the complex and harsh sounds of the demon's language refusing to bend to her unfamiliar voice. Yet… her hand remained outstretched, her will unwavering in the face of the difficult incantation. She would try again.
"Friend, let's try it slowly, I know you can do it, you smartie. Just like Betty says with the bread dough"
Aamon cheers, his voice full of a certainty he seemed to borrow from the memory of the inn.
"It's all about patience and the right push! Listen. First, go GLAH… deep in your throat. Then kee-ays. Feel it here."
Aamon said, his earlier exuberance softening into patient encouragement. He leaned forward, his massive frame folding so he could look her directly in the eyes, his bone clad fingers moving slowly through the air as if physically shaping the sounds.
"Then TAY-loom. That's the power behind it. That's it."
Aamon tapped his own chest as he spoke the phrase again, breaking the harsh abyssal words into manageable pieces: "Ig-nis. Glo-bus."... an abyssal elf, had the heritage for this magic in her blood; she should pick it up with an instinctual ease.
Ciel's eyes dropped to her own outstretched hand, the smooth palm a testament to Aamon's silent care. She took a slow… steadying breath, pushing aside the part of her that whispered this was forbidden, that creation was not her purpose. She focused on the sounds he made… on the shape of them.
"Ignis…" she began, the first syllable more confident this time, the 'g' a low rumble. "…Globus." The final word was a clean, sharp exhalation.
For a moment… nothing happened… The air remained still... A flicker of the old failure, the familiar sting of inadequacy threatened to surface. Then, the shadows at her feet seemed to congeal… pulling themselves from the stone floor like ink rising from a page. From that pool of darkness, a form erupted… a jagged, brutal shard of ice, roughly the length of her arm. It wasn't beautiful like Aamon's pristine javelin. It was misshapen, its edges are dull and uneven, looking less like a weapon and more like a piece of a frozen cliff face that had been violently broken off… But it hovered above her palm, cold and solid and real… It was her first spell.
"YOU DID IT! You made a javelin! A real one! I'm so proud of you, my friend!"
Aamon's shout was so sudden and joyous that Ciel jumped, though the javelin barely held its form. He was practically vibrating… his wings giving an excited flutter. He danced a little jig, his tail wagging so fiercely it was a blur. a rhythmic thump… thump… thump against the stone wall that was utterly drowned out by his enthusiasm.
"Now you can make more! Like… like a staff for focusing, or… or a sword for slashing, maybe an axe for chopping! Ooh, or a little ice butterfly!! The possibilities are endless!"
Ciel looked from the crude, glistening shard in her hand to his beaming face. Her usual guarded expression had shifted… softened around the edges by a feeling so foreign she couldn't immediately name it. It was a fragile warmth in her chest… a lightening of a weight she had carried for so long she'd forgotten it was there.
Ciel realized with a start, something akin to pride... Her lips parted slightly and she asked the question softly, testing the new feeling like a tongue probing a missing tooth.
"Ciel made something? Is… friend proud of Ciel?"
"OF COURSE I AM!! My best ever friend made an ice javelin in only six attempts! It took me like forty tries when my mother showed me. You're a natural!"
he boomed… his voice full of genuine, unadulterated awe. Overcome with emotion, he reached out and gave her shoulder a friendly pat.
It was too sudden… Too familiar... Her slave roots went deep, her body reacted before her mind could intervene. She flinched hard… recoiling from his touch as if burned. The concentration shattered. The jagged ice javelin in her hand dissolved instantly, vanishing back into the abyssal shadows from which it had been summoned, leaving behind only a faint chill in the air.
A moment of tense silence hung between them... Aamon's hand hovered in the air where her shoulder had been… his excited expression faltering into one of dismay and understanding. Ciel hugged her arms around herself, the familiar posture of making herself small returning.
Not long passes till she straightened her shoulders. She looked at the empty space where her spell had been and then back at Aamon. The hope in her eyes hadn't been extinguished; it had been tempered. So she asked, her voice firmer now, laced with a new determination.
"Should Ciel try again? She wants to know magic."
"Well then, I'll show you how to make a staff… It's better for defense anyway. My mother said this spell should make one special for each person, a shape that fits the caster's spirit. Just keep it a secret, she said… but you're my friend."
Aamon's smile returned, softer this time… it filled with a deep respect for her resilience. The admission that he was sharing a secret from his powerful… and terrifying mother was a gift of trust as significant as the magic lesson itself.
He put out his hand… Aamon's demeanor shifting into one of focused intent.
"Baculus Glacialis"
he intoned… The words were smoother… more fluid than the command for the javelin. From a wisp of cold mist, a long, elegant staff of clear ice formed in his grasp... It was plain but perfectly formed, culminating in a multifaceted, crystalline orb of ice at its apex that caught the dim light and fractured it into a dozen tiny rainbows.
"Now you try, friend. It isn't as hard to say, I'm sure you'll get it quickly. Remember, it's about the shape you see in your mind..."
he encouraged as the staff in his own hand vanished.
Ciel nodded, focusing intently. The first attempt was a struggle, the new words tangling on her tongue. "Booculus… Glra..cia..is?" The air shimmered weakly but produced nothing.
She closed her eyes… blocking out everything but the sound of his voice guiding her. She tried again… and again… each attempt getting closer to the correct pronunciation. On the fifth try the words left her lips not as a hesitant question but as a clear, confident statement:
"Baculus Glacialis."
Once more, the shadows at her feet answered the call… swirling up around her hand like a loyal pet. The darkness coalesced, forming the long and slender shape of a staff. Then, as if freezing from the inside out… the shadow transformed into solid, glistening ice. But it was nothing like Aamon's plain staff.
This was a thing of intricate beauty. The shaft was smooth and perfectly straight, but at its top, the ice had bloomed into an elaborate… symmetrical snowflake the size of her palm. Each of its six arms was impossibly detailed, etched with finer patterns that resembled frost on a winter windowpane. It was not a weapon of war; it was a work of art… a manifestation of a beauty and precision that had been locked away inside her, waiting for a means of expression.
Ciel held it, her fingers curling around the cold, smooth shaft… A sense of rightness, of ownership had settled over her. She looked at the snowflake, then at Aamon, her expression one of quiet awe. A hint of that newfound pride returning to her voice.
"Ciel… likes staff, She will become a good mage."
"Good! That's the spirit! We've got hours of daylight left... I'll teach you spells till nightfall! Next, we'll try a simple shield! Just wait, soon you'll be making whole ice palaces!"
Aamon's grin was radiant. His excitement bubbling over once more, but now tempered with a teacher's pride. in the safe confines of the cave… with a friend beaming beside her and a staff of her own making in her hand, Ciel believed him.
The air in the chamber was a thick, cloying tapestry of scent, each thread a deliberate note in an opulent symphony of power. It was the ghost of lilac… too sweet and pervasive to be entirely natural, woven through with the dark… spicy smoke of burning incense that coiled from a dozen golden braziers. The only sounds were the soft hiss of those sacred fires from somewhere in the shadowy recesses of the vast room. The steady, rhythmic drip… drip… drip of molten candle wax hitting cold stone slabs… a sound that spoke of time both passing and standing utterly still.
The room itself was a testament to dominion… a space designed to dwarf any who entered. The vaulted ceiling soared into darkness, lost in shadows that the flickering candlelight could not hope to pierce... The walls, hewn from seamless, polished obsidian that stretched so far into the distance they seemed to curve… reflecting the thousand points of flame in a dizzying and starry void. in the center of this immense, silent universe stood the bed... It was not a piece of furniture for rest, but a dais, a fortress of silk, velvet, and towering ebony posts carved with scenes of forgotten conquests.
Upon it, reclining amidst a sea of pillows, was the mistress... she was laying on her side, the perfect picture of indolent grace, one arm draped over her eyes. Her skin was pale, flawless white… making the spill of jet-black and the burning ends of deep magenta hair across the linens seem like a rift in reality. From her brow, curving with elegant, deadly symmetry… her opal horns…They were not mere bone, but living gemstone, capturing the candlelight and fractaling it into a mesmerizing. The internal fire of pinks, blues, and greens. They glistened, wet and beautiful… a crown of captured rainbows…
With a sigh that was not one of weariness but of mild… profound boredom, she sat up. The heavy blankets spun from the night itself… they slithered down to her waist, revealing a form of statuesque and formidable beauty… Her stature was immense, not merely tall but dense with ancient power... She did not just occupy space; she commanded it, her presence bending the atmosphere of the room around her… making the very air feel heavy and obedient.
Her movement revealed the other figure in the room. Kneeling at the foot of the bed was a woman of breathtaking, martial perfection… She was clad in armor of polished silver and white gold, etched with celestial patterns. Huge, powerful wings, each feather is like a blade of polished steel… were folded tightly against her back. A Valkyrie-like helmet, forged into the visage of a stern, beautiful angel was tucked under her arm. its surface shining with a cold, captured dim light that seemed to originate from within the metal itself. This was Valtheris, and her head was bowed, not in fear, but in absolute, unwavering fealty.
The mistress's eyes, the color of ancient violets crushed into wine… opened and settled on her kneeling general. There was no warmth in them… only a deep… calculating curiosity.
"Valtheris," the mistress spoke. Her voice was a low, melodic hum, like the lowest string of a harp being plucked in a silent hall. It was a voice that did not need to rise to be obeyed.
"My Lady," Valtheris responded, her own voice a clear and resonant bell in comparison, though softened by deference.
"I have heard… a most curious whisper upon the threads of fate…It seems a guest has… departed… Prematurely… From the Cell of the Damned."
the mistress began, her gaze drifting to the swirling incense smoke as if reading its patterns. A minuscule flicker of tension tightened the skin around Valtheris's eyes, the only sign of her surprise.
"The containment was made from the other devils, My Lady. It should be impossible."
"Should it? Little in this cosmos is truly impossible, my dear… Merely… improbable. The improbable has a tiresome habit of occurring."
The mistress's lips curved into a smile that did not touch her eyes. It was cold and sharp. She paused, her head tilting as if listening to a sound only she could perceive.
"The curious thing is… I do not feel her... I sense the rupture, the scar in the fabric of that place… the power that should be screaming into the abyss… is absent. It is as if it never was... Or as if it has been… rebottled."
She leaned forward slightly, the opal horns catching the dim light… casting tiny, dancing rainbows across the dark sheets.
"There is another note in this symphony, however… A faint, mewling counterpoint... My listeners reported it before the silence fell... From the cell… there was a sound they described as… a baby's cry, many years ago."
The word hung in the perfumed air, absurd and terrifying in equal measure.
"We thought they had solved this terrible problem for good, locking… her… away in the past…. But this child changes everything… They create new possibilities and risks we shouldn't have to worry about before. The danger is back… you have to deal with it."
The command, though it is delivered in that same melodic hum, it landed with the finality of a tombstone sealing shut... The perfumed air seemed to grow colder, the lilac scent now cloying, the incense smoke feeling like a funeral shroud.
"Find the source of that cry. Follow the scent of nothingness to the place where her roar should be. Locate the echo where only silence answers."
The mistress did not look at her knight as she issued the decree; her violet gaze was fixed on the middle distance, as if already seeing the tangled threads of this new problem... Her voice remained bored with indifference, but the words themselves were sharp and absolute.
"If it is that child… kill it. if you see… Atom…"
There was no malice in the instruction… only the pure… clean efficiency of erasing a mistake. For the first time, a flicker of something else not anger, but a profound, weary annoyance passed through her eyes.
"Kill him too. His continued existence is… an administrative error."
The words hung in the air, a death sentence spoken with the emotional weight of a comment on the weather. Valtheris
Valtheris did not immediately move... The kneeling figure, a statue of devotion and martial grace absorbed the order. The polished silver of her armor seemed to drink in the dim light, the steely feathers of her wings shifted with an almost imperceptible rustle. With a fluid, powerful motion that was silent save for the soft chime of plate against plate… she rose to her full, impressive height. She was a warrior forged in divine fire, now standing in the service of indolent decay.
She placed the angelic helmet upon her head, the act itself a ritual of commitment. The helm settled into place… its stern visage masking her own features, leaving only a glimpse of resolve in her eyes through the narrow visor.
Her voice was filtered through the helmet… transformed into a resonant, metallic echo that held none of the Mistress's melodic boredom. It had a pure unadulterated purpose.
"Yes, my Mistress of Sloth. Your will is my command. I will see this through. The cry will be silenced. The error will be… corrected."
The title was not an insult… but a title of office, spoken with the utmost reverence. With a final, slight bow of her helmed head, Valtheris turned... Her great wings, though still folded, seemed to pull at the air around her. She did not walk to the immense sealed doors of the chamber; she simply took a step forward and vanished… not in a flash of light, but in a sudden, silent convergence of shadows and displaced air, leaving behind only the smell of ozone and the lingering, sweet perfume of lilac and ash. The hunt had begun…