So I Heard My Father

"Anyway, can we please talk about Shaun's theories now?" Constantine's voice broke through the heaving breath of everyone in the room, sprawled flat on his back with candies still stuck on his hair.

Cilix's bird nest of a hair peaked through the pillow he had covering his face, cheeks red with exertion, "Oh right, I almost forgot!" he moved the pillow and instead hugged it to his chest when he saw that the coast is clear, and no more objects (pillow or otherwise) will find itself on his forehead.

"Just so you know, Shaun, I am not helping you clean." Castiel was seated on the carpeted floor next to Constantine's sprawled form, fixing his hair while eyeing the room's current disarray.

The room in question, Cilix noted, is littered with stray pillows, candies, and other snacks that is most certainly not supposed to be thrown at each other's faces, with everyone's bodies sprawled in varying degrees of dishevelment on every space available, be it the floor or the couch. One of the pillows was even dangling from the chandelier, and Cilix will not even try to question how the thing got there.

Shaun took a can of soda from the coffee table, and Cilix briefly wondered how the drinks survived the chaos.

"It's alright, Cilix will help me."

"What?" Hearing that, Cilix rolled over from his upside down position on the couch, "Why － ow ouch － why me?" he fell on the floor in a tangle of limbs as his blood rush from his head, feeling slightly out-of-bounds.

"Because it's late so you're going to stay over here, and you wouldn't want to sleep on a messy couch, now would you?" Shaun said in a saccharine sweet voice, batting his eyelashes at the raven.

"You're evil." Cilix threw a pillow at his face, which only made the guy laugh.

"You love me though." Shaun gave an overly enthusiastic wink with finger guns.

Shaun's smile is like a glimpse of the sun from the horizon after a night of devastating storm, and Cilix vaguely wondered how a smile can give you this much warmth when the person itself hides a world of pain behind it.

After another bout of laughter, Shaun sat up straight and started with another, "So I heard my father," and proceeded to prop his elbows up on his knees and rest his chin on the back of his folded hands in mock seriousness. "before I left the manor last summer, he was talking with Major General Amelo."

"Ain't that the bald one?" Axton asked.

"Yeah, from the first circle." Answered Sienna.

Cilix thought that perhaps it's not that rare for a military personnel to have meetings with ministry officials, those two divisions work side-by-side either way. What's sketchy is the person in the meeting itself.

"Now I'm interested," Oleah rose from her horizontal position on the floor, very much like those undead characters on one of Cilix's video games, "Amelo's a spineless, bootlicker. And your Dad's got the most expensive boot to lick, full offense intended, of course." she directed the last part on Shaun, still sucking on a blue candy bear.

And when Oleah spared him a side glance with one perfectly trimmed eyebrow up, Cilix kept his gaze straight ahead because no, he did not make a high-pitched screech at her sudden appearance with blue tinted tongue no thanks to that candy. It was a very manly screech anyway.

"I don't even know how to fucking react to that." Lerice's deadpan voice was obscured by Sienna's honest to god cackling laugh, falling off the couch and into Constantine's shaking body.

"Most expensive boot, oh my god my lungs." Constantine snickered, turning on his side to push Sienna off him and accidentally kicking Castiel without even realizing it. Cilix can only imagine his horrified look once he did realize.

But Castiel only mouthed, "Spineless bootlicker." as if not sure whether to laugh or be offended by Oleah's sheer audacity.

"Anyway," Shaun made a choking sound and cleared his throat, still trying to retain his serious 'conspiracy theorist' persona. "anyway, they were discussing about an anomaly that's been happening in one of those so-called 'No-man's land'."

Cilix remembered his Papa explaining that concept to him in his youth, during that phase where he believed that he was a King and it was his duty to know his Kingdom. He remembered memorizing the name and exact location of every Provinces from the map he saw of Leviathan, and coming across patches of lands without a name.

His Papa told him that they were called No-man's land, that there is one for each of the nine circles except the capital, and that no sane Welk ever lives there because of the dangerous beings that inhabit them. He remembered being overly curious, specially to the one in the North of the first circle. So he researched and read, like he always does whenever he's curious.

It took him a lot of time since information about no-man's land is so few and far in between, some are even in other language he can never translate even with his Papa's help. But Cilix is nothing if not diligent even as a nine year-old kid. He found out that the reason these lands were deserted is mainly because the magic there is really strong, so concentrated that neither Guardian nor Weaver will be able to properly control their magic in there, and the pure concentrated magic of these lands attracts wild magical creatures.

Cilix wasn't able to find out why this magical phenomenon happens, and he remembered promising to himself that he'll do more research once he started school. "Huh." Cilix thought, it looks like he forgot all about it after all.

"What anomaly?" He asked, feeling that long forgotten childhood curiosity rear its ugly head for the second time.

Shaun shrugged, "They didn't say."

"Of course they didn't mention the most interesting stuff," Sienna rolled her eyes, "the semester's barely started and you're already giving us a headache." and then threw a candy at Shaun, which he caught with his mouth.

"Or maybe they did, hard to say, I was spying from the vents and they were already half way through when I got there."

"Ten out of ten, Aster, that's how it's freaking done." Cilix reached over to high five Shaun, much to the man's delight.

"Please don't encourage him." Castiel said in his 'I'm-so-done-with-you-just-kill-me-now-pretty-please' voice, making everyone laugh.

"Wha's that gotta do with the new subject anyway?" Axton cut through the noise, resting his head on his girlfriend's lap.

"Ooh we're just getting to the good part my man!" He made a show of clearing his throat as he continued, "There was another one in the meeting, a woman I didn't recognize, didn't see her face from my position too. She's making it seem like the reason for this anomaly was a student at Levin, dunno why but she seemed so sure. Father agreed to her too, said she'd be able to monitor the students through the new subject they'll instate."

"A student being the cause of an anomaly in No-man's land of all places? That's wicked." Constantine said in disbelief.

"I know! I tried a bit of research too about this anomaly, you know? But there's nothing! Not the news, not the internet, not even the tabloids. And you'd think there'll be news reports if it's big enough that the ministry's getting involved right?"

"You realize that's downright impossible?" Everyone's eyes veered to Oleah when she spoke, "The magic in that place is so fucked up being on the damn borders can knock a grown ass Colonel down on their knees, you really believe a student can prance around there, do god knows what, and come out alive?"

There was a moment of silence as every one of them swallowed that piece of information.

That is, until a devious smirk took residence on Shaun's face, "And that's exactly why we need to find out."