Chapter 46

Cattleya turned on the gas lamp overhead the couch as she looked down at my damaged form with a concerned expression.

"You said he was injured by a shapeshifter?" 

She inquired as she opened a drawer filled with multiple pieces of medical equipment. Aaron nodded, sitting down next to me, Aizawa stood in the corner of the room, his expression similar to Cattleya's.

"Yes, the man turned into a beast, before I could capture and interrogate it, it disappeared into the night just like that."

Aaron suddenly snapped his fingers in an attempt to mimic the beast's disappearance, which made Cattleya's eyes widen as she turned to Demetrius who was sitting on a chair next to a desk full of research papers, most associated with the Nightshades

"Maybe he's the person you were talking about?"

Demetrius nodded, standing up before approaching me, and slowly unwrapping the makeshift bandages around my head, revealing 3 large gashes over my face.

He then traced his finger gently over one of the gashes which were still leaking blood, and traced a circle of blood on his right palm, before waking back to the table and taking out a bottle of Compax Oil and sprinkling it over the circle of blood.

After doing that the blood started to glow a bright red, and it started to move in a circle, like it was spinning around in a bottle, except there was no bottle.

Suddenly a small beam of light shone up from the circle of blood, and a figures face appeared in the finger of the beam of light, the old man with white hair and wrinkles.

"That's the guy who shot Oboro by chance, his name is Isaiah Walls, a former member of the nightshades, but quickly turned to dark market practices and bounty missions."

Aaron's eyes narrowed.

"That name sounds familiar."

He mumbled under his breath, before planting himself on his chair and scratching his chin.

"Maybe that's why he called you when you approached him during the fight, maybe he recognized you?"

Shinso inquired, entering the room with a bottle of healing ointment in hand, and handing it to Cattleya.

"Maybe, but I don't really know why anyone would really recognize me, I was a pretty shy person when I was younger."

As he told us that, Cattleya approached me with the bottle of ointment, putting a sample amount on her finger before rubbing it across my wounds gently.

"You'll be fine in about 2 days, this ointment is made from scales of the dawn-eagle, it's known to possess healing properties, and is deceptively effective."

She noted, screwing the cork cap back onto the bottle before placing it into the drawer with other supplies.

"How's your research with the Nightshades going, you said we'll need to find them because of those symbols I found in that book."

I asked her, causing her to turn towards me and smile softly.

"Well, I've been going around downtown and looking for evidence with Carter, during one of his grocery runs he said he spotted something right before he entered the shooting range earlier today."

My eyes widened slightly.

"Why didn't he tell me and Shinso, we were in the shooting range and we're part of this organization!"

My sudden outburst seemed to take everyone aback, but Cattleya just sighed.

"Well, in this organization we have tiers of people. Those who are at the top like me and Carter get access to more private and dangerous information, while…since you've only joined about a week ago, you're unable to learn about this stuff because of possible leaks and recklessness."

Shinso rolled his eyes, evident sarcasm and displeasure in his voice.

"So you're saying all teenagers are reckless, if let's say an adult joined this organization and is a low tier, you'll probably tell them all they meet to know anyways."

Cattleya scoffed, rolling her eye back at Shinso and pushing her glasses up.

"That wouldn't be true, you know nothing about what we really do, if you did…you'd be tumbling on the edge of madness."

Her voice gradually turned cold and less sarcastic, while also having a caring and foreboding tone, like she was worried about us at the moment.

"You will learn soon, but in the meantime we should all get some rest, it's late at night."

She then proclaimed, reaching overhead and turning off the light above the couch, shrouding the room in a pit of darkness once more.

I heard everyone progressively leave the room, leaving me alone in the darkness with my own thoughts. My mind then wandered towards that door in Cattleya's office.

"Why was that strange voice telling me to look away, was it those spirits like the one that latched to my back?"

I then rolled over on the couch, my body positioned in a way where I could see the gas lamps seeping through the crack in the half opened door, allowing a faint, yellow glow to enter the room without overwhelming my senses.

In the dim light, I could spot a series of books laid on the desk where Cattleya held her medical supplies, and I guessed they were either research books or journals. 

Attempting not to make a sound, I slowly stood up from the couch, the floorboards only letting out a little creak. I carefully crept towards the pile of books, my heart pounding in my chest before grabbing 1 or 2 and housing them under my arms. 

I then crawled back to the couch and opened one up, using the dim light as a way to see what was written.

"Entry 72; April 27th 1639. This boy who recently joined our organization helped me translate the scribes in my office, he called the language; Spanish."

"He told me that he learned it from the Industrial Revolution of the Indun Empire, and that it was a mandatory language of the emperor's creation."

"I should also expect Aaron to give me the results of the boy's blood testing soon, and it will help us determine which potion he drank, and help him hone his abilities."

A strange sense of calmness washed over me after I read everything that Cattleya wrote in her journal. Usually in most movies the main character would find a secret which would turn the plot upside down, but everything in here was completely normal.

I felt my eyelids slowly dropping, but I forced them to stay open letting out a small sigh as I closed the book slowly, trying not to damage the tender pages underneath the hard cover, and slowly walked it over to Cattleya's desk with a quiet plop.

I then crept back to the couch before opening the other book I grabbed, from what I read in the dim light, it was a history book.

I slowly opened the first page, and it took me to an old, yellow, wrinkled document written by a man by the name Kaden Zourist, as it was written in cursive in the upper hand of the page in ink.

"Along my travels in this plane, I have met the most beautiful woman in all of the Adligon Clans, and I hope to confess my feelings to her and upbring my true identity to her. Hopefully she won't fear me afterwards."

I felt a little flushed after reading that, this man wants to confess to their crush, but is scared of revealing his…true identity to her? What could that mean?

In my thought I impulsively turned the page my eyes glued on the next set of words.

"In this time there is chaos, blood and war. Only God knows when this fighting will stop, and when the earth can once again return to its peaceful state when I first arrived here, and I can live with my lover in peace."

I looked down at the bottom of the page, it said this entry was written in 1143, approximately 500 years before Cattleya's entry was written. 

"Who is this Kaden anyways, why was he traveling, and who is this girl?"

My mind continues to race with questions as I flipped deeper into the books and scrolls, attempting to dig out whatever knowledge I could.

"Upon the ritual, I saw something terrifying. Their minds and bodies seemed to combust like rotten fruit, and their minds became connected, quite literally becoming one singular organism."

My eyes widened in fear and astonishment as I read these strange yet terrifying eyewitness of a ritual of some sorts, but the name at the bottom was blacked out with a layer of ink, not in a scribble-like fashion, but completely spilled over it.

"What happened?"

I flipped the page again, and was immediately greeted by a horrifying drawing of the abomination described on the last page. It stood about 6 feet tall, it was slender with trunk likes pores seeping from its skinny and boney body, with blacked out eyes that seemed ripped from their sockets. But upon closer look, it didn't have eyes to begin with.

I quickly looked down at the bottom and saw something written in a red liquid, which stained onto the next few pages after it.

"In power you find weakness, in weakness you lose control."