Chapter 73

Upon descending back into the physical plane, I saw Anthony situated at his desk, but his deep red eyes seemed to be somewhere else, staring into another plane of existence beyond my current knowledge.

I saw a tiny amount of drool run from his mouth, hitting his lap. It appeared that Anthony was either asleep or he was so traumatized from the encounter with The Umbridge that he couldn't form a coherent thought.

"Heh, it appears someone might be a little scared." 

I chuckled as I brushed myself off, standing up from the carpeted floor and taking a quick peek around Anthony's office whilst he was in this indescribable state. I found nothing but old files and the occasional skull placed for decoration. The office overall was a messy and dusty room, so I left as soon as I could, still gripping the pile of ashes and the coin I found in my vest pocket. 

The council members all turned their heads to look at me, all giving me puzzled and somewhat angry glares upon seeing Anthony's current condition from behind my body. I turned back for a few moments to look at Anthony before chucking lightly.

"He's fine."

I said with a placid expression on my face. The woman with blonde hair and pronounced features spoke up, her voice was serious and also very curious.

"I assume you're heading to prison now? I've had no one able to testify with Anthony in regards to dropping cases."

I chuckled at the woman before flicking my collar.

"I was able to explain all the given details, he's now aware of my given situation and dropped me. He knows that Raymond framed me, but I'm not sure any of you knew that until I told you just now."

Her expression gradually softened, and she packed up her cup of tea before loudly siping it, her blue eyes still fixated on me. She then placed the mug down before speaking in a solemn tone.

"We will be taking a deeper dive into the matters regarding this Isaiah Walls, the information that your accomplice Raymond told us will be very helpful."

I nodded before bowing slightly, and departing from the room. Upon stepping into the hallway I felt a sudden rush of confusion wash over me, something that my previous nonchalance was unable to detect until a few seconds after. 

"They didn't seem all that interested in pressing me further, why though?"

My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by Raymond, who leaned against the wall in the hallway, making a hand gesture as if he was stirring a teacup full of tea. A spiral of green energy was fixated between his 2 hands, and the spiral was constantly spinning.

"What the hell is that?"

I took a few steps towards him, but he waved his hands and made the spiral energy disappear at that moment. Raymond then looked back up at me and rolled his eyes.

"Nothing, you're an awfully intrusive person."

He replied in a snarky tone, raising his eyebrows and giving me a glare of disapproval. 

"Manipulate, mind, manipulate, mind."

The voices repeated those words in my mind, and my expression washed over with a mix of relief and confusion. 

"You saved me from getting truly framed, huh."

Raymond rolled his eyes again, attempting to defend his somewhat nice actions with his own predominant logic. 

"I didn't want you to be killed, but I don't want you to be alive either."

I suddenly remembered something that Aizawa told me within the medical facility, something regarding a prayer that Raymond recited before stabbing me in the gut.

"What did you say before you drove a knife into me at the party?"

I asked, leaning against the wall, my eyes still fixed on Raymond and his aggravated expression. 

"A prayer, so?"

"Forgiveness."

I said, making Raymond nod slowly.

"Why would you need forgiveness from anyone, wouldn't that betray your ideal philosophy?"

An eerie smile played on his lips, and his emerald eyes lit up with some amusement.

"I never said that anyone besides humans would garner my respect, or even a grain of my attention. I workshop deities who I can't even attempt to grasp their power. And isn't forgiveness the answer to everyone's problems?"

"But why would you need to recite a prayer before killing me, wouldn't that be an almost unredeemable act, one committed for your own personal gain and nothing else?"

Raymond chuckled quietly, running his fingers through his silky, black hair. He then popped his collar and looked back at me.

"Any act that one commits can somewhat be for personal gain, but why would a street rat steal a loaf of bread, why would a politician exact a new law?"

The parallels that Raymond brought up seemed to connect together. They could be for their own helpfulness, but they could also be for the sake of others. And besides, what politician would exact a law for their own personal gain, wouldn't that cause outcry from the public?

"I see your logic, but that doesn't answer your own question."

I folded my arms and shot him a glance, telling him mentally to finish his unanswered statement. Raymond nodded and pushed his glasses up, before clearing his throat. 

"Forgiveness is a blessing, but it can also be a curse. If I kill you and ask to be cleansed, and start anew, would that make me truly pure? No, because you would've still killed someone. But the weight of the crime is nothing of a factor, isn't it? I would murder 100 people and still ask for forgiveness, and it will be bestowed upon me. I believe that makes the weight of forgiveness dwindle, because it's up to the person who gets it what they want to do with it."

"Morality and any sense of ethics dwells deep within common human activity, we all have our own morals and drive to what we see as the inevitable cleansing that is death. Some would welcome it with open arms, while others shut themselves off, crying themselves to sleep every night because they fear such a simple concept."

He then cleared his throat again, a little weary from all the monologuing. 

"So in a simple conclusion, I said that prayer because I knew what I was doing."

After he took a few steps back before nodding at me.

"I was already aware of your profound status, and killing you would be the only viable option I saw at the moment."

I furrowed my eyebrows and leaned up a little, glaring up at Raymond with a tiny hint of suspicion. 

"So, you want me dead due to my "Apocalypse" status? Then why would you allow me to be promoted to Order 8?"

Raymond smiled at me before speaking in a solemn tone.

"To be frank, in all of my dwellings into history I've encountered numerous hidden tales and legends, but yours stuck out to me. I've always wondered why someone would allow another being to destroy the world, but I won't interfere into the minds of lower beings."

"I know that you're destined to destroy everything, but what lurks within you says something else. You're not open to the prophecy, but you don't reject it, otherwise you would have been scrambling around when I fed you the potion."

I took this puzzling statement to the back of my head for later, but for now all that was in my body was exhaustion from the mental force I just pushed into myself by siphoning a powerful deity into my mindscape for another "meeting."

"Well, I hope the council does something about the predicament, otherwise I'm getting tired and I already feel like collapsing right here as we speak."

I walked down the hallway while giving an exaggerated yawn, before opening the large set of doors at the end of the hall and stepping out into the city, where the sun had already far disappeared behind the Cardigon mountains. 

Aaron stopped leaning against the frame of the pillar and approached me and Raymond, shooting us curious glances.

"What happened there? Did they discuss the matters with Isaiah?"

I gave him a tired nod, rubbing my eyes before croaking up.

"They did, now I'm too tired to continue anything else."

I stretched heavily, before approaching the street a few meters away and sticking my hand out. But due to the current hour and our given location, it took a lot more time than previously expected for the carriage to arrive and pick us all up.

The ride to the town was pretty quiet and a little awkward, and it took a little over 20 minutes in length. We eventually pulled up to the main part of town and stepped out of the carriage, giving the coachman what we had left of our Lumin.

I took out the golden coin I stole from Anthony's vest and looked at it for a few seconds, before noticing something I found to be quite peculiar.

The coin had symbols around its edges, ones that looked familiar. Upon closer inspection I saw that they were the exact ones that I notice whenever I'm bored and dwell into Cattley's books.

"Divination symbols?"

I looked at the coin for a few more seconds before putting it back into my pocket and continuing down the street. We arrived at the headquarters a few minutes after, and it didn't take long for Aaron and Raymond to crash in for the night.

Because of Raymond's new temporary arrival here, he crashed onto the couch where I'd usually sleep, leaving me to find elsewhere to sleep.

I decided to take residence inside Aaron's lab, which was a pretty unconventional place, but all I really needed was a blanket and a pillow to make myself comfortable.

Aaron's lab was filled to the grin with miscellaneous items and other stuff. Test tubes, bottles, ingredients and other utilizations. Within the lab I spotted a vial full of black blood, the exact blood that I shed last week and was taken in for testing.

Then I thought back to the blood that covered the bandages around my torso, I lifted up my shirt and gazed down at them. My blood was crimson red, different from the inky shade in the vial. 

"Perhaps this was another change from The Umbridge, they changed my blood color to get rid of any suspicions."

I approached the vial of blood and observed it carefully, watching it simmer gently above the tiny fire that was ignited below it. I felt my eyelids get heavy but then I felt a vibration in my pocket, it was the sun-charm that Aaron gave me before departing to the council hall.

The sun-charm was vibrating and glowing brightly in my pocket, so I took it out and placed it on the table. The sun-charm was an artifact utilized in escapes and concealing one's presence. But why would it be vibrating like this? Maybe the link between it and Raymond's given amulet was reestablishing, maybe Raymond's doing something?

I immediately stormed out of the lab and approached the couch, where I saw Raymond sleeping on it, his glasses sitting on the table beside it. They sat on top of the books that I read a few nights ago, the books where I saw the strange creature that Aaron stated to be corrupted. 

I grabbed the book's carefully, something inside me told me that this was a good thing that I was doing, but I was just bored and after feeling the sun-charm vibrate only for it to probably just be a trick or a malfunction of some sort. I carefully took the necklace off of Raymond's neck, before walking back to Aaron's lab and placing all the items in a neat little row.

I flipped through the book and landed on the page, the words; "In power you find weakness, in weakness you lose control." still written in the red liquid on the bottom of the page, making me shiver.

I then grabbed another book sitting next to me in Aaron's lab, it was a book regarding ritualistic magic. I opened the book and flipped to a page, the page being a divination spell, a spell to tell the future and predict events with almost certain accuracy. 

The ingredients were listed out near the bottom of the page, 2 drops of Ink-Walt squid blood, a blood drop of a human, and a raven's feather. Upon memorization the ingredients and processes were similar to the Order 9 Apocalypse formula the strange man concocted for me in the alleyway.

"This divination will tell me a lot about the future, the intentions of it, and all possible outliers."

I repeated the phrase 3 times like the paper said, before grabbing a sheet of parchment paper from the corner of Aaron's workroom, which was a little wet from an overhead leak in the old pipes. I then laid the paper onto the desk, before approaching a cabinet full of different ingredients, and fishing through them until I found the Ink-Walt squid blood, and the raven's feather.

I dropped a few droplets of the squid's blood onto the parchment paper, and plucked a few feathers from the raven's wing carefully, before mixing them in with the blood. The blood seemed to possess some acidic properties, as I saw the feathers melt into the black liquid.

Upon gracing a knife over my wrist a few times, I watched as the warm, red liquid of my own blood fall onto the parchment paper, it mixed with the Ink-Walt's blood and formed a red and black concoction, which seemed to glow an illusory red color that reflected all across the transparent and empty flasks of the lab, creating an almost mirror like realm around me.

"What was that prayer that Aizawa said that Raymond muttered before stabbing me at the party?"

I thought to myself as a strange sense of hopelessness washed over me, but it wasn't long until the illusory voices called out.

"For the lord's touch shall grace me, I repent of my wrongdoings. For the lord's touch shall grace me, I repent of my wrongdoings. For the lord's touch shall grace me, I repent of my wrongdoings."

After a few repetitions, I repeated the words under my breath, closing my eyes.

"For the lord's touch shall grace me, I repent of my wrongdoings."

I then dipped my finger into the liquid, and formed a circle of it onto my right palm. The warm liquid seeped into my veins, traveling up my arm and into my mind. My surroundings were immediately submerged with a blinding white light, and I ended up in the streets of Serephis Kingdom, which were littered with dead bodies and flames engulfed a large portion of the streets.

A cold rush of fear instantly washed over my body. 

"Maybe this is the wrong ritual, and I ended up in the past?"

Those suspicions were immediately canceled as a figure came into view, leaping across rooftops. I heard gunshots fill the air, all firing towards the leaping figure. One of the bullets graced their arm, and they tumbled off the slanted rooftop and into a dumpster nearby.

Suddenly, a group of people all wearing white masks approached the dumpster, the masks all had the same blue moon shape embellished in their foreheads. 

"The Nightshades?"

Suddenly the figure leaped out of the dumpster, before driving their long, gray furred claws into one of the Nightshades' heads, sending them to the floor in a bloodied mess. The other nightshades frantically started shooting, but the Nullifying bullets seemed to have no effect whatsoever. 

The massacre continued, as I saw more and more Nightshades' suffer brutal deaths, more blood being shed, and more bodies piling up. They then pulled down their hood, and my eyes widened when I saw Aaron.