Chapter 23

I met up with the ex-church lackie and the weird priest in the early morning, when the Sun was barely up and casting long shadows that seemed to coil and twist just out of sight.

Looking at the manse where I'd first faced something so utterly out of my league didn't really bring up any fear within me though, even knowing how close I came to losing my life. No, it was just... exciting. I was struggling to hide my enthusiasm. Pissing off someone way above you was the greatest feeling ever.

Much of the structure had collapsed in on itself after Yvette set it on fire, the veranda was in tatters, the soil was marked with deep scars and much of the dead vegetation was simply gone. A deathly stillness hung about the dilapidated place.

Something told me things weren't going to be quite the same as last time.

I turned to Heine who was gripping his neck tie pin embedded with different precious stones and shared the profound thought that entered my head the second I laid eyes on him.

"You..." I narrowed my eyes, "You're a siscon, aren't you?"

For a moment, his composed countenance faltered before he instantly recollected himself. Then, he gave me a small nod of affirmation.

"I know cause I'm also one." I gave him a thumbs up.

He just ignored me and faced the rusted gate. I shrugged. He could be like that if he wanted. But I knew what I saw there. My instincts told me he was kindred, and I trusted them.

The priest accompanying us chuckled into the back of his hand. "You got busted so quickly, Sir Knight. Perhaps this one's intelligence is due more credit than I thought. Intriguing."

This guy thought he was slick, didn't he? 

Still, I decided to be the bigger man and not respond to the insult. Most certainly not because I couldn't come up with a proper comeback for the way he called me an idiot. Instead, I focused on the matter at hand.

"I wanted to ask something..."

The priest, Mark, craned his neck curiously, hands behind his back.

"It didn't follow us when I pushed it back the first time. It didn't throw everything it had either. Why?"

"To even attempt to understand the mind of a heretical creature not of this world is a fool's errand." He smiled, speaking in a perverse tone. "Well, this is a newborn, isn't it? How much logic or understanding do you expect from a toddler?"

"You know, it becomes a lot less cooler if you say we're fighting a baby."

"Oh? Then you won't like it when I tell you this is like a late abortion. An abortion after the fact, even."

"Isn't that just murder?" I sighed.

"No, it is cleansing because I happen to be a representative of the Church."

Woah. That was wild.

He seemed to realise it too judging by the fact that he started chuckling again. Our little 'discussion' was interrupted when Heine stoically threw cold water over Mark's odd humor.

"You can not assign nature to something that isn't natural to begin with. Unlike you two, I don't have the time to sit around either. So... let us begin before I grow tired."

"What, you wanna get to your sister that bad?"

"Hit the nail right on the head there, young Henry. Say, won't you become my apprentice? Surely eternal bliss beats out anything the magi have to offer?"

I opened my mouth to answer but Heine, the boor he was, wrenched the doors of the manse apart and stepped inside. With a sigh, I pocketed my aviators and followed him in, immediately faced with an alien world. One I could understand far better this time around for I'd already deciphered it fully last time.

I also noticed something else. Heine's white suit was a mystic code too, with a latent spell under it. Even his skin had a latent spell to it, same with that necktie pin he kept fiddling with. Something to do with stone.

"The Lord is my refuge. No harm shall overtake me, no disaster will come near my tent." Mark stepped in while professing those words. It was some prayer, from the Bible I assumed. But, with each word he uttered, magical energy shifted, his circuits hummed and pulsed.

That wasn't a prayer. 

"It's a fucking spell chant."

He was connecting to that 'something' that enacted all spells, a Thaumaturgical Foundation, one far grander than any I'd seen to this day.

"For he commands his angels to guard me in all my ways. They will lift me so that I strike not stone." 

A defensive spell?

"I will tread on the lion and the cobra. I will trample the great lion and the serpent."

He finished his chant, and the spell came into effect. Not on just him, on all three of us. A defensive spell, and a strengthening one as well, combined into one. It did something else too.

Bar the influence of that which was decreed evil.

So these were the baptism rites of the Holy Church, stabilised and given strength by the belief of the masses, activated through mana.

It was an incredible occurrence. One I documented long before he even finished, and I didn't need that chant either. I could connect to the system and make that command objectively. I didn't need to convince myself of what I could literally see through a spell.

I didn't get to ponder upon those thoughts. The instant he finished, I was wrenched by my nape and thrown against the wall. A hand clenched around my throat. I choked. But I grinned too.

"Looks like... somebody's... angry."

It was that 'thing' that bore the name of Gabriel. 

"Blasphemer!" Mark called out. "I denounce you and call you evil. Know this well, you who would bend the word of our Lord, it is beyond you! So I declare! So it is!"

The third part of his 'spell' came into effect.

I punched it with a reinforced fist... to no avail. When I opened my palm, a burst of flame exploded onto its face. This time, the stone of its flesh was nicked. My eyes widened in realisation. There was something around it that was stopping everything. That 'something' wasn't affecting what was already in contact with it. That 'something' was a world that came from it, but was not a part of its own form.

Heine Istari uttered a single word.

"Convert."

The soil under us hardened and ruptured in spikes that meant to bury the daemon. It didn't work. The spikes shattered into nothing long before they ever made contact. Its wings shimmered. The spikes turned back on Heine.

He didn't even seem surprised. 

"Convert."

This time, it was his own body that converted. Liquid stone spilled out from under his skin and enveloped his body. It formed gauntlets on his hands, plate on his chest, pauldrons on his shoulders, and greaves on his legs. Finally, a helm of stone clicked around his head, or rather, his very skin morphed into it, with only a thin line that revealed shimmering blue eyes underneath. He looked like a knight straight out of a high-fantasy novel.

It was Alchemy, I instantly deciphered. He was finely manipulating stone embedded in his own body as part of his magecraft and converting his own flesh into it as well. Liquefying and hardening it at his leisure. Truly, alchemy in its purest form. The transmutation of matter from one form to the other. His was just solely focused on that Living Stone.

Getting choked out by a daemon was worth it already solely for the Istari family's magecraft.

Wait, if it involved manipulating stone... and this daemon's flesh mimicked that then...

A coiled spear formed in Heine's hands as he rushed at the angel with greater speed than his bulky form should have allowed. He jammed it in its throat and dragged it back with him. I took that moment to free myself with a curious application of Heine's magecraft. The fingers around my throat melted away and I fell to the dead soil.

"You too, help Sir Knight. I will cleanse this blasphemous fiend." Mark appeared behind me, a hand on my shoulder. "Disregard your worries. This one has no power over us. Hold it while I rid us of it permanently."

The daemon seemed to latch onto those words. It dissolved into nothing in the second Heine took to heed Mark's words. The world shifted near us. It stepped out, wings shimmering, one eye white and one eye obsidian. A black sludge spilled from pores in its wings.

The bastard was holding a mean fucking grudge from last time with how hard it was on my ass.

The earth between us wilted away as Mark was flung aside like a useless side character with a stony spear pierced through his shoulder but Heine was on it before it could reach me. This time, I was more alert. More ready. I waved my hand and dozens of flaming bullets shot out. I raised my other hand just as they neared it and brought it down. Lightning rippled down from the sky. It struck hard and true, as my flames embraced Heine's coiled spear.

"If this is an artificial fucking newborn, what the hell can real ones do?"

It was a dreadful thought. It was an exciting thought. Again, one I didn't get to ponder when a stone hand slapped me across the face. It didn't hurt. It was just extremely fucking disrespectful. Then my skin started oozing that same disgusting goo and I almost screeched like a little bitch as I backed away.

My cheek was rotting. Necrosis? I buried the pain under my excitement.

"Hark heathen! You carry the name and form! Thus you submit to His laws!" The priest addressed the 'name' of the daemon. It's angelic visage. The priest threw a key-shaped sword onto its forehead, then two at his wrists and one more at its feet. "Be admonished, ye who think yourself judge! Serve thine Lord with fear! Rejoice with trembling as you are righteously cast down!"

The daemon faltered. It truly trembled. The stone of its form cracked and gave away, slowly falling to the ground.

"Know you are not just! Know you are not to be! Begone from this plane! I command thee in the name of the Lord of all creatures, the Lord of thine name. You who are twisted... Submit to Him, He gives you rest... His is your solace..."

He was... turning its own birth and nature against it. A cleansing rite to banish 'creatures of evil', tampered to suit this particular case. I doubted I would have much use for such a spell but deciphering and storing it wasn't something I had a choice about. It was near instinctual.

Its wings shimmered again, the cracking arms moved to Heine's armoured throat as bright light erupted from within them.

"Begone... and in death, have eternal life. Kyrie Eleison."

It exploded in a blinding light and crumbled apart. The alien world went with it. A light that was pulled to the cloudy skies above us. I had to pinch myself to see if it was even real. This had been nothing like my first encounter with this thing.

In fact, it was too easy.

I eyed the old priest bleeding from his shoulder.

What kind of maniacs were these people that such a thing was routine for them?

I was envious.

Still... scripture as spells... huh?

Heine stepped up to me as his armour disappeared back into his flesh, calm and collected, not the least bit bothered. He dusted off his shoulder before putting a hand to my rotting chin. He was used to this, it didn't take a genius to tell that even if I was one.

"'But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,' declares the Lord."

A soft warmth caressed my rotting flesh, when it faded, the pain faded with it and I was left better than ever. Unfortunately for Heine, he didn't realise that his good intentions had just given me a healing spell... and in doing so, casually granted me new heights to which I could elevate my eyes.

"Sir Knight is honorable as ever." Mark observed as he joined us, fixing his monocle like his shoulder wasn't even wounded.

Harmlessly, smiling, he neared me. Harmlessly, smiling, he pulled a key-shaped blade from his cassock and buried it in my neck.

-

Comment ya thoughts.

You can find six chapters ahead at patre0n.com/Bleap. It'd be eight but the latest chapter was extra chonky and I didn't really wanna break it up. It'd mess up the flow.