031.006

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Astral Authority

Watching From Above

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No longer invisible, running through the streets with Fela and Izsha was sure to cause problems. In the past twenty minutes, their group had passed by a number of people. Not a one of whom had remained calm. They fled, ran indoors as fast as they could, or, in the case of one old woman, simply fainted. Alyssa didn’t bother trying to stop them to explain. Not only would it have taken far too much time, time Alyssa didn’t have, but it was for their own good as well. On a night like tonight, indoors was probably the safer place to be.

The Pharaoh could deal with the inevitable angry populace in the morning. That was his job. Not Alyssa’s.

Of course, city defense wasn’t really Alyssa’s job either, but it was one she had somewhat adopted. Really, she should be trying to figure out some way to get paid doing it.

Deciding to bring up the topic of a reward later, Alyssa scanned everywhere around her as Izsha chased after Fela. Infected had a vague but noticeable difference in their souls. A bit of oil or slime to their souls where regular humans had none. If these intruders were using infected as Irulon had suggested, there should be some sign of them.

But she was getting nothing. And Alyssa wasn’t sure if that was a relief or incredibly concerning. Fela certainly picked up on some smell. It was entirely possible that she was taking them to some infected completely unrelated to the intruders. Having three infected-related incidents in one night wasn’t actually that surprising. It just meant it was a bad night. Most nights went by without Fela finding anything at all.

The fact that the intruders had pentagrams in their cart brought all the incidents into suspicion. Were they natural? Just incidental accidents caused by declining faith? Or was it something more sinister? What if the Juno Federation had gotten their hands on embers and were trying to distribute them among the people? It was just speculation right now, but she could see it happening.

Especially if a demon had managed to replace Adrael. It could whisper into Liadri’s ear, pretending to be the same old voice that it always had been. But now, it could be directing their organization down an infernal path.

Alyssa needed to find them quick.

“I’ve reached the crossroads you described,” Irulon’s voice came on over the phone.

Opening her eyes, Alyssa glanced around. “We’re at the northern end of the markets at the moment, a bit off the main path to avoid as many people as possible.”

“Understood.”

The markets were definitely a bad place to be. Even after night had fallen, there were more people around than there were at just about any other single location. An infected appearing nearby, targeted attack on the city or completely random, could cause panic, death, and very likely a ripple of new infected across the city over the next month. There had already been two incidents tonight, both of which had been witnessed by people. There would already be an increase in demons. She could hope that the latter incident would help to stifle matters. Her voice had not been quiet when calling upon Tenebrael’s power. But most had already fled by that point. Unlike the incident in Teneville, people hadn’t all come out of the woodwork to gawk once things had settled down.

Things felt like they were spiraling out of control. Individual fights went well for the most part. But the attrition was taking a toll. Or it would be soon. And she wasn’t sure what to do about it besides playing a Whack-A-Mole game.

Idly, Alyssa glanced down at her fingernails. Then she looked up to the palace. An odd thought ran through her mind.

How would that look with a giant statue of Tenebrael perched on top?

It was probably a silly idea. And it probably wouldn’t work the way Alyssa hoped it would. Given the spell earlier hadn’t harmed the true demon, a laser beam-equipped statue probably wouldn’t even notice demons even if they overran the city. It would attract the Astral Authority. It might kill a few of them, but they would probably figure out some way to deal with it sooner or later.

The best way it would help would be through hope. Giving the people something to look up to like that, especially through conjuring it in such a miraculous way, might stop plague incidents cold overnight.

And that might be worth it.

Though maybe not on top of the palace. If the Astral Authority did find a way to destroy it, the pieces would rain down on the city.

Where else would one be? The courtyard right in front of the palace? A park? The market square? Maybe all the way out at the walls. She wasn’t just trying to protect the rich districts, after all. Having a giant statue of Tenebrael at each of the four main gates would certainly make for an intimidating presence for any who didn’t believe in her. Alyssa would love to see the look on the faces of Morgan and Bercilak if they showed up again with those statues around.

But that was all just idle thought for now. It might not even work. To create the one in Teneville, she had used the fallen pieces of the temple. It was a material that looked like obsidian, but might be entirely divine for all Alyssa knew. There certainly weren’t large deposits of it around the city.

They were near the easternmost gate. She could try. Just a quick test.

It might not be a bad idea. And it would stop more infections.

If it didn’t work, she wasn’t out much other than a short amount of time.

Decision made, Alyssa whistled. “Fela!”

The hellhound skidded to a stop, giving Izsha a moment to catch up. “What’s up? I know I’m winding back and forth, but it is a hard smell to track down.”

“You’re doing just fine. There’s just something I wanted to try. I don’t want you running off on your own.”

“I’ll be fine, I’m—”

“No. These people might have a fairy with them. They might also have that misty smoke. I’m not going to take any chances with leaving anyone alone.”

Fela frowned, displaying some teeth in the process. The furry ears on top of her head twitched around, trying to hear everything. Despite her frown and clearly being on the lookout for anything suspicious still, she nodded.

“Irulon. We’re headed to the main east gate,” Alyssa said into her phone. “There’s something I want to try. It’s off the trail, but it might help more in the long run.”

There was a pause. For a moment, Alyssa worried that she had been disconnected. She checked, but the call was still ongoing. “Irulon? Mom? Oxart? Chris?”

“I’m here,” Chris said instantly.

Irulon responded before he even finished. “I am as well. I was just trying to think up what you might be up to. It’s something… strange, isn’t it.”

“I mean, some people might think it is strange.”

There was a small sigh of exasperation on the other end of the line.

Oxart’s raised voice sounded somewhat distant. “You better not be blowing up my city.”

“Though I disagree with Captain Oxart’s usage of a possessive pronoun, I agree with the sentiment.”

“No. No blowing up. At least not from me. I’m feeling more constructive tonight.”

“Hm. Fine. I will meet up with my father instead of you. Do what you need.”

As Alyssa slid her phone back into her pocket, Fela looked up. “What are we doing?”

“You know that giant statue of Tenebrael? We’re going to try to make one here.”

“Why?” she asked as Izsha started toward the gate. Fela had to start running on all fours to keep up.

“Morale boost, mostly.”

“Is that really such a good idea to do right now? Shouldn’t we use your strength to vanquish our enemies?”

“Wouldn’t it be better to prevent plague infections from happening rather than deal with them as they crop up?”

“Would it actually help?” Fela tilted her head, looking a little confused as she kept pace with Alyssa and Izsha.

“Besides, this might also help fight.”

“Oh.” Just like that, the confusion vanished. She stared straight ahead and seemed perfectly happy with the change in destination.

Speaking of destinations, the eastern gate was identical to the other gates with one key difference. It was the location of one of the three towers that dotted Lyria’s walls. One was to the southwest and the other was almost straight north of the palace, just a short way west of the northern gate. They were all the same as each other. Long but narrow brick chimneys with a circular bulb at the very top. On the bulb’s roof, a triangular spire jutted up into the sky.

Even including the spire, none of the towers could match the palace’s height. They might even have been shorter than Tenebrael’s statue down in Teneville. Still quite tall compared to the rest of the city’s skyline.

It wasn’t directly on top of the gate, probably as a result of the engineers not wanting to weaken the base by cutting giant holes in it for carts and the like to pass through. Which was a good thing. Alyssa wanted to plop a statue down directly on top of the gate, if at all possible. Maybe just on top of the road outside the city. She didn’t want to damage the physical gate.

None of the guards were dead, which was nice to see. None gave her any trouble either. Alyssa had garnered some notoriety thanks to her associations with Irulon, Brakkt, and Oxart. Fela was well known among the city guard. Draken were as well, though not on an individual basis. It probably helped that Alyssa was on her way out of the city. They were guarding against unauthorized entry, not exit.

They probably got a little nervous when she dismounted half a football field away and faced the gate, but as long as they didn’t start slinging spells, she was fine with them being a little nervous.

The hard part was what to say. How to configure a valid request to Tenebrael. Alyssa had been thinking about it the entire way over. She could remember what she had said in Teneville. But that had clearly been designed for speaking in front of a crowd. The only crowd around now was Izsha and Fela. Would she need to pull half the city over in order to build one?

If it failed, she could try. For now…

Alyssa took a breath and let it out slowly. She focused on her connection to Tenebrael, feeling the warmth their connection provided.

Her fingernails turned as black as the night sky.

“Tenebrael. A city of your followers is in jeopardy.” A mystic circle sprouted from Alyssa’s fingertips. The glowing black-white was a good sign, but not one Alyssa could focus on at the moment. “Demons infest the population. The Astral Authority has come, seeking evidence of you. Intruders would have your name scoured from history. Show them that you will not be cowed. Tower over those who would fight against you. Let your glory radiate over the city, find the enemies of the people, and cast them out!”

The sound of a pin dropping thundered in Alyssa’s ear.

The mystic circle spread out, growing larger and more complex with every added line. It continued until it was twice Alyssa’s height.

Then it just… disappeared. Vanished. Winked out of existence.

No statue had popped up.

It had failed?

Alyssa sighed, slumping. She had thought it had been going so well too. Sure, she hadn’t specifically asked for a statue, but she thought she had done a pretty good job implying that a statue should pop up out of nowhere. Maybe rephrasing would be best. ‘Dear Tenebrael. Please erect a statue. Thanks, signed Alyssa.’

Holding out her hand, Alyssa prepared to try again. She took a deep breath and let it out nice and slow. Her fingernails hadn’t turned back to normal and Tenebrael’s warmth was still surging through her body.

But before she started, she noticed Fela. The hellhound, standing at Alyssa’s side, had her head craned straight back, staring upward.

Getting a bad feeling, Alyssa followed the hellhound’s gaze.

A chill ran through her body. It was that feeling. That bad feeling that happened sometimes when she screwed up, knew she screwed up, and had no idea how to fix it.

The city was lit up from above. A three-dimensional almost spherical mystic circle rotated slowly over the city, well above the tip of the palace. Or, it looked slow. But that was probably just because of how big and how high up it was. The outer edge of the circle was probably rotating faster than any living being had ever gone on this planet. Maybe that was an ignorant statement given that spells like Accelero existed.

Alyssa noticed a few interesting shapes among all the criss-crossing designs. The most obvious of which were oblong ovals, pinched at either end. The entire interior was a luminous white. All except for two thin grey lines… right where the inner and outer edges of an iris would be. There were two of those ‘eyes’ looking down on the city from above. Other people, people not quite as familiar with Tenebrael as Alyssa or without the analytical abilities of Irulon, might have dismissed them as one feature among the many geometrical shapes within the churning mass of mystic lines. But because they were there, Alyssa recognized another feature.

Surrounding the eyes, deep black lines weaved in and out, shaping up to be nearly identical to what Irulon and Tenebrael had tattooed on their faces. There wasn’t any skin connecting the eyes and the tattoos. Even without that, it looked like a giant Tenebrael had dipped her face beneath the clouds to spy down on the city.

Alyssa stumbled backward as strength left her legs. She stumbled right into Izsha. A few of the more prickly scales jabbing into her back was enough to tear her eyes away from the… whatever it was. She honestly had no idea. Not the slightest clue. Her request had been for Tenebrael to destroy enemies within the city. But it didn’t look like it was doing much aside from watching at the moment. Did that mean that there were no enemies? Or just that none had ventured beneath those eyes? Did staying inside protect them?

Or was the whole thing something else entirely?

Looking away from the circle brought Alyssa’s attention to her headphones. They were hanging out of her pocket, dangling down near her ankles. She didn’t know when, but at some point, they had fallen out of her ear. Bringing them back up, she held them a distance away.

There was a lot of noise coming from a lot of different people. Lisa. Oxart. Chris. Irulon. Tess? It sounded like there was an Oz and Lumen in the background too. A few other people as well.

In fact, she could hear noise from the city itself as well. Even standing a quarter of a mile down the path from the walls, there was noise. It sounded like a football stadium. The entire city.

Panic was probably too small of a word to describe what was going on at the moment.

“What is that?” Despite all the noise on her headphones and from the city, Fela’s voice was the first clear sound that she could hear.

And she didn’t have an answer.

A bright golden orb zooming upward from the city proved enough of a distraction. Alyssa pulled out her binoculars to get a better view on whatever it was, but before she could, a dozen beams of light rained down on the golden orb.

It was an Astral Authority fake-angel. She could see the porcelain mask and fading aureole, but she couldn’t tell what kind it was. It didn’t look like a Kindness or Patience, but it was so mangled that the possibility was there.

Two more golden orbs in the distance started flying up toward the giant mystic circle. More beams rained down, but the Astral Authority had wised up to the tactic and weren’t flying in straight lines. It made looking at them through the binoculars incredibly difficult. Alyssa barely caught a glimpse of one before she managed to focus on it for a second longer.

A Diligence. It looked like a snake. Or maybe a Chinese dragon. Two pairs of wings carried it upward and helped it slither between beams. The porcelain mask at the front split in two—not where the mouth was, but a vertical split—and a bright golden light fired out.

Some of Tenebrael’s circle shimmered and faded as the light passed through it. It didn’t stay broken for long. Enochian and geometric shapes quickly filled in the vacancy.

A much wider beam fired from one of the eye-like shapes. Too wide for the Diligence to dodge.

There wasn’t much left of it to fall when the beam faded.

More of the Astral Authority started swarming around the city. Not all looked like they had been there from the start. Little square doorways opened up in mid-air to admit one of the fake-angels every few seconds. The more fake-angels that appeared, the more black beams fired down upon the city.

Alyssa’s heart clenched with fear that those black beams were destroying buildings and even killing people. But, tearing the binoculars off the battle in the sky, Alyssa couldn’t find a single column of smoke. No dust being blown in the air. When one hit the side of the palace, it didn’t even leave a scorch mark.

Maybe that was thanks to Alyssa’s phrasing. She had requested that the enemies be destroyed, not the citizens or anything else. Whenever Iosefael reappeared, she would have to thank the angel for warning her to be more specific in her requests. Though… given that she had wanted a statue to appear, perhaps she still hadn’t been specific enough.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?”

Alyssa’s sigh of relief turned into a hiccup of panic. She had her pistol out and half a miraculous request on her lips as she turned. The words died in her throat.

Tenebrael, hovering just a few inches off the ground and leaning against Izsha’s hindquarters, waved a hand. A few black feathers drifted through the air around her. “Been a while.”

Slowly, carefully, Alyssa holstered her pistol. She took a step forward. Drawing back her fist, she slammed it into the stupid angel’s nose.

Tenebrael jerked back and immediately started rubbing at her nose. Alyssa did the same to her knuckles. It was like punching a wall. Except if walls gave a little.

“That wasn’t a very nice greeting,” Tenebrael said, frowning. Her face didn’t even look marred.

Alyssa was fairly sure that her hand was bleeding. “That’s for disappearing for so long. Where the hell were you?” Fela was staring, but Alyssa didn’t care, the hellhound knew about angels. Izsha did as well.

“Those things,” Tenebrael said with a wave of her hand at the sky, “have been buzzing around like annoying flies. Or perhaps wasps is a more apt term.”

“So you show up now? There are more of those things around than I’ve ever seen! I wasn’t even aware of them until two weeks ago and didn’t even see one until today.”

“They don’t get involved with mortals. Most of their duties revolve solely around beings related to the Throne. It isn’t surprising that you haven’t seen them. As for why now?” Tenebrael pointed upward. “Thanks to you, there is quite the distraction to keep them occupied. They’ll notice me sooner rather than later, but we should have a moment to talk now.”

“Talk.” It had been nearly two months since she last saw Tenebrael. She had things she wanted to ask about. Iosefael had answered some questions, mostly about the Astral Authority and the usage of the connection to Tenebrael. But there were so many other things she had thought of over the weeks.

And yet, she was drawing a complete blank.

Was it because of how distracted she was? The giant circle overhead, the Astral Authority, the intruders in the city, the mounting demonic issue, and Tenebrael’s sudden appearance all swirled around in her mind to the point where she had no idea what to ask.

“Indeed. Talk,” Tenebrael said. “I believe we can solve both our problems. Well, two of our largest problems, that is. The Astral Authority is a great thorn in my side. And I believe the demons have been annoying you, have they not?”

Whatever questions she had thought up and forgotten would have to go on hold. Alyssa nodded. “Annoying would be putting it lightly.”

“Then let us talk.”

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