037.009

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Lost Authority

Bathhouse

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If there was a more blissful feeling than taking a long, hot bath after getting sweaty and dirty, Alyssa didn’t want to know what it was.

Everyone who had gone to the Justice was sitting in a deep pool of water within the Illuna guest house, just relaxing. Not even the slightly murky water ruined the experience. Using the not-quite-power washer spell, Alyssa and Irulon had mostly cleaned out the ash in their hair and from the draken and Fela. It wasn’t perfect, which was why they had all decided to take a bath, but the shower had gotten the vast majority of the ash off them. Their clothes were being handled by servants, with Brakkt watching to ensure that nothing happened to the dragon hide armor. The armor was just too valuable to be left in the hands of unknowns. It would be too easy for it to go missing.

There was one thing bringing everything down… well, two things. The first was the draken. Izsha and Musca took up a lot of space in the relatively small pool. It wasn’t a tiny space by any definition of the word. Not like a modern single-person Earth bath. It had clearly been modeled after the public bathing facilities in Lyria. A good ten people could have sat on the built-in seats along the edges without bumping elbows. But draken were just that big.

The other thing was the mood. No one talked much. Catal hadn’t said a word. He just stared. Alyssa wasn’t sure that he was even aware of being in a bath with a princess and a few monsters. He had followed them in an absentminded state and seemed to have not recovered his wits just yet. The Justice couldn’t have left him in that deep of a shellshock, could it have? It was true that Alyssa had been stunned for a few moments upon first seeing it, but she had gotten over the shock quickly enough to get moving.

Then again, she might have just gotten a little overly used to things like that. She hadn’t seen something as large as the Justice before, but she had heard about it from Iosefael which had softened the blow. Seeing angels, demons, and monsters on the regular, plus a whole new world in general, was a bit desensitizing as well.

As for the princess… Aside from suggesting the rest in the bath in the first place, she hadn’t said a word. At the moment, Alyssa wasn’t even sure that she was awake at all. Irulon sat in the rounded corner of the bath, resting her head in a small divot clearly designed specifically for that purpose while using Musca as a footrest. The way the divot was shaped, she was basically just a face poking out above the surface of the steaming water. With her eyes closed and her breathing slow, Alyssa could only hope that she wouldn’t have to be the one to wake her up.

But a bit of rest would probably do her good. So despite the prospect of having to wake her up eventually, Alyssa didn’t disturb her.

“Hey,” Fela said, splashing a bit in the water as she slid closer to Alyssa. She bumped her shoulder against Alyssa’s before poking one of her sharp claws into that same shoulder. She didn’t poke hard enough to hurt, but it still made Alyssa jump a bit. “Sorry. I just wanted to ask what these meant.”

“These?” Alyssa said, looking down to where Fela’s claw was still lightly pressed against her shoulder. “Oh.” Her tattoos. The large tribal pattern running from around her elbow up and over her shoulder. “It doesn’t really mean much of anything. Lots of people think you have to have some meaning behind your tattoos, but honestly? I just thought the design looked cool. I was going to get a similar piece done on my left side too, and maybe something on my back, but… Good tattoos are surprisingly expensive. And it takes quite a bit of research to figure out who to get to do the work. You don’t want to go get some garbage work done by the local corner tattoo shop only to hate either the design or the outcome. They’re fairly permanent, after all.”

“Uh huh…” Fela mumbled with a bit of uncertain disinterest in her tone. The hellhound wasn’t stupid or anything, but she had consistently shown a fairly distinct lack of interest in most of anything from Earth. Except for food. “So you’re saying that the tattoo is not why your spells are so strong?”

“I don’t… think so?” Alyssa had honestly never thought about it before. As she had found the design on the internet and had not modified it, it was highly likely that someone else out there had the same pattern. Perhaps they were out there, locked up in a sanatorium, called crazy for claiming to see angels… but probably not. It was just a tattoo. “Irulon has seen my tattoo before. If there was something magical about it, I’m sure she would have noticed by now.”

“Oh,” Fela said, large ears drooping slightly as the flames from her eyes diminished.

“Sorry.”

“I just thought that if I have to keep casting human magic all the time, I should cast the most powerful versions of the spells.”

“No,” Irulon said without raising her head or opening her eyes. “Alyssa’s source of power is not her tattoos. I tested it.”

“You tested it?” Alyssa said, flicking her eyes to the princess’ shoulders. Both were bare. Aside from Tenebrael’s tattoos on her face, Irulon didn’t have any tattoos. Which meant… “Tess?”

“Tess has far too many preexisting tattoos that would contaminate test results.”

“Then…”

“Don’t worry about it. It was a failure anyway.”

Not sure if she should worry or not despite Irulon’s assurance, Alyssa just nodded her head. “If you say so.”

“I do, and I also say—”

Whatever Irulon had on her mind got interrupted by the bathing chamber’s doors slamming against the walls.

Alyssa jumped at the noise, reaching for her weapons. Both her pistols and her deck of cards were on the floor just near where she had been resting her own head. Well within reach. Irulon’s tome was next to her bed, also within reach. Fela and the draken were weapons in their own right. Catal was the only one completely unarmed, having left his mace with the servants for cleaning.

But reaching for her weapons turned out to be wholly unnecessary.

Lumen marched in through the open door, glaring with her piercing eyes at everyone until she spotted Catal. For a moment, her angry expression softened. For a moment. Her fury doubled over as she marched right up to the edge of the stone basin. “What did you think you were doing? You fool. We were supposed to go together.”

For the first time since their planning session under the protective dome, Catal spoke. Kind of. He stopped before getting the first word out to clear his throat. After that, he actually spoke. “They were going to leave. There wasn’t time to wait for the rest of you to get ready.”

“So you went alone? Have you gone mad?”

“I wasn’t alone, Lumen.”

“These things don’t count,” she said, waving a hand around the room. It was hard to tell if it was intentional or not, but Lumen’s sweep of her hand stopped at Alyssa and Fela. Irulon, still with her eyes closed, was left out of the gesture. “They would leave you to die if it suited their needs.”

Alyssa narrowed her eyes at the accusation. Things had been hectic out there, it was true, but she never would have just up and abandoned someone.

“They wouldn’t and they didn’t,” Catal said before Alyssa could offer any scathing remarks. “I’m back in one piece, amazingly enough.” Taking in a deep breath, he looked up to Lumen. “If you’re here because the guild wants my report… tell them that it is in my opinion that this Astral Authority organization of monsters should never be antagonized or approached under any circumstances.”

That brought Lumen up short. She leaned back, taking a less aggressive stance toward Catal. “They were that bad?”

“You’ve only seen the little ones around the city. Even ignoring the claims that their numbers might well be limitless,” he said with a nod toward Alyssa, “their leader is truly the size of the palace, wielding a sword just as large as if it were a feather. A single swing of that sword would destroy the entirety of Lyria.”

Alyssa thought that was just the slightest bit of exaggeration, but not so much that she felt a need to interrupt. Irulon, if she was even listening, apparently felt the same for she didn’t speak up either.

“And that was only the one. Apparently they have four leaders?” he said, still looking toward Alyssa.

“Don’t know what they’re like. Hopefully we never have to find out. If everything goes well, we shouldn’t have to worry about them at all in the future.” Alyssa quickly glanced around the bathing chamber as she spoke, half expecting Tenebrael to pop up to confirm that she had indeed finished her actions against the Astral Authority.

But no feathers started to drift through the air.

All the Astral Authority had vanished after collapsing the sliver around the ash-filled crater. From there all the way back to Illuna, Alyssa hadn’t spotted even a single Kindness performing some observation on the area. They had vanished into portals, according to Brakkt and a few others who had been stationed around the wall, leaving behind the corpses of the infected as the only evidence that they had ever been there.

Without being able to close her eyes to see souls inside bodies, Alyssa had performed a quick check on one of the infected corpses. Even before being connected to Tenebrael, she had been able to see souls as long as they were separated from the body. So she had conjured up a scythe and dragged it through one of the bodies. There had been no resistance and no sign of any infected soul. Which she should have expected, given that there were a few pentagrams around the body, but she still felt as if she had to check.

Either the demon had survived or there were more true demons to take up her task of collecting the souls of fallen infected. Both could very well be true.

Alyssa glanced to the side, looking over Irulon as the princess rested in spite of all the shouting Lumen was doing. Despite her promise back in the field of ash, Alyssa had no idea how she was supposed to help Irulon on her own. With her vision, Irulon knew leagues more than Alyssa did about souls. All Alyssa could really do was some legwork. And without being connected to Tenebrael, doing even some manual labor was not much of an option as far as souls were concerned. Maybe she could use a scythe to rip the souls apart, but that really seemed like a poor idea even if there were no other option.

As Alyssa stared, Irulon opened her eyes. It was a slow opening. At first, she didn’t even move her head. Slowly, she sat up enough to look around the room. “Would you two mind taking this elsewhere? I cast a number high ranked spells and am feeling beyond drained. Your arguing is grating.”

Lumen snapped her head over, looking at Irulon. She opened her mouth, but seemed to hesitate upon noticing Irulon staring back for the first time since she entered the room. It was enough to make her take a step back, turning her mildly less aggressive stance into an almost submissive one.

Catal standing saved her from having to respond to the princess. “I would like to get some sleep, so leaving is fine with me. I’m sure the guild wants my report, but they’re going to have to wait until morning. If the Astral Authority truly will be gone soon, haste in delivering it won’t matter.” Looking to the rest of the people in the room, he nodded to each. “Princess. Alyssa… Monsters. If you need anything from me, you know where to find me.”

“Hm.”

With that, Catal headed out of the bathing chamber, followed closely by a scowling Lumen. They closed the doors behind them, leaving the rest to their supposedly relaxing bath. Alyssa half expected Irulon to lean back and close her eyes once again. While she did the former, her violet eyes remained open.

“I didn’t get much of a chance to look at it,” Irulon said slowly, shifting so that both her ears were just out of the water as she leaned back into the divot. “The Reality Sliver changed between when you and Kasita left and when I began the spell casting. After, the entire thing had a layer of ash obscuring everything. I thought to clean some of it off with wind or water, but after seeing you and speaking with you, I decided it would be best to simply leave. The Archangel’s presence contributed to that decision.”

“The demon got slammed into the dome, shattering the mirror. The parts nearest to her darkened,” Alyssa started, explaining the course of events. From the darkened panels to the Justice swinging its sword that shattered the entire dome at once, to what had likely been the Justice slamming into the outside of Alyssa’s smaller dome just before it regressed from reality.

Those had been Irulon’s words, but it was the same thing in the end.

The darkened panels had to reflect wherever the demon had come from. The same place the pit in Owlcroft had lead to, in all likelihood. The golden iridescent locales were obviously the Endless Expanse. That the remaining panels showed worlds beyond Nod and Earth seemed most of interest to Irulon at the end of Alyssa’s explanation.

“No mortal slammed into the reality sliver, shattering portions of it. Correct?”

“The dome had already been reflecting a mortal world. Would that not have been part of it?”

“Hm.”

“I don’t suppose you’re thinking of replicating what happened out there? I don’t exactly know what use it might be at the moment, but it could be extremely useful in the future.”

Not the least because it seemed to be a portal between worlds. Alyssa had been unable to put her hand through the panel, but both Kasita and the demon had been a whole lot more successful. Kasita had shoved an arm into the Endless Expanse and the demon had hopped from portal to portal instantly to launch successive flurries of attacks against the Justice. If one panel did end up showing the Earth and not some strange parallel universe version of it, it might just be the way home that Alyssa had been looking for. Assuming she could figure out a way to cross the boundary.

Angels might still try to kill her, but so long as she had a steady supply of spells… she could spend her entire life chaining them down until… she fell into one of their traps or died of more natural causes. Not the most ideal of situations.

“Doing so might be difficult,” Irulon said. “You recall the first time I used that spell in your presence?”

“While we were chasing after Oxart, right?”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Um? Trapped a few of the Juno Federation?”

“A horse slammed into it at full speed, hard enough to break the horse’s neck. It didn’t even leave a scratch on the mirrored surface. I admit that I’ve never tried to break one intentionally, but other people have. For instance, we used the smaller version of the spell to seal off the basement of the church back in the Federation’s outpost. While I didn’t inspect it for damage before dismissing the spell, I doubt it shattered. If we have to break the mirror to reveal these other worlds, we might find ourselves in some amount of trouble.

“There is also the possibility that, no matter what we do, it won’t work. Thus far, demonic and divine elements are the only things we have observed damaging the spell in such a manner. We mere mortals may simply lack something required to do so. At least, we mortals might lack that,” Irulon said, piercing gaze turning toward Alyssa.

“You think I can break it?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t. Despite your claims, you are not a mere mortal.”

Alyssa sighed out a stream of bubbles as she sank down into the bath.

“I know. You’re just a regular human who got caught up in strange things. But even if you are what you think you are, there are still some things about you that just don’t fit in the same category as the rest of us. And even if there isn’t an odd thing out… I can think of one thing that could help us out.”

“Oh? What would that—”

Alyssa didn’t get a chance to finish taking. She had to lift her hand in front of her face as a flurry of golden-white feathers slammed into her. The water splashed up, half drowning her as a pair of hands gripped her shoulders.

“What did you do, Alyssa meadows?”

Alyssa shoved the angel off her, coughing a little as she sucked in some fresh air. The water tasted of ash, a filmy slimy feeling. Realizing how it felt against the roof of her mouth just made her cough more. Irulon and Fela were out of the water and the draken were standing upright. But none of them could see the angel in front of Alyssa.

“Get off me you stupid—” Alyssa hacked out a cough again as she shoved Iosefael away. “I haven’t done anything this time.”

“That crazy Archangel just tried to take my head off!”

Alyssa blinked away some of the water, glad that even with as nasty as it felt in her mouth, it wasn’t stinging her eyes much. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I might have done something.”

With the water finally out of her eyes, Alyssa could see those cross-shaped pupils of Iosefael’s green eyes widen in surprise. With a quick gasp, Iosefael said, “She’s here!”

The angel picked Alyssa up and moved her just far enough away from the edge of the tub that Iosefael could slip behind her, cowering. Alyssa found herself face to face with a familiar red-eyed angel.

A particularly angry Archangel.

“Save me,” Iosefael whispered from behind Alyssa.

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