by Eva Brandt
Before I could point out the absurdity of the offer, TB launched herself at Samuel. With an infuriated hiss, she flew straight at him and landed on his face, her fangs dripping with black venom.
Her wings were far larger than they’d been when she’d attacked me in my first year. Should I stop her from hurting him? Probably. I didn’t want her to get in trouble because she accidentally killed him or something.
He was a vampire, so it was unlikely that she could do lethal damage to him. Then again, she was a magical familiar, and nothing was out of the question in this literally God-forsaken place.
Mikael must’ve had the same idea, because he stopped TB before I could. “TB, that won’t be necessary. I’m the one who should handle trash like this.”
Okay, maybe his train of thought had been different. Right. He’d just said that he was okay with most things as long as someone didn’t try to threaten our bond. Apparently, offering me a spot in another house qualified for that category. What the hell was I supposed to do now?
Thankfully, my luck took a turn for the better. Before either TB or Mikael could sink their fangs into a certain vampire’s throat, the scythe-like tower stopped spinning. Maybe our teacher preferred to do the reaping himself instead of allowing his students to do it.
TB flew back toward us and landed on Shiro, as she often seemed to, these days. Meanwhile, Gemma helped Samuel to his feet and ushered him to the door of the tower. I couldn’t hope to interpret the look in her eyes, but for some reason it reminded me of the chapter on familiar bonds I hadn’t gotten to read yet and the comment Leviathan had made.
It was a stupid thing to focus on right now, so I shook my head, banishing the recollection to the back of my mind. We all shuffled into the tower, with Mikael, Shiro, TB and me staying at the back of the pack.
I didn’t know what I’d expected of the Grim Reaper’s lair, but it certainly wasn’t something that looked torn out of the pages of My Little Pony. The inside of the tower wasn’t a room at all. When I looked up, I couldn’t see any ceiling, but a rainbow-colored sky. A shower of glittering confetti drifted over us from above, and butterflies flew through the air, their wings leaving behind trails of multicolored dust.
The academy had always been surprising in that it didn’t have the infernal ‘fire-and-brimstone’ look I’d been taught to expect. Since my arrival here, I’d learned to see past that, past appearances. Still, this was a little much.
I must’ve made some kind of noise of surprise, because Mikael gripped my elbow to draw my attention. “Grim is a scholar of forms of strange and unusual torture,” he whispered. “He likes to expose his students to such things, to test out his theories.”
So it was a social experiment? Did My Little Pony count as torture for demonic souls?
It must have, because at least ten of the students present started to look nauseated mere seconds after they entered the room. They would’ve undoubtedly tried to made their escape had Grim himself not popped up in front of us.
His appearance was almost anticlimactic. There was no spatial distortion or anomaly. I blinked, and he was just suddenly there, manifesting out of nowhere with the ease only a primordial force could employ. He was dressed in the same plain black robes he’d worn the day I’d first seen him, but the hood was down and his scythe was missing. The eyes of the skull-like face zeroed in on us, burning with a flame hotter and more intense than hellfire.
“Welcome to Necromancy,” he started. “As students of The Academy of the Devil, you’ve already become familiar with death. However, most, if not all of you, might not truly understand its meaning. Our first goal in this class is to challenge these misconceptions.
“Death isn’t an end. It is a beginning. It is a gift, one granted to people who’ve either fulfilled the tasks they wanted to accomplish in life or haven’t had the best luck and need to start over.
“In that sense, necromancy is a perversion of the natural course of things. But before embarking on any kind of necromantic ritual, you need to understand a very important thing. Ninety-nine percent of the time, creatures that are brought back through the necromantic arts have nothing to do with the people they originally were.
“The body is just a shell, and in death, it becomes open territory for any soul to inhabit. There are occasions when no soul is willing to join the ritual and accommodate the necromancer. If that happens, the construct must be sustained by the mage’s own energies, which is dangerous and can lead to the depletion of one’s magical core.
“It is considered almost impossible for the original soul to return to the body it once inhabited.”
Lilith had said something similar when Mikael and the others had decided to help Shiro. Divine resurrection magic clearly surpassed the limitations of necromancy. I wondered why it was different and made a mental note to ask Professor Grim at one point in the future.
“For our first class, we will have a brief field trip, in order to give you a better understanding of the concept of death. Those of you with familiars, please hold onto them.”
The only ones with familiars were me and Mikael, and I appreciated the head’s up, more so since it made it clear that Grim wouldn’t be among those annoying teachers who’d discriminate against Mikael because he was a nephilim.
Also, a field trip would be a nice change. I hadn’t left the island since my arrival here, and Satan only knew I needed the break.
Mikael didn’t seem as optimistic. “No matter what you do, don’t leave my side.” He wrapped his arm around my waist, and his hold on me was so tight it was almost painful. “I have a feeling this won’t be pleasant.”
TB curled around his neck, perhaps uncertain that her position on top of Shiro would provide her with enough security. Shiro couldn’t do that, so he pressed his body to mine and I put on his leash, just in case.
The tower started spinning again and it was a minor miracle I wasn’t immediately thrown around like a rag doll. If not for Mikael’s steadying magic, I’d have had a very unpleasant meeting with the walls. Several other students weren’t so lucky and were tossed through the room, almost like we were inside a My Little Pony-themed pinball machine.
The weird analogy stopped being accurate the moment we reached our destination. The cheerful decor vanished, replaced by a battle field.
My breath caught as I took in the two opposing forces. On one side stood the angels, the armies of Heaven lined up to face the threat of The Infernal Realm. Most of them didn’t look humanoid. Up to a point, they could even be called monstrous. A lot of them had multiple faces, some of which were beast-like in nature. This wasn’t a surprise to me, as my studies in ADA had already prepared me for the fact that angels looked nothing like I’d expected. But even so, there was a strange balance even in that, in their surreal, inhuman looks.
Some were flying in the air, their transparent, glowing wings easily holding them aloft. Others were simply standing there, their feet firmly planted in the ground, as if they planned to create an unbreakable barrier.
The demons were on the other side, and they were a mixed, chaotic bunch. Some were demonic, twisted creatures that reminded me of Morrigan’s blob. Others were shape-shifted in animal forms. Others were undead or their necromantic constructs.
And of course, there were the fallen angels, led by Lucifer himself. They were all cherubim, so they had two sets of wings and four faces. But even so, there was something special about Lucifer, something that made me identify him easily in the crowd.
He just shone, his light so bright it was blinding, taking my breath away. I suspected it would’ve been impossible for me to face him had this been happening in real time.
Confirming my guess, Grim explained the background of our field trip. “We are witnessing one of the greatest battles between angels and demons. We call it The Battle of the Watchers.
“During this battle, most of the angels who abandoned The Heavens with the Brightest Star were killed. The Fallen One rescued their spirits and a
ttached them to the school, but he could not bring them back into their previous forms.”
My breath caught as I remembered the massive eye that had greeted me when I’d first arrived at the academy. That… was a former angel? If so, it was no wonder Mephistopheles had been jumpy when I’d mentioned the Watchers in class. Their new state must still be a sore subject.
In the vision Grim had created for us, Lucifer raised his burning sword and pointed it at the celestial army. “Destroy them! Scorch this land and take what is ours!”
Mephistopheles was right there, by his side, although he looked very different from the man I was familiar with. His massive, winged form reminded me a little of his transformation after Redrum’s attack. His skin was a brighter red and his tail had grown sharp spikes. His horns had lengthened and curved over his face and his previously humanoid feet ended in hooves.
He wasn’t the only familiar figure on the battle field. The sky darkened, and at first, I thought one of the demons was using shadow magic. I realized my mistake when a gigantic whale-like monster descended from the clouds.
I had no idea how Leviathan had managed to leave the ocean, but I supposed that even if he was technically an aquatic creature, he didn’t have to obey trivial things like logic or the laws of physics. He was flying, his fins guiding him through the air like wings.
Meanwhile, a massive, golden wolf made its way through the crowd of demons, carrying the figure of a handsome man dressed in nothing but gold coins. A dragon flew up from above Leviathan. A half-naked demon was riding it, and he had three faces—one that looked like a bull, the other ram-like, and the third, humanoid.
I recognized them as two other Princes of Hell, Mammon, Lord of Greed, and Asmodai, Lord of Lust.
Legions of demons followed them, their roars and screeches deafening even if this appeared to be only a recreation of the past. But the angels weren’t intimidated. Their ranks tightened, with the elite guard of Powers taking the lead. When they retrieved their swords, the weapons glowed with a light that reminded me of the magic that had brought Shiro back. The Dominions raised their golden scepters and the ground started to shake, divine energy echoing through the earth, reaching the army of demons.
Seven magnificent figures floated forward, their features indiscernible because of the light they emanated. The most imposing of the seven produced a golden horn. As he brought the horn to his mouth and blew it, a melody unlike anything I’d ever heard before echoed all around us.
The demons screamed in anger and distress, but Lucifer flew ahead, and his glow seemed to protect them all from the sound vibrations. Meanwhile, soldiers dressed in gold and white fanned out around the imposing angelic figure, responding to his call.
By my side, Mikael tensed. “Who is that?” I asked him, even if in my heart, I suspected I shouldn’t.
“The Archangel Michael. My father.”
Oh. Oh, shit.
I squinted and the light around the archangel dimmed slightly. Every single muscle in my body went rigid when I saw how similar Michael was to my lover. Mikael’s cheekbones were a little sharper and his lips fuller, but for the most part, he and his father looked a lot alike. Their wings were the largest difference, as Michael’s were incorporeal and white, whereas Mikael’s were black and, most of the time, flesh and blood.
Either way, this was an unpleasant surprise. Maybe I’d given Grim a little too much credit. Clearly, he was the type of person to hit below the belt. Mikael hadn’t told me much about his celestial family, but what he had said suggested that he didn’t get along with most of them.
Then again, maybe the lesson we were supposed to learn today went beyond Mikael’s family history. When the battle erupted, even Mikael seemed to forget all about the presence—or rather, the memory—of his father. In the big picture, that resentment didn’t matter.
It was a massacre. With a mighty roar, Leviathan crashed into the hoard of angels, tearing apart more of them than I could count. Asmodai’s dragon spat out a stream of hellfire, and golden spikes emerged from the ground, spearing legions of angels straight through.
The archangels remained untouched. They dug their swords into the ground and a divine glow swallowed the whole battlefield. Their lost soldiers were suddenly back in one piece, looking a little worse for the wear, but very much alive.
Lucifer laughed, not seeming put out by the failure of his first attack. “Nice try, Michael, but that won’t protect you forever.”
His wings flashed and the light he emanated carbonized everything it touched. Hundreds of angels threw themselves at it, trying to stop the wave of power, but they couldn’t do much. They were simply turned to ash, leaving nothing behind to resurrect.
After that, the battle descended into utter chaos, to the point that I had trouble distinguishing what was happening. A few times, I caught sight of Mephistopheles cremating and disemboweling a batch of Powers, but he eventually went down too, struck by a bolt of divine light sent by a Dominion.
I reminded myself none of this was real, but when he disappeared from my sight, I couldn’t help but ask the question that had been on my mind ever since Grim had first brought us here.“Why are they fighting?”
Maybe it was a stupid question. Maybe demons and angels didn’t need a reason to do battle beyond the fact that they existed. But I refused such a simple explanation. There was more to it than unjustified hatred, I could tell.
Everyone turned to stare at me in incredulity. I didn’t flinch away from their glares, and instead, decided to insist. “This battle seems important, so something must’ve triggered it. It’s not just your regular skirmish. So why are they fighting?”
After a long moment of pause, Professor Grim answered, but his reply wasn’t very helpful. “They fight for hope.”
For hope? What did that mean? What hope could this massacre possibly bring them? There was no hope in death, was there?
In front of me, the archangel Michael collapsed from the sky, his form already scorched and heavily bruised. Lucifer pounced on him and his sword flashed through the air, decapitating the powerful angel.
Golden blood splattered over my gown, and Mikael pulled me back before it could make contact with my skin. “Careful,” he reminded me.
I was surprised the vision could have any physical effect on us when it wasn’t real and I intended to ask Mikael how this was possible. Before I could do that, Lucifer looked up, and for a few seconds, I could’ve sworn he was staring straight at me. His monstrous, but angelic body, shifted and all of a sudden, he looked like a man.
“For hope,” he repeated, as if echoing the Grim Reaper.
To his right, the other archangels rushed toward him in a last ditch attempt to rescue their fallen leader. Lucifer launched himself into the air, evading their attack.
I assumed that at one point, Michael must’ve been brought back, because otherwise, my Mikael wouldn’t have been conceived. But apparently that wasn’t relevant for the purpose of this lesson.
The battlefield around us blurred and the fighting demons and angels vanished, returning into the shadows of the past. Moments later, we were back into the tower. Several students were on their knees, having obviously had some trouble throughout the field trip. Others were eager to learn more about what we’d just seen.
“Professor, if The Fallen One defeated the archangel Michael, why did we lose?” Samuel asked.
“That’s a complicated question, Mr. Byte,” Grim replied. “It is also lesson for another day and for someone else. For the moment what you need to learn is this. Anything and anyone can die. But it’s what you die for that counts.”
On that cryptic note, Grim ended the lesson. His assignment was an analysis on the differences between the deaths of an angel, a demon and a human.
I mechanically jotted it down on my notebook, barely able to process anything. I felt cold inside. In his humanoid form, Lucifer had been very similar to Lenoir, the cherub who’d notified me that I needed to go to The Academy of t
he Devil.
That couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.
What the fuck was going on?
Ghosts from the Past
Lucifer. Satan. A cherubim? An archangel? The leader of The Watchers and of The Great Infernal Rebellion. There was a lot to read about him, and yet, so little information.
I snapped the book shut and let out a frustrated huff. From his spot underneath the table, Shiro shot me a concerned look. “Lyssa?”
“Sorry,” I told him. “This is just so frustrating. I can’t find anything that can help me. I hate this so much.”
A whole week had passed since that first Necromancy class, and throughout this time, I’d made it my business to sneak away from The House of Envy whenever I could and do some private studying. I felt a little guilty for keeping my secret quest from my lovers, but I couldn’t explain this feeling of restlessness inside me, and I didn’t want to upset them.
So far, I’d found nothing to suggest my suspicions and fears might be correct. But on the other hand, the Battle of the Watchers was also notably absent from every history book I read, which was alarming and reeked of censorship. Someone was hiding a lot at the academy, but Professor Grim didn’t care about that, and he wanted to throw a wrench into this person’s plans. Maybe it was the dean. If that was the case, he wasn’t very likely to explain, so making that guess didn’t help me much.
“I guess tonight’s another waste,” I said with a sigh. “We should go back to the dorm.”
Shiro nodded and emerged from underneath the table. Together, we headed to the exit of the library. As we stepped outside, a shiver coursed over me. Evening had already fallen, so it had gotten chilly. Or maybe I was just imagining it, because the chill I’d started to feel at the Necromancy lesson had never quite faded.
I made my way through the corridors, grateful for Shiro’s presence by my side. By now, I could protect myself perfectly well, but still, just having him there anchored me.
