♱ •⋅ 1750 B.C. ⋅• ♱ •⋅ Samael ⋅• ♱
"Won’t you answer?" Anneliese’s black eyes stared at me with a certain disgust. It was almost comical how she didn’t even try to fool me about her preference.
"Who knows?" My lips arched into a broad and mischievous smile.
The truth is that I would love to torture Calisto a little more.
"He’s still king" Anneliese did me the favor of remembering, but I was an alchemist, not a poor old man with Alzheimer’s.
"I know that, dear," I hissed as I leaned over my desk of notes, my arms crossing over my chest "but you should not forget that in the end I do not obey the king directly."
She shot me with that sharp, feline look.
"That’s why you founded the temples, isn’t it?"
Smile. A smile of pure fun.
Anneliese had not become one of my wings out of respect or admiration, she had done it to make sure I would never get out of control.
It was obvious from the day she stepped into my temple and swore me loyalty, but... how could I refuse? Anneliese may not be one of God’s favorites, but that never made her less powerful, never made her a raw talent than incompetent hands.
"Who knows?" mocked "Should not the temple be a refuge for those who do not wish to live under the orders of a tyrannical sovereign?"
That incredible pair of eyes analyzed me.
"Someone like our "father"?"
"Someone like our emperor who insists on calling himself king."
She snitched.
"He’s not a tyrant. Callisto would never become someone like that phony god."
I let out a low, snitchy laugh.
"Of course, of course... how could the man who condemned humanity to a dark world and almost impossible to survive... be coldly called a tyrant?" I teased her in the corner of my eye, but Anneliese didn’t seem too happy about it.
"Since when do you care about mortals?" she fired.
"Am I not known as the patron of mortals?" I stared at her with an air of superiority "dear... have you forgotten your oath?"
The fallen one shook hands in fists.
"So let me go, you already disrespected him a lot, leaving him so long without any response."
Good.
It wasn’t that long, but Anneliese wasn’t so wrong to say I ignored Callisto for a while. I should have answered the emperor within 2 weeks, but still I preferred... well, there was nothing better to do, I just didn’t want to answer.
It was obvious what he would ask me: find Daddy! Save my son!
I sighed.
Boring.
Tedious.
I pulled the pen I used to write and spun it between my fingers as I thought.
I couldn’t let that child die - not because I cared, but because I was Quinn’s child -, but still, even after 567 years, all I could do was slow down the speed with which his body aged and use heavenly blood as a source of vitamins.
It was a way of "patching up" the situation, but it didn’t even come close to a resolution. It was just like humans and the sun that the phoenix had swallowed it.
Without the sun, plants could not produce oxygen correctly and this would end the ecosystem. The spells I used, the layers I created around this ridiculous planet, were a way to conserve their ridiculously weak bodies for a while longer.
Because in the end: humans were useful. Too useful for me to allow them to just fall apart into dying bodies.
"Maybe it’s not a bad idea..." I muttered sliding my fingertips across my lip.
Celine had visited me a few weeks ago and had made it clear that a saint had really awakened.
A saint.
A saint of my "father" had awakened in front of my temple. I remembered not having been able to contain the laughter to hear about it.
The pride of him who called himself the lord creator of the whole universe was so clearly fragile - that he had to send a poor child in front of my temple and light it.
"Cassiel" I called and as always, my second wing just appeared, eyes lifeless, without pupil.
"Yes?"
"Tell me again, who will be attending the fall formal?"
"Only those who interest you?" My smile has expanded.
"Of course, my dear."
"Your Majesty the sun of the empire, Calisto Bernieri. The young prince has not yet been confirmed, but there is a great possibility that he will attend. The princess of the third territory, Lucifer Angelov, and the saint, Elaine Andreatta."
"Hummm... Andreatta" I muttered as I looked at the stack of notes, scribbles.
Andreatta was an old last name, very old.
During the few millennia in which mortals survived in their young world, this surname was used by them after being remembered by scholars, but the truth about it was never properly disclosed.
Andreatta was an ancient word coming as a way of saying: the one to whom it belongs.
Maybe it was just a coincidence that the poor mortal to ascend in my father’s name had received that name, but... what was the fucking chance?
"38%" my lips moved alone and a low, childish laughter was heard.
Remiel.
The seventh archangel and the seventh angel to fall. Even after so many centuries, he still preferred that childish form.
"You look excited, brother," he said playing with a lollipop on his small, pink lips. Ramiel’s hair remained blond as it was before his fall, his eyes remained bluish, as the mortal sky had been before Asra stained him with her rage and her skin... she resembled porcelain, but among all that made him look more like-if to the archangel who had been so long ago, were his wings.
White.
Pure - the complete opposite to your aura and will, but as if a light finally appeared in my mind, I smiled.
"You’re right, Anne..." I said turning my face to face the fall that was still shooting me with its eyes.
"Could you do me a favor?"
She sighed, a sigh of sheer frustration and just as others always did, she bowed and put her wrist on her chest as a sign of loyalty.
"As you wish... my lord."
A float of feathers and a crackle of wax after I delivered in his thin pale hands the black envelope that I finished preparing.
"Deliver it to the emperor and assure him that this time... I’m not really playing with it."
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