Alyssa couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. Not at the prospect of talking with an angel. Definitely not. Not only had she spoken with angels in general before, but she had spoken to this one. There really wasn't anything special about angels. Aside from the deity-tier power that they wielded. But they weren't supposed to wield that at her, so everything should be just fine.

No. It wasn’t Iosefael making her nervous.

It was the other side of the portal.

When Alyssa had prayed—asked for a solitary location to talk, she had been expecting something like a room in the palace. Maybe an abandoned cabin out in the woods south of Lyria. Someplace… normal.

Alyssa looked around, wondering how she ever could have been so foolish as to expect normalcy.

They were in a room. A single room. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all constructed of that same obsidian-black material that had made up Tenebrael’s temple and now made up her statue. They could even be inside that statue for all Alyssa knew. It wasn’t like she could tell. There were no windows and no doors. The room was completely cut off from everything.

As Alyssa watched the portal close behind Iosefael, that nervous feeling only grew. If Tenebrael didn’t want her to leave, this place could actually be her tomb. Angels weren’t supposed to harm humans, but hadn’t it been Iosefael who had implied that indirect methods of killing would work? There was no food anywhere to be seen. But she didn’t think she would starve. If anything, she would suffocate.

There was definitely some kind of magic in the place. The walls and floors were smooth, as was the ceiling. No light sources of any kind. Yet she could see as if she had Night Vision active. In fact, she had to double-check that it wasn’t active.

She could only hope that there was some magic providing oxygen. Or rather, converting carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Alyssa was tempted to raise an arm and try opening another portal. Just knowing that there was an out would put her nerves to rest. But… it was possible that this whole room was to trap Iosefael. Tenebrael had made a few references to a tiny box being used to store both Iosefael and Kenziel at various points in the past. This could be that box. If she tried to leave, Tenebrael might not let her come back for fear of freeing Iosefael.

Gnawing on her lip, she glanced over at the shivering pile of chains. Although she had offered up the token protests while being dragged inside the portal, the angel hadn’t said a word since she made it to this side. The chains didn’t rattle as they moved. They were ethereal. Not real. And yet, despite Alyssa having never heard them make noise before, she could have sworn that there was some… chattering coming from them.

Alyssa wanted to leave. But… the oxygen in the room wouldn’t run out immediately. If Tenebrael was going to let her leave, then doing it now or after a talk wouldn’t matter much. If she wasn’t… well, Alyssa was just going to have to… She didn’t want to say that she was putting her faith into Tenebrael, but that was roughly what she was doing. The end result was already written in stone. Alyssa just couldn’t read the text. She wouldn’t know until she tried.

And she needed to have a conversation first.

As much as it amused her to see Iosefael chained up to the point where no part of her was actually visible despite the translucent nature of the chains, it didn’t make for an easy conversation. Dismissing half of all the spells she had cast helped. One more than half freed up Iosefael’s face.

Her green eyes were wide, but she wasn’t staring at anything in particular. She was just… scared. Frightened. And… were those tears?

Alyssa sighed. She shouldn’t feel bad, but somehow, it felt like she was bullying. Bullying a divine being. It sounded silly, but the way Iosefael’s blond hair jittered as she trembled just made Alyssa feel like she was the bad guy here.

“Iosefael.”

Those tearful eyes snapped up to Alyssa. She hadn’t actually started crying, but at this point, a mean look might get her going.

“T-Tenebrael,” Iosefael stuttered in a whisper so quiet that Alyssa actually had to lean down. “Please. You can’t leave me here again.”

Alyssa closed her eyes, sighing again. “I’m not Tenebrael. I’m Alyssa. I won’t allow you to say that you’ve forgotten.” First of all, Tenebrael had mentioned something about angels having perfect or nearly perfect memory. Secondly, Iosefael had called her by name just before being dragged through the portal. Just because her eyes were glowing and she had used a spell that only angels should be able to use didn’t mean that she was Tenebrael.

Despite her clear and concise words to the angel, Iosefael did not seem to hear. She continued to mumble Tenebrael’s name along with a few other tidbits of information. “I didn’t betray you. It wasn’t my fault,” was the most interesting of all her mumbles.

That got Alyssa to lean in much closer. She went so far as to kneel so that she would be eye-level with the bound angel. “What wasn’t your fault? What did you do?”

“N-Nothing! I did nothing!”

Alyssa couldn’t help her frown. She was pretty sure that her cousin, Uncle Earl’s six-year-old daughter, had said the same thing in exactly the same tone after knocking a glass vase to the ground. A part of her wished that Kenziel had been the one collecting souls. Although she had really only had one interaction with the diminutive Archangel, she had come off as slightly more mature. Well, except for her sales pitch to Tenebrael. But that was more of a target audience problem than it was a poor display of immaturity.

“Iosefael,” Alyssa said, clasping her hands onto the angel’s bare shoulders. The chains were slightly in the way, but she managed. “I want you to tell me what happened the night you tried to collect my mother’s soul.”

The angel didn’t answer right away. Although her trembling slowed with Alyssa’s hands on her shoulders, it didn’t vanish completely. There was clearly some trauma associated with this room. Combined with her earlier request to not be left here again, this had to be that prison Tenebrael had kept her in. So…

“If you tell me,” Alyssa said in the kindest voice she could manage. “If you answer my questions and do as I say, I’ll ask Tenebrael really nicely if you can leave.” That was about all she could do. Tenebrael would either let her leave or not. Though, if Tenebrael tried keeping Alyssa here, she would definitely be making attempts to get out.

An Annihilator would probably just kill her. It might destroy the cube, but using such a spell in an enclosed space couldn’t be healthy. However, the material the cube was made from might be more susceptible to destruction in other ways. If it was miraculous or otherwise supernatural, Alyssa might be able to break it apart the same way she had broken apart Adrael’s trap wire spell.

Something to try later. For now, she stared into Iosefael’s green eyes, hoping that the stupid angel could pull herself together long enough to speak a few coherent words.

If this wound up as fruitless as the interview with a demon… Alyssa had no idea what she would do.

“You would do that for me?” Iosefael’s eyes moved. For the first time since entering the room, she actually looked at something.

“Do?” Alyssa blinked. “Do what?”

“Ask Tene if I can leave.”

“Um… Sure.”

A smile of pure joy spread across Iosefael’s face. Those tears that had managed to stay back until now started falling. “This must be what they call fire-forged friends,” she said. “Even though there is no fire.”

“I don’t think that’s the phrase… Sure.” Whatever. “Iosefael. What happened that night? Where is Tenebrael?”

A shadow crossed Iosefael’s features, wiping the smile from her face. “It’s all my fault.”

Alyssa crossed her arms, waiting. She could be patient. This had been a month coming. In this tiny box where no one could interrupt them, it wasn’t a problem to allow the angel another minute to get her thoughts together. Especially because this thought conflicted with her earlier claim of it not being her fault.

After a minute or so of Iosefael staring down at the smooth obsidian floor, she continued without looking up. “We argued. It was a long and drawn-out argument. I… I still don’t know exactly why or how she turned her world into what it is. But I think I understand. Especially after watching you.”

“You’ve been… watching me.”

Aside from the handful of times when Iosefael had appeared directly before Alyssa, she hadn’t noticed the angel’s presence at all.

Iosefael nodded. “I watched how hard you’ve struggled to survive, even against angels like Adrael. I wasn’t watching every moment, of course. I have my duties to attend to. But you are a child of Earth. My child, if you think about it.”

Alyssa was trying to not think about it. But she didn’t want to interrupt, so she didn’t say as much.

“Watching you fight so hard against what should have been your destiny made me realize that Tenebrael just wants to be like you. Or maybe not you specifically. She wants to be like humans in general. And that is something I understand. I like humans too. When I have a moment, I like to sit in a park and just watch them. People-watching, I think it is called. It is a regular pastime among humans, I understand. That’s why I started in the first place, because—”

Alyssa didn’t want to interrupt, but she felt like Iosefael’s words were straying further and further from the topic of Tenebrael with every sentence. “So Tenebrael wants to be like humans.” It wasn’t that strange a concept. Tenebrael had mentioned that the higher ranked the angel, the less free will they had. While Alyssa doubted that Tenebrael wanted to give up the power afforded to her by her position, she easily believed that she wanted a more human-like will. “But how does that lead to you arguing?”

“I understand Tenebrael’s desire. So I decided not to interfere with her world anymore. It was her world and she could do as she wished. As she explained it to me, the Throne knew all and it wouldn’t have given her a world if it hadn’t wanted her to act the way she did. It sounds strange and wrong, but I cannot deny her logic.

“But then I found her on Earth. That soul from her world inside your mother. Once was bad enough,” Iosefael said with a pointed look at Alyssa. “But you were an accident. That night was no accident. We argued for quite a long time, shouting at each other. Well… I shouted. Tenebrael kept her demure calm about her. Honestly, I was angry enough that I probably would have tried fighting her again if I hadn’t been trussed up, even knowing I would lose.”

Iosefael’s deluge of words slowed to a stop as she hung her head. If her arms and legs had been freed, she probably would have pulled her knees up to her chest in a self-pitying hug. “It wasn’t me,” she whispered soft enough that Alyssa, already sitting on the floor, had to scoot closer to hear properly. “I didn’t call them. Someone must have noticed because it wasn’t me. I didn’t betray Tene.”

Alyssa waited. Whatever dam had broken to allow Iosefael to speak so much had clearly not broken enough. She was just sitting, biting her lip with no sign that she would speak anytime soon. So Alyssa patted her on the back, just between her wing and her shoulder blade. She even let a few more chains fall off the angel in order to properly pat her bare skin instead of the ghostly links.

“I believe you,” Alyssa said softly. “And I’m sure Tenebrael knows too. But who didn’t you call? Who came?”

Her voice barely moved the air around them. “The Astral Authority.”

“Seraphim?” Alyssa hissed, a slight fear creeping into her voice. Tenebrael was alright, wasn’t she? Alyssa’s glowing eyes were a sign of that. But the Seraphim were the ones Tenebrael feared. Possibly the only ones.

Iosefael looked surprised as she slowly shook her head. “N-No. No Seraphim.”

“But… aren’t Seraphim and the Astral Authority the same thing?” Alyssa said, trying to remember those notes on angels that Tenebrael had given her months ago.

“Uriel leads the Astral Authority, and a few other Seraphim are also leaders, but… they don’t do much these days.”

“So it’s just lesser ranked angels.”

“No? I can see where you’re confused. Many religions on Earth got some things mixed up, like what are angels and what aren’t. Kindnesses, Humilities, Chastities, Prudences, Justiceses… Fortitudes? Temperances?” Something must have crossed Alyssa’s face because Iosefael slowed down with a mild pout. “None of these ring bells? That’s the phrase right? Ring bells?”

“Look, I wasn’t ever very religious. I know all those words individually, but I don’t think I know what you’re trying to say to me now. Before all this,” Alyssa said, waving a hand around vaguely, “I could have been considered agnostic at best.”

Iosefael’s pout deepened, but she nodded. “They’re divine beings, but they aren’t angels, to put it simply. They were created to fight fallen angels and demons of Inferno. Or the Pit. Hell. Whatever you want to call it—it’s had many many names.”

“That’s all you needed to say,” Alyssa mumbled more to herself than to Iosefael. “So this anti-demon task force noticed Tenebrael and started fighting her?”

“Oh it caused a terrific mess. Just terrific. No human died, but there was so much destruction. They definitely noticed. A few archangels are trying to get things back on track—”

“Tenebrael isn’t dead,” Alyssa interrupted. No one died, that meant that her father and Clark were alright. Beyond that, she didn’t really care what the angels were doing on Earth. It wasn’t like she could do anything about it. “Did she get captured? Injured?”

“She’s hiding, I think.”

“Hiding?” That would certainly explain why she was avoiding Alyssa. Opening her mouth, Alyssa almost asked where Tenebrael was hiding. Upon thinking for a second longer, she hesitated and decided that it was probably a silly question. Iosefael would have been more certain in her response if she knew. “How can we help?”

“Help? Oh no. No. Don’t do anything to help. The Astral Authority isn’t under the same restrictions as regular angels. A Patience will spear you without any of the hesitance that Adrael had.”

Alyssa raised an eyebrow. She couldn’t remember any hesitance in Adrael’s actions. That archangel had tried to kill both Irulon and Musca. Izsha too, using the shield. If not for Alyssa and Tenebrael, Adrael would have human blood on her hands. It was a thought that Alyssa had considered before, that Adrael had been able to act as such because of Alyssa’s presence. If the angel had known that all the damage she had inflicted would be reversed, perhaps that was what had allowed her to attack. It was just a theory. A theory Alyssa hadn’t talked about with anyone—Tenebrael had been missing and she had no one else to talk to about those kinds of angelic matters.

“In fact…” Iosefael stared at Alyssa, locking eyes without blinking. The intensity actually made Alyssa shift where she sat. “You asked Tenebrael to bring us here… Have you been doing that kind of thing often?”

A flash of annoyance had Alyssa gritting her teeth together. “Define ‘often’ please,” she said. If Tenebrael screwed her over…

“I saw, with my own eyes, a Kindness in this world. Where there is one, there are many. They are watching, searching for signs of Tenebrael. I think they think that she has fallen, but… Tene hasn’t. I know she hasn’t. She isn’t being orthodox, but she isn’t a… a demon.”

“You don’t have to convince me. I thought she was at first, but having met an actual demon… Tenebrael is drastically different.”

Iosefael blinked twice. “You what?” If not for the chains around her, she probably would have jumped up as she shouted. Instead, she just jerked before falling back against the wall. “Why would you meet a demon? What did you do? What did it do to you?”

“Nothing. It’s fine. I learned my lesson.” Though, if anything, the demon had helped if in a roundabout way. By giving Alyssa that ember, it had basically been the whole reason she had connected to Tenebrael. The ember had been destroyed and nothing bad had happened…

As the thought ran through her mind, a cold sweat dripped down Alyssa’s back. That… couldn’t have been the plan all along. The demons couldn’t want the Astral Authority here. They were demon killers. The ember had been something that would have harmed or transformed people. Or, if left alone, it might have sprouted into some kind of demonic tree. The demons wouldn’t have given it to her with the intention of her destroying it using Tenebrael’s power…

Right?

“You said a Kindness is watching for Tenebrael. It is watching for miracles that she helped to create? Like that portal?”

“That would be accurate, yes.”

Alyssa stood, palms sweating. It was fine, right? No angels or fake-angels had shown up when she created that giant statue of Tenebrael. If they hadn’t noticed that, then what was a portal? “What would the Astral Authority do if they found evidence of Tenebrael? Like a portal… or a three hundred foot statue of Tenebrael?”

“That’s oddly specific.”

“Just answer the question, please. They aren’t going to start killing people, are they?”

“Regular people? Probably not. I don’t think humans really register on their senses. They were designed to fight demons, which really aren’t that different from angels. On the other hand, you?” Iosefael tilted her head back and forth with a pained expression. “Maybe? They might also try to use you to get to Tenebrael. I don’t imagine that would be pleasant.”

“Great.” Alyssa grit her teeth as she started pacing back and forth. At least they weren’t going to go slaughter a defenseless Teneville. “Great,” she hissed. “What do they look like? What are they likely to attack me with? How do I kill them?”

“Kill them? They’re divine beings. You can’t kill them. You can’t fight them.”

“Try me. Are my pistols going to work?” The trip to her house hadn’t just been for vacation. They had emptied out the gun safe. With the draken, they had been able to carry everything. All the ammo, a few shotguns, a few rifles, and an armload of pistols. Of course, guns probably only worked on mortal opponents. Humans and monsters. “I doubt it right, but what if you did something to them? Surely you can cast a miracle that lets them harm divine beings.”

“I can’t—”

“What about magic? I’ve blasted quasi-demons to the moon hard enough to kill them. Surely some spells will work on these fake angels.”

“There’s no—”

“And this,” Alyssa said, reaching behind her back. Slipping her hand into the leather holster, she gripped the golden staff and pulled it out, planting the bottom into the ground at her feet. “It protects me from human magic, which is nice, but what about angelic or fake angel magic? Can I use it as a weapon too? Surely it can do more than just smack and skewer things. How do I use it? Tell me.”

And if all that failed… That demon had said that her demonic scythe could harm angels. If it could harm angels, it could hurt fake angels. But that was a last resort. An absolute last resort. The demon would probably hand over her scythe without complaint, but, as Tenebrael had said, the silver platters came with a cost. Alyssa did not want to find out the price after she ate.

Crossing an arm to rest both hands on the staff, she stared down at the angel. “Well?”

“Are you going to let me speak?”

Alyssa blinked. “Sorry. You tell me that these things are watching for me and it makes me a little nervous. I don’t want them popping up out of nowhere and attacking me.”

“You don’t have to worry about that here. Can’t you feel it? We’re cut off from everything. Even the light of the Throne itself doesn’t reach inside this prison.”

Frowning, Alyssa pulled out her phone and checked herself in the front-facing camera. “My eyes are still glowing. Tenebrael is still connected to me.”

Iosefael let out a long sigh. “I don’t know how. I don’t know how Tenebrael could have made an area like this in the first place. To be cut off from the Throne, we would have to be outside Creation itself.”

“I don’t really know what that is supposed to mean,” Alyssa said. Iosefael opened her mouth, probably to explain. “And I don’t really care right now. I’m more worried about this Astral Authority and how they might decide to interact with me, my friends, and Tenebrael. In that order. So are you going to help me? Or do I have to leave you here, cut off from the Throne for potentially a very long time.”

“You said you would let me out!”

“I said I would ask Tenebrael if you do as I ask. Right now, I’m asking you to help me.” It felt bad to bully the stupid angel, but Alyssa couldn’t accept no for an answer. If she walked out of here without Iosefael’s help, some Kindness or whatever could drop down on her and she would have to rely on Fractal Mirror. A spell she only had two of in her deck. Two or three of these Astral Authority fake angels attacking in quick succession would almost certainly result in her death. She needed to know what they were capable of and what worked against them. They hadn’t attacked so far, but that could be luck more than anything. Even if she broke the connection between her and Tenebrael now, it wouldn’t guarantee that a Kindness hadn’t noticed her build Tenebrael’s statue.

They could just be waiting, watching for something more.

Alyssa sighed as she stared at the angel gnawing on her lip. Sleep might be a luxury that she wouldn’t be able to afford for a while.

“Iosefael.” Alyssa knelt, resting the staff on the smooth obsidian ground. “A human is asking for your help. You’re the only one who can help me. And if you help me, I’m sure it will help Tenebrael too.” She didn’t know what that stupid angel’s plan was, but it probably involved Alyssa doing all her work for her. Stupid angel. Keeping her irritation off her face, Alyssa smiled at Iosefael, letting all the chains around her vanish. "Haven't you always wished there was something you could do for humans?" Tenebrael had mentioned that Iosefael loved humans. "You'll help me, right? I can’t protect myself from the Astral Authority without you.”

Iosefael’s wings spread out slowly, like she was stretching her arms after being cooped up in one position for far too long. With the way she kept her eyes on Alyssa, it was probably an unconscious action. “Okay,” she said in a whisper.