The next morning, Irene wakes me up early, before the first bell. I stumble up out of bed, still half asleep as she's dressing me for the day. "Master Eryk says you're starting your classes again today."

"Oh, that's right..." I mumble, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and weird dream images from my memory. I think I was getting used to sleeping later since I've been recovering here for a few days now.

"Now come, Aria, it's time for breakfast," Irene quips, then turns on a heel and leaves the room.

"Breakfast..." I murmur, trying to shake myself a little to wake up and get downstairs. As I'm walking, my thoughts turn to last night.

My conversation didn't really get anywhere with Reena after my realization that she might be seriously endangering herself by putting part of her soul inside me. Of course, she couldn't give any more information about it, she just kept apologizing. I told her it was fine, and it kind of was, since I'd already heard all I needed to hear to fill in the rest for myself.

If someone got access to her soul through me, they could do anything they want to her whole soul. Like attacking her maybe, trying to hurt her or go after her memories if that's possible. Maybe even try to kill her. Without having to deal with her real body. Even if she's the weakest god, I'm sure she can protect herself infinitely better than I can...

I keep thinking back on that vision she gave me.

"'Throw my lot with yours,' huh..." I mumble to myself again.

After a quiet breakfast with Eryk, he picks me up to go to work just before the first bell. Just outside the refinery, we meet John.

"Aria, good to see you again," he greets me with a big smile, and I return it. It feels like such a long time since I saw him last, but it's only been a little over a week.

"Hi, John," I return the greeting, feeling kind of awkward about it all of a sudden.

"Are you alright? That's a pretty big bandage," he notes with a look at my hand. Since it's starting to cool off, Irene put me in a very dark blue dress today, almost as dark as the clothing Eryk wears, with long sleeves ending at the wrists, so it actually covers most of my bandages.

When Eryk sets me down to unlock the door into the refinery, I turn and look up at John. I figure I shouldn't try to hide it from him, so once we go inside, I pull the collar of my dress aside so he can see the bandages all the way up around my shoulder and chest, and tell him that I got pretty hurt, but I'm healing, so I'll be fine.

"Ooh..." he rumbles with a pained look, but doesn't say anything else as I sit in my usual seat at Eryk's table. Leaning my head and arms onto the tabletop, I sigh. Has it really been just over a week? Between the battle and all the crazy stuff that happened after, mixed with lounging around Eryk's house, it feels like the most eventful and uneventful week ever. How does that even work...?

Since I already had breakfast earlier, I rest on my head on the table for a bit while Eryk scribbles away at his desk. Eventually, John goes to stand outside again, and it's quiet for a little while, until I decide to go over things before class. Eryk gave me a little blackboard and chalk to use earlier since mine is still back home, so I grab them and start writing out my words while I wait.

Claire arrives at the second bell, just like always, and we move into the back room for my classes.

"With current events, I think it would be pertinent to teach you about angels today."

"Angels?" Hearing the word out of nowhere makes my heart jump, but I do my best to hide the shock and worry.

"Do you know anything about them?" Claire asks, one brow lifting as she studies me closely, and I have to try even harder not to give anything away.

"I've heard of them," I start, unsure how much I should say. I guess I'll just stick with the basics. "They're chosen by the gods to fulfill a task." I try not to cringe when I add, "they basically become a servant of their god." Normal angels, I tell myself. Reena's not like that.

Claire frowns faintly, did she expect me to know more? But then the expression vanishes a moment later when she speaks. "I figured this would be important to know, given the arrival of Catherine Lundrum yesterday." Just thinking about her makes me gulp nervously, and I nod.

From there, Claire starts with the basics, explaining the things I already know, like how angels receive a mark from their god, and how they are granted the authority to speak for them in order to complete their task. Then there's something I didn't already know.

"When it's said that an angel speaks for their god, it's well understood that their god is always aware of their actions. There are countless stories of foolish angels going against their god's wishes and being struck dead on the spot. So being in the presence of an angel is essentially being in the presence of the god themselves."

Oh.

OH!

I desperately try to control my expression while my heart attempts to leap out of my chest. Catherine finding out about me means Hurena finding out about me! Wait, no duh! Of course it does! Reena's always aware of what happens around me when I channel my mark, so the other gods would be aware of their angels all the time!

If I'd run into her at church yesterday...

While I'm kicking myself for missing something so obvious and nearly blowing everything, I realize Claire is watching me intently. "Y-yes?" I jolt.

"Mm, nothing. I just noticed you're pretty interested in this topic," she says lightly.

My first instinct is to deny, to distance myself from talk about angels the same way I do with rail units, but I stop myself at the last moment, because that would just make me more suspicious. "Well, umm, yeah. I guess so..." I reluctantly admit instead, scratching my cheek with a finger. I can't come up with any reason to use for an excuse though, so I just keep my mouth shut afterward. Thankfully, Claire bobs her head slightly and moves on.

Once she's covered the rest of the basics, she returns to speaking about Catherine. "She is the angel of the goddess Hurena, and as she said, her task is to bring nature back into balance by pushing back the creatures in the forest. This should actually be a common occurrence." I pick up the odd emphasis there, but wait for her to explain.

"There are entire books full of similar historical records. Hurena is well known for being the god who anoints the most angels, she's always using them to keep nature in balance, whenever things shift too far away from normal."

Claire pauses for questions as usual, but I'm still waiting for the point I can feel her approaching, so I just stay quiet. "Of course, that doesn't mean each angel isn't a big deal. Word of their deeds inevitably spread far and wide, that's just the nature of the position. Which brings me to an... odd point. Like I said, Hurena has a well storied history of creating many angels all across Loqaterna, all the way back into ancient times."

With her lips pursed in a surprisingly concerned expression, Claire explains. "So, it's very strange that in the last fifty years or so, there has been a sharp decline in Hurena's angels. In the past, they were a near-annual occurrence. Now, the last one before Catherine was nearly twenty years ago."

I blink. Twenty years? It's been that long, when she used to do it yearly? Claire nods slowly after making her last point, and lets that sink in for some time.

"In any case, while Hurena was the most common, other gods also anoint angels from time to time as well." From there, Claire goes over some well known angels from the past, like Cala, one of the earliest angels people still remember. Apparently, she was a woman from the ancient times who Baro made an angel with a task to save her people from a fast-spreading disease, a lot like the cough going around now.

Claire goes on like that for a little while, telling me about different ones and expanding on the similarities and differences that are known about angels from the records that have been collected over the years. Apparently, their marks are always very obvious, big and bold in places that are hard to cover. Hands, shoulders, or even faces, so no one can miss them.

Then she cringes a little when she tells me that the marks will never disappear, that there are some... less child friendly stories about angels who lost a marked hand, only to have the mark move somewhere else on their body. The thought makes me shudder, and she immediately moves us back to less creepy topics.

But hearing about that, I can't help my mind jumping back to it, even as Claire goes over other things. Obviously my mark is on my face and there isn't any way I could get that cut off without dying, but when I actually look inside myself, it's always felt like my mark was attached to my barrier around my forehead. But at the same time, there was nothing inside the mark when I looked at the magic which indicated where on my body it should actually appear.

Mmmm..... I'm probably still missing too much to put the pieces together, so I put those thoughts aside for now, and pay attention to Claire's lesson. Which is especially easy when she takes out a number of little wooden blocks with every gods' mark on them for me to study so I'll be able to recognize them all better. Now I don't need to worry about going back to the church after the service, with the priests and nobles and all of those dangerous people...

Like Catherine...

As we come near the end of our morning lessons, Claire pauses for questions, and one actually comes to mind.

"Umm, actually, this one is going back a bit, to when you were talking about different angels from history earlier... What about Reena?"

Claire keeps a neutral expression, but pauses for a few moments. Then she shrugs lightly. "I figured you would guess as much when I didn't give any examples from her earlier. No, Reena has never had an angel before. I'm sure most would see it as yet another example of her powerlessness, but I actually think of it differently."

My eyebrows go up when she says that, but I don't interrupt, so she'll explain. I know she's a follower of Reena too. "Reena is a goddess of knowledge, and what little is written about her indicates she is fiercely invested in independent, critical thought." She pauses again so I can work through the difficult terms, before continuing.

"Angels are, by definition, being forced into the service of a god, losing their self-determination to a higher power. They either obey and complete their task, or are struck down in disgrace. Based on what we know of Reena, I doubt she would want to do something like that. Those are my thoughts on the subject anyway," she finishes, with another small shrug.

She... is right, I think. Reena told me how she didn't want me to be her servant, how marking me normally would have been going against everything she believed in... So that's why she found a way around it for me, even though it put her own soul in danger. All to help me, because she needs me for... something, later.

I end up using the last of the time before lunch to ask about the other well-known angels in the world today. I try to make it sound like I want to know more about them, but I really just want to know how many more are out there I might need to watch out for.

According to Claire, there are fewer than there used to be, just five besides Catherine Lundrum. The first two are a couple men out in Shonamakase, angels of Arcanas and Herat, pitted against each other in some sort of squabble over a stretch of mountains or something. Probably don't need to worry about them...

Of the remaining three, there are two in Eschalle, and one in Bromunst. The two in Eschalle are angels of Lila and Shana, and have some sort of tasks related to the fertility of the region. Claire doesn't elaborate, which I guess makes sense. She already mentioned that Eschalle is mostly desert, so it's hard to grow things there.

The last is the angel of Saras in Bromunst. Claire can't say for sure what their task is since not much news makes it here from Bromunst with the war going on. The most she knows is that it has to do with the northern peninsula.

"Peninsula?" I ask about the completely unfamiliar word.

"Oh, it's a specific type of land, surrounded on three sides by water," she explains. I try to think back to the map of Loqaterna she showed me, but it's a bit fuzzy since it was a while ago, and I only looked at it once. So Claire goes up to the blackboard and quickly sketches out the continent of Terna. The shape is about the same as I remember, and she points out the big section of Bromunst where one piece of the land shoots up to the north, attached to the northwest side of the continent and surrounded on three sides by water, just like she described.

"Up here, Saras' angel has some task out in this section of Terna."

While I'm looking over her map and trying to memorize the few angels out there, the sixth bell rings, ending our morning classes. I'm just glad that besides Catherine, they're all so far away where I don't need to worry about running into them...