11:30 PM, The Reliquary at the Carmelite Convent Chester, England

Rose finished reading the story of Saint Ostric’s exaltation and rise to heaven. She stared at the hand-painted drawing in the margin, showing the monk being carried to heaven by the Archangel Ariel. Down below on earth, the Saxon and Celt armies watched with King Aethelred on his knees in prayer.

She smiled, admiring the illustration of the bizarre tale and its scenes. She considered the beautiful but simple drawings ironic, given the tale of souls in peril. She was proud of her accomplishment. It had taken nearly a year to learn to read the Latin language and countless visits with Mr. Cooper to translate and understand words and phrases. It was an arduous process pulling meaning from the Old Latin, written eleven hundred years ago by a scribe who also spoke an English so different from the current day as to be a foreign language.

She wondered if Ostric had visions and dreams that led him on this path and how he obtained the strength and guidance to save the King and stop a demon. Rose was excited by the adventure and wondered how Ostric had dealt with his call to face evil. Rose had the desire to stand up for good and help those who suffered; all she needed was direction. It was well and good that an angel had chosen her, but for what? Why was it that the stories of the saints seemed to be knee deep in mystery and magic all the time?

The tale of the wilderness monk who saved King Aethelred’s soul began when the King deserted his throne after his wife’s death. Wandering in despair, he came upon the lands under rule of the Clans of Briton; these Celts had been at peace with Mercia after having been conquered by Aethelred's army five years before.

The saga chronicled how he fell in love with a clansman’s daughter after the death of his wife.

The young woman who became Aethelred’s new love was a succubus, the daughter of the demon Marbas, sent to seduce the Christian king and sow discord by siring a son with Briton blood. The king quickly came under her spell. Offspring of a fallen angel, the woman’s magic was prolific; she drew magic from the demon’s underworld lair. The plot to usurp the Christian king of the land and return his kingdom to pagan ways would begin from the sin of lust.

The priest Ostric came out of the wilderness and traveled from town to town to rally the Ealdormen for Aethelred’s aid. After Aethelred's abdication, the monk brought forth armies to the fields of Chester under the banner of Coenred, Aethelred's nephew, the new King of Mercia.

The succubus had infected Aethelred with her venom and placed him under a spell. When confronted by King Coenred, Aethelred attacked the new King. All this was directed by Marbas through the temptress. She urged Aethelred to call upon the clans to join with loyal Ealdormen and take back the throne.

Ostric interceded; he used a relic the ‘Speculum angelis Dei’, which was best translated as "the mirror of angels" to show all the true form of the succubus and then called upon the Archangel Ariel to smite the temptress and her father. The miraculous summoning of one of God’s soldiers resulted in the defeat of Marbas and his minions, in addition it restored Aethelred to his faith and made Coenred and all the attending Ealdormen true believers.

Rose had completed further research and learned that after the incident at Chester, Aethelred returned to his pious ways. He retired to Bardney Abbey, a Benedictine monastery he and his first wife had founded several years before her death. He finished out his days in contemplation and redemption as a monk.

She had found a plate drawing of him from his days as king, there was something familiar about him, yet how could she have seen him, he had been dead for centuries. It was a puzzle for later.

Rose looked over at the old wooden box where the skull resided and wondered if she had the strength to accept God’s call as Ostric had done, or if she would be too confused to decipher the divine message.

Next to the illumination was the Diaries of Edward Kelly, given to Rose by Cooper. Not a story book or a tome of research as much as it was a journal, a scribbling of notes reprinted by an unknown source. Within it were references to other books like the Book of St. Dunstan and objects that could perform miracles.

Rose had marked the page where Kelly described how he connected with the divine using crystals or mirrors to contact angels and notes on alchemical mysteries including the use of tinctures to transmute metals. Reading the intellect and science of the work, Rose was becoming obsessed with Kelly and would need to learn more.

Just as the mill where her father worked utilized the power of the river through wheels and gears, applying the invisible power from the river to turn grain to flour; why couldn’t there be a way to tap into the mystical, in a way more potent than prayer?

Rose wondered what time it was. When she was alone and deep in her studies time flew. In the last year she had had several instances of being up all night with her research, surprised by the sound of the first morning birds tweeting to alert her to another night of lost sleep. It had been a few hours since the last bell and she was to go see her family tomorrow. She would just finish up reading a little of Kelly’s book then go to her cell to get a few hours’ sleep.