After breakfast, Zeke returned to his bedroom, equipped the snowboarding gear from the basket, and grabbed the duffel bag. According to Gill’s explanation, the clothes were made for him by Ashlin, who somehow took precise measurements of his body using her magic during their first interaction. It was the same case for Ugo.

The group of Healers, all glad in their ski and snowboarding getups, were accompanied outside by Gill’s army of servants. Out on the patio of the lodge and having the biting cold blow its winds onto their faces, Gill put on a show for them and summoned several mid-sized ice dragons in a matter of seconds and flashy hand signs.

Pairs were formed, and some rode the dragons solo to the top of the white slope behind the rustic mansion.

At the top, the dragons vanished as soon as everyone unmounted them. Zeke surveyed the path of the piste and saw that it was well-groomed like it was prepared for a major Olympic event. There were plenty of opportunities for jumps and flips and other tricks down the slope, not that it meant anything for Zeke, he’d be lucky to stand on his board for longer than three seconds.

The scenic view stretched to the rest of Zürich, a collection of gothic and baroque architecture with snowy tops dotted all over the terrain.

Even so high up, the air was easy to breathe in, which Zeke suspected had to do with more magic. The air was tainted with a cool earthy scent due to the snow-covered trees huddled together off-piste. He looked over to his fellow brethren with his snowboard under his arm, which already felt like a sports exercise. His gear didn’t seem to be doing much to fight off the cold.

He was too embarrassed to ask if snowboards were supposed to feel this heavy as everybody else had their game face on, and all looked like they knew their stuff. Even Ugo, which was alarming for Zeke since he knew that his stepbrother had never done anything like this in his life. Ugo went for the skis that, in turn, slightly bothered Zeke as it was the smarter choice for a beginner.

Zeke had forgotten to tell him about AJ’s warning and noted a mental reminder to tell him later in the day. He was confident that no one would want to hurt Ugo, and out of all of his stepbrother’s deplorable personality traits, ‘homicidal’ wasn’t one of them.

As he turned his head in Violet’s direction to see her in her dark-colored snowboarding apparel for the hundredth time, which she looked infinitely lovelier in, he surprised himself by averting his focus onto the least put-together Healer of the bunch.

Plagued with red-blotchy skin and a case of the chills, Wade was shaking some pills out of a bottle and onto his gloved hand.

Once again, surprising himself, Zeke ambled up to him to inspect from a closer angle. He was a tall guy but awfully slim and haggard noticeable by how big his clothes were on him.

Wade chucked the pills into his mouth and swallowed in one swift motion. Then, he made an expression of pure ecstasy. He was paralyzed, staring into nothingness with his now blank eyes and a smile so wide he looked like a painting. Where his mind went to was somewhere far and probably not even in the same galaxy where he left his body.

Zeke was assured Wade had no potential to be a murderer, and with his drug intake, why would anyone go through the trouble of murdering him if they could just wait until he intoxicated himself to death?

He backed away and approached Gill while keeping his eyes on Wade. “Is it okay for him to be here?” Zeke asked.

“Yeah, why not?” Gill replied, sliding his goggles up to his head.

Zeke stole a glance at Wade. “Does he even know where he is?”

“Of course he does!” Gill looked over at Wade. “Wade! Where are we?”

“I dunno. Somewhere in Sweeden?” Wade responded somnolently.

“See?” Gill said to Zeke.

Zeke’s eyes narrowed. “That’s good?”

“Very good! At least he said the name of an actual country and got the continent right!.”

“I still think bringing him up here in the snow could be dangerous.”

“It’s snowing?” Wade asked.

The gang looked at him vacantly.

“Still pretty good,” Gill blurted.

“Wade is doing better these days,” Aida said, nodding.

Yaalon stepped forward and declared, “Alright, everybody, listen! It’s time to go over safety measures.” He wore a helmet and extra padding over his yellow camo print gear. Standing firm like a military general, he turned to them and put his hands behind his back.

He rambled on about safety, its history, and its importance. Stretching out his speech by shoving in unnecessary details.

Zeke peeked at each of the Healers, and by the looks of their faces, they all became suspects—except for Isaac. He was smiling as expected, and despite everything, Zeke felt that he wouldn’t resort to straight-up murder, and with his insane power, it would take a just as insane effort to take him down.

Yaalon powered through the groans, complaints, and eye rolls his reluctant audience members made throughout the lecture, but a well-timed fart sound made by an underdressed Akachi using his mouth made Yaalon snap.

“Do that again and see what happens!” Yaalon shouted as he pointed an admonitory finger at him.

“What is that?” Ashlin said, looking up.

Zeke moved his eyes upward, and multiple white spirals covered the graying-blue sky.

“Okay, ha-ha, very funny,” Yaalon said robotically while looking up, “I kill the mood, I get it. I’m just looking out for everybody, you know.” Once he stopped to stare back at everybody, all he got were silent looks.

Then the Healers started sharing confused looks with each other.

“Well? Who is doing this—?”

“Hey!” Ashlin said. “Don’t talk to us as if you are above us.”

“Maybe it is just a natural occurrence,” Zeke suggested.

Yaalon pointed back at the sky. “What part of that looks natural to you?”

Zeke looked back up at the angry family of swirls teasing a storm of cyclones guaranteed to mess anybody’s life up. They made a daunting whooshing sound, slowly swelling like an orchestral build-up. More of various sizes spawned in the sky.

“Alright, everybody, hands up,” Gill ordered.

All of the Healers raised their hands with open palms. They all checked each other, and nobody was making mystical hand movements of any kind, and yet, the condition of the sky was worsening.

“It could be the work of some angry elementals,” Isaac suggested.

“Nah,” Aida refuted. “It’s mating season for them right now. They don’t have time for this.”

Kian, with a mouth mask and in an all-black ensemble like how he usually wears, took a step forward and kept one hand raised. As he pulled down his ring finger with his thumb and flipped it downwards, he summoned, “Plaga.”

There was a black flash and a violent boom like a bomb going off. Afterward, Kian was equipped with his Healer’s Garb.

It was composed of a medieval hunter’s outfit with a leather belt slung over his shoulder with multiple skull-shaped pockets. It reminded Zeke of his character’s build in Blooddead 2.

The outfit was covered with some dark pieces of light armor and over everything was a feathery black coat draped over his shoulders that reached down to his ankles. His face was concealed with a bone-white plague mask, and a tilted pointy hat covered most of his head.

“What’re you gonna do?” Akachi asked, unimpressed with the getup. “Fight the sky?”

“I don’t know who, but someone could be attacking us,” Kian said.

“Well, the guy who has been bragging about mastering elemental spells is right in front of us,” Akachi said, looking over at Yaalon.

“Why would I sabotage my own speech and, more importantly, my schedule?”

From where Zeke stood, he could see the sigils and the mold colony on Kian’s Healer’s Garb appearing as white-greenish splotches all over his attire.

“Maybe it’s one of the new guys,” Wade chimed in.

Ugo looked back at him. “What the heck, bro?”

Zeke watched as the Healers started barking at each other, and as he expected, Isaac and Violet kept their distance and watched.

As the shouting swelled, the whooshing of the cyclone crescendoed, and one of the spirals in the sky descended in a rotating vortex that drilled itself into the snowy terrain.

Violet raised a finger pointing forward. “The storm is here.”

It was too late for any of the teen spellcasters to do anything about it. An army of angry snownadoes was dancing all over the slope, uprooting a couple of trees and hurling snow and hail in every direction.

It was like having two of the world’s largest turbine engines on either side of him booming into his eardrums. Zeke could sense the harsh vibrations making his innards pulsate all at once, forcing him down to a knee. First, he saw Aida and Violet get whipped up by the twisters. It was downhill from there as Ugo followed, and then snow blanketed his vision. Zeke was trapped in a rotating wall of white as a choir of screams was added to the cacophony. He spotted some colored blurs across his vision every now and then, but shortly after, he took a massive ice pellet to the face. Everything went black and stayed like that.

###

Yaalon awoke from his trauma-induced slumber. He slowly lifted his aching head and turned back to its resting place—a rock with some blood smeared on the snow.

He reached for the back of his head and felt the open wound. He held two fingers up and closed the wound with a quick spell as he chastised himself under his breath for not wearing a helmet strong enough to stay latched on throughout a tornado. Yaalon got himself back to his feet and scanned the surroundings of the mountain forest he crashed into. He stopped once he spotted something even more unpleasant approaching in their white and gray outfit.

Isaac pulled off his gray beanie, freeing his chestnut brown hair. “Nice to see that you are safe, brother.”

Yaalon paused as he glowered at the Vicar, prompting him to halt with confusion on his face.

“What is it?”

“You’re the one behind the storm, huh?”

“No, brother. That wasn’t my doing—”

“You sure do lie a lot for someone who claims the moral high ground,” Yaalon said with a lot more disdain in his voice than intended, but he didn’t regret it. “It’s just us against the angels, man. They all want us dead, and we need to stick together, and you keep pulling us apart with these shenanigans.”

“I also want us to be united, Yaalon.”

That ‘I wouldn’t hurt a fly’ dipshit smile on his face like a politician spewing buzz words to get the votes. All Yaalon wanted to do was punch him until he could no longer produce it anymore.

“Aw, shut up,” Yaalon hissed. “I know you’re more self-aware than that.” He gave Isaac a look as he pondered. He was saving this for later, but there was no better time than the present, so he decided to reveal his cards early. “I’ve done some investigating of my own regarding the Seal incident. I have reason to believe that the angels suffered a sneak attack on all three Sanctums, or in other words, they were infiltrated amongst their ranks.” Yaalon waited and focused on Isaac for a reaction. All he got was more innocuous smiles.

“What brought you to that conclusion?” Isaac asked.

“It’s not important where exactly I got the information from what I know for sure is that the only way for someone to have infiltrated amongst the angels without being detected is if their soul’s purity was almost indistinguishable from another fellow angel.”

“Are you making an accusation?”

His entire deck was on the table. There was no point in turning back. “Yeah, I am,” Yaalon said, taking a stance. “You’re the only one with high purity levels and the only one who could cast a soul-masking spell like that.”

“Well, I have to relent after all that, brother. You are correct.”

Yaalon’s stance was disrupted. The confession made him a bit disoriented with how simple it was. “So you admit it,” he asked again, ensuring he didn’t misinterpret.

“I had to for reasons that would’ve helped our world. Sure, there have been some setbacks, but in the end, we’ll be successful.”

“Who are the others that helped you?”

“I can’t tell you that. They’ll have to come forward themselves.”

Apparently, being a ‘snitch’ is not part of an extremist’s doctrine.

“You are a major threat to us,” Yaalon said.

“You don’t consider Sister Violet to be one?”

“At least I can understand her. You’re just chaotic. You need to be put down.”

“And you’re going to be the one to do it, brother?”

“Stop calling me that.” Yaalon got in position and clasped his hands together. He held out both thumbs and middle fingers and summoned, “Serka.”

His body was engulfed in golden yellow flames. Once it dissipated, Yaalon’s Healers Garb appeared on his body. It was a partly sophisticated garb with a reddish-black hooded trench coat over an onyx symbol-patterned vest and a white collared shirt. Blazing gauntlets rested on each of his wrists with cracks sprawled all over them. A skull mask covered his face, and yellow flames burned furiously from the eyes and mouth.

Isaac looked back at the flaming skull head under the hood and said with a harmless smile, “that looks a little inappropriate for a Healer, don’t you think?”

“I’m going to give till the count of 5 to summon your Healer’s Garb. 1…”

“Wait, why do we have to resort to fighting?”

“2…”

“I have no reason to hurt you.”

“3…”

“Let’s talk about this, brother.”

Yaalon charged on four. He couldn’t stand hearing that honeyed, raspy voice any longer. His boots melted the snow beneath with every stomp, and with his armored fists enhanced with golden flames, he swung rapidly at Isaac, landing hit after hit across the devotee’s face.

After the sixteenth punch, Yaalon backed up to catch his breath and stared back at Isaac.

Issac’s hair was now messier than it had ever been. He was severely injured for sure, with blackening bruises dotted all over his mug and steam flowing from his slightly charred skin. Blood oozed from his lip, but that smile stayed in place like a stubborn piece of gum.

“There’s no need for us to fight,” Isaac said, convulsing, gagging some more blood out.

“Fight back,” Yaalon hissed.

“Your specialty is defense. As long as I don’t do anything, there really is nothing you can do yourself.”

As the rage built up inside Yaalon, he heard his Garb’s cosmic transmissions reverberate in his head. Serka communicated with Yaalon, not with words, but with sounds in a way that only Healers would understand as usual.

It told him as the Eleventh of the Tainted Generation: The Immunologists were always underestimated by those of higher rank. But Yaalon needn’t worry about it. This fact would grant him the upper hand.

Yaalon put his hands together and made his hand signs. He had this day in mind for years and had been preparing ever since Serka reminded him. The golden flames that emanated from his Garb turned gray. He pushed his closed fists forwards, launching two gray fireballs that moved with incredible speed. It was a successful hit.

The flames circled Isaac from top to bottom and then dissipated.

Serka congratulated Yaalon on the spell. With a specialty in understanding weaknesses and resistances, Yaalon had access to troublesome spells that could modify one’s weakness to particular objects, beings, and environments.

Isaac hunched over and began to heave, granting Yaalon a much-needed euphoria and confidence.

Yaalon stretched his hand to the side, making several signs, and summoned a frozen spiked mace. Serka told him that now with the Vicar’s power halved and susceptibility to the cold increased, all he needed to was a land a couple of icy blows, and it would be over.

He ran towards his weakening opponent, who looked like he could topple over on his own at any second. Yaalon leaped into the air, clenching his frozen morningstar overhead.

“Vistrea,” Isaac said softly.

The blinding white glow that emitted from Isaac made Yaalon drop his weapon and crash into the snow.

Yaalon heard angelic choirs for a second as the holy light subsided. While blinking the stinging, hot tears out of his eyes, he looked at Isaac in his white robe with gold patterns all over and the white gold mask covering the lower half of his face, plus a large gold cross hanging from the side of his beaded belt.

Isaac summoned his staff in a burst of light and fired a white beam at Yaalon from its giant eyeball.

Yaalon blocked the attack with his gauntlet but was pushed back until he hit a tree. Heaps of snow fell on him from the branches above. Sensing another celestial attack, Yaalon didn’t let himself stay down for long and prepared another spell buffing up his defenses.

As he finished, rocks mushroomed across his Healer’s Garb until he was completely covered in it. Then it crystalized alongside his mask, becoming gold diamond armor.

Isaac walked toward him slowly. The sound of his white gold boots crunching the snow reverberated into the air.

Serka reminded Yaalon that it was good that he got Vistrea to reveal itself. There was nothing to worry about with their impenetrable defense.

“I’m guessing that your Garb is telling you not to worry because of your defenses,” Isaac said.

Yaalon succumbed to the trepidation, and Serka insisted that he remained calm.

Isaac disappeared in a bright white flash, reappeared right in front of Yaalon, and raised both hands. “Have you ever touched a soul before?”

Serka told Yaalon not to answer. To not respond to his taunts to fire him up. To not listen to his heart freaking out. He just needed to focus. His armor would protect him as long as he didn’t lose focus.

“Have you ever had someone touch your soul before?” Isaac asked again, his smile twisted eerily. “I warn you, it is not as pleasant as it sounds.” He crossed his fingers, and his hands turned translucent.

Isaac’s hands phased through the armor, Yaalon sensed the soul-touching, and the Vicar didn’t lie about the uncomfortableness. He groaned loudly as he arched back.

“It’s a common misconception that White Magic is useless when it comes to offensive measures,” Isaac said. “You know what holy fire is, right?”

Yaalon’s eyes widened behind his mask.

“As long as there is no sin in your soul. No hatred, no unrepented actions, no perverse thoughts. You should be fine.”

Yaalon had nothing to worry he told himself after Serka did multiple times. All he had were noble thoughts and aspirations. He wanted to help the unfortunate to be able to cure themselves of deadly diseases that required expenses out of their reach. He wanted to teach the poor how to harness Mana to improve their lives. There was nothing bad about that.

But then he focused on Isaac’s face and remembered his mention about ‘hatred.’

Yaalon had never felt so much pain in his entire life.