Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 55109 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55109 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
“We will practice with a wooden sword. You can learn the basics before you accidentally manifest some weapon of unimaginable power again. You know the gentlemen’s smoking room is going to be a portal for potential demonic transmission for years to come.”
“I did not know that.”
“Oh, yes. You should really go and inspect the aftermath of your handiwork. Quite stunning.”
“Yes. Alright. Let’s go upstairs.”
I return to the scene of my, well, scene.
“Well,” I say. “Fuck.”
There is an anomaly in the middle of the room. A messy, shattered place where the world simply isn’t anymore. There are spinning bits of reality shining like glass, reflecting the light from the windows, and then a sprawling hole of isn’tness between them.
I stand and I stare. It is just as I remembered. It is an impossible possibility. It is the perfect paradox and I created it with my very own will. I have been refusing to fully buy into this bonkers belief system but seeing these remnants of destruction in the sober light of day is very convincing indeed.
“It’s real,” I say wonderingly.
“Yes,” Cosmos agrees. “We have been trying to tell you that for what feels like a small eternity.”
“Holy… I’m magical.”
“Yes,” he says.
I turn to him with a marvelous expression of wonder as I am suffused with an entire universe of possibility all at once. I am more powerful than I ever imagined I could be. There is a force inside me that animates me and allows me to do what should not be done. I am my very own real-life superhero. And I have just come to a conclusion Cosmos needs to hear.
“Magical people don’t do cardio,” I inform him.
“My bride does, or she gets herself spanked long and hard,” he replies, tapping the tip of my nose with his finger as if I am a cute, but disobedient puppy.
“I can tear holes in the fabric of being!”
“Yes, and Crichton here can travel between this world and Hell. Everybody is special here, Elise. That’s why you belong.”
“Bryn said I was the most special, though. Demons are a dime a dozen here, no offense, Crichton.”
“None taken,” he murmurs.
“But only Nina and I are angels, and her powers are mostly winsomely wandering around in the mist. I’m the real deal. I can summon the flaming sword that stood between humanity and the paradise of Eden.”
“Wow,” Cosmos says. “And here I was thinking you were a little atheist with no knowledge whatsoever of divine lore.”
“I picked up vague bits here and there.”
“Uriel was left to guard Eden with his flaming sword,” Crichton says, filling in the gaps left by my patchy understanding.
“So. This Uriel. Is he the one who knocked up my mother? Wait. Don’t tell me. I don’t care. I decided a long time ago I never want to know who my father is, and that doesn’t change just because he’s magical.”
“Now do you see what a responsibility you bear?” Cosmos is coming over all serious.
“What’s it for? As in, what am I supposed to do with it? You want me to guard the shrubs outside?”
“Like all gifts, you will choose how you use it. Your responsibility is to learn how to use it. And that, Elise, is why you are going to learn to fight.”
We’ll see about that.
10
Elise
Time passes. Not a lot of time. A matter of days, perhaps a week or two. I have done everything I can to stall Cosmos’ plans for physical training. I’ve buried myself in calibrating the Gauss rates of the computers upstairs. That’s not actually a thing, but it sounds enough like a thing for Cosmos to believe that I need to do it. Then my period came, which took me out of action for a full week in almost every sense. Can’t learn how to slay evil when you’re wrapped around a hot water bottle. But then I ran out of excuses, and he made me actually run. I hate it. Physical activity is not my thing.
I have started to settle in at Direview. I’ve begun to be treated like one of the girls. I really never thought I’d start to view these people as friends and confidantes, and I still don’t. I haven’t forgotten my old life, my independence, my work. I haven’t forgotten what it is to be normal. God, I miss normal.
Cosmos has been busy in his own way. He and Bryn are at each other’s throats almost constantly. They make good sparring partners for one another. That is another way I am kept out of training.
But inevitably, I eventually overplay my hand. It is a sunny afternoon and all I want to do is go sit in a dark room and look at my screens, but Cosmos has banished me from work for the rest of the day because apparently, I am wasting my entire existence looking at a screen. This does not please me, as it leaves me confronted with the dreary reality of Direview.