"How are Burch and Murker?" I inquired even though seconds ago, I was on the brink of death.
{"They'll be up and running after a few days of rest. It took me a bit longer than I thought to reverse whatever took hold of them."}
"Was it that bad?"
{"Very,"} she said flatly. {"How are you feeling?"}
"Couldn't be better!"
{"That's good."}
{"Master! We will make our escape!"} Taki's voice rang out as he appeared before me.
{"But first lets subdue these creatures!"} Tosh shouted, he then made a loud crunching sound as he appeared next to his brother. {"Apple toffee, brother?"}
Taki nodded.
Tosh passed a bag full of apple candied lollies to his brother and then he pulled out another bag of sweets out of nowhere. He then opened the bag and grabbed something out that looked like it was covered in powered sugar and placed it in his mouth.
{"Mmm! Sugar plum Mochi!"}
The two brothers looked at each other before swaying their heads side to side, loosening up their necks with a loud crack.
Both of them then breathed in hard and closed their eyes. When they reopened their eyes their eyes glowed golden.
Golden feathers appeared out from the darkness above and fell down like snow flakes.
The feathers swirled around the brothers before floating it's way to the creatures like a golden stream of wonton noddle soup.
The feathery stream glowed it's golden light through the darkness, lighting up a path as it makes its way to the creatures.
The creatures seemed to be entranced as they stared at the floating stream of feathery light.
The stream of golden passed straight through the creatures like a needle and string, sewing the creatures together.
The twins chanted something under their breaths that sounded a lot like Japanese.
Each time they paused or took a breath from the chant, the golden stream wavered and vibrated which caused the creatures to abruptly wail.
Their face was stern and their mind was unmoved, focused.
Both of the bags filled with lollies dangled in their hands but the brothers were so entranced, like monks in a meditative state, the bags felt out of place.
The illusion however broke when I saw Taki's hand slightly moved it's way towards his other hand and dipped a few fingers into the bag and took a piece of toffee out.
He slowly lifted his hand towards his mouth and slipped the toffee between his lips in the midst of a chant.
I had to chuckle inwardly at that.
Tosh without missing a beat, also in midst of a chant, raised a hand and whacked Taki at the back of his head.
The smack would've at least moved someone's head even a centimetre involuntary but Taki, with his stance looked solid like an immovable rock.
Their chant, though sounded like droning to my ears, caused the golden stream of feathers to separate back to falling snowflakes, once all the creatures had been 'sown' together.
The brothers golden eyes shifted their gaze to me and then to Amilie.
{"Sister!"} Both said in unison.
{"On it!"} Amilie replied back.
Amilie took her place and stood next to the brothers. She closed her eyes and with the flow of the falling golden feathers, a sweet soft humming sound danced and played with the feathers. As each note of the sound is voiced by Amilie, a golden feather glowed brightly, in synced with the notes.
It looked like one of those YouTube piano tutorials videos or one of those VR beats games.
As the soft melody flowed and the feathers fell in rhythm, a light haze covered my eyes.
I could still hear Amilie's soft melody but my vision felt askew.
"What happened?" I heard Namise voice but it's as if she was saying it from afar.
"Woah! Where are all the monsters?!" The spell caster shouted but rather than like Namise voice that sounded like she was miles away, the spell caster voice was blaring loudly at my ears.
The haze that was covering my eyes, slowly faded away and a marbled room appeared before me.
Was all that an illusion?
The only thing in this room besides us were slab of marble tables in the centre.
{"No master, all that was real."} Amilie spoke up next to me.
"This looks like a normal room. Where's purgatory?"}
{"We're in it, master."} Lilith said as she walked around the room. {"I can feel my father's power scattered all around this room."}
Lilith wrapped her arms around herself as her eyes wandered around and tears dripped down her cheeks.
Lucifer walked slowly behind her but at the same rate as her pace. He looked on to his wife with a soft and warm expression.
Lucilia, stood with me and the others as she watched her parents. Her expression looked pained.
I think everything had finally caught up with them. Lilith had lost a father and Lucilia had lost a grandfather.
"Ryan!" Someone called out my name and I turned my head to the speaker. It was the spellcaster. "What's the plan now?"
"Why are you asking me? I'm not the captain of this team."
"You are now!"
I turned my gaze to Pyrus who's supposed to be the captain.
Pryus shrugged.
"I'll be happy to hand over the role of captain to you, Ryan. You're more capable to lead this team than me. You've proven that just now."
"Are you sure?"
"I want Ryan to be captain…" Namise said in a quiet voice.
"I do too!" Agreed everyone else.
"You're the strongest one out of all of us anyways with your summons." The spellcaster said with a sigh. "Also we wouldn't even have made it out of that darkness hell hole without your help and support. We would've been stuck there with those creatures with no means of escape, if it was only just us… I would've just let fate decide, if I had to listen to those creatures make that noise again…"
The spellcaster shuddered as he said that.
"Alright." I said with a nod.
"Great! Now let's get out of this place!"
We all made our way to the door and opened it. The bright light from the outside blared at us and I had to cover my eyes and waited until the light became bearable.
I was amazed at what I saw as my eyes adjusted itself to the light. Outside of the door was a beautiful courtyard? Court garden? Greenhouse?
It was a large courtyard of some sort with a dome glass ceiling. There was a waterfall and a myriad of different kinds of water features scattered around.
We stepped into the courtyard and I looked up.
My eyes widened at the sight.
It was like looking at Hogwarts from within a snow globe.
"Oh my god!" Shouted someone from the other side of the courtyard. The dome covered the whole place and even the sides which allowed us to view the outside, clouds moved passed the dome and across the castle's ground like it was an everyday occurrence. "This is amazing!"
{"This was my mother's garden courtyard."} Lilith said as she walked over to a bench next to a pond that's connected to the waterfall, sat on the bench and looked around. {"When I was little, I used to love playing in this garden courtyard. I would always hide over there whenever I know I'm in trouble."}
She pointed at a tree close enough to the waterfall that half the tree would always be constantly wet.
{"I would've love to have met you when you were a kid, my love."} Lucifer cooed as he bend down over her and pressed his nose to hers.
{"I know we would be best of friends, if we were together as kids."} Lilith tilted her head up so she could kiss him. Her arms were wrapped around his neck for support as her backside was hanging over the large pool of water.
Lucifer had planted his hands firmly on the edge of the bench so that they wouldn't fall over.
After a hot minute of kissing, the couple unabashedly resumed our conversation as if nothing had happened.
"Ryan… Does your summons have relationships?" The spellcaster questioned with wide and intrigued eyes. "I've never seen a summon even talk before… how extraordinary."
Do I reveal to him that they aren't really summons? Or do I play along? But if I do play along, he would have a million questions, in which I have no answers to…
…
"They're uh… aren't summons."
His eyes furrowed. "What do you mean? What are they then?"
What are they indeed…
"Spirits? Ghosts?"
"…"
The spellcaster stared at me.
{"You can think of us as spirits if you like. We aren't technically alive anymore…"} Lucifer shrugged.
"Oh my! I wished my summons could talk to me… all that comes out of their mouths are grunts."
{"Are all your summons, beasts?"}
"I uh… was never talented enough to summon anything other than beasts…"
{"Oh? Would you like to learn how to perform a heroic summon?"}
The spellcaster's eyes widened as his jaw dropped.
It took him a while to snap out the shock and responded.
"Y-yes please!" Exclaimed the spellcaster.
{"Good. I'll be your mentor for the next hour, come and let me give you a quick lesson on how to summon a powerful being."} Lucifer said with a grin.