Heaven's Shadow

Chapter 2 | Summer Demon

Summer flew by like a swift breeze. After a long, dreadful week of staying in his room with Yun sneaking in every night, Remigius's grounding was finished, and he spent the rest of the summer following along with Yun's antics. Maven was dragged along as usual, and Mr. Clarity scolded them more than they could count.

Like every year, Yun left to go to the mandatory summer camp the moment the six-year-old set foot into the Heavens. Every time, Yun whined and begged not to go, clinging his hands and legs around his dad, but the Church was relentless. He always pouted as he waved goodbye at the entrance of the Water Bubble until the water sucked him to the other level of Theschost. 

Remigius and Maven hung around the library or went cafe hopping while they waited. When he was truly out of his mind, he wrote letters to Yun that he then stuffed under his bed. There was a better chance of him finding the letters here than using the Underwater's mail system. 

A few weeks later, Yun returned to the Heavens and filled Remigius in on his adventures. He chatted nonstop about some new friends he made, the films he watched in the cinemas, and crème brûlée, which he said he would have brought some for Remigius if he could. Remigius didn't like sweet food anyway, but Yun insisted one day he would drag him to the Real World. He wasn't sure how he felt about that, but Yun continued gesturing wildly, and he listened. 

They fell into routine again. Mr. Clarity asked Yun and Maven to head to the town market to purchase a few ingredients for the soup he planned to make that evening. Remigius decided to tag along to grab some herbs for his father's potion-making. 

Maven suggested heading to the town's grocery store, where they bought their supplies and moved on to the greenhouse, where the herbalist, a buxom and eccentric woman, wrapped brown wax paper with twine around long stems of weggu vines.

After handing her three coins, Remigius placed the package into the satchel his father gave him. The satchel's black leather was glossed with the breath of a moonstone cat—a cooling property that would keep the herbs fresh. Weggu vines were susceptible to the heat, and if he arrived back home with the leaves shrivelled up, his father wouldn't make Caius's medication. 

When his father was in a good mood, he would ramble about his youthful years when he'd invent new remedies that all of Theschost had never seen. Everett Atwaters, the renowned apothecary of a family whose specialty lay in potion making. The textbooks he wrote and illustrated sold everywhere, even to the other realms of Theschost. The original copy belonged on the shelf of Remigius's bookcase. 

His father's eyes would glimmer until the end of the story. It always led back to the same pitiful ending. His passion dwindled until it flew away, smothered by society. For it was his wife's existence causing a smear to the Atwaters. Then his two sons, one with an abnormal Ivion and the other with no Ivion, hammered down the shame. 

"Check it out." Maven gestured over to Remigius, beckoning him to walk to where she stood in front of a sealed glass cabinet hung on the wall. Yun was on his trail, his interest piqued as well. 

"It's bedra fangs." She pointed at the jar with yellow-stained fangs as long as her finger. "You only see this kind of stuff in Darling's Forest."

"What does it do?" Yun asked, who never paid attention in potions class. 

"Well, the fangs are highly venomous and could kill you in less than an hour," she said in a tone between fascinated and disturbed. 

"And you would never find venom like that in the Heavens," the herbalist said with pink cheeks and a bright smile. "Only going down to that horrid forest will you find stuff like that."

"Like in Crystal Square?" Yun lifted himself to sit on the counter to lean towards the herbalist as if they shared a dangerous secret.

"Darlings," she cursed with a shake of her head, "such vile creatures. That Crystal Square is a true place of hell."