A statement of a soul | Raphael x Reader

18. The prize

The sky in Avernus neither darkens nor brightens. The horizon is covered with bloody red clouds, flawed by occasional stroke of dark, almost black volcanic fumes constantly erupting into the sulphuric atmosphere. There is no trace of sunlight or the moon and the only light sinking inside the floating House of Hope is sickly, feverish red. Despite being in the place only for a tad more than a day, you find it hard to suppress the urge to just leave; but you know that the portal inside Moonrise Towers which you've drawn with blood, has a high chance of reawakening your fiendish possession and thus making you a threat to everyone in the closest proximity.

Instead of leaving, you try to memorize everything you've learnt about Raphael, but reading the same plaques and notes is bound to get boring at some point. After sharing a surprisingly vulnerable moment with Korrilla, you notice that the sisters spend more time together and you try not to interrupt them, especially not since you've heard Hope shed a few tears after Korrilla joined her in the portal room.

To show your gratitude, you prepare a hearty meal from the well-supplied kitchen in the House of Hope, finding a surprisingly big stock of spices like cumin, ginger, rosemary, saffron. You wonder for a moment if Raphael dines with his guests or if everything inside the kitchen is for the mortals to enjoy. Quite frankly, the presence of the kitchen is a big surprise to you. You always thought that the food was either transported from somewhere else or simply conjured. But then again, if it was conjured, it would not be rotting away on the table, it would simply disappear - you realize.

At one point during the day or night - it's so hard to tell the difference in this place - you get a chance to catch up with Hope and realize that she is growing more and more frustrated at the lack of progress with lifting Raphael's seals and spells. You delicately try to suggest leaving this place and to your positive astonishment, she approves of this particular advice.

Not long after that, the exhaustion graces your eyelids, weighting them down, commanding you to seek a comfortable surface to lay on. You head back to the boudoir, quietly hoping that a splash inside a rejuvenation pool will help you ease the sleepiness, but the healing water can only do as much.

With a sigh, you seek the single bed placed near the hexagonal pool and change into a soft night gown before slipping underneath the sheets. Almost as soon as you lay down comfortably on your back, you feel your body weight sinking into the lush, heavenly mattress and your breath evening out. The second your consciousness leaves the refreshing surroundings of the boudoir's pool, you find yourself transported somewhere else again. A part of your mind is prepared to see the horrifying images of your fallen companions, but you realize that the usual feeling of dread is not weighting down your shoulders.

As your eyes get used to the dark, you eventually notice tall stone walls, effortlessly blending with shining, icy ones connecting some kind of a building to an enormous glacier. You aren't sure where the walls lead to, as you can only see an insignificant fragment of them compared to their real scale, so you find yourself placing your left hand on the nearest flat surface and following it for some time, which in the dream feels like eternity. You can't feel any cold and there are no sounds coming to your ears. You even try to glance down, but your wish is not granted; instead, your dreaming form keeps following the curving and descending corridor, leading somewhere deeper. At this point, a part of your consciousness suspects the place to be some kind of a building inside Cania, if it's not the Citadel - Mephistar - itself, that is.

The scene melts away as if you used a misty step spell, blinking some distance up ahead. Suddenly, a weird sensation passes through your skin. It's similar to a pressure, as if the air around you turned into water, making every movement slower and heavier, straining your muscles as you try to move forward. It must be some protection magic, you realize as your form is guided deeper into a dimly lit room until a massive door materializes in front of you. A shiver passes across your back and for a moment you think that you see someone's outstretched hand casting a shadow on the door. It swipes across the room and you can hear a few different clicks before the door slowly swings open, revealing another room and an opened vault.