When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears

Mutually Beneficial Agreements

His soul radiated red. Crimson light filled the sky dancing around the boy like his own personal fire, casting what should have been an eerie glow over the Jersey streets that night. The crimson was interlaced with gold, so bold and beautiful even Gauvain, who after eons wandering the earth and thought he had seen it all, had to stop and stare.

He had been living in the dark for so long that such a light should have hurt; it should have been blinding. He didn't cower, though. He had no desire to run. Like a moth, he was drawn to it. He wrapped himself in his wings, hidden from the human eye, perched upon a roof, and watched.

It was like a scene from a classic. The boy—or man, Gauvain corrected, because for all his near cherubic appearance, the bright being was an adult—was beautiful in every sense of the word. His brown skin was free from blemish, save the occasional freckle, his dark curls were pulled back in a ponytail, a few of them free and cascading over his face. His eyes were deep and grim, filled to the brim with determination. A white jacket pillowed behind him, wholly unsuited for his purposes; before him was a ghost.

Gauvain could see it clearly: a woman long dead, flickering between worlds. Her eyes were empty. Her hair flowed around her freely, weightless. Her body was void of color or tone, and her mouth opened in a scream, only audible to humans at the highest frequency. To the man, it would sound like nothing but the buzz of tinnitus, growing steadily more intense before she faded. To Gauvain, it was nails scraping down a chalkboard and babies crying and a record scratching.

Still, though, nothing to be done about it. She needed to move on. The warrior wielded a knife of silver, glinting under the moonlight, holding it at ready in case she got too close to him while he read an exorcism, invoking a higher power to drag the spirit away. The Ecclesiastical Latin fell from his lips like it was his first language.

The man's soul shone so brightly Gauvain wondered that no one else could see it. Shades of virtuous gold and righteous red clashed and glowed and lit the night around him. He was almost afraid to go close, for fear of the light burning him.

(He thought it might be worth it to feel the light's touch just once)

The colors built and surged like a symphony, humming in anxious vibrato until the end, when the last words of exorcism fell from the man's lips and the spirit screamed as she was finally ripped from the mortal realm, pulled violently across the veil.

The man settled, his jaw slowly unclenching, his soul settling in denouement. His colors blunted and faded. The reds became less crimson and more maroon, the gold lost it's metallic glint and settled into a satisfied saffron.

What was Gauvain to do but follow him?

He resisted the urge to look in the man's mind. It would have been as easy as seeing the colors of his soul. That was an line Gauvain wasn't ready to cross, though. He was already breaching the man's privacy in a way that was likely unforgivable. The man couldn't see Gauvain following him, he had no idea he'd been watched or that his soul was on such obvious display. If he were a better being, Gauvain would have ignored the man and gone about his business. He wasn't, though.

It was a short walk to the university, and, of course, Gauvain should have known he was a student.

The Maximillian Pierre Building of Paranormal Sciences sat at the far west of the campus. The building was in pristine condition with none of the obvious wear and tear of the older buildings. It had been built within the last few decades; any observer could easily see that, even without knowing anything about architecture. Gauvain hesitated on the steps, taking a corporeal form only once the man was inside. There was no one around to be startled by his sudden appearance, and he figured that was a good thing when he was stood on the steps to the most prestigious PS program in the nation.