The Morningstar Brigade

Chapter 40

XXXX

URIEL

Day Seven. Six Days Remain.

Eli's Room, Morningstar Keep

When Uriel woke up the next day, he quickly realized how severely he had underestimated his own fatigue. During his training, his limbs had ached like he had never known before. His over-use of Dawn, however, felt as if something at his very core had been torn out, only to be snapped violently back into place. He spent hours even after awakening simply lying on his back, the morning light slowly dripping over his frame as it turned to midday. He attempted to hoist himself out of his bed, but quickly found that it's relatively difficult to move around when it still feels like your Breath isn't quite connected to your body.

It felt as if divine threads were meticulously knitting themselves once more against his spine. And while there was a deep discomfort to this near-paralysis, Uriel couldn't help but feel a soft sort of pleasure as the ethereal fibers wound against him stronger than before. The coils of strength that had run wild within (or, perhaps more accurately, beyond) him were binding back to him with a new discipline. With a sense of power and control he hadn't known. A raw confidence undergirded this strange new knowledge, his nose twitching with a sense of self-satisfaction as he drew a spark from his fingertips and, through the sheer force of his will, had it race along his skin until it jumped happily along the tips of his toes.

And so, brimming with a newfound fire, the Shepherd at last hopped out of bed and threw on his Brigade vestments. Uriel resolved to take his day to do what so many other overconfident young men do when they've discovered a new talent: Go attempt to show it off to a girl who was definitely doing something more important before they arrived.

"Alright stupid, come on. You got this far, no point in backing out now," Uriel said to himself under his breath as he stared at the door to Kat's room, the machismo from before almost immediately evaporating as he stared down reality. He lifted his hand to knock, and then quickly dropped it to his side again. "Well, maybe now's just not a good time. I should probably come back later. Say, maybe in ten years? Yeah, that sounds good," he concluded, slowly backing away. "I've really just got to make my decision before I get to the door in the future," he muttered, becoming conscious of a pattern.

Just as he was about to turn away, the door swung open. Kat stood in the entryway to her room with a surprised look as her gaze settled on Uriel in full Brigade dress uniform. Her eyes scanned him carefully for a moment, a wrinkle in her brow forming and then disappearing just as swiftly. It was if she was re-orienting herself to the sudden return of a friend. As if she had just been somewhere else. Any lingering sense of disorientation, however, was quickly replaced by a broad grin as she gave him a brief, if unexplained, hug. "Hey there, sparkplug," she said, giving him a surprisingly forceful squeeze. "You clean up nice for a potentially cataclysmic human weapon."

"I, uh..." His body was in a bizarre half-retreat, awkwardly cocked at a forty-five degree angle away from the doorway.

Kat was wearing a black, sleeveless work-out shirt. Her hair was tied back into a tight ponytail and every inch of her body was dripping with sweat. The bulge of training weights was apparent around her waist and even encircling her ankles. Veins pressed against her tensed muscles in a palpable show of force. Her entire body seemed to radiate a new strength, her slim but rigid frame emitting an air of sheer power. She studied his appearance suspiciously. "I thought today was a day off, please don't tell me we've already got another monster to fight," she groaned. "Wait, were you just talking to yourself outside of my door?" she asked, suppressing a chuckle.