Angel Tongue

duodēcim

Filippa Belluomo was not sure what to think, which was an event rare enough in itself.

Since she was a child, she had always had an answer for everything. She remembered everything she ever learned, and thus remembered always how to act, what to do, what to think. But now, she was a blank slate. She had just seen a centuries-old faun, an old, wise creature, protector of all things living, slam a child into a wall, after all.

"How are the matters with Elder Aesculus?" she whispered to Piero as they walked away from the children who stood motionless behind them. "Did somebody speak to him after the-the scene?"

"I will tell you," Piero told her, his voice equally soft as he turned to look at Pax and his friends. "But somewhere more private." He led her through the corridors of the Sanctuary she had called her home since the first time she set foot on its ground as a young maiden. Through a door, they went out onto a private corner on the exterior of the building. Several small plants flowered beside the walls. Behind the bushes, a small sea of ivy clambered up the brickwork, a spiderweb of green breaking up the sienna of the wall.

Filippa could remember, with outstanding clarity, this specific part of the Sanctuary. The shrubs had grown, and the ivy had risen several feet since then, but it had not changed much. Her perfect memory told her so. She could feel Piero's hands on her as if it were just a while ago, when he smiled at her in that childlike way that she always loved, and asked her to marry him.

"He dislikes Isaac," Piero muttered as he paced the length of the clearing in front of Filippa, interrupting her from her daydream. "Says that he could see the darkness in him, somehow."

"There is some sense to what the faun said," Sierra responded, unable to stop that feeling of nostalgia for times that have passed from bubbling in her stomach. "You told him yourself, that it was most probably because of the bite he suffered from the demon. He is still recovering, is he not?" She put her hand on her shoulder, only to see it fall through empty air as her husband continued to pace.

"Yes, of course," Piero absentmindedly agreed, though the worried look had not left his face. His eyebrows were furrowed in deep, troubled thought, and a hand was on the tip of his chin. "Of course, but..."

Filippa looked up at him as he said that. But, what? She wondered what exactly was going on in his mind, that he had pulled her through the Sanctuary to their own little sanctuary when they were still young, and everything that was between them still a secret. She knew that this was no trivial matter, for she had learned quite a lot about him from years of observing, of tracing the lines above his eyebrows, following the contours of his face, memorizing the curves of his lips. No, this was something big, something that nagged at him from deep down, perhaps making him question whatever he believed to be true. She opened her mouth to inquire so, but was interrupted when Piero chose to speak again, quietly, almost as if he were just speaking to himself.

"He did not seem to be convinced," Piero finally forced himself to speak again, apart from the unintelligible mutters he had been letting go of, another visible sign of his unease to Filippa. "They tried to provide him reason, and he was subdued, but he did not seem to be convinced," Piero shook his head as he spoke, giving Filippa more feelings of worriment than she already had before.

"I don't see the reason why we should trouble ourselves with this," she said, gulping down her own unexplainable feelings of confusion. "If it is what he believes, let him believe it. It could not have been the child, that is what we know."

Piero stopped walking at that, his back turned towards his wife. With both hands, he cupped his face. "Oh, Filippa..."

"What is troubling you, Piero?" she finally asked him, walking up to her husband and putting both arms on her shoulders. They were set hard beneath her palms, tensed up as if wanting to say something, yet not sure if he should.

"I am beginning to think," he broke his silence at last, scratching his head as he did so, "that perhaps, he is not wrong. About the darkness in the boy."

Filippa removed her hands from his shoulders, her features morphing, incredulous. "Why do you say that? Do you not think he is innocent?" she asked her husband. "The child is as much a victim in all this as those who were killed, Piero. Remember that he almost died, if it had not been for the nectar."

"No, no. I did not mean it that way," Piero spoke, searching her eyes with his own. "It is just," he put his hand to his chin once more, heaving a heavy sigh, "you recall that I took an amount of the boy's blood, to see how he is connected to the Manus Dei. And that is just what I set out to do, you know. I-I took the samples and I analyzed them, I took a look at them, because that is what I was supposed to-"

"Piero," she said, making him cease his rambling, and get back to the topic. "What are you trying to tell me?"

"It is not yet final," he told her before continuing, "but I found infernal energies in the blood. The nectar did not erase all go it." He scratched his head once more, the confusion clear in his face. "And it was not just that. The demonic matter seemed to have adapted to his blood. It wasn't eating through it or burning the essence, or anything of the sort."

Filippa felt her eyes widening as she shook her head. "I do not remember anything of the sort ever happening in history. What do you think it is?"

"Of course, it is all preliminary. I haven't gotten to the root of it yet," Piero started pacing once again as he said this, and this time, Filippa paced with him, both of them putting their minds around the situation that had presented itself. "But I fear the worst."

"The worst?" Filippa did not know why, but a small shiver of fear caressed her spine then, causing her to tremble visibly. It was tiny, so small that nobody except for her would have been able to take notice, certainly not Piero, who had his mind stuck in the clouds, in his current dilemma.

"I fear... that the demon venom was not any ordinary kind," Piero told her after a period of silent pacing between the two of them. "I fear that it may have affected Isaac, and that it may continue to, if we do not do anything about it. But then..."

"We do not know what to do, for this is not in any of the texts," Filippa continued his train of thought. Just then, the shiver of fear that had been terrorizing her elevated itself into a chill of terror, as she remembered several nights ago, when Isaac had just been brought to the Sanctuary, dying, when she asked Sierra and Pax to describe the demon that had attacked the child. She remembered exactly what Sierra told her, yet she dismissed it with a nonchalant wave of the hand.

"Yes," Piero said grimly, and they both stopped. Filippa felt it hanging in the air, that dreadful responsibility to do something to help, yet she did not know how.

"Well then, you best continue studying it," Filippa told her husband, willing her voice to be steady, reassuring. "I will be in the Athenaeum. I will try to find something..."

Piero took her hand in his, gently placing his lips on its back. "Thank you, my love."

With one final turn, he strode back into the Sanctuary, no doubt taking the long walk to the infirmary. Filippa followed just behind him, though soon, their paths divided, and she took the familiar direction, down a walk that she had taken thousands of times before.

The library was empty when she walked through the doors. She immediately set to work, going rapidly through the shelves until she found the book she was looking for, near the far end of the large room. After less than a minute of looking, she had it in her hands. With purpose, she lifted the heavy volume towards the closest table she could find and set it down with a small slam, thanks to its great weight.

She felt along the pages before she opened, knowing exactly where to open the book to, though not exactly why. Her breath hitched in her throat when she looked down on the faded paper, for there, in a terrifyingly accurate rendition, was the demon Sierra had described to her. The demon she had denied the continued existence of.

The color of smoke, the size of two men, skin like hard leather, tail.