What You Are Is Beautiful

Shadows and Doubt

A/N for some reason when I was writing this, the iblis' speech sounded like Endermen. Do with that as you will.

"Oh my God," Ava breathed in boredom.

"Language," Beatrice whispered in response.

"Why can't the church just have the internet for this stuff? Like an archive where you can search key words. It would be so much easier and faster."

Beatrice pulled another book from the shelf and added it to the bag on her arm. "We cant have people finding out about the Order by accident."

"C'mon. No one would legitimately believe that there was a sect of soldier nuns who fight an 'ancient war on evil' actually working for the Church."

"Just help us get this over with," Lilith snapped.

"Geez. What's your problem?"

"I want to get out of here and figure out what that thing was. I don't want to be here all night." Lilith messed with her sling, agitated. "So hurry up and stop whining."

"Damn," Ava rolled her eyes, "okay."

"Good."

The whole group was now silent as they dug through the shelves, adding books to their bags before checking them all out and heading up to Ava's room to complete their research. Ava settled on the ground with her head resting on her palm while she hovered over the same page, trying desperately to not interrupt the quiet with a complaint. She sighed and stared down again, trying to make sense of the words before her. She was surely certain that she was the wrong person for this job.

But she tried. Ava looked at the lines as they began to blur together from mental exhaustion. She felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up to meet Beatrice's gaze. "You seem stuck."

Ava sighed and whispered back. "I'm trying. I just—I'm trying to focus."

Beatrice kept her hand on her shoulder, letting it linger while it could. "Try picking up a different book for a minute or two."

Ava smiled softly in response. She was relieved once more that she wasn't being too harshly judged. She did feel very useless at the moment with her being forced to sit and do hours of research with what was probably quite literally the attention span of a child. But no one else seemed to have noticed.

She bent over to reach for a book from one of the several bags scattered around the room. She felt her fingers run over the stamped leather binding. Please don't be another super old book with fancy talk. I never read Shakespeare. Ava flipped the book over in her hand and glanced at the cover before flipping to the chapter index. She found the section titled "Demonologie" and dug in. She flipped through a few pages about the wraiths and mass possessions before stumbling upon a page of lesser demons. A little smoky demon probably isn't a greater demon, right?

Ava ran her fingers over the lines until she found it. A non-corporeal corruption of humans composed of hellish smoke and two glowing yellow eyes. Damn, creepy much? "Hey guys," the other women looked up from their pages. "I found something." She re-read the passage aloud. "That's what you saw, right?" An iblis?"

Lilith stood up and wandered closer to where Ava sat. She bent down and took the book from her lap. "Yeah it sounds correct," she searched the lines for an answer to the question she hadn't yet announced, "but this thing had Camila pinned to a wall. It wasn't non-corporeal."

"Well, Adriel wasn't an angel. I say something changed. When is the entry from?" Mary scrunched her brows and shifted to fully face them.

Beatrice leaned over to investigate. She took the book from Lilith and looked at the inside of the back cover. "It looks like it was published in the 18th century." Camila suddenly let out a gasp and caught the attention of all the warriors around her.