Saint Curwel's Abbey was an ancient stone building, each brick a handsome salmon shade in its images from centuries ago, the color all sapped now to an ugly mix of pale yellow, grey and white, infiltrated through the spreading spiderwebs of cracks by blackened moss and ivy. It was deep in the temple district where the streets were too narrow to allow anything more than a little donkey cart by, too narrow for any commerce of substance and thus forgotten, left to the lowly peasants, laborers, and quiet orders of monks and scholars. Though the abbey itself above ground was quite small, it had numerous basements branching out from a single cellar chamber --

One led to the archives, four stories deep, groundwater held back from the cold stone and timber walls by layer after layer of aging enchantments, all of it enough for an eerie, uncomfortable air, not because the designs were sinister in any way, but because the whole place was of an ancient generation to which the present simply did not belong. On the lowest level Alain DeMuer sat with his nose buried in a volume about a sub-race of angels that had ruled as warring merchant-princes in a realm a thousand years ago, before they caught the Maker's attention and subsequent wrath. He was waiting, patiently, for the demon who would return the second and third volumes of "The Fall of House Aruss."

Brother Mann, when Alain found him, said that a man, clearly of some devilish origin, had checked the volumes out several times in the past, returning them always after a few days, and Alain figured it was a game to see who might be interested in the Architect's story. After a solid week of intensive surveillance, the detective and his allies had puzzled out the demon was none other than Rajashtan, a 'sleeper agent' and guardian for the Architect's interests in RhyDin... and the creature in the black cloak now descending the stairs towards the lowest level of the archives matched the profile perfectly...

Was it aware? Did the creature know, even then, that something lay within the Abbey, awaiting it? Did the creature know it was being followed down those very steps it strode? It was, after all. The young woman who followed Rajashtan, though a good three dozen footsteps behind, was known to the monks, it seemed, as she was being allowed within the sacred archives themselves.

She looked--like nothing. Perhaps a scholar, perhaps merely a devout who wished to grow closer to God by reading apocrypha. Hair bound, crystal cross around her neck, cloaked from neck to ankle in article of dark greenish grey. Her footsteps scuffled a little behind, but she did not falter.

Two pairs of footsteps, Alain heard, but he made nothing of the second pair. The copper cross was wrapped up in his left hand, fingered thoughtfully as he shifted the book in his lap, ready to shut it. Ideally he would flush the demon out but remain hot on his heels, and take him down in the upper cellar chamber...

When Rajashtan stepped off the stairs near Alain, the latter slapped the book shut and dropped it onto the floor, rising, one hand dropping to within his coat to the hilt of the glamored blade... and Rajashtan ran for the far stairwell and up, leaving Alain to bound up the one Rajashtan had just left, racing unwittingly towards the woman in the green robes.

Green cloak. This was revealed when she threw it back over her shoulder--revealing a blade of her own. Matte black leather armor beneath. Alain must not have been the only one searching for this being. Light sparked within blue-grey eyes, even as she smiled. It left quickly when it was not the demon who raced at her, but a mortal. "What? Where did he go?" Though with the way he raced past her there was only one answer. She said nothing, then. Just followed. Two swords were better than one. Divine providence had shown itself, and who was she to question God? She'd ask questions of the man later, if there was time for it. Now? Now the hunt was on!

"Who the hell are you!" Alain called over his shoulder as he raced up the rickety staircase to the very top of the archives, each step creaking in protest under his weight, aware with the wooden chorus behind him that he was now being followed. He spun past a monk at the top of the stairs, vaulted over a bench, and scrambled his way up the wide stone steps towards the upper cellar chamber.

Rajashtan, in said chamber, waited by the dismal little algae-covered fountain in the middle, his cloak thrown free, hefting a scimitar-like blade as long as any Zweihander and wider than a halberd head, eyes alight with a hellish flame... He assumed Alain was not only a mere mortal, but also the only one about to confront him.

"Gale Raziya. Forgive me, Father." As she brushed past the monk, mere footsteps behind Alain himself. The bench had fallen over, and she leapt it as if she were a track star, taking the steps two at a time. Barely out of breath as she darted up after the detective, sweet hunter's smile curving her lips. She simply pointed at the demon then, voice ringing like a bell. "Ut qu?ties tri?mphum div?nae humnilit?tis, quae sup?rbiam nostri hostis dejecit."* Bravado? It was possible.

The words made no sense to Alain, though Kael understood them pretty clearly. It didn't matter. This little demon was toast. "You know I'm here for more than the books," Alain said, coming at him in a great curving arc to the right, and Rajashtan smiled wickedly as he cast the books off to one side... and Alain stepped on the outer edge of a great ritual circle just as he was drawing his pistol. A blasphemy far beyond a demon in an abbey - the same demon in the same place using Hellish Arcana to call an idiot devil into his service.

In a flash of red light a hulking creature with mottled red and brown skin, a broad, neckless head, stumpy, horny black wings, and sickly yellow, curly ram's horns appeared before Alain, let loose a saliva-flecked bellow, and knocked Alain tumbling backwards with a sweep of his arm. His gun clattered and slid across the room - leaving Rajashtan to engage Gale Raziya unhindered.

"A half-breed... how quaint," he sneered, twirling his blade three times as he closed the distance.

And yet Raziya smiled. It was not pride to be confident in the One who made you, if you chose to serve. As she did. Her blade was rather unassuming. A longsword, much like a knight or a Templar might wield in the service of the Church. Cross hilt, though there looked like amber in the center. Amber that moved. It only looked like amber. Had there been any true stone in that centerpiece, it had been removed long ago, and replaced with a vial of blessed chrism. Presumably the blade had been anointed with the same. "So lacking in faith are you in your service to your master, that you had to call a dog? How low you have fallen, demon."

"A dog to dispatch the rat," Rajashtan scowled and brought his blade crashing down in a great, powerful arc towards Raziya's head.

Alain, meanwhile, was recovering from his tumble. He felt dazed, but with Kael's insistence urging and perhaps some subtle aid, scrambled to his feet and out of the way of another charging swing from the monstrous devil. He backpedaled one slash from the monster's claws, then another as he drew the sword Lilinbane - and plunged it then into the thing's shoulder. It was not his clumsy knowledge of swords, but instead Kael's, that guided his hands. The man's lips curled as he pivoted, twisted the sword out, down, and swung it back up to lop off the devil's arm at the elbow.

Not just a pretty face, but some skill as well. Longsword versus Zweihander was not a particularly fair fight, but that was neither here nor there. Raziya ducked it, gone tumbling out of the way. She lifted the blade in a practiced, guarded motion, murmuring a prayer to St. Michael beneath her breath. Part devotion. Partly because it would annoy the dickens out of the demon, as well she knew.

The devil screamed when Alain twisted the blade around again, his eyes now a grey, stormy rage, and when he plunged the sword into its chest, it burst into flame, disappearing in another flash - in the deep shadows it created, one could swear great wings extended from the mortal man's back...

It was a fatal moment of distraction for Rajashtan as he swung his blade sideways at the woman and turned his head towards the flash, and the surprising turn of events in the supposed nature of this mere man, mid-swing.

No torture. No anger, though there was a bit of triumph in her gaze. She had not missed Alain's little display, but her focus was on the demon. Another one of those quick, ferretlike movements as she danced back, away from the demon's sword, and she lobbed her sword at the demon's neck. Jerking her head to the side, towards the subject of Alain's quest. Her movement and its meaning were clear. Get the books! Get what you came for!

"Urk!" The gargled cry escaped the demon's throat, his neck cut halfway through, and somehow he still managed not to die, his abilities moving his arms jerkily to claw at his throat although his spine had been severed. He sank to his knees, already pooling blood.

"I take it you know the drill - head, heart, and eyes," Alain spoke as he crossed the room, passing her and the doomed Rajashtan to collect the two volumes. The covers aren't in good shape... "Oh, Brother Mann won't be pleased..."

"I usually find a good burning suffices, but I can see why that might not be appropriate here." Not in a small monastery that held a rare library within its catacombs. Raziya reared back and drove another vicious slash through the demon's neck, muscles working beneath the leather. "O enemy, thy destructions are finished forever!" The partial psalm she quoted dissolved into murmuring as she knelt to saw through the rib cage into the demon's chest, and pull out the grisly black lump of an organ from within it.

"The eyes are my favorite part," Alain muttered sarcastically as he hefted the books into a satchel under his coat, then set about cleaning and putting away the blade Lilinbane. "Gale Raziya. I've... been told the name's Celestially inspired, though..." His lips quirked towards an ironic little smile. "...an interesting choice."

"My father named me for Metatron. And they say angels have no sense of humor. Whoever they are, are wrong." With a delicate little snort at that, before she grimaced. Apparently the laws were different here. "They actually have to be removed? Do you know why?" She rose, leaving her grisly package at her feet, and removed a cloth from a pouch at her waist, to clean her own blade.

Alain moved over to take care of it himself, drawing a trench knife from his calf as he crouched by the severed head. "Something to do with unlocking the demon's spells - think it also makes it possible to revive the body, in the wrong hands..." One was removed, then the other, both dropped into a pouch.

"You know anything about Rajashtan?" He remained in his crouch and looked up and over from it at her, his eyes filled with a... guarded curiosity.

"Only what I was told. That he was taking orders from a very evil being and needed to be disposed of." The young woman shrugged, and slid her sword back in its sheath.

That made Alain grin. "Well, aren't you a do-gooder... Still, though. Good to hear the Architect has a few enemies." He stood, then, to offer his right hand to her, and if she paid attention and read Celestial marks, she or the one guiding her might recognize the mark of Kael... "I'm Alain, Baron of Sainte-Ouen, Head of House DeMuer... and you and I, Raziya, have much to discuss."

Her brows rose. She had been given some education in Celestial. Stripping off one of the gloves that had shielded her from demonic blood, and offering it out in turn. "Do we? Interesting. I imagine the least I can do is hear you out. Since you had my back."

He turned his head from her suddenly when he heard voices echoing up the stairs and the footsteps of concerned, potentially displeased monks. "...We should get moving. We'll have our little chat somewhere else."


*Translation from Latin: "How often the divine humility has triumphed, casting out the pride of our enemy."

Taken from live play. My thanks to Alain's player.