Could we please get a fidus achates update? 👀
The next chapter isn't ready but enjoy a snippet!
“Th-there was an attack,” Charlie stammered, voice thick with emotion. She still had Alastor's hand gripped in hers. “Lute fired a weapon, Adam’s guitar, I think? I’m—I’m not sure, but Alastor, his shadow,” she choked on a sob. “It got in the way and it just, it was suddenly gone and, and then Alastor was screaming, everything was screaming, and he wasn’t responding when I got to him, and he looked like he was in so much pain, but—but he wouldn’t—”
“Breathe, Charlie,” Belphagor’s raspy voice said, soothing but firm, as she clapped a hand on her shoulder. “I need you to focus.”
Vaggie stepped forward, grabbing Charlie’s other hand in a show of comfort, which Charlie curled into. “It’s just like she said, ma'am. Lute fired Adam’s guitar at us. It’s not like the rest of our--the Exorcists weapons. It’s…” Vaggie hesitated, at a loss. “I don’t know, I’ve never gotten too close to it. It harness energy or something. Directs it. But Al, his,” her eyes darted to Alastor and back and she swallowed, “it took the hit and just...disintegrated. Burned up, or something. I--I don’t know I didn't see all of it."
Though she was back to examining Alastor’s body, Belphagor nodded and hummed. “And his shadow, it was corporeal?"
“So it moved on its own?”
Belphagor nodded again. “Shadow magic is a complicated art. Getting it to move at all requires years of practice and too much personal energy to make it worth it to most practioners.” She pressed her fingers to Alastor’s sternum then down to his stomach and back. “How close was he to the blast?”
“Alastor?” Vaggie thought for a minute. “I’m—I’m not sure. It all happened so fast.”
“Ten feet, I reckon’” Husk piped in, off to the side with the rest of the group, hovering near the edge uncertainly, as if worried about getting too close. “Maybe fifteen. He wasn’t with the rest of us.”
Belphagor’s head snapped to him. “But his shadow intervened?”
“It did,” Angel Dust added, “right before that light, whatever the fuck that was, hit us.” His eyes drifted to Alastor and he looked away, sniffed, and rubbed quickly at his eyes. He laughed weak and watery, “Was a hell of a surprise. Didn’t think Smiles had it in him.”
Belphagor studied him carefully, then the rest of them, her expression slowly narrowed, sharpening with a focus her otherwise lazy demeanor didn’t mirror.
“How animated was his shadow?” she asked slowly, enunciating every word carefully as if to make sure they understood the importance of the question.
