The Devil's Crown

LXI One More Day.

The strength that appeared out of thin air during the heist, all vanished the moment that he returned to the comfort of his bed. He couldn’t explain the feeling as he felt himself bleed all the strength as he reached home.

To his luck, Joanna and his mother were already in deep sleep. No one came to witness his miserable state as he stumbled his way to his room. Throwing himself on the bed to collapse.

*The blood on your clothes,* Orathan had pointed out.

Elfric couldn’t argue, not to mention that he had a point. His family will most probably be up way before him, and the last thing that he needed was to be seen in an outfit full of blood. Putting it in the laundry didn’t seem like an option either. He had no other choice but to burn it.  He collapsed in the bed again after he took off his clothing, sleeping in nothing but his undergarments.

“MOM!” Joanna yelled the next morning, finding her half-dead brother in his room. “Rick is sleeping in his underwear again! I-I think he is sick!” she ran out to her mother.

The comfy apartment was small, Lorena could hear her daughter's voice since she was in the room. For a second, she was ready to nag her oldest son on being careless again.

“Your sister is still young!” she always told him.

But then she heard her say that he was sick, her heart sank to her knees. “Are you sure he is sick?” Lorena quoted as she blocked her daughter’s way before she got to her.

“I think so…”

Lorena stepped past her and got to Rick’s room. His breathing was heavy his pale face was flushed with fever. His beautiful eyes were shut but she doubted that he was sleeping. She eyed his body and thought against trying to get the blanket from underneath him.

“Joanna, can you get me your cover?” She asked and Joanna scattered and got what she was asked.

A pink flower pattern didn’t go well with him, but it wasn’t like he would care at this moment. His mother tucked him in, she was reminded by the old days when it was just the two of them and all the struggle that she had to go through to bring him into the world. Halfway through her pregnancy, she was asked by her doctor to not have much hope for the baby's survival…it was his father that told her to never lose hope, that a healthy baby will be born.

And he was right, the moment that her eyes fell upon his pale skin for the first time, she thought she gave birth to a fairy. His beautiful eyes…heterochromia, the doctor said. Nevertheless, it was a disease but how when it looked so beautiful.

Lorena was happy for the memories by she was by no means happy to see her son in such a state. After doing all the essentials, of cooling his flaming body and tugging his half-naked skin, there was nothing left to do. She can’t force medicine down his throat.

“Joanna, I think you should skip school today,” she said, shutting the door behind her slowly. “Your brother isn’t going to be able to go for a few days at least.”

“Eh?! But I just got back to school!” Joanna protested. “I don’t see why I can’t go because Rick is sick?!”

“Little lady you are not going to walk to school alone without your brother and that’s final,” Lorena firmly said as she glared at her daughter. No way in the world was she going to let her walk the slums alone.

Joanna was silent for a moment as she registered her mother’s words. She saw the truth in them after she recalled the fear she feels when Elfric used to walk a little bit ahead of her. It took her a lot of power to hold him back from beating a drunken man to death after he pulled her wrist. She felt the creeps travel down her spine, remembering how it felt to be yanked by a stranger.

She nodded in defeat. Her mother sighed as she got back into the kitchen. Joanna stared at the door of Rick’s room, wondering what might have happened the night before that he got him in this state.

Elfric however was aware of everything that was going on around him, but he had no strength to open his eyes. So, he allowed himself to be handled by his mother this once.

*Are you dying?* Orathan had no choice but to ask seeing him in that state.

“You won’t get rid of me this easily…” that was the last thing he remembered uttering before he allowed himself to be devoured by sleep.

~~~~

West could see the change in the atmosphere in the warehouse after they have gotten back. They were worried for a couple of days after the heist, the feeling that they were going to be ambushed at any moment was eating at their inside.

*What if they were followed all the way here?!* they tried to not think of it too much.

“If they knew where we are why would they wait till now,” West tried to calm them down. It was logical and yet he also had a hard time swallowing it down.

Samael was nowhere to be found or heard off. Handling the Rebels with his sudden vanish was no easy work. They all had questions that needed answers, West included. Nevertheless, he was thankful that he was back in the comfort of his damp warehouse underneath the rusting metal and leaking roof. It was falling apart but it was still better than any luxuries hotel he had been into, the security that he felt here among his own kind felt good.

Trying to convince them that Samael was going to return when needed was outrageous. Well, he couldn’t blame them. They didn’t have some sort of email that he can reach out to him with, and as far as he knows neither does Samael. But after all, that has been done…all that he has done it wasn’t logical to doubt him now.

Just like how he appeared amidst the dim lights of the basement in the hotel, he will do it again. He has his ways for sure, there was no other explanation.

Not even in his wildest dreams would West imagine that Samael was knocked out half-naked in his bed and getting pampered by his mother. The long-awaited recovery…much needed to say the least.

West ordered the halt of all the other jobs, he had no energy neither physical nor mental to try and get anything done. There was no mistaking that Allen and the others were thankful for it too. Scarlet, however…

After the recklessness that she has caused, almost getting one of them arrested, and risking the ruin of the whole plan by acting stubborn and out of place. One can only imagine the kind of scolding she got from West after they got back.

“Your only job was to get us in there and that was it!” West yelled out, the others outside the room could only hear muffled screams. “That was it! You had to stay put and wait for it to wait! What if someone noticed your disappearance! Or see you talk to one of us, Scarlet?! Did you think what would happen to us?!”

Back then, she stood silently staring at her boots as she took it all in. “Your childish acts have almost gotten Zach caught!” he added. “You were going to get out with the rest of the Nobles, Scarlet. That was what you already knew before going in there!”

The lecture went on and on, Scarlet felt herself on the edge of crying but that wasn’t her right. She came to that conclusion after she got to the warehouse the next morning. Julian, Allen, Margret, all of them were too weak to go back to their homes and collapsed on the rough floor. The hardness of their own floor had a magical way that knocked them all out the moment they collapsed, West didn’t feel like waking them up either.

It all felt like a dream, one day…seemed like the impossible was possible. A miracle, that was what they called it. Though hoping for miracles wasn’t one of their expertise but there was no other way to refer to the mystical appearance of Samael.

Would they have gotten out of it if it hadn’t been for him? They doubted that.

Rationally speaking, they would have been doomed before reaching halfway. The underground tunnels…the very notion that they were ignorant to its existence was scary.

The blood-stained tunnel, stocked with the dead bodies of the White Cross…that would have been them if it weren’t for the Devil – there was no calling Samael an angel – no angel is this brutal. Even so, their foe wasn’t a saint either.

Just one more day. One more day of cooling down, and they are going to do everything that needs to be done.