Angels and Demons

Maahes tensed when he felt Princess Rose tap his shoulder, and when he did turn to face her, he felt heat rise up to his face in embarrassment. "My name is Maahes," he said. He sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. "We met back in that forest. I, uh, was a little kid back then, and was definitely hard to deal with, so I'm sorry for that-"

As he finished speaking, he was bombarded by a sudden burst of cold air. This was followed by a rather ominous mist rolling out from the darkness of the forest. It easily blanketed the ground and impaired his normally great vision - he knew immediately that something was horribly wrong.

"If this is a ghost, I'm going to lose it," Edward said, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Maahes didn't bother to point out that he wouldn't be able to punch a ghost. "This is the worst possible time for a partial to show up-"

A figure appeared in the darkness.

Aquarius immediately ducked behind Griffith, who was staring, petrified, at the newcomer. They finally reached the very edge of the forest, and it was then that Maahes got his first good look at them. And Maahes, who was quite scary in his actual form, felt a jolt of terror when he saw what they looked like.

He was dressed like he were from some sort of carnival. He had never been afraid of clowns or the circus, but seeing the man's painted face suddenly pop out of the darkness when Maahes knew he was defenseless made him feel absolutely terrified. To add onto it, the man had spiky black hair underneath his hat, and eyes were red - add this together with his tail and horns, and it was clear this man was a demon.

"Hello," the man said, his voice deep, intimidating and incredibly creepy. Was this the person who had brought them here and done this to them? He certainly seemed to play the part.

The temperature dropped several more degrees. Ice had begun to crawl across the forest floor, and Maahes honestly wouldn't have been surprised if it had started snowing.

Aquarius screamed.

Loudly.

"Aquarius-" the man started to say, his voice suddenly at least an octave higher, but this only made Aquarius scream even louder than before.

"You-You know my name!" Aquarius said. From where Maahes was standing, he could see tears forming in the corner of Aquarius's wide, terrified eyes.

"Aquarius, calm down-"

Aquarius just sobbed in response and wrapped his tail around his legs, leaving Griffith to awkwardly stand there as the man left the forest and walked right over to the two. Tail swishing behind him, the man came to a stop only a foot in front of Aquarius and Griffith - yet another scream left Aquarius's mouth.

The temperature suddenly jumped back up, and the mist began to recede back into the forest. "Rius, it's okay," the man softly said. "I'm not going to hurt you. I promise."

Aquarius stared at the man. "Ze-Zeph?"

The man nodded, and a second later Aquarius was throwing his arms around him and pulling him into a tight embrace.

Spoiler

This is what the new character looks like, but with short, spiky black hair, no scepter, and with black horns and a tail.

Rose listened to this and then walked up. She was shivering violently, her eyes were wide and she was pale. She had a hard time walking she was shivering so violently. It wasn't just from the cold.

"Are you responsible for this mist?"

The mist completely receded back into the forest and then into nothingness. The newcomer gave a nod, holding Aquarius close to him. Grim watched him nervously; it wasn't Télos. The personality and nickname didn't match, though the differences in appearance could easily be equated to him being changed the same way they were.

"I was responsible for it," the man confirmed, holding Aquarius in his arms as he turned to look at Rose. His face paint wasn't all that terrifying compared to what Grim normally looked like, but it still was a bit hard to take him seriously with it. "I just cooled the temperatures to make the right weather conditions for it."

He turned his attention back to Aquarius. "You look like a demon, too," he said, taking a step back and looking him over. "Did you change your form?"

Aquarius frantically shook his head.

"I woke up like this," he informed him. "You-You didn't either, right?"

So this man was a god, then? It would explain the magic; Aquarius had water magic, and Télos had control over gold. But who was he? He tried to remember all the people that both of them had mentioned in that mansion, but couldn't put a name to the man's painted face.

"I didn't," the man confirmed. He glanced down at his outfit, then back up at Aquarius. "I just thought I'd play the part to get some answers."

Rose narrowed her eyes. Something was wrong here. She still trembled. "And the trees? Are those your fault as well?" She demanded.

I'll admit that it relieved me to find that Damascus' troubles arose from sources unrelated to myself. I was moderately disgusted that such a thing should bring me relief, but I tried to brush both feelings aside, for the moment.

"It'll be alright." I told Damascus, warmly. "We'll work out this whole physical transformation, trans-dimensional abduction business together. It's nothing we haven't dealt with before. Well, maybe not the transformation... but I have every confidence that we'll all be just-"

In merely seconds, a thick mist flooded the forest floor, and with it a pervasive chill that permeated the scene more completely than it had any right to, for how little time it had been there. These phenomena were the heralds of a new figure, whose dulcet tones may have been impressive, had they not come from a demon clown.

A demon clown, whose appallingly tacky garments should have defused any credibility he may have otherwise possessed, and yet still he succeeded in spooking Aquarius, the skittish oaf.

"-Fine." I finished, irritably.

Equally miraculous as the spooking, I was able to overlook this atrocious display enough to take in what he said thereafter.

He would have had us believe that despite his unnecessarily theatrical entrance, and admitted involvement in the arrangement of this scheme, he was functionally in the same boat as us. Regarding or disregarding my strong suspicions, I did not want to share any sort of boat with the demon clown.

On principle, I did not harbour any predetermined ill-will toward demons, or clowns, but I did, on principle, hold ill will toward anyone who paired wide black and white stripes with highly saturated red. I had not even started on the face paint, and already I had no desire to look upon it any further. I turned to Sevy and Damascus.

"What do you make of that?" I asked, not bothering to suppress my repulsion.

Though he was filled with a warmth of graditude toward both his friends and their reassurances, Damascus was quickly distracted as his attention became fixed on the newcomer.

Studying the scene for a moment, he glanced at Boris precariously.

"Well, he certainly seems very..." trailing off, he cleared his throat, gesturing with both hands vaguely.

"Dramatic. And not in the pleasant way, either." Sevy deadpanned, taking in the gaudy makeup and outfit. "I'm glad he can find some sort of fun in this situation." He fiddled with his tail a bit hyperactively (if not hypocritically) as his said this, whipping it in circles.

After watching Sevy's tail swing around several times, Damascus gently reached out a hand to still it.

"...so, are you still a kid, or-" Rose was cut off by some rando appearing from the trees with a bunch of fog. She looked over at the disturbance, as did Stan and Raiden. The latter of which began picking his nose.

As the interaction ended, with Rose being mildly more irritated than before at being cut off twice, Raiden popped up nearby Aquarius.
"Man, you got scared for this clown? Like, this guy? W e a k," he said, looking over the demon clown with an air of detachment.

Stan meanwhile sighed. This was such a drag.

Maahes took the opportunity to slip over to Princess Rose's side and answer the question she had been in the middle of trying to ask prior to the sudden entrance. "I'm not a kid anymore," he said, giving her a small smile. "I'm a lot older than that, actually."

He didn't say the specific amount of years - he didn't want to overwhelm her.

Meanwhile, the newcomer had been just about to answer the other Rose's question when Raiden had suddenly decided to interrupt by popping up near Aquarius. And to Grim and Edward, who were both standing a short distance away, it seemed like Raiden had gone a step too far when talking to Aquarius. Edward didn't think that the comment was all that purposeful; Raiden sounded more than a little bored when speaking.

But then the temperature sharply dropped, and he could see his breath in the air again.

This was quickly followed by ice spreading across the ground, radiating out from underneath the newcomer's feet. And while his outfit may have been...lacking when it came to the fear department, this impressive show of magic sent shivers down both of their spines.

"What did you just say about Aquarius?" the newcomer asked, his voice taking on a dangerous tone. He went to take a step towards Raiden, but was promptly stopped by Aquarius grabbing onto his arm.

"Zeph, don't," he begged.

The temperatures hesitantly began to rise, and the ice very, very slowly began to recede. "But he insulted you, Rius."

"It's okay," Aquarius quietly reassured him. "I think he just wants to get into a fight with someone, and he thought I was an easy target."

"Well, he's going to get a fight if he keeps saying stuff like that-"

"Remus," Aquarius said, and it was this name that seemed to get him to finally calm down. The ice disappeared, and the temperatures returned to normal.

"You're on thin ice," the newcomer told Raiden, before turning around and looking Rose in the eye. "I didn't have anything to do with the trees - I can't. I can only do what my magic allows."

He paused for a moment, then added with a little bow, "Zephyrus, god of ice and twin brother to Aquarius, at your service."

Rose rolled her eyes, growled, and returned to a tree. She leaned against it, her face drawn.

I met Zephyrus' introduction with a look of resigned disdain.

"More gods. Delightful. If he is a part of Kartiel and Rendra's lot, I am going home." I said.

Jokes aside, I intended to keep a careful eye on him.
It did not take a man of great intelligence to deduce that he knew more than he would ever deliberately let on.
But eventually, inevitably, he would reveal something, and I intended to catch it when he did.

Rose began to melt into the tree, ignoring everyone else.

James watched the new arrivals with a quiet annoyance. Raiden was being Raiden. The man with the facepaint, hideous outfit, and ice magic clearly had anger problems, or at the very least, issues keeping a cool head. And were he more inclined to laugh at puns, he would've been amused with himself at the irony.

He stepped forward, looking around at the forest with a careful gaze.

"Wonderful," he said dryly. "Welcome. We were just discussing our options and decided to explore the ground around this building that most of us woke up in with the simple goal of finding out more information and potentially finding the person or people responsible for bringing us here and making us something we're not. I still think it'd be a good idea to explore the building -" he said, glancing back at Edward. "I know staying together feels safest, but not everything is always what it seems. In situations like these, we cannot discount the unlikely. For all we know, there could be something hidden in the building, or there could be something small and simply out of sight that could be of use. Considering how little answers we have, it'd be wise to explore even the most meaningless of leads. Because the truth is, we don't know where to start. The moment we put all of our fates in the hands of our assumptions, we might miss something. So if most of you are content being out here, I'll take a look around the church with Engel. The rest of you look out for each other as you-" he stopped abruptly as he looked at the young girl who was backing into the trees.

"What the hell?" he muttered. "Rose, get over here! I'm for splitting up into smaller groups. Not going off alone."

"I see your point," Edward argued, trying to ignore how Rose was currently melting into a tree - he lived with a grim reaper. After doing that for awhile, you tended to get pretty used to any possible craziness that could occur. "But we don't want to waste time, and the one place something might have been hidden was around the altar. I checked it out when I woke up behind it. No one would want to put something anywhere else in the room - it just doesn't make any sense."

It felt wrong to be arguing with James of all people. They were brothers. They were meant to support each other, but he also had nearly a year of working with and for Schadel under his belt. Would he have wanted to search the church if there was more time? Yes. But they didn't know if this was going to become permanent after a certain amount of time, or if the person who might have brought them here was getting farther and farther away the longer they argued.

He turned back to the others in the group, hoping that one of them would back him up. But Griffith and Maahes were both staring at Rose with wide eyes, and Aquarius and Zephyrus were in the middle of talking to each other.

"Who are Kartiel and Rendra?" Zephyrus asked, turning to his brother. Edward had been wondering the same thing, but hadn't thought of asking yet because there were so many other things he needed to put his attention to.

Aquarius shook his head. "I don't know," he quietly admitted.

Zephyrus frowned. "They can't really be gods...right? There's only so many of us now. Wouldn't someone have heard of them-" He paused, then gave a small smile. "Actually, I see the hypocrisy. We were both unheard of for years."

Aquarius returned it with a small one of his own, but then the smile quickly faded. "There's people from other worlds here, Zeph," he whispered. "I-I don't think they're from Minecraftia, or even Earth."

Zephyrus's red eyes widened.

James closed his eyes as Edward retorted again. When Edward finished, James opened them and held Edward's gaze. Already, he was anticipating Edward's arguments to every point that he could come up with in his head, and it was all exhausting. If Edward had a point about anything, it was about time. They didn't know if they were working on a ticking clock. So with a glare, he resigned.

"Fine," he said curtly, turning to the forest, already walking to lead the others around the building.

If Edward wanted to go forward, it was on him if they missed something.

Rose fell out of the tree, pale and trembling. She was shaking violently and her eyes were wide.

"Those trees, they are so happy, but they look so weird." She noticed all the stares.

"I left out the fact that I'm a dryad." She said, sheepishly.