I am some feet off the ground, so while I don’t dare tear my gaze away from his, I have enough presence of mind to realize this means he is floating. Or maybe he’s like a mountain goat.
It takes a great effort to not laugh in his face at that image, but I just manage.
Possibly I am getting hysterical. In my defense, it has been aday.
“Many would call that idea heretical, or at the least treasonous,” Nariel says softly.
He’s trying to scare me, and I am imagining him arranged sideways on a mountain with goats.
I need to take this seriously. It’s tempting to think I can’t possibly get myself in deeper shit than I already am, but—hmm, no, actually that’s probably true.
That thought is both liberating and abruptly sobering.
So I lean in, and I don’t blink when I say, “Angels aren’t gods or rulers, and what magic one person can work, another person can unwork.”
His eyes narrow. “You’re not stupid. You know you should be concerned about the angels deciding you’re a problem—“ He stops. “No. The plague spell?”
“The plague spell,” I confirm grimly, sitting back. Well, at least now I know for sure he’s not stupid, either. Even if I didn’t really expect him to catch up with me that fast. A fallen angel has a lot of time to practice making connections, I guess.
Hopefully my fallen angel being smart won’t work against me?
Welp, I’m in trouble.
“Whoever caused that plague had access to angelic magic,” I explain. “High Earth is so used to thinking of angels as... like benevolent gods, basically, that Evram must have looked over the key rune a thousand times and never really considered what it meant.” I cock my head. “Come to think of it, insisting I resolve it myself did him a favor, because it preserves his relationship with the angels if they learn it was me who undid it.”
“But it puts you already on the angels’ shit list, if they were in fact directly involved,” Nariel points out.
I shrug. “If they weren’t, a High Earth mage managed to con their magic out of them, and while I’m sure you understand Ihave a high estimation of human abilities, that doesn’t actually seemmorelikely to me.”
The shadows in his eyes swirl again. “That’s why you could solve the spell.”
I nod. “Once I realized my world could absolutely hold magic too, the narrative that angels were Low Earth wizards’ saviors—because in exchange for the spell to supposedly save our world, they required High Earth to train us so we learn how not to die—fell apart too, even if I don’t know why they would require that otherwise.” I pause, thinking through the implications of what little Nariel has told me. “Ah. Magic conveniently gathered into humans would make it easy for us to become a magic source for spirits, wouldn’t it? That’s why they want to make sure we learned to expel it.”
Nariel watches me as he answers, “Yes. Spirits could eat you to power up. It’s much easier than absorbing a little from the surrounding environment.”
I have to ask. “Have you eaten many humans?”
He rolls his eyes. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Have you enslaved many spirits?”
I open my mouth and close it again. Consider. “No. But not none. It was part of my training, and in High Earth I did whatever I was told even if I disagreed.”
“And have you since you returned to Low Earth? You clearly had questions, and that would have been a way to get answers and power. Even if you could only bind a lesser spirit with the power available to you.”
Does that mean I could theoretically bind him? Maybe not, if he’s actually an angel. I’ll have to think through the theory for longer than a second on that one. But a binding is technically a contract, and I can’t imagine what I would have to offer for a demon of his power to agree.
“No,” I answer. “The more I thought about the terms of the binding, the less I liked it.”
Nariel nods. “And I have not eaten the flesh of any humans, but there have been occasions, either after battles with mages or when drained of magic near to the point of death, that I have in turn drained them of their magic and killed them.”
I think about that for a minute, and he waits.
I finally ask, “So your first thought when you look at me is not that I’m food?”
His amusement this time is more obvious. “No.”
