Upon waking up, Misra’s vision was filled with a strange mesh pattern. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she realized it was just the sleeping accommodation that was situated above the one that she had collapsed in the previous night. Through a crack in the ceiling, she was able to identify that the sun was currently just above, putting the time around midday. The shelter wasn’t too active right now other than people who seemed to be just finishing up their lunch.

Sitting up, Misra scanned her body for any injuries and then quickly checked on her things, ensuring that she still had her notes. It seemed as though someone had gone through them, messing up their placement a little bit, but other than that, everything seemed to be perfectly fine. Looking around, she found that she was almost completely alone. There was no one else in the “beds” around the shelter, but sitting almost directly across from her was someone shrouded in shadow. All that Misra could make out about them was that their right eye was glowing.

Misra sat up and made her way over to them. After a few steps, they looked up at her and stepped forward, revealing themself in their entirety. Misra stopped and smiled as the person came up and hugged her.

“It’s really great to see you again, Avery…” Misra said softly before breaking their embrace.

Avery smiled up at her and nodded. “It’s great to see you too!”

Now that she was standing right in front of her, Misra was able to get a better look at Avery. Since she’d transitioned, she hadn’t actually seen the daughter of Strataros. All of the info she’d gotten had been through letters. Before, Avien had stood around an inch taller than her, but now Avery was around two inches shorter than her. Her face looked almost exactly the same, but was a little rounder and her nose was a little smaller now. Everything from the neck down had become much softer and more feminine all around. Misra was a little surprised at the size of her chest, but then she remembered the photos that she had seen of Maria and it all made sense. She also noticed Avery had gained a bit more muscle to her arms. Before she had been quite skinny, but now she looked a little more muscular. Knowing that she was dating Lilith, it made a lot of sense that would be the case.

Once she was done examining Avery’s new body, she noticed that her face was rather flush. Misra chuckled softly. “Sorry, I just hadn’t seen you since you transitioned, so I had to check you out, ya know?”

Avery nodded, averting her eyes and trying to regain her composure a bit. “R-Right… Yeah… Uh… Well… Here’s me…”

Misra smiled and gave Avery a quick hug. “Are you happy?”

“Yeah… I really am…”

“Then that’s all that matters. Now, I assume there’s a reason you’re here?” Misra asked.

Avery held out a notebook which seemed to contain a map of the mortal world with all kinds of points all over. “If all of my searching has proved as effective as I hope it has, Ezrael should be pretty close by. I’ve been tracking sightings of a person with his description and all roads have led me here. There seems to be a high concentration of sightings of him here and the timing for them is usually after he’s sighted elsewhere which leads me to believe he has set up camp here or something to that effect.”

Misra examined the notes closely, seeing how her brother had likely been going all over the place to try and help the mortals. A soft smile crept on to her face as she realized that the brother she would find would not be the same person that she lost all those years ago. But she was different too. Would Ezrael even recognize her?

“Ready to head out?” Avery asked as Misra handed her back the notebook.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

Misra slung her bag over her shoulder and the two exited the shelter, heading out in to the city. Avery had narrowed the place where Ezrael most likely had a place to stay set up to around a mile radius centered right around the shelter where Misra had been. Avery admitted sheepishly that she was very happy that she’d run in to Misra since Avery couldn’t search for underground tunnels like Misra could and, if he was underground, Avery would likely have missed him.

“I thought you were good at sensing auras?” Misra asked.

“W-Well yeah, I like to think I am and I have my observer’s eye, but I don’t really default to looking for things underground and with an observer’s eye, you have to actually intend to try and find things underground which I likely would have completely forgotten to do and just ended up searching the surface,” she replied, laughing nervously.

The two continued on through the city in mostly silence. Misra tried to make some small talk by asking about how Avery and Lilith’s relationship was going, but there wasn’t much interesting happening on that front. Things were going really well for the both of them and they were really happy together.

After a few hours of searching, the two decided to take a quick break for some food. Misra hadn’t had anything to eat all day and apparently Avery hadn’t been eating all that much while on her travels. They stopped by a café and ordered some food, not talking too much while they ate.

Once they finished up, they exited the building and were immediately met by the ground shaking. In the distance, they could make out dark grey smoke and flames all around.

“We’ve gotta go help,” Avery said, drawing her swords.

Misra nodded and pulled out her sword as well. “There’s also a really good chance that Ezrael will be there. These are exactly the kind of things that he’s been responding to all over, right?”

Avery smiled and the two began running towards the large creature in the distance that was tearing up the city, hoping to find Ezrael.