The Kingdom of Solis’ churches were apparently sanctuaries made to worship The Queen of Soils, Lynier and her beliefs. Apparently it all began with her trying to convert people’s faith toward The God Aria to her, a mere queen.. Yes, it sounds a bit ridiculous for a queen to have whole churches dedicated to her. But as unusual as the situation was, the two have had a dispute for several years. There have been a lot of rumors going around about it, but it’s unsure to the public what it's really about. 

Anyhow the church was located at a top hill a bit further away from the village, which seemed a bit weird to have a church located further away from the village. As Cyrus began to approach the church they noticed a lot of guards guarding the area surrounding it, and they began walking more cautiously just in case. But honestly that made the guards pay even more attention to them. From up close, the rustic looking church with wild leaves bushes and trees around, looked more charming than from afar, but with that charm came a chilling gaze that felt somewhat sinister. It was the church's priest and it’s followers who had been keeping an eye on Cyrus. It seemed like Cyrus wasn’t welcome there.

The priest walked over to Cyrus and looked at them with a petty look on his face. It seems like this attitude is common with the people living here.. Cyrus being a bit discouraged with this repetitive manner that the people here have been showing, just went straight to the point.

“Excuse me good sir, I’ve come here to meet the knights assigned to.. these incidents that have been happening here.” Cyrus starts the conversation with a smile.

The priest sighs and presses his hands against his head as if he was having this huge headache.

“Look youngster, I do not care as to what business you have with The Knights but I advise you now to leave the premises of the church, for we do not accept the likes… of you here.” The priest replies.

‘Hah??’ What was this bullshit Cyrus was hearing? They do not accept the likes of them? Cyrus honestly felt dumbfounded and they were not having that shitty excuse, so thought to ignore the priest, run past him and enter the church regardless. The plan was ‘perfect’ but they needed to execute the plan perfectly to not get caught. 

“You know what sir?” Cyrus asked the priest.

“..What..?” The priest looks at Cyrus with a stern look.

“You’re right, by being here I’m just tainting this place with my presence so I’ll be taking my leave now.” Cyrus says with slight sarcasm in their tone.

“...” The Priest seemed to be a little surprised, maybe he thought that Cyrus would argue about it or something. 

“Hmph as you should, now get going.” The Priest watched Cyrus slowly leave then started to head back to the church himself. Little did he know Cyrus was planning this whole thing. Cyrus turned around and started running towards the church, even passing the startled priest.

Finally Cyrus reached the very long door of the church, but that had led them to problem number two; It was guarded by knights.

“Halt! State your name and business!” One of the guards said while blocking the door.

‘Well crap.’ Cyrus nervously thought to themselves.

“If you do not state your business, unfortunately we will have to ask you to leave.” 

The mint haired youngster started sweating nervously not knowing what to do, since using force on these big, muscular, armed men was totally out of the question because of Cyrus’ petite figure. While the priest had also arrived angrily to scold Cyrus, a new character appeared from behind the church’s long door.

“Oh..?” the character says.

From the shadows of the long door they seemed like a young man dressed fancily and looked somewhat familiar to Cyrus.. He comes into light and oh! It was the arrogant and rude man Cyrus had met on their way to the village!

‘Oh no… Gods please spare me…’ Cyrus was begging mentally.

“Ahh.. It’s you again.” He says with a fake looking smile with his hands crossed.

Although Cyrus now felt more annoyed than nervous about this situation they suddenly thought they could use this very coincidental coincidence to their advantage. 

“Ahh yes, yes! I remember you from a while back too!” Cyrus replied with a slight nervousness in the back of their mind. 

The young man gets straight to the point, “Yes.. And so, tell me what brings you here.” But then he realizes something, “Ah I got it.” 

“..What did you get?”

“You’re here for the job rewards I mentioned, right?” He continues.

‘The job rewards?’ Then it clicked to Cyrus, they remembered that he had mentioned something like that in their previous conversation. 

“Yeeees of course I remember, you were dissing me for looking like a beggar or something.” Cyrus talks back with a slightly annoyed tone.

Not exactly how the young man had worded it, but that was what it sounded like in Cyrus’ ears. The two guards seemed to notice the slightly bad aura lingering around them, so they awkwardly stayed quiet during their quarrel. 

“Ahem!” The priest suddenly let out a dry cough, and everyone got alarmed but their attention had gotten diverted to the priest like he wanted to. 

“My apologies, Sir Azrael. I did not know this..” The priest points at Cyrus, “Fellow was an acquaintance of yours, please, forgive me.” The priest apologizes, but he seemed to be apologizing only not to disrespect and offend ‘Sir Azrael’. 

“It’s alright, I’m sure they didn’t mind.” Azrael politely replied back as he sarcastically looked at Cyrus. “Right?”

“...”

“Mint haired lad, shall we go?” Azrael asks Cyrus.

“Mm let’s go I guess. Also It’s Cyrus, my name that is.”  

Azrael let out a scoff and replied, “Alright then Cyrus, I’m feeling quite generous today so I’ll be taking you in, so do not mess up.”

“Haha” Cyrus laughs, “It may not look like it, but I have a lot of cards up in my sleeve, so don’t worry since I’ll probably be carrying the whole team.” Cyrus said with utmost confidence. But in the back of their head they already knew that their statement was full of bullshit but just rolled with it, because they felt like this mission involving demons could be somehow beneficial to them finding their memories or just a piece of it. 

Azrael was felt very amazed by Cyrus’ cocky attitude and let out a laugh, and the two of them enter the church together to meet the rest of the crew to finally start solving the mystery surrounding the village.

New surroundings - End

Mysterious incidents - Start

As Cyrus and Azrael entered the church, from Cyrus’ point of view Azrael who was walking  beside them was quite tall and what caught them off was Azrael’s well kept appearance. Nicely styled hair, brown hair with black roots and fancy clothes made out of high-end materials. Cyrus couldn’t help but think that he was obviously from a wealthy family or a leader of an organization. Moreover they certainly couldn’t help but feel slightly more ‘sloppier’ next to a good looking man like Azrael.

As they entered the nave of the church, they walked past all the neatly arranged chairs and entered another room that was located in an isolated corner within the nave. The room they entered was camouflaged in a way where you had to use a magic spell to enter. As the two of them entered the room they were greeted by other Knights that were also assigned to this mission. 

Cyrus immediately noticed that there were at least two other knights with the same uniform as Azrael, they were all wearing the same kind of orange and white uniform that seemed to symbolize the sun. The uniform seemed to represent the organization they were working for. And the rest didn’t have a specific set of uniforms, just outfits that were picked based on their class or job, and based on that speculation there seemed to be a sorcerer, a mage and one more person whose class Cyrus couldn’t tell.

Azrael went behind the large table containing a map of a region that was probably of the region they were currently in and started talking, “Alright everyone let’s start the session.”

As Azrael started talking he first started with the very beginning of the situation just to refresh everyone's memory and to get Cyrus on track.

All of this first started to occur around three or four weeks ago when the village’s people started missing one by one, and afterwards the first humanlike monsters also started appearing. At first, while the villagers were paying attention to this, it wasn’t a major issue since the villagers were able to defend themselves against the monsters. But then one day when they were fighting against the monsters, one of the villagers who had slain a monster made a very disturbing discovery. 

The villagers noticed that some of the ‘monsters’ resembled some of the missing villagers. So all this time the ‘monsters’ they had been slaying were all of the missing villagers but mutated and soulless versions of them. 

Upon learning this, the villagers weren’t capable of fighting them off anymore, so they had contacted the church who had then contacted the knights. Before the knights even arrived, the church's members had conducted a brief investigation on the ‘monsters’ bodies and came to the conclusion that it was likely that demonic magic was used to conduct a ritual on the now deceased and mutated bodies of the villagers. The magic lingering around the bodies was cast by someone who has experience using demonic magic. Thus came the guesses of demons being involved or an experienced individual or cult that practices demonic magic. 

“And that’s it, the full story up until now.” Azrael states, “Does anyone have any questions?”

The crowd talked amongst themselves not speaking up, until a dark skinned lady with short curly hair, wearing a light velvet dress with potions hanging from her waist belt, indicating that she was probably a witch or a sorcerer, spoke up.

“Commander Azrael, I do not particularly have a question related to this mission, but more of who is this little mint haired fellow?” She asks with her arms crossed with a curious look on her face. 

Azrael doesn’t look surprised by her asking the question, “Admiral Evelynn, this mint..- I mean Cyrus, will be acting as my right hand man..” As he said his sentence he hesitated and continued, “Nevermind, they’re more like my personal assistant who is also going to assist us in our mission if necessary.” 

He said all that with doubt, which led the whole room to become silent, but Cyrus was still baffled over Azrael’s comment of them being an ‘assistant’. Cyrus slowly started regretting getting themselves in this situation.. 

“Hm, I see, I suppose I’ll let this matter slide for now.” Admiral Evelynn sighs before finishing her point, “But I hope this ‘assistant’ of yours won’t cause any setbacks for this mission.”

After that ‘tight’ integration, they were slowly putting all of their strategy and information together, and they all went to rest for tomorrow's investigation at the crime scene. 

“Did he really bring me to be his damn assistant..???” Cyrus silently muttered as they were silently following Azrael out of the meeting room. As the two of them walked down the hall Azrael suddenly stopped in the middle of the hall and turned to Cyrus with a confused face. 

“So why are you now following me?” He asks Cyrus had also stopped and was struck with confusion, they didn’t really get what Azrael was getting at. 

“Wait, wait, wait.” Azrael continues, “I get it.” 

“You get what..?” Cyrus replies hesitantly.

“You don’t have a place to stay at, right?” He says with a laugh coming out of his smiling face.

“...” 

Cyrus suddenly froze and felt their whole body getting very hot. They became bright red.

Not that Cyrus felt embarrassed about the fact of them being a wanderer without any place to stay, but when Azrael worded it the way he did with a laugh, they felt some type of embarrassment.

“S-S-SO WHAT??” Cyrus yelled out while doing random hand gestures in the air, “I don’t have a problem with it, why should you??!?” They were desperately trying to justify them not having a place to stay at as they pouted.

Azrael bursts into laughter after being unable to contain it.

“I’m sorry, it’s fine since it was to be expected after all.” He continues to laugh, “You can stay at my place for tonight if you want, that is.” 

Cyrus glares at Azrael angrily but then thinks to themselves, ‘Oh..? What a generous offer!”, but then it clicked, this was all too suspicious. Who would just offer a random person a job with the knights for a classified job and on top of that also give out a place to stay for free? There must be a catch, Cyrus thought. After all there is no-one in this world that would just ‘nicely’ offer so many things to a stranger just like that..

“Hmm.. Then..” Cyrus replied as they spoke up, “This is quite the offer, Is there a catch..?”

Azrael seemed to be taken aback by this question and hummed lightly with a smile on his face, “What do you mean a ‘catch’?”

“Like, honestly, no person would just offer a classified job and a place to stay to some person they met less than a day ago!” Cyrus points out, “So obviously you’d want something out of it.. Right?” 

Azrael seems to be pondering something and giving it a very deep thought “I suppose you’re right.” 

‘I suppose..??? Did he really give this no thought..!??’ Cyrus thought to themselves.

“Anyways I’m just offering you a place out of generosity, so I do not need you to repay me in any way. Nor do I think you’d be able to repay me anyways.” He continues, “So it’s really up to you to decide if you want to come and spend the night at my place.” Azrael shrugs his shoulders and proceeds walking toward the end of the hall.

Shortly afterwards Azrael had reached the end of the hall where the church's large doors were, he looked at Cyrus and waved with a cocky smile and with that, he left. Now Cyrus was left in the church's quiet and dark hall all by themselves to think. Processing all that happened today.. and to decide whether to go stay at Azrael’s house or not..