“Chamuel!”

“Is that Chamuel?”

“He looks like an Angel.”

Weeks had passed since he’d met with Father Bation and Auriel in a blur of paperwork, just there to keep him busy and to “test his abilities,” as Michael said many times. He kept up with as much training as the monotone schedule would allow him, much to everyone’s confusion.

They didn’t understand why he wouldn’t be happy with the “easy job” that he’d been given.

He had tried to make his small section of the office his own, but it was usually littered with paper from files that had been on the island longer than Raphael had been, covering the few decorations he’d accumulated. They got him further through the assignment that Michael had given him. A private assignment, as he’d learned the hard way when he’d almost told Ryan about his work.

She’d shot him a terrified look when he started to say she’d given him work. It had filled his veins with ice; it held an experience he hoped never to understand personally, but he expected he might soon.

He and Auriel only spoke when they were forced to by the others, with whom he was growing close. It was painful trying to relearn everything about the other and learn who each now was. The fantasy of having Evan back had died with the damn tree he was obsessed with.

The gnarled tree had somehow grown worse in time and under Auriel’s intentional care. Its bark was now splintering off from the main tree, and the dirt was buried in a layer of bug carcasses that hadn’t had a trace when he’d been there. It was eating away at Auriel, maybe Evan too; the physical toll it took showed clearly on his body, in his stance, and in his eyes.

With nothing assigned to him, Chamuel decided to explore the small island after a long one-on-one training session with what seemed like the island’s only trainer, on his first day off that he’d gotten. His worries quickly became his reality as he struggled to wander through the thick crowd that seemed drawn to him. Most just seemed excited to see a new face among their ranks, but there were some starstruck as he walked past them.

He did his best to ignore them, focusing on learning the layout and observing those who seemed oblivious to the crowd swarming him. He watched workers glance up and quickly return to their tasks, as if they were afraid of the consequences of staying idle too long.

The similarities to his normal life fascinated him. He’d been a public figure for most of his life, with very few good stories shared with the tabloids, and the swarming of people attracted to the money and power he held was just a part of walking around in public for him.

But the scale was something else.

The number of people who were excited to catch a glimpse, to hear his voice, or feel his skin, was something he wasn’t used to. It felt more like they forgot he was human; it was like they thought he was divine in some way.

It took him too long to remember that they did think he was a real Archangel come to save them from the worst of what could happen in the impending apocalypse before the second coming.

His mother was convinced he’d be something great, like most parents do, but he doubted this was what she thought that something would be.

A big name in a cult was far from what she had pushed him toward, the Archangel of love instead of CEO, a warrior instead of a doctor, a paper pusher instead of a politician. Cult was the only word he had to describe the island’s behavior, but he wasn’t sure yet which side was worse.

Politician or beacon of hope for hundreds.

Maybe he’d be able to do something great with that beacon. Maybe he could fulfil her aspirations for him through this…cult.

Maybe he’d spiral deep into the cult and fall too far to be pulled back out into reality.

Colton hated maybes.

Main Street was lined with busy shops and cafes; one in particular had a line out the door with an excited air about it. At an intersection stood a large, empty park surrounded by an open fence, with streetlights at every corner and benches every few feet.

Odd, he hadn’t seen a school anywhere yet, outside of the church’s small room and the training hall that he suspected were just there to find recruits for Bation’s “Angels.” There had to be more kids around than would fit in that tiny room, or were fit to fight.

Where do they all go?

As he walked, he noted that he hadn’t seen anyone who looked any younger than late teens. Michael, whom he’d catch the occasional glimpse of as he wandered the town, as she patrolled the city’s comings and goings, looked to be the youngest person on the entire island, even though her laser focus seemed to hold the experience of centuries within it.

He could understand why people would believe that she was a much older soul than she should be.

Each of the four was given their title based on rules that he still didn’t fully understand and took that position to places no one else would have in their situation, and now the island waited with bated breath to see what he would do with his.

He was waiting to see what he’d do to live up to the legacy that had been plopped into his lap.

There weren’t many options left. Michael was right when she’d said that she had enough warriors; the team needed someone else. Something new. The island had its food taken care of twice over, its judicial system completely rebuilt, and its commerce now boomed. What else was there to do?

What could he do for it?

A loud crash of waves hitting the pier jolted him back to the sun pounding on his skin, a sensation he hadn’t noticed before. He hadn’t even realized he had gotten so close to the ocean. He wondered how much time he’d spent wandering the town.

He heard screams as he looked around for the source of the crash, somehow not seeing the ocean anywhere. Chamuel picked up the pace as he saw people running away from something he couldn’t see. As he began to run, a loud, pained roar thundered through the ground.

“Stand down, five, you are not necessary here,” Raphael’s voice echoed in his ear from nowhere he could see. He stopped in his tracks, trying to find where she was to sound so clearly, “Comms, dumbass. Courtesy of Gabriel.”

“What’s going on?” He asked as he continued to run toward where he assumed the pier was.

“A Sea Monster followed a ship in and is trying to overrun the docks,” Michael responded, cutting off Raphael as she began to tell him again to leave.

“Any idea why?” He asked. finding himself a perch close enough to the action that he could see nearly everything. If they didn’t want another warrior, maybe they could use a coach? It wasn’t like Ryan was filling that role.

What does Ryan do? Handle?

“None yet,” Raphael grunted as she struck at a flailing limb that nearly killed a dock worker. “Run into town, Kidd.”

Colton watched the creature, watching as its familiar panic grew the longer it was out of the water. She looked like she was desperately looking for something and struggling to breathe while she searched. It reminded him of when his father lost him at the only fair he’d been allowed to attend as a kid, he’d scared his Father so badly that he’d nearly been grounded for a month.

“Looks like it’s looking for something important? Are the nets still in the boats?” He offered, “could be a mother looking for her young.”

He watched as Michael froze for a beat and took off for the ships, “I’ll check, keep it from destroying everything, One.”

“I haven’t seen one of these care for a nest before,” Raphael dogged a tail as she led it away from Michael’s direction, “But there’s a first for everything, I guess.”

Raphael switched the long spear she had been fighting with to the stick end, keeping the elaborate blade as far from the creature as she reasonably could until Michael told her otherwise. She fought diligently, even though her focus had changed in a moment to distraction.

“I hate to admit I can kind of see what he means.” She mumbled, backing toward the edge of one of the only empty docks left, keeping the creature’s focus on her.

“Glad I’m not nuts talking about Sea insanity. What even is that?”

“Heard of Nessie?”

“Yeah? The lake monster?”

“Think of this as her salty cousin.”

He could kind of see it. The creature looked like a mix between a seal and a snake. It was massive, with a long spiraling body that had large fins that a Whale would be jealous of. Its blue-gray skin seemed perfect for camouflage in the ocean off the coast of the island. He wondered how deep it normally stayed, how far from the island it had come from. How long did it chase the ship?

“Found a partial nest, and a massive egg.” Michael’s voice sounded strained, like she was still carrying the net.

“Egg?”

“Foggy membrane, baby that vaguely looks like a sea monster inside. Can’t imagine it's anything else.”

“How far are you? I’m about to be swimming.”

“Can you swim?” He asked.

“Please tell me that you’re joking.” Raph clearly looked up at him. She was too far from him to see her face, but he was sure it held the most offended face he’d never seen.

“Yeah,” His voice was strained higher.

“I manipulate water, of course I can swim.”

“That sounds like the place to go then. Three can drop the net from a different dock, and you can help her bring it home?”

“You’re insane-” Raphael started.

“That might just work.” Michael finished for her, taking off down the nearest dock to them.

Raphael watched the creature as it slowly approached, head swinging side to side as it searched, then, as it froze, spotting the net Michael held in her arms as she rushed toward the ocean. She shook her head, fighting with herself before she finally jumped into the clear water below, the ocean seemingly reaching up to catch her before she would have met the edge.

The creature met the waves moments after her.

Raphael was below the fraying wood Michael stood on, less than a minute after her. Michael quickly dropped the contents of the net into the slow-reaching wave that he assumed Raphael created to keep it safe.

He lost track of Raphael and the creature quickly after that, with the massive creature blending in perfectly like he had assumed it would. They sat in silence for a while, his breath catching in his throat every time he tried to breathe.

What if I was wrong?

What if I just got her killed?

He knew that he hadn’t seen any of them in action before, and he knew he hadn’t even seen them train. He couldn’t know what their abilities were. He had no reason to assume that the files that he had access to weren’t horrifically exaggerated.

There hadn’t been any new combat reports; the only ones that had been submitted recently were operation reports about their separate areas and about Magnolia as a whole. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary compared to the reports that he was used to seeing from the few times he had gone to the office with his father, with the assumption that he’d be following in his footsteps.

He had no reason to believe that she could get to wherever the nest had been, or that she could somehow communicate that with the creature, or that she could make it back on her own.

But Michael didn’t seem tense as she sat on the dock, her legs swinging below her as she watched the waves.

Chamuel scrambled down from his perch, slowly walking onto the pier and down the dock before sitting next to Michael.

“She’ll be fine, right?”

“Yeah, she can breathe down there, and fights better if she needs to.”

“Like she belongs down there?”

“If she could, she’d gladly live down there at this point.”

He nodded, trying to see what Michael was staring at in the distance. Instead, he found himself drawn to the horizon where the glittering waves met the pale blue of the clear sky, framed by the sea rocks poking out of the crashing waves.

The wind brushed through his hair, fluttering the locks as they waited for something to happen. Whether that was for her to need them or to greet her after a job well done, he’d take it as well as he could.

“If she’s not fine?”

“The collars will let us know.”

He touched the cool metal on his neck, his skin still sore and itchy beneath it, “How?”

“It will pulse, it’s weird-”

“You don’t say,” He mumbled.

“It is not painful, it’s just a little pressure that depends on how close whoever it is, is.”

He nodded, rubbing his neck, suddenly very aware of the insistent itch his still-healing skin was wrapped in. His wounds had been mostly healed for a week, but that week had felt like the longest stretch of the process. While the rest of the time it was searing pain or dull reminders of their existence, the itchiness of the scabbed skin he couldn’t get to pulled his attention away at the best of times, making his office life that much harder to get through.

For an hour, it seemed like Raphael wasn’t going to come back. They sat, staring at the calm waves crashing against the rocks, expecting her to show up at any moment and scare them.

They were ready to head back to the Saints’ wing during the second hour of waiting, partially so that he could brief her on the progress that he’d made on Bation, and partially so that she could write her report on the fight that Raphael would have to finish with the half that neither of them knew anything about, when they spottef the top of Raphael’s head racing towards them above the water.

Michael stood, shielding her eyes from the sun as she called out to Raphael. Chamuel rubbed his eyes, sure that he was seeing things after staring at the same thing for so long.

Blinking away the spots, he looked back at her, seeing that his eyes were right. Raphael was carried back by the Sea creature, as though it were a horse racing on a mission to inform the coast of the red coats coming. She had a massive smile on her face that only grew as their confusion became clearer the closer that they got.

She stepped onto the dock breathless and turned back to the creature as though they were old friends that had been united, “Thank you, Cetus.”

The noise that it made seemed like a mixture of pure joy and a ferocious growl. Cetus turned to them, nuzzling Michael in thanks and snorting at him before escaping back into the waves, disappearing quickly as though it had never been there in the first place.

“She apologizes for the destruction and panic that she caused in her search. I tried to assure her that we never would have known what had happened if she hadn’t caused so much.” Raphael summarized what had happened; it had apparently been a chase two leagues out of their normal fishing routes before she found the rest of the disrupted nest with the raging mother on her tail.

Cetus had calmed down when Raphael had done what she could to make the nest whole again and was briefly able to communicate their grief over the pain they had unknowingly caused her and her family.

He was admittedly excited for the report that would be due on his desk in the morning.