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Headmaster closed his eyes. A white light flashed, bathing his vision in red as the light shone through his eyelids. Then his vision was black again. “We’re here,” a voice, Sariel’s, said. Headmaster opened his eyes and furrowed his brow.
“What is this…?” Headmaster asked, dropping Cleo on her head as his grip around her tail loosened. The muscles in his jaw slackened as his lips took the shape of an ‘o’. He took a step forward, body trembling, and touched the railing ahead of himself. Sariel walked to his side. They were standing at the topmost seats of an arena—the one she had him design so many years ago. In the battleground, dozens of glowing, golden trees were pulsating like tree-shaped hearts. On their bending branches, plump, white fruit were hanging, nearly touching the ground.
“This is one of the Creator’s urgent requests to me,” Sariel said. She glanced at Cleo who was moving her limbs randomly, her sense of hearing, sight, and touch still gone. Sariel bent down and pulled Cleo’s tail, preventing the lizardman from falling down the stairs leading towards the arena’s battleground. Sariel glanced at Headmaster who was still standing in a daze. “You designed this for me and left.”
“I thought you were engaging in immoral activities,” Headmaster said and shook his head. “Like dogfighting between slaves and criminals. Or a way to create the strongest demon by having them all fight to the death here. Or even a way to perform bloody rituals away from the eyes of the public. I didn’t expect you to actually make it into a garden.”
Sariel glared at Headmaster. “Just how badly did you think of me?” she asked. “I even told you it was the Creator’s will.”
“You say everything is the Creator’s will. If I hit you right now, that’d also be his will,” Headmaster said and shook his head. “Why take on the shape of an arena? Why not build an actual garden?”
Sariel made a face. “It’s in the shape of an arena because Creator’s will,” she said and walked down the stairs. “Come, we need to bring these fruits with us before we escape.”
“What are they?” Headmaster asked as he lifted Cleo by the tail and followed after Sariel. “How were you going to carry them all?”
“With an orb of kleptomania,” Sariel said and made a face. “Though it’s a sin, there are some uses to it.” She stopped in front of one of the trees. The white fruit was shaped like an egg and was easily half her height. She stroked the side of the fruit with a strange look on her face as if she were a mother looking at her sleeping child.
“Are these eggs?” Headmaster asked. If he squinted his eyes hard enough, he could barely make out an outline floating within the fruit. “And you don’t have to use an orb to store them.” He raised Cleo into the air. “She’s good enough.”
“So that’s what you meant,” Sariel said, nodding her head. She wrapped her arms around the fruit and bent her knees. The fruit separated from the branch with a plopping noise, and the branch reached towards the ceiling once the weight holding it down was gone. Moments later, the tree began to fade away. Sariel dropped the fruit into the space Headmaster created between Cleo and her belt, and it vanished without a sound.
Sariel repeated the process for the remaining trees. When she was halfway through, she finally spoke up, “About your previous question…. Yes. You could say these are eggs.” Headmaster waited for her to continue instead of speaking. Sariel dropped another fruit into Cleo’s space. “Do you know the origin of angels?”
“The Creator created us,” Headmaster said. Sariel nodded and moved on to the next tree. Headmaster’s brow furrowed. “Wait. Don’t tell me my ancestor is a tree.”
“Your ancestor is a tree.”
Headmaster fell silent. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “These are angel eggs?”
“That is correct,” Sariel said. “First-generation angel eggs. Maybe they should be called second-generation angel eggs. Regardless, the Creator sent me a vision in my dreams—it was of him devouring everything. When I woke up, the seeds of the trees were beside me. I knew what I had to do. If the current race of angels ever displeased the Creator so much that he had to destroy us, then these eggs would birth the second generation.”
“…Are you sure the Creator didn’t just want you to grow fruit for him to eat?” Headmaster asked. “I don’t understand how you interpreted a vision like that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sariel said and shook her head. “When I went to sleep, there were no seeds by my bedside. When I woke up, there were. Even if I dreamed of the Creator reading a book, I would’ve planted the seeds.”
“Right,” Headmaster said as the last tree disappeared. “And these twenty or so angels are going to populate amongst themselves to create an inbred species?”
“Maybe?” Sariel asked and tilted her head. “But we should discuss that later. Didn’t you say we had to hurry and flee?”
“Right,” Headmaster said and nodded. Sariel had insisted on coming to the floor below the basement, so he let her. He hoped Palan was still distracted by the six beings. It would be convenient if he was, but that probably wasn’t the case. Things never went conveniently for him. Headmaster sighed and reached into Cleo’s space, pulling out his special bottles of liquor. If he had to, he could fend Palan off for a while, but he couldn’t pull off another teleportation. He hadn’t recovered enough for that.
Sariel and Headmaster approached the circle on the ground where they had teleported in from. They closed their eyes, and a white light flashed again. When they opened their eyes, they were in the basement. “The trapdoor,” Sariel said and bit her lower lip. Headmaster glanced at the ladder. The trapdoor was lying on the floor beside it with a dent in the center. He looked up. There was a black object blocking the exit.
“You know, I told you there should’ve been more than one entrance,” Headmaster said. “But you didn’t listen.”
“More entrances would’ve given the demons summoned more chances to escape,” Sariel said and pursed her lips. She climbed up the ladder pressed a button. Nothing happened. Normally, a block of metal would rush out of the wall and knock everything over to the side to clear the entrance. She tried pushing on the object. It didn’t budge.
Headmaster shook his head. The basement was created with red metal. It was designed to keep any summoned demon as weak as possible; otherwise, he’d have used his powers to create an exit. In the center of the room, there was a massive, metal birdcage covering a magic circle. “Any luck?” Headmaster asked as he inspected the circle.
“No,” Sariel said. “It reminds me of the eggs and cocoons demons use for evolution. I don’t think we can break this. Why would there be a demon evolving in front of the trapdoor?”
“Well, maybe Palan was chasing us and suddenly evolved,” Headmaster said and stood up, dusting off his knees. “If that really is the case, then you’re going to die—no questions asked.”
“If you could hatch those eggs, then I would’ve gladly sacrificed myself to him once he hatched,” Sariel said and bit her lower lip. “But I’m the only one who can. I have to live. You’re a genius, think of a way out of this.”
“If you had listened to my genius suggestion of having more than one exit because of fire hazards—”
“I know I was wrong,” Sariel said. “You don’t have to rub it in here.”
Headmaster sighed. “There’s two options I can think of,” he said and raised one finger. “One, we wait until my powers recover so I can teleport us away, but that can take up to two weeks. The standard evolution time is one week.” He raised another finger. “Or two, I use my remaining power and send you to Eljiam with this portal.”