Bella disagreed with his assessment. "That was a human war? Buddy, you might want to get your eyes checked. Those weren't human missiles—they were Theron single-seat craft. God knows how those aliens ended up in the middle of nowhere like this."
Seeing that Castiel had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, she spelled it out. "That was an alien. An alien, you understand? An alien broke the demon seal. It had nothing to do with humans."
Castiel maintained his usual deadpan expression, apparently seeing no fundamental difference between aliens and humans.
Bella gave up trying to correct him.
"Forget it. Who did it doesn't matter. Sealing the demon and finding my friend—those are the only things that matter."
When it came to demons, her knowledge was limited. The Ancient One knew far more, but the Ancient One's experience couldn't become her own. All Bella could do was ask the angel beside her. "Do demons have any weaknesses?"
"Holy magic."
"I don't think I know any holy spells. What else?"
"Banish it."
"Now that's good news. I just figured out a banishment spell recently, though it only works on lower-ranked demons so far. What else?"
"Use weapons imbued with holy properties."
"...My relationship with the Holy See has never been great. They probably wouldn't lend me their weapons."
Castiel listed several methods for dealing with demons, and Bella found none of them applicable.
The two of them gleaned no further information from the town. Bella declined the police chief's offer to send a few townsfolk along—ordinary people confronting a demon head-on meant death.
They wasted no more time and returned to the front of the monastery. At the foot of the main entrance steps lay a large pool of dark crimson blood, still fresh by the look of it. Bella raised her eyes to the spot directly above.
That was the monastery's second floor. A breeze drifted past, setting the open window up there creaking softly. Half a length of coarse hemp rope dangled from the sill, its end tied in a knot. The size, the length—everything about it seemed to announce that some poor soul had used this rope to end their life.
As a formally trained mage, Bella responded by the textbook. She drew her Model 500 revolver, loaded the rounds into the cylinder one by one, then pulled on a bulletproof vest stamped with "FBI."
Noticing that Castiel had made zero preparations, she let out a small sound of surprise. "You angels don't gear up before a fight? Don't you all carry swords or something?"
"No."
Bella couldn't tell whether he meant his rank was too low to warrant a sword, or that the angelic host simply didn't use bladed weapons at all.
The Abbey of St. Carta was a somewhat dilapidated monastery, small in scale. Apart from local villagers and the Vatican, no outsider knew that a monastery even existed out here in the countryside, much less that it housed a community of ascetic nuns.
The moment the word "nuns" crossed Bella's mind, something deep within the monastery stirred like a caged beast. The entire building turned sinister in an instant. The main doors were weathered and half-open; through the gap, the courtyard was choked with weeds. A pristine white statue of the Virgin Mary wept crimson blood from its eye sockets. From where they stood, they could see into the nave, where over a dozen nuns appeared to be kneeling in a circle, praying.
Bella stayed outside the gate. Across the courtyard, she aimed the Model 500 at the nave from a distance. "Castiel, you'd better have a plan for dealing with this. Cas—where'd he go?"
Mid-sentence, she realized the angel beside her had simply vanished. She stood alone at the entrance.
"A personal grudge, huh? Don't want me getting involved? Fine. How about this—release my friend, a sixteen-year-old girl, and I'll leave you to your business. What do you say?"
She spoke in a tone of casual negotiation. Two seconds later, every door and window in the monastery began slamming and rattling.
"That doesn't sound like a yes..."
Bella stepped inside. She was far from the rookie she'd once been. Fifth-circle spells weren't exactly formidable by multiverse standards—plenty of things out there outclassed her—but they weren't weak either. Run-of-the-mill enemies couldn't hold her.
"Sister! Hurry! Come pray with us! Beg for the Lord's mercy!" Several nuns rushed out of the nave, seizing Bella by the arms and pulling her toward the interior.
Bella put on an expression of sudden enlightenment. "Oh? Praying? I just love praying!"
Her arms pulsed. A Frost Nova detonated outward in every direction, centered on her.
When the ice swept past, the nuns vanished as one.
Bella stood in place, reading the residual traces to gauge the enemy's strength.
"What the hell was that? I'm picking up holy energy mixed with demonic essence. How do two completely opposite forces even combine like that?"
With the phantom nuns gone, darkness swallowed the nave immediately.
Bella channeled the lead of an American TV series, gripped the revolver in her right hand, and called into the pitch-black hall. "Hello? Anyone there? Miss Harmon? Castiel?"
The monastery's main hall was rather narrow. She advanced slowly. Candlelight flickered on the walls, and by the entrance stood two torches, practically begging visitors to pick them up.
Bella studied them for a moment, found nothing suspicious, but didn't take one either.
Her gaze swept over two stone sarcophagi resting in the hall. The gloomy, frigid atmosphere barely troubled her—the ruby face of the Ring of Fire glowed faintly red, and the chill clinging to her skin dissolved at once.
A stone chair sat in the exact center of the hall, an Ouroboros symbol carved into its back. She walked past it, continued ten or so paces forward, then whipped around. Someone had appeared on the chair—a figure shrouded entirely in black veils.
The fabric was extraordinarily fine, and the light extremely dim. Despite her good eyesight, she couldn't quite make out the figure.
Bella smiled. "I'm Mithrandir—one Light spell and I can go anywhere!"
She produced her staff, gripped it one-handed, and swung it left and right like a club.
Despite the bravado, she hadn't actually cast Light. Instead, she was studying the figure intently.
"What are you doing?" The veiled figure on the chair remained motionless. It was Castiel—in his middle-aged pastor vessel—who emerged from a side corridor.
He had walked in at the precise moment Bella was swinging her staff around.
"Nothing. A couple of nun apparitions showed up. I scared them off." Bella made something up on the spot.
Castiel also noticed the veiled figure on the stone chair.
Given the time and place, a stranger like this was wrong in every conceivable way.
"Looks like a lingering soul. Want to handle it?" Bella asked.
She still hadn't cast Light, because Castiel seemed to radiate a natural dim-light aura—just standing near him pushed the darkness back about a meter.
Castiel's expression was unusually serious. "If I use my abilities, it will place a severe burden on my vessel. That's what you warned me about before, and you were right. I shouldn't use my powers lightly."