"We're here." Edward slammed on the brakes, forcing Nuriel to wake up from his near slumber.
Nuriel stepped off the black car, then turned to face Edward with a faint smile under the moonlight. He gave one last bow before saying his thanks.
"Visit my house another time," Edward said, slightly laughing under his nose, but hearing Nuriel's silent reply made him stop.
Rubbing the back of his head, he finally realized his mistake from before and continued, "It's house number twelve, by the way."
Nuriel nodded, and after a minute of small talk had passed, the two finally separated from each other.
Turning around, he went inside the faculty dormitory building, greeting the receptionist who was working in the middle of the night as he passed by. While walking, he carefully silenced his steps since everyone was already asleep.
Entering his room with his keys, he noticed that the lights were off.
'I returned way too late...' he thought, remembering what he said to Vivienne before he went out.
Opening the lights, he saw the book Vivienne was reading. After picking it up, he saw a small bookmark sticking out of the last page.
'She's a fast reader.' Nuriel analyzed the cover and figured out the genre without even reading a single word from the story.
The Cooking Princess
Nuriel chuckled at the strange title. He contemplated reading a couple of pages, but seeing that the clock was near midnight and remembering the guilt of making Vivienne wait for him to tell the story, he decided it wasn't appropriate.
After washing and changing into his pajamas, he dozed off to the throne room.
Making his way to the throne, he sat down and spun the untainted scepter.
Almost immediately, dozens of strings appeared before him, but none of the colored ones.
He observed the three scepters beside him, taking the Witch's Scepter and rubbing against the rusted metal that made up its outer skin.
Nuriel turned to the distance. He saw new strings streaking across the space, signaling someone beginning to dream, but he also saw some strings disappearing, signaling the opposite.
'Now how should I find Yevdokiya...'
Nuriel wished he knew what the conditions were to have a colored string, and so he asked the scepter.
[Insufficient data to provide an answer]
He sighed, a breath filled with disappointment, fidgeting with the scepter in his hand while his other played on the glossy wooden armrest.
Finding nothing to do, he stood up from the chair and walked toward the abundance of strings. With the Witch's Scepter in hand, he wanted to test if he could bring it into the dream.
Locking his eyes on a particularly bright string, he reached out his hands, but before he could touch it, his other hand holding the scepter was suddenly being pulled.
[??? is reacting to a presence]
The pull grew stronger and stronger, to the point that he staggered beneath his feet, struggling to slow it down as it tugged on his arm, dragging Nuriel like a dog refusing to follow its owner's leash.
As he was dragged further and further away from the throne, the scepter suddenly stopped its mysterious pull.
In front of him was a string so faint that it might as well not have existed.
'I feel like I've been getting dragged all day...'
He hesitated to touch the faint string, fearing he'd be dragged into another mess, but he slapped himself on the face for thinking like that.
Fortune favored the bold, although Nuriel didn't plan on being that bold.
Gripping the string didn't feel much different from the rest, other than the fact that it felt like he was holding nothing but air. There were no strange mental illusions or any other sensations like with the golden string of Vivienne or the silver string of Yushin.
'This needs a bit more than needed.'
He dragged the string as far as the range of motion his hands allowed. Despite pulling it so much, he did not feel any pressure going against his fingers.
Letting go, a low hum reverberated throughout the entire space, the large oscillations big enough for half of his body to go through.
Despite the strong tug, he still didn't feel anything like getting sucked into the dream.
However, as he looked into the space between the oscillations of the string, he could just barely piece together an image.
A bright night and a large grassy space in the center of a ruin.
Nuriel didn't hesitate to step inside. The period of his sight blacking out was short-lived as he spawned in what seemed to be the ancient ruins of a cathedral.
He looked at one of his hands, finding the scepter still in his tight grip. He then looked around the area.
Pillars dotted the space, but there was no roof for them to support. Large pieces of the walls stood, but they held no windows. Remnants of deteriorating pews lined the long structure of the cathedral, but there were no people to sit on them.
Looking up, he saw the full moon basking the entire space in a dim yet ethereal light.
He followed the ray of moonlight, his eyes landing on something in the distance—a strange group of hooded figures in pastoral clothing. At first glance, Nuriel imagined them to be a cult undergoing some kind of satanic ritual, but he doubted it.
In the center was a man holding a ceremonial sword, and in front of him was someone he knew kneeling.
Nuriel scoffed, a mix of shock and amusement surfacing. Light gray hair and a notably shorter stature compared to the ones around her.
'It's her,' he thought. In an instant, he disguised himself as one of the hooded figures.
He walked closer to the scene, but suddenly the arm holding the scepter was being tugged again.
[??? is reacting to a presence]
'wrong time! Stop being in such a hurry!'
Nuriel pulled on the scepter, his foot paving a dirt path under the force.
Luckily, he managed to steer himself toward a stone pillar, which stopped him from getting closer than he needed to be.
Calming himself down, he took a deep breath and poked his head out, closely listening to the event unfolding before him.
The man holding the ceremonial sword spoke in a heavy tone, the words coming out of his mouth reverberating around the area.
"May our blessed Steel Witch grant you strength,"
The man intoned, pressing the flat of the blade to Yevdokiya's left shoulder, then her right.
"And courage worthy of a saint in service to our beloved witch."
Nuriel continued observing the ceremony as he pieced together what he was seeing.
'This must be the ceremony where she becomes a saint... but why is she dreaming of this now?' he thought, hugging the pillar as the scepter kept pulling in her direction.
He remembered what the man said earlier, that her appointment as a saint was scheduled for sometime next week, yet she was already dreaming it.
Though, thinking about it more thoroughly, it wasn't surprising. Impatient people often dreamt of things that were yet to happen or might never happen at all.
Nuriel frowned. If Yevdokiya was so eager to become a saint under the Church of the Steel Witch, then it was clear he'd have a hard time recruiting her. Worse, she might even call him a devil if they ever met.
'But why does the Witch's Scepter want her?' he thought. His fingers began to ache as he gripped the scepter tightly to stop it from sliding across the circular pillar.
Nuriel continued to watch the ceremony unfold, trying to find any weaknesses he might use to his advantage.
"Before the soul of the First Saint Desacares, I name thee the 289th Saint of our Church. Let their undying will bear witness to your ascension."
"May the Witch bless you, your mind and your soul—
"!!!"
To Nuriel's shock and awe, Yevdokiya sprang toward the man reciting her ascension and delivered a fatal strike to his stomach, knocking him out cold.
"As if I'm letting that steel bitch make me a saint!"
'Huh... what?!'