"Aiden, Romeo-" Ivor snapped, already turning to face the other demon.

Aiden gritted his teeth. His face had gone a little pale. "I know," he said tersely, already dropping his spear and running straight out of the room.

Actually, it wasn't just him. Maya looked a little uncomfortable, while Gill looked more like he'd actually throw up.

Lukas' face was hard to read, but it was always hard to read, what with his eyes being covered.

"Fuck," Xara was muttering, over and over, shaking her hand and glaring at the floor. It looked like her eyes were wet, but then she'd lowered her head more and they couldn't see.

Harper turned to the other three October Children, Petra already hustling over. Mevia was already speaking, still in the middle of turning around. "We might not have much time before..."

She didn't say it.

If Romeo died, the contracts would break.

If the contracts broke, it was only a matter of time until the hearts disappeared on their own without anything them binding them.

And without their hearts...

Well.

"As long as your heart exists somewhere in this world, even if it isn't in your body, you won't die."

Time was ticking.

"Aiden's already heading over to Romeo. What plant knowledge he has should at least buy us some more time," Isa said, her voice hushed as she looked around, careful that none of the guests were listening in.

They certainly didn't need a huge panic, not right now.

Harper never said much, but what she said next was universally understood, despite how few words she used.

"Find Jesse," Harper said simply. "Now."

The October Children nodded, but before they could bolt off to go scouring the whole building, Petra cut in roughly. "Sorry to make this even worse, but we have a problem," she said, voice low and urgent.

Ivor blinked red irises at her. "What is it?"

"The key's gone too."

Xara snarled something- it was probably a swear- and kicked the table, sending it skidding a few feet and knocking several glasses over, shattering on the floor in musical, chiming chaos. Several guests spun to look at the mess in shock, but they had more to worry about at this point.

The lords exchanged grave looks, Xara's perhaps much darker than the others. She promptly turned to the nearest guard, hair bouncing in her face, eyes filled with something dark and seething and that made the guard step back a step in surprise.

"Lock down this whole building. Nobody else leaves or enters this building until further notice," she ordered, and the guard nodded frantically and went to go do exactly that.

It would've taken a very good observer to notice the tremor to her voice.


Aiden shot through the air like a bullet.

He was pushing his shadow form pretty much to the limit, he was aware, noticing how the shadow kept trying to slough back (but he refused to let it).

Sure, he'd flown long flights before. A hundred times at least during training; from Narvid to Hizelk, from Jupin to Enchantra. It wasn't like it was new.

But never, ever had he before even thought to attempt to fly across the whole of Cosmos.

If flying from the Underneath to Beacontown without stopping was an endeavor that left him exhausted, he didn't want to know what twice that distance would do.

(And he didn't want to know what would happen if his shadow form gave out before he could get there, especially considering he was so high up in the air that a human would probably die instantly if falling from this height.)

He gritted his teeth and pushed anyway. Romeo was in his office, probably. He tended to frequent that room the most; what with work and all.

He'd have to stop in his garden and grab the required herbs- and crush them, too, so that the effects could reach Romeo quick enough.

But nothing could truly stop Rayiha poison from progressing without destroying the poison itself. Only slow it down.

He hoped it would be enough.

No, it had to be enough.

The snow was fading away now, little white flakes hitting him in the face and bouncing off of the shadow, flitting around him in a windstorm that was slowly being put behind him.

He would be flying over Jupin, which mean he'd have to avoid the patches of Nether that were starting to creep through, consuming the land. Those spat out vicious burning gas that he wasn't sure his shadow form could take right now, not without draining him of the energy he needed to get there in time in order to keep himself from getting scorched.

He focused most of his attention on diving, dodging, sensing more than seeing the bubbling bits that sent roaring heat hundreds of feet into the air, and the back of his mind dedicated itself to figuring out what the right herbs were.

He couldn't heal.

Not like Jesse could.

(Not like Jesse, who was missing and probably in danger because they were a pretty damn small human, and the lords and the other October Children and Petra would probably be crushed if Jesse died)

But he had enough plant knowledge that maybe, just maybe, Romeo might make it.

Maybe.

Jupin flew by at record speed, and soon the familiar spire of a building loomed in front of him.

Aiden didn't even slow down as he descended towards his garden- he landed hard enough to crack the stones beneath him, shadow form trembling before collapsing into him, but he didn't even stop to think or rest or breathe deeply, there was no time for any of that, no time at all.

"I'm sorry," he murmured to a plant before clumsily ripping the leaves off of it, tossing them into a cup that happened to be sitting off to the side, scraping some little feathery bits off of a different one with his thumbnail and leaving jagged marks in the fuzz where his thumbnail had been, accidentally snapping a small vine while he grabbed the berries, sticking his thumb into the too-small cup to crush them together clumsily as he hurried towards Romeo's office.

Please let him be in there.

For the love of whatever deity had created this world, please let Romeo not be lost somewhere in the house.

Romeo was sprawled on the floor, facedown. His veins were almost black, several of them having spiderwebbed over his face- he looked practically like he'd been shattered into pieces and glued back together.

Well, at least he's not lost somewhere in the house, something at the back of Aiden's head thought.

Aiden didn't even have time to think about balking at the state of him; he just grabbed Romeo and rolled him over roughly- even if he dislocated something, he figured Romeo would be just a tad more miffed if he died because Aiden had picked this particular moment to be gentle.

Just a tad.

The mixture in the cup wasn't nearly as well mixed as Aiden would have liked. There was a whole chunk of berry still intact, and he could still see the leaf, barely crushed, but he didn't have the time to stop and mash it up properly, especially since he didn't have the right tools so he'd have to go sprinting, find a pestle, and grind it up while running back here, and that would take far too long, so he grabbed Romeo's jaw and jerked it open wide enough to dump the mixture clumsily into Romeo's mouth.

It went down.

Aiden could hear Ivor asking him questions in the background, the orb on the floor a few feet away, he was probably standing in front of the others and ignoring them, but he just shut them out and focused on the lord on the ground in front of him.

One heartbeat passed.

Nothing.

Two heartbeats.

Nothing.

Three heartbeats.

There was a slight intake of breath. Very shallow. Very weak.

But it was there.

Aiden took this as his cue to pass out, and proceeded to do exactly that.


Due to Aiden somehow managing to fly across the whole of Cosmos in less than four hours without dying on the spot, the poison was slowed down.

But it wasn't a permanent fix. While they'd been lucky enough to catch it before Romeo flat-out died, he was still in the process of dying.

Xara was something of a mess. The lords had all hurried back using Hadrian's teleportation (they'd had to track him down; he was in the middle of trying to help the knocked-out guards who had been protecting the key make sure none of them had brain damage or something) at this point; she was just sitting next to Romeo and staring at the black veins creeping across his body.

They were talking quietly, Harper only periodically asking something, before Xara said something that made them all turn to look at her.

"Can you fix him?"

"What?" Ivor asked, but Xara was turning to face him.

"You can fix him, right? It's light and healing magic. You're good at magic. Plus he's a lord, so he'll have more time to last against the poison, right?""

"Xara, magic is... complicated," Ivor said slowly, frowning. His brow had creased.

"Well, can't you use it to fix him?" Xara practically demanded now, hands shaking harder than she would've liked. She clenched them into angry fists to stop it, digging her fingernails into the palm of her hand. "There are healing spells, right? I've seen you use them."

It didn't work.

Ivor considered this, his brow furrowed. "Yes, well..."

"Well, what, Ivor? Stop being vague as all hell and get to the point, would you?" Hadrian snapped, drumming his fingers on his elbow.

Ivor shot him a look. "Alright, fine, I will. Magic doesn't actually exist."

There was a long, long silence.

Then-

"What?" Harper asked, brow furrowing.

"Well, that's something of an inaccurate statement, I suppose. It exists, but it's not as powerful or a 'do-all' as some people think," he corrected himself, scratching his chin.

"Think of it more as... energy, that exists and can be harnessed. I use that metaphor of taming creatures to explain it, but that's more akin to how magic actually works in Cosmos- you harness whatever it is that's the source of the magic in order to use the energy for your own purposes."

He looked over at them. "I can use magic to slow the poison down- but that's about it. Rayiha poison is extremely strong, to the point where even a drop in your bloodstream can lead to your throat swelling up to the point that you can't breathe. That energy can only do so much against it."

Xara's fists curled into even tighter little balls, her nails pressing in so deep they drew blood. She ignored it.

"So what?" Xara snapped; it would've taken an extremely observant person to notice the tremor to her voice. "He's just gonna die, no questions asked?"

Nobody questioned Xara about why she would even care about Romeo.

(And there was a very dim, quiet part of her that was very grateful for that, because she didn't want to have to explain it.)

"I didn't say that," Ivor replied. "Rayiha does have an extremely negative reaction to light. If we were able to use an extremely large amount of light magic to purify it... he stands a chance."

Maya groaned at that, tangling her fingers in her hair and tugging. "You're saying we probably need Jesse."

Gill rolled his eyes at her. "No, Maya, he's saying we need a hairy octopus."

Maya stomped on Gill's foot.

Ivor gave a helpless shrug, choosing to flat-out ignore Gill now swearing and hopping up and down like a defective rabbit. "That is exactly what I'm saying, yes. Since they're not even half-demon, their light magic skill is higher than any I've ever seen."

"We can't just... collaborate and combine our magic together?" Isa suggested, brow creased, knowing that the likelihood of finding Jesse at this point in time...

Well, the chance of finding their body in the street wasn't exactly low, at this point.

He shook his head. "Isa," he replied with a graveness that rattled the whole room, "the sheer skill they have was able to bring Aiden back when his wounds were infected with dark energy, after having never performed any magic whatsoever."

He turned to look at the other three, Gill still hopping around like a rabbit, Maya trying to temper her smug smile, and Lukas just awkwardly watching this little display of camaraderie, if camaraderie involved swearing at each other and sending each other death glares.

Somehow, Ivor managed to not express his incredulity at their idiocy.

"Meanwhile the October Children's skill level with light magic isn't even one-eighth of that; combining it wouldn't be enough. And they actually have an affinity for it, because they're not fully a demon."

"Find," Harper said quietly.

Ivor nodded. "We need to find Jesse as soon as possible, if Romeo stands a chance of surviving."

And if Jesse themselves stands a chance of surviving, surrounded by demons that probably want to consume them, he added to himself.

He decided this would probably not help the morale of the room of now-nodding heads, so he said nothing.


A/N: And my updates are slow af because of being in Taiwan please forgive me T^T

wonder how jesse's doing :3c

Have a good holiday everybody!

responses to reviews!

Darkbeast Dend: Thank you! I hope this one's good too :3

Toni42: I wonder if PAMA thinks Jesse'll be useful in some way. / Also no he is not hfkdsa;fhs

jessicanightmarewolf: he ain't quite dead yet lol / Jesse is still mia, alas haha / thank you!

DubstepDragon14: fhdkf;as very much a psyche chapter / poor Jesse haha / I'm glad!

Happygoluckymegami:

Lol / It might be that! But PAMA's seen Jesse do some stuff. I wonder if it thinks Jesse'll be useful somehow. / They smell great too haha / That's fair! PAMA is nonbinary in this yes haha

TheAmberShadow: absolutely NOTHING went right last chapter lol / It is! Romeo's abilities are extra-special because not many people can actually summon the full being. / It is also hard to do that, considering the amount of magic that has to build up to have the amount of energy to snap a neck. / I wonder... who is Abrecan :3c / I am! Taiwan's been very good about following protocol so there's virtually no virus going around (they take it very seriously; I am not exaggerating when I say someone broke the 2-week quarantine period for literally about 8 seconds and they got fined 3500 dollars. I'm not kidding it's in the news.)

That's all for now! See ya, so long, and g'bye!

x.X. A.L. X.x