Years later, this chapter has to be mildly redone to match up with the rest of the newly updated chapters.

When the Vance soldiers Church had sort of incriminated himself to began escorting him to the castle proper (after binding his wrists of course, it occurred to him that his plan would probably be extremely touch and go once inside. After all, the plan itself was entirely vague. It had just one overarching goal: get inside and assist his allies. Somehow. It was difficult to determine exactly how he should go about that since he had no idea what the two of them were up to in here, but he figured that causing general chaos and discord would probably help either way. Usually a distraction was pretty useful during infiltration.

While being escorted across the bridge, Church was surprised to discover that there were no security checkpoints save the first one on the shore. At first this confused him, but he supposed it would be a real pain to have multiple security checks just to go in and out of the castle, especially as far as nobility was concerned. Still, he would have thought it prudent.

That said, it was a clear, easy walk to the opposite end of the bridge, where Church discovered the drawbridge that kept people from waltzing right in, or more importantly, a battering ram from having something to actually break down.

A soldier atop one of the towers at the drawbridge lowered it when she saw her comrades escorting what could only be a prisoner, allowing Church and his entourage entry into the main courtyard of the castle. Upon entering, Church decided to reassess calling it a castle in the first place. Castles were built for the sole purpose of defense. They existed only to keep the lord safe from invaders, and therefore the entire structure was built as a fortress. From the outside this place looked like a castle, but within the walls it seemed to be more of an extremely large manor than a fortress. In fact, Church would go so far as to say the only part of the place situated for defense was the walls and its many towers. Then again, when you had an entire lake around you and but one bridge you could be assaulted from, he supposed the place was defensible enough already.

Of course, realizing that begged the question of how Airi and Melona had gotten inside the place. Church highly doubted they used the same method he was right now. But then again, Melona had already made it in and out once already, so she must've had a method for infiltrating the castle. No doubt she had simply utilized it a second time, but with Airi in tow.

Upon being ushered into the courtyard, Church did his best to observe what he could, since you could never be sure what would benefit you later. That said, there wasn't much to be seen. To the far right was several open archways that looked appeared to lead either into the main wall. Directly in front of him was a large L-shaped building with long vertical windows every few feet that could have been anything. Other than that, all he could really note was that every rooftop in this place was a really weird brownish green. Everything else was white stone.

Of course, there was a decent number of soldiers about, whether it was on top of walls or simply patrolling the grounds themselves, and it was at this point that Church realized a large number of the troopers in black steel and white cloth were women, and this struck him as odd. As far as he knew, the 'soldier' occupation was usually entirely dominated by men.

But now that he thought about it, he had yet to see many skilled male fighters in this world at all. In fact, aside from some of the Elves that had been working for Taowrol, almost all of the seriously skilled fighters he had met were women. This notion was perfectly fine with him of course, but he still found it strange. Why was this the case? Had this world's society simply evolved in a different manner than his own? Were women encouraged to be warriors, fighters, and soldiers while men tended to the domestic needs of society?

Considering that he hadn't actually seen too much of this world all things considered, Church decided to shelve his musings on this society's gender roles until later. After all, while a great many of the soldiers here were women, he saw plenty of men as well.

The two soldiers escorting Church wasted no time in pushing him through the exterior of the castle, leading him around that L-shaped building he had noticed and into the manor proper from the side. This caused Church to question his plan a little more thoroughly. In hindsight, claiming to know about the location of the Count's wayward daughter may not have been his best bet. If these soldiers brought him directly to the Count, he would have a hard time doing anything other than trying to convincingly lie about Leina's whereabouts, and who knew if they would bother to keep him alive after getting what they thought was the truth?

He would be much better off going towards a cell, but for now there was nothing he could do to influence his destination, so he settled on observing his interior surroundings instead. It was ornately decorated with crimson tapestries, carpets, and lots of expensive looking furniture. But the most noticeable thing was the rather ample amount of artwork that lined the halls. Most of them were of people: the same people, as it were, and Church quickly deduced that it was probably the family that owned the joint.

That said, he quickly pieced together the family unit. Dad was an older gentleman with gray hair even in his clearly younger portraits, with an obvious fondness for a pointy beard and an admittedly nice mustache. There were three girls that kept appearing in this portraits at various stages in their lives, and Church assumed these were his daughters, taking age into consideration. The clearly oldest was a redhead with sharp green eyes. For obvious reasons Church wasted no time in comparing this woman to Airi, and he found her sorely lacking. Of course he may have been biased considering his relationship with the latter, but even so Church believed that Airi's scarlet strands and emerald greens were just objectively superior.

The other two girls in these pictures looked a lot more like siblings than the oldest, both being blue eyed blondes. Still, even in artwork it was easy to tell the two apart. The one that appeared to be the youngest had wavier hair than her sister, which was mostly straight. And even though it could have just been a figment of Church's imagination, he was sure that the baby sister looked a lot more adventurous and passionate in all of these paintings. He quickly decided that she was his favorite of the bunch.

Ultimately Church was led through several twists, turns, and staircases throughout the fortress, but the more of the castle he saw, the less he payed attention to it. Instead, he focused on memorizing the path he had been forced to take, so that he could remember his way out of this maze-like structure. After all, it would hardly do to get lost in this place during any time of urgency.

Finally, after what seemed like an unnecessarily long tour through the castle grounds, the soldiers escorting Church led him into what he was sure was obviously the dungeon. After all, it was completely devoid of any of the trappings of creature comforts, and more obviously, there were cells here. Really, really big cells, which for some reason struck Church was an important thing to question. Seriously, the cells in this place were as large as some metropolitan apartments.

Still, rather than dwell on that, he now needed to worry about what he was going to do to avoid going in one of those cells. He was fortunate enough that they were going to imprison him rather than take him straight to the Count, but he needed to avoid getting imprisoned in the first place.

He quickly deduced that close combat was going to be his only means of escape. Unfortunately, the odds were stacked against him. He was outnumbered, unarmed, and his wrists were bound. At one time he would have counted his knee against him as well, but truth be told it had not been bothering him much lately, for reasons he could not comprehend. He vaguely remembered having some sort of dream with a pink haired girl (not Melona) telling him about healing him, but aside from obviously being a dream, he believed the figment of his imagination had told him his knee was still screwed up anyway.

Still, he had the element of surprise at least, and honestly he felt better about himself than he had in a long time, likely thanks to the many physical endeavors he had gone through since arriving in this world. As long as he acted quickly and decisively he could win.

And with that in mind, he made his move just as the trooper leading him made to unlock his cell door.

Prioritizing his targets like any good soldier does, Church snapped his elbow back to catch the guard behind him in the face, ruining her nose with a resounding crunch that almost made Church feel guilty. Said soldier's cry of pain was enough to have the first soldier begin to turn and face them, but Church launched his foot into her back before she could, which sent her helmeted skull sailing into the metal bars of the cell with a resounding clang that echoed throughout the dungeon.

Now it was just a matter of switching back and forth between the two, keeping both off balance or dazed until they were both knocked out. Easier said than done of course. With that in mind Church turned to face his initial target again, who was just starting to draw her sword from its scabbard. Not wanting any dangerous pointy things in this fight, Church grabbed the soldier's hand and shoved the blade right back into its sheath, just before placing his leg between hers and using the leverage to flip the trooper over onto her back.

Certain she would need a minute to catch her breath after that landing, Church turned again and planted another kick into his second opponent, this time catching her in the chest but still resulting in her poor head bouncing off the bars of the cell behind her. He got the feeling he was just about done here, so Church snapped a kick at the soldier he had flipped while she was getting up, catching her in the chin and undoubtedly knocking her out cold.

Glancing around for a moment, Church realized he had actually won. He hated to sound surprised about it, but he hadn't been guaranteed success. The first soldier whose head he had abused moaned from her resting place against the bars, and for good measure Church kicked her head into them again, fairly certain her steel helmet would prevent any permanent head injuries. It also made him realize that his foot hurt. As expected, kicking steel helmets, even with your heel, was a bad idea.

Thanking his lucky stars that the soldiers had been dumb enough to tie his hands in front of him instead of behind, Church leaned down to cut his bonds on one of the blades of his enemies. Unfortunately for him, he was only halfway to reaching for a sword when a faint pinkish light illuminated the dungeon from behind him.

"Really Melona, how could you have lost your way? You've already been here twice."

Melona answered Airi's question irritably, though not loudly. Shouting was a good way to ruin their chances of remaining undetected. "This castle has a stupid design, OK? Stop blaming me for that."

The two servants of the Swamp Witch roamed around the upper hallways of Vance castle, attempting to locate the Count so Airi could perform her assigned task. So far, they had avoided detection by patrolling guards by melting into the tiniest puddle possible and fading into the walls, respectively.

But although they could probably sneak around the castle for hours, Airi had no wish to do so. She had been reluctant to leave Church alone in the first place, never mind for an extended period of time. She wanted to finish up here as quickly as possible.

She told herself that it was a matter of efficiency, but if she were honest with herself, Airi was viewing this whole thing as an interruption. She had been seriously enjoying herself before Melona came back to them. For a while, she had completely forgotten that she wasn't even human. Church had made her feel like a normal girl. Well, not a normal girl by any means, because she was apparently the most beautiful redhead in the whole wide world.

The part of Airi that demanded loyalty to the Swamp Witch tried very, very hard to convince her that the thought of it didn't make her downright giddy, but it was having absolutely no success. Even so, she wasn't so far gone as to forget all the reasons anything as foolish as romance was, well, foolish. Aside from the basic fact that Airi's relationship with the man in question had existed for little over a month and a half, there were all the much more important things to consider. First of all, she was dead, and he was alive. He was human and she was a monster. And most importantly, pursuing her own selfish desires would conflict directly with her service to the Witch.

But she couldn't ignore the fact that he had made her forget about all of that for a few brief minutes. And she couldn't help but wonder how. She'd been so happy she briefly forgot about her own state of being. How could anyone do that?

Airi didn't know, but what she did know was that the whole mess was confusing. She was happy about what Church had said about her, happy that he found her attractive in both looks and personality. But she felt guilty for being happy about it, because she existed only to serve the Swamp Witch. Anything that made her happy for reasons other than pleasing her Master just weren't supposed to matter.

And yet it did. Somehow this man they had brought along with them on some silly whim of Melona's had become very important to her, and for reasons that had nothing to do with the Witch at all. She wouldn't call it love of course, there was hardly enough cause for that. But Airi wouldn't lie and say she wasn't seeing Church in a somewhat romantic light after their last conversation. He was handsome, kind, and considerate. And he made it clear how he felt about her. What wasn't to like?

But her rational side, and ironically, the side that cared more about serving the Witch, told her it was just a product of the moment. She'd been really happy to be praised, and that was why she was feeling more inclined towards the person that had praised her at the moment. It would wear off, and then she could forget about this girlish nonsense that had no place in the afterlife of a spirit.

Either way, Airi was subconsciously flying through the halls of the castle at a speed that was a bit too much to be safe. Not that she had to worry about actually hitting anything. It was being noticed by people that was her main concern.

But for the most part, these upper halls seemed sparsely populated by troops or servants, and should she actually be detected by someone, Airi was sure that she could take care of them before they could sound the alarm. At least, she would've been able to handle most people that way. But the person ahead of her, that was another story. She could probably beat her, but Airi wasn't sure she could do it fast enough to avoid alarming the castle guards.

Airi entered her ethereal state as she raced towards the Vance Captain of the guards, who had just rounded a corner into the hallway Airi was speeding through. Fortunately, Airi had lost all physical form before Elina noticed her, and she passed through the blonde's body as easily as if she hadn't even been there. For a brief moment, Airi was pretty sure she saw the girl's insides, but she tried not to dwell on the gruesome visual of the sausages the blonde had eaten for lunch. Her speed carried Airi through the wall up ahead, leaving Melona to fend for herself. She wasn't doing anything useful at the moment anyway.

The wraith passed through the stone barrier effortlessly, and came out on the other side of it in mere seconds. Still, seconds was a lot, considering how fast Airi had been moving. It must've been a really thick wall: and thick walls protected important things. As luck would have it, this chamber was exactly the one that Airi was looking for. She was standing (or floating, rather) in the Count's personal bedchamber. Convenient didn't even begin to describe the situation.

Maintaining her spiritual form, Airi searched around the room for the Count, or, should he not be anywhere within, for a place to leave a spell that would activate when he entered. Airi didn't know why her master wanted to speak with the man, but that was what the Swamp Witch wanted, and Airi lived to serve.

It was soon obvious that the bedchamber was not occupied by the Count at this time, so Airi searched for a suitable place to leave the mark that would activate the spell when it was needed. The spell needed a reflective surface, first of all, and so Airi located the one mirror in the whole room. It was quite large, and would easily suffice for her purpose.

Airi hovered over to the mirror and drew a mystical circle on the floor in front of it with her finger: it was a sort of magical trap that the Swamp Witch had supplied her with. When the Count stepped on it, not only would he be held in place, but whatever message the Swamp Witch had for him would be displayed on the mirror.

As Airi finished drawing the mystical symbol, it disappeared, not gone, but hidden from sight. Concluding that her work here was done, and that Master would be pleased that things had gone so smoothly, Airi left the chamber the same way she had come in, eager to return to her friends and leave this wretched place behind.

Church was quick to whirl on his opponent with sword in hand when he realized he had been discovered, but when he laid eyes on an angel with shoulder-length pink hair and golden eyes, he quickly realized he was in no danger.

"You!"

Hachiel nodded calmly, eyeing the two soldiers Church had incapacitated with dismay. "Me. Do you need help with that?"

Church cocked en eyebrow at her, confused at first, but he soon realized that she was referring to his bonds. "I guess, but... man, I thought you were a dream."

The slightly glowing pink angel (Church quickly realized it was her wings giving off the faint pink light) stepped forward to assist him. "A dream? Why would you think that?"

Church held out his tied hands, unsure of what she was going to do to aid him. "Well, c'mon... a beautiful angel with a sweet smile healing all of your wounds? That sounds exactly like a dream too good to be true."

Hachiel giggled with mild delight, unused to receiving praise in such a form, even if it were from a mortal. But honestly he didn't seem like a bad sort, so she did appreciate his kindness. With a quick tug, she easily ripped the ropes around Church's wrists in twain, earning an incredulous expression from the man.

"W-wow..."

For her part, Hachiel could see no reason for his supposed surprise. "Is something the matter?"

"N-no, I just...didn't see that coming."

She looked at Church quizzically. "Why not?"

"Those were some decently thick ropes. You pulled them apart like wet paper."

Concluding that her strength was what had shocked him, Hachiel sought to clarify her attributes. "Angels are quite powerful, especially compared to mortals. Not to brag but... I could have easily pulled the cell door off its hinges to free you if you had already been imprisoned. And to be fair, I am considered physically weak. Nanael is much stronger."

Church tried not to envision what 'much stronger' than someone who could pull a steel door off its hinges looked like. "Speaking of which, where is Nanael? I was under the impression you two were... I don't know, partners or something?"

"No offense to her or you, but does Nanael truly strike you as someone inclined to stealth?"

Glancing at the pure white attire, stark pink hair, and feathery white wings, Church gave her a quizzical look. "To be fair, neither do you."

Hachiel simply smiled, like she was in on some joke Church didn't understand. "Fair enough."

As for Church, he felt the need to ask the most obvious question here. "So... what exactly are you doing here?"

Hachiel actually seemed surprised that he was asking. "Did you not need rescuing? It appeared as though you were mistakenly arrested by the soldiers at the bridge."

"Even if that were the case, why would you rescue me? Aside from being agents of truth and justice and all that."

The ninth angel of heaven wondered how much she should reveal. "Suffice to say you are... of interest to certain parties. It would be best if you were not in harm's way. Forgive me, but I cannot elaborate further than that."

Recalling a very particular dream with a mysterious voice that had supposedly summoned him to this world, Church nodded in what he believed was understanding. Surely the mysterious being that had summoned him had colleagues right? Hachiel was clearly interested in his health, so it wasn't too much of a stretch to assume she was helping him. "Right, right, I get it..."

Almost positive that he did not, Hachiel nevertheless let it be. "I am going to attend to the soldiers you incapacitated before we leave, if that is alright with you. I cannot in good conscience leave them without at least checking for permanent injury."

Figuring that such a thing was expected of an angel, Church decided not to dispute it. "Alright. I'll go watch the stairs for any guards while you work, alright?"

"Very well, I shouldn't be more than a few minutes."

With that, Church retreated back up the stairs to the main floor, bring along the sword and sheath of the soldier he had defeated for good measure. As he reached the heavy steel door that hadn't been locked due to a lack of soldiers who had entered the dungeon also leaving it, Church managed to peek into the hall, seeing nothing on the one side his angle provided him with.

Tucking the sword he had appropriated far enough into his pant leg to walk normally while still hiding it with his jacket, he slowly stepped out into the hallway, not realizing he was endangering himself until the distinctly cold voice of a none too pleased woman entered his ears.

"Oh, an escaped prisoner? I suppose I could use something to entertain myself for awhile..."

Church turned to face the source of this disconcertingly frigid voice. It was a blonde girl who looked remarkably close to a cat. She sported tiger-pattern garments, a clawed gauntlet, and even some sort of head ornament that looked like cat ears. She also held a metal spear that looked quite dangerous. Aside from all of that though, Church immediately recognized her as the baby sister from all the portraits that he had declared his favorite. Though she probably wouldn't appreciate it, her position as number one among her sisters was cemented by her killer legs.

Gorgeous thighs aside, this meant she was nobility, and he could possibly lie himself out of this situation. He only hoped he could bullshit his way out of it convincingly enough to escape with everything physically intact. "Ah... no, milady. I'm the...servant boy. I just got done scrubbing the dungeon floors."

The young blonde took a few steps forward in order to come closer to Church, scrutinizing him with suspicion. "You don't look like any of the servants I've seen around here lately."

Church bowed low, trying to cement his image as some slave, servant, or otherwise inferior individual. "Milady, I'm sure that a lowly servant like me has done little to attract the attention of one such as yourself. I am not even worthy of your attention. I also spend most of my time in places too lowly for the likes of you, such as the dungeon and kitchens. That is why I must not be familiar to you."

Even this was enough to erase all suspicion from him, though the point the woman before him made next was somewhat baffling. "What are you wearing? It's much too stylish to be the garb of a common servant."

Unsure of why this was the thing she pointed out above all else, Church thankfully managed to lie his way out of that one too. "I saved a great deal of my wages to purchase it, milady..."

The girl striking blonde scrutinized him for a few more moments before seemingly accepting his deceit, or perhaps just growing bored with it. She tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder before making to pass Church and leave him behind her. "Fair enough. Carry on with... whatever it is people of your status do."

With that, the arrogant woman continued on her walk down the hall, and Church breathed an inaudible sigh of relief even as he questioned the person he had just encountered.

She's not as nice as I imagined her being from all of those portraits... although, she's still pretty hot. She might have even nicer legs than Airi.

He was drawn from those musings when Hachiel stepped into the hall beside him, having clearly waited for Elina to vacate it. "I wish I could say nicely done, but I cannot actually condone lying."

"Well next time-"

His retort was cut off when Elina turned the corner she had left to apparently say one more thing to the servant she had encountered in the hall. "One more thing, where did you get that-"

The blonde's words came to an abrupt halt as she eyed the supposed family servant conversing with an angel of all things. And while this situation raised a great many questions, she was more than smart enough to deduce that the man in the admittedly stylish red jacket was not who he said he was.

As for Church, he cringed when the blonde noble clenched her armored hand around the edge of the wall it was holding, cracking the stone just slightly. Still, that didn't scare him nearly as much as the entirely pissed expression on her face.

...fuck.

This shall be the final revision. I hope. Maybe.