Edward's eyes went wide at the weapon, his face lighting up and his jaw dropping. "And that, Celine, is one hell of a weapon," he said with a slight laugh in his voice. This is so cool! his mind screamed. His own eyes, normally hazel, shone almost gold in the light. "My name's Edward, by the way."
"Nice to meet you." Celine laughed softly. "It's what we fight with every other day. Burns the skin of Shadowhunters and mundanes. But they're angel blades, so they are therefore our best weapon against demons. Nearly every Shadowhunter has a seraph blade and a stele. I want you to have this Seraph Blade." Her hand released the strangely beautiful weapon, dropping so that the blade was only in his grasp. "They respond to the name of the angel you've given it. So if you were to say Malik again...," she trailed off.
"Wait, you're GIVING me this?" Edward asked in shock. It hadn't occurred to him that he would be handed a weapon on his first day. "Malik," he added, to deactivate the clearly supernatural sword. The blade responded, shimmering down so that only the hilt was left.
"You don't have to use it straight away of course!" she said quickly, waving her hands in front of her somewhat frantically. "No, you've still got a lot to learn. I mean, I don't finish my own Shadowhunter studies and training for another two years. But it's better than nothing." She shifted from one foot to the other, training her gaze on the floor as if nervous.
Edward looked for a place to put the blade, settling on a place in his BDU pocket. "Thanks, anyways," he said with a slight smile. "That thing really reminds me of a lightsaber."
At that, Celine looked up, bewildered. "Lightsaber?" she said quietly.
He took a step back in shock and something else he couldn't quite name. "You don't know what a lightsaber is?!" He was dumbfounded by Celine's complete and utter lack of knowledge. "You obviously don't know what Star Wars is, then."
"Unfortunately not," she replied with a nervous laugh. "The only mundane movie I've ever watched was Jaws."
His mouth twitched at the naming of mundanes. It was getting on his nerves. However, he set it aside quickly.
"I ought to show you sometime, then," he said with a smile. "It's possibly the best movie series ever made. Not to mention iconic."
"Perhaps you ought to. And sorry. About the whole 'mundane' thing. We don't really have anything else to call them. Anything nicer, anyway." Celine bit her lip, running a hand through her golden curls.
He waved a dismissive hand. "Not to worry. I won't exsanguinate you over it," he said with a slight chuckle. At her look, he added "Joking!"
In the meantime, something was very clearly going off in his brain. He hadn't confirmed it yet, but it was impossible to deny it now. His mind kept telling him to ask her out. And it made sense; the slightly sarcastic girl from the field had disappeared with a thin shell, leaving a kind and beautiful young woman behind. Even her name was lovely, oddly French, too. He hadn't known why he'd tried to push her away at first. Perhaps it was the indirect death threat.
Damn it, he thought, taking a deep breath. "So, uh, I thought maybe we could watch it over the weekend?"
Celine blushed darkly, her skin going from pale gold to a darker gold when she caught onto the intentions of his words. She ignored the blush and tilted her head to the side in thought, her golden eyes clouding over.
"Unless you count fighting demons all weekend as something that would prevent that, sure. Sometime this weekend is good." she smiled softly. "Now you have the clairvoyance rune, let's get you a stele."
After a few more minutes of Edward asking what a clairvoyance rune and stele were, he figured out that the rune was what he had thought of as a tattoo on his right hand, for seeing the Shadow World. A stele, on the other hand, was apparently a device used for making those runes.
Suddenly, Celine asked him a question that she perhaps should have a long time ago. "Wait a second. How on earth did you get that rune in the first place? It can't have been from the Ottawa Institute, right?"
Edward shook his head. It hadn't been; his parents had forbidden any member of the Ottawa Institute from speaking to him, or even coming to his house every six years. They hadn't exactly spoken to Edward about this, but they did mention never speaking to anyone that said they were from the Ottawa Institute or the Clave. They didn't mention anything else. When he told this to Celine, she frowned. "That's weird. Why would they do something like that?"
"I don't know," Edward responded. "There was one incident, though..."
Edward's mind jumped back to a day in February, three years past. It was a typically cold day in downtown Ottawa, citizens trotting past, some with their mouths covered by scarves, some not. Edward had been dressed in his typical winter outfit, consisting of a red jacket, dark gray snowpants, hat, neckwarmer, and black winter gloves. Of course, this sort of thing was standard for Canadian children who actually knew what cold weather could do and weren't complete idiots.
His slightly more miniature self had trudged along in the snow, gazing around at passers-by and the buildings that pierced the sky. Cars had rolled by along the street, all headed somewhere in the city. The faint smell of tobacco smoke had filled the air, combined with whatever local delicacies were being consumed. He had no idea how he remembered it so vividly, but he did. At one point, his parents had passed an alleyway, and Edward had followed close behind, but not close enough.
He had felt a hand closing over his arm, pulling him into the space between two buildings. Edward had struggled, eventually landing a good elbow strike to the stomach of his assailant, but instead of escape, a shockwave of pain had suddenly exploded within his nose. Edward fell, slipping on the icy asphalt. His senses went wild, but he could have sworn he had felt his glove being torn off and then someone drawing on it. An icy hot feeling, similar to that of sticking your hand in the snow, had spread over the back of his hand and he had kicked out, missing his attacker's head by inches. Instead of disappearing, however, the feeling in his hand had persisted for a few seconds, even though he had heard the sound of footsteps.
Edward had looked down at his right hand and saw a tattoo of what looked like an eye.
As he snapped back to reality, he found himself staring at his right hand, where the Clairvoyance rune lay. He shook his head to clear it, then looked back up at Celine, who was nodding. Edward hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud.
"So, yeah. I had been able to see Downworlders and things like that before this, but this was the first time I had ever seen that type of rune."
"Weird," Celine said, biting her lip. "So it must have been a Shadowhunter, since Nephilim-that's another name we call ourselves-are the only ones who know runes from the Gray Book."
"Gray book?" said Edward, tilting his head. In answer, Celine nodded.
"Yeah, it's a book of all the runes the Angel allowed the Shadowhunters to have. It's kind of like the Angels' language if you will. We still haven't figured it out, and probably never will. Anyways, it had to be one from the Ottawa Institute. But I honestly don't know why they'd do that, wait until you were twelve and jump you like that." Celine shook her head, sending her golden curls bouncing. "Doesn't make any sense."
"We'll probably have to figure that out later. So, since I'm actually a Shadowhunter, would I be, like, trained or something?" This made Celine smile.
"Yeah, actually. My father tutored me for most of my life, even though my early days of training were difficult. I was the smallest of the group, and the weakest. That was obviously bad in the fighting portion of it... Oh well, at least his lessons were entertaining. You'll love him. I'll try and get you a tutoring session tomorrow, but no promises."
"All right," Edward said, managing a small smile. "Can't wait to start. I mean, I did do like nine years of karate before we met, so it shouldn't be that big of a learning curve."
Celine laughed, the first time she did so since she had found Edward. "Lucky. I didn't have it easy. I was the smallest Shadowhunter here when I started my training at eight years old. I was absolutely tiny. It took me two years just to learn how to do backflips and frontflips off of the rafters. And by that point, all the other Shadowhunters my age were way ahead of me. And then something else happened that put off my training when I was twelve. So all in all, I didn't properly finish the training I had to be taught by my father until I was 13. You would've had a better chance than me. My brother's taught me since then and I have to say, I've been getting a hell of a lot better. I still can't beat him, hardly anyone can."
"Well, here's hoping those frontflips were at a decent height. I hope they don't expect me to do one off the ground. That would probably end in disaster," he admitted nervously.
"Wait, you were small?" Edward added, injecting humour into his voice once again via circumstance. The girl was almost his height, and he was taller than most people at his high school.
"I know right? Hard to believe," Celine said, fidgeting with her top. "But yes, I was very small. Wasn't this angelic looking either."
"Well, the past was the past, you can say that for sure."
Celine bit her lip in a small smile. "Yeah. But in some ways, looking kinda like an angel is a curse. You have no idea what vampires would do for a pretty face. But hey, I suppose you've had your fair share of admirers."
Edward blushed a little at that. "I guess, but... I'm a bit of a geek, so I'm not that noticed. And I've never actually seen a vampire who wanted to bite me." He shrugged.
"By the way, what are your kind called? I heard something about a heron, but I'm pretty sure you're not a bird." This made Celine laugh once again, louder this time. Edward's eyebrows shot up, nearly disappearing into his hair. He hadn't intended for her to actually laugh at the joke.
Guess my humour's better than I thought.
"It's my family name. Herondale," she began, launching into an explanation of Shadowhunter families; the fact that they were more respected the longer they'd been around; and the fact that they had a symbol and a ring. (Her family symbol was a group of herons in flight.) Edward nodded along to her words, though they didn't seem to answer his question.
"Okay, what about your pupils? How did you get those?"
Celine pointed at her eyes for confirmation, and Edward nodded. "Well, no one really knows," she said. "My father doesn't have them, nor my mother. I think they know something, but they just won't tell me. And as for my skin, well, his skin was like this, too. That's probably where I got this from."
Edward frowned. "So you're still a human."
"Well, Shadowhunter, but yeah. Shadowhunters are actually half angel, half human."
"Half angel?" Edward raised an eyebrow. He'd never had much interest in fantasy, despite everything that he saw, and angels were one of the concepts that he'd never really gotten into.
"Well, yeah. Everything we do revolves around angels, since we have their blood."
"Might I ask why you have angel blood in you?"
Celine smiled knowingly. "I knew that question was coming sooner or later. You see, around a thousand or so years ago, demons began invading the earth in massive numbers. So, to counteract this, a once mundane named Jonathan Shadowhunter summoned the Angel Raziel to figure the whole problem out. Raziel decided to mix some of his own blood with Jonathan's blood in a chalice that would from then on be known as the Mortal Cup, to create a superior race of warriors to properly fight the demons. After this, the Mortal cup was used, and still is, to create new Shadowhunters when the Clave is in need. The Clave is basically the word for all the Shadowhunters in the world. Anyway, Raziel also gave us the runes we use almost every day. They all come from the Gray Book. I think I mentioned that earlier."
"Yes, you did," Edward said patiently while Celine nodded.
"Also, we name our seraph blades after angels because it's said that whatever angel you name your blade after, that same angel's spirit inhabits the blade, if that makes any sense."
"None, but then again nothing does. I'm still getting used to all this talk of angels."
"Yeah, it's angels, angels, and more angels. Don't be surprised when you walk into a classroom next," Celine said with a teasing smile. "Come on, I'll show you the weapons room and we can get you a stele," she added, taking his arm and leading him down the hall. Edward had no real choice but to follow.