God Ash: Remnants of the fallen. Chapter 1391: Blackfyre (2)

The wisp of grey floated above his palm. It was steady and strange, like a whispered rumor upon the wind, or the words of a fickle man.

Nero had never seen anything so... so...

So unassuming.

He stared at it for a long mont, watching the way it flickered with that sa uncertain quality, as if it couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to exist or not. The fla was pale grey, almost colorless in certain lights, and roughly the size of his thumbnail. It cast no aningful illumination across the room. It didn't crackle or hiss or exhibit any of the qualities he typically associated with fire.

It just... was.

Small. Quiet. Utterly unheroic.

Nero paused for a mont then placed his hand above it to test its heat.

The warmth reached his palm imdiately, gentle and steady. Much to his surprise, the fla did give off heat, similar to the fla of a candlestick. However, its intensity was rather weak, even by comparison. He could hold his hand directly above it without discomfort, without the instinctive flinch that ca from getting too close to real fire.

He lowered his hand slowly, watching the grey fla continue its small, steady existence above his other palm.

'Oracle, what the hell is this thing?'

The response ca with its usual asured cadence, the voice manifesting in his mind with that quality of certainty it always carried when delivering information it considered factual.

{That is the Heretic's recently acquired skill, Grimfyre.}

Nero was silent for a while.

Then he grunted, a short sound of profound dissatisfaction.

'Thanks for the information, but that's not what I wanted to know, now is it?'

The silence that followed stretched longer than usual. Nero could feel the Oracle processing the question, or perhaps simply deciding how much it wanted to elaborate. He'd learned that the entity had moods, or sothing approximating moods, and sotis those moods made it more or less forthcoming with information.

Finally, it spoke again.

{The Grimfyre is a strange fla born of the Heretic's nature and that of the Chained Prince of Heaven he devoured.}

Nero grimaced, the expression pulling at muscles still sore from recent trauma.

'So that really was Ruml Abellion.'

He'd hoped, in so distant corner of his mind that still believed in simpler explanations, that the notification had been mistaken. That the thing in the lake had been sothing else, sothing lesser, and the Oracle had simply misidentified it in the chaos of combat and consumption.

But no.

He'd killed an angel.

He'd eaten an angel.

A Chained Prince of Heaven, whatever that ant in the hierarchies of divine beings, and apparently his body had processed that consumption and turned it into this. A thumbnail-sized fla that barely qualified as dangerous to dry paper.

{Affirmative. Indeed, it would appear that the angel truly is a child of the Divine One.}

A frown appeared on Nero's face, deepening the lines around his mouth.

'How did you not know this?' he asked.

It wasn't an accusation, exactly. More a genuine question born of confusion. The Oracle knew things. That was its entire function, as far as Nero understood it. It provided information, guidance, knowledge that no human should possess. And yet it had failed to identify Ruml Abellion when the creature had been standing right in front of him, had given him nothing useful when he'd asked desperately what he was dealing with.

{That is because the na Ruml Abellion has never been written in the heavenly records. It is a na that does not exist, for all intents and purposes.}

Nero shook his head slowly, his frown persisting.

'If this was so ordinary low born with no na, then you could say that. But that thing...'

He trailed off, letting the implication hang. An ordinary person, soone insignificant, might not appear in heavenly records. That made a certain sense. The divine architecture probably didn't concern itself with every individual human who lived and died in obscurity.

But a Chained Prince of Heaven?

Sothing of sufficient rank that its death generated a hundred Seals of Sin in a single act?

That should have been recorded sowhere.

{You are right, Heretic. It would seem that there is an error. It is strange.}

The Oracle's tone didn't change, but Nero detected sothing in the phrasing. Not concern, exactly. The Oracle didn't do concern in any way he understood. But sothing adjacent to it. A recognition that this deviation from expected patterns warranted attention.

Nero was silent again, the grey fla still floating above his palm, casting its minimal warmth and light.

'This thing isn't that reliable after all.'

The thought ford with more bitterness than he'd intended, but he let it stand. He'd been operating under the assumption that the Oracle was essentially infallible within its domain. That when it provided information, that information was accurate and complete. That its guidance could be trusted absolutely because it drew from sources beyond normal human access.

But apparently not.

Of course, he knew that wasn't quite the full truth of it. The Oracle was useful. More than useful. It had saved his life multiple tis over, had provided knowledge and skills and warnings that no one else could have given him. Its utility was undeniable.

But...

It was probably outdated.

That was the most reasonable explanation. The Oracle drew from so archive of divine knowledge, so repository of information about the world and its workings. But that archive had been compiled at a specific point in ti, and things changed. Nas were erased or added. Beings rose and fell. The heavenly records were updated, and the Oracle's source material was not.

Which ant there were gaps.

Gaps large enough for a Chained Prince of Heaven to hide in, apparently.

Nero sighed and shook his head, then turned his attention back to the fla.

It continued its steady, unimpressive existence, completely unaware of or indifferent to his disappointnt. The grey tongue of fire flickered once, then steadied, maintaining its candlelight warmth and its complete failure to be remotely intimidating.

He watched it for a mont longer, then spoke to the Oracle internally, his ntal voice carrying a note of resignation.

'This... Grimfyre. What can I use it to do?'

Because that was the practical question, wasn't it? He could spend hours contemplating the gaps in the Oracle's knowledge, the mysteries of angelic hierarchies, the strange fact that he'd consud sothing divine and his body had processed it without apparent consequence. But at the end of that contemplation, he'd still be sitting here with a tiny grey fla floating above his palm, and he'd still need to know what it was actually for.

The Oracle was silent for a mont, and Nero could feel it gathering information, or perhaps simply organizing what it already knew into a format his human consciousness could process.

The grey fla flickered again, patient and steady, waiting to reveal what it could beco.