Chapter 58: 8.1.1
gabriel is initially hostile towards koen after sending his internal blood but after a bit gabriel decides that koen isn’t a threat. after deciding that gabriel starts examining koen, curious about the other kid. koen can’t speak common
one of gabriel’s older brothers, raphael (another archangel), decided to drop by the cottage for a surprise visit. but instead of finding his younger brother and his lover, raphael finds two kids that look suspiciously like koen and gabriel. gabriel immediately recognizes raphael
The world was too big.
That was Koen’s first, overwhelming thought. The hardwood floor of the cottage living room, usually just a few steps across, now stretched away like a vast plain. The sofa loomed like a cliff face, the coffee table a dark mesa. He sat, small limbs curled into himself, staring at hands that were pudgy and soft, absent of the calluses and thin silver scars he was used to. The clothes he’d been wearing pooled around him, a heavy, scratchy tent of fabric. A cold, unfamiliar panic, simple and pure, tightened his chest.
Across the sea of polished oak, another child stirred.
Gabriel pushed himself up, his movements uncoordinated, wings—small, soft, and downy white—fluttering for balance. He was tiny, a perfect cherubic form with that same shock of blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, though now they were wide with a storm of confusion and indignation. He touched his temple, his fingers coming away smeared with a single droplet of golden ichor from where he’d knocked his head on the leg of a chair.
His gaze locked onto Koen. The confusion crystallized into immediate, sharp hostility.
“You,” Gabriel said, his voice high and clear, but dripping with a familiar, haughty suspicion. “What did you do? Where is this? Who are you?”
Koen flinched at the tone, shrinking further into the fabric. The words were noise, sharp and meaningless. He understood only the anger. He shook his head, his ashen black hair falling into his orange eyes. He opened his mouth, but no Common words came. A low, frantic sound bubbled in his throat, and he whispered the only words that felt safe, the old, guttural syllables. “Noli me nocere…”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “Infernal. A demonling.” He wiped the golden blood from his temple, his small face set in a grimace. The tiny wings on his back mantled slightly, a defensive gesture. “Did you bring us here? Answer me!”
He took a wobbly step forward, intending to be threatening, but his foot caught on the hem of his own oversized tunic and he stumbled. The stumble broke the posturing. He righted himself, cheeks flushing with embarrassment, and glared at Koen as if it were his fault.
Koen hadn’t moved. He just watched, trembling, his pointed ears peeking through his hair. He wasn’t attacking. He wasn’t chanting. He was just a small, scared thing hiding in a pile of clothes, muttering fearfully in a language Gabriel couldn’t parse.
The hostility in Gabriel’s posture seeped away, replaced by a burgeoning, analytical curiosity. The demonling wasn’t a threat. It was… lost. Like he was.
“You can’t speak Common,” Gabriel stated, more to himself than to Koen. He took a cautious step closer, then another, his little wings twitching with focus. He stopped a few feet away, peering down. “You’re half-blood. I can smell the mortal taint. And the sulfur. It’s… faint.”
Koen went very still, like a rabbit sensing a hawk. His orange eyes were huge.
Gabriel crouched, ignoring the way his oversized pants bunched. He was all clinical examination now, the fear and anger sidelined by the puzzle. “Your eyes are wrong for a full infernal. More like embers than pits. You have freckles. Demons don’t have freckles.” He leaned in, sniffing delicately. “You smell like… old paper and gun oil. And rain. Why do you smell like rain?”
Reaching out, he poked Koen’s shoulder with a single, imperious finger.
Koen jerked, but didn’t retreat. The poke hadn’t hurt. It was just… assessing.
“You’re real,” Gabriel murmured. He then noticed the state of them both. “Our garments are impractical. We are swimming in them.” He looked around the gigantic room, his brow furrowed in thought. “This domicile is empty of appropriate guardians. A temporal displacement? A translocation mishap? The metaphysical resonance feels familiar, but… smaller.”
His monologue was cut short as Koen, emboldened by the lack of violence, slowly uncurled one arm from his chest. With a timid, shaking hand, he pointed at Gabriel’s temple.
“Sanguis,” Koen whispered, the Latin word for blood clear in the Infernal.
Gabriel touched the spot again. The golden droplet had trailed a shimmering path down his cheek. He looked at it on his finger, then back at Koen’s concerned face. The concern seemed genuine. A demonling, concerned about an angel’s blood.
“It’s a minor abrasion. It will cease its flow momentarily,” Gabriel said, his tone softening from a declaration to something closer to information. He sat down fully on the floor, crossing his legs, facing Koen. The examination continued. “Your canines are pronounced. Can you retract them? Do you have a tail? Most lower infernals have tails.”
Koen just blinked, not understanding the questions. He mimicked Gabriel’s posture, sitting up a little, the mountain of fabric settling around his small waist. He looked at Gabriel’s wings, fascinated. He pointed.
“Alae,” Koen said, and a tiny, awed smile touched his lips.
“Yes, they’re wings. I have them. You don’t.” Gabriel gave them a little shake, sending a puff of soft light into the air. “Superior design for celestial travel. Your method of locomotion is presumably bipedal and mundane.”
The words washed over Koen, but the display held his attention. The fear was melting, replaced by a wary, dawning fascination. This angry, shiny, talking bird-boy wasn’t going to hurt him. He was just… talking. A lot.
Gabriel leaned forward again, his blue eyes sharp. “Can you say anything else? Try. Say ‘table.’” He pointed to the enormous coffee table.
Koen followed his gaze. His brow furrowed in intense concentration. He opened his mouth, strained, and a choked, soft sound came out. “T-tuh… T-tabula…” He deflated, shaking his head, a look of profound frustration on his young face.
“‘Tabula’ is Infernal. The Common word is ‘table.’ Your phonetics are obstructed. Interesting.” Gabriel filed that away. “You understand some of what I’m saying, though. You’re following my gestures. Your cognitive reception is functional; your expressive faculty is impaired. A linguistic disconnect, not an intellectual one.”
He said it with the gravity of a senior scholar, which was absurd coming from a child with apple cheeks and downy wings. Koen had no idea what he’d just said, but the tone wasn’t mean. It was just… matter-of-fact.
A long moment of silence passed, the two children sitting in a circle of discarded adult clothing in the cavernous room. The strange, shared disorientation became a quiet bridge between them.
“I am Gabriel,” the cherub announced finally, as if bestowing a great gift. He waited, then prompted. “You have a nomenclature. What is it?”
Koen stared. The silence stretched.
“Your name,” Gabriel insisted, pointing at him.
Comprehension dawned. Koen placed a small hand on his own chest. “K-Koen,” he managed, the ‘K’ sound clear, the rest a soft exhale.
“Koen,” Gabriel repeated, testing it. He nodded once, a tiny, decisive motion. “Adequate. This situation is untenable. We require solutions. First, we require appropriately scaled attire.”
He stood up, determined, his wings helping him balance. He looked at Koen, who was still sitting, looking up at him with those wide, ember-like eyes.
“Well? Come on, Koen,” Gabriel said, his tone leaving no room for argument. He held out a small, imperious hand. “We can’t investigate draped in curtains. There must be a linens closet. Or perhaps a trunk. Follow me.”
Koen looked at the offered hand. It wasn’t a fist. It wasn’t a weapon. It was just… there. After a heartbeat of hesitation, he reached out his own small, tan hand, speckled with freckles, and let Gabriel haul him to his feet. The fabric puddled around their ankles. Together, two very small, very lost beings, they began to wade through the woolen sea toward the hallway, the first, fragile thread of a new connection spun between them in the overwhelming silence of the cottage.
The journey to the hallway was an expedition. Koen tripped over a sleeve and fell with a soft whump, disappearing into a fold of dark linen. Gabriel sighed, a high, put-upon sound, and waded back to dig him out.
“Your motor functions need calibration,” Gabriel observed, pulling Koen upright by the back of his collar. “Walk where I walk. Step high.”
They moved like explorers in deep snow, Gabriel leading with a determined frown, Koen following in his clumsy footsteps. The hallway was a dim canyon of closed doors. Gabriel pushed the first one open, revealing a bathroom with a titanic porcelain tub. The second door was a closet full of brooms and dusty boxes. He made a dismissive noise.
The third door, at the hallway’s end, was larger. Gabriel shoved it open, using his whole body.
It was a bedroom. A massive, sunlit room dominated by a bed the size of a hill. But more importantly, against the far wall, stood a heavy oak wardrobe.
“A repository,” Gabriel said, satisfaction in his voice. He marched toward it, his tiny wings fluttering with effort as he tugged one ornate door open.
Inside, adult garments hung in neat, ominous rows. But on the wardrobe’s floor, tucked away as if forgotten, was a wooden chest. It was plain, latched with simple iron. Gabriel dropped to his knees before it, his cherubic face set in lines of intense focus. The latch was stiff, but he wrestled with it, a soft grunt escaping him.
Koen knelt beside him, watching. He reached out one tentative finger and traced the iron band on the chest’s edge.
With a final scrape, the latch gave. Gabriel lifted the lid. A scent of cedar and old cotton bloomed into the air. Inside, folded with care, were small garments. Simple tunics in soft grays and browns, a pair of dark, child-sized trousers, smallclothes. They were worn but clean, relics from a past neither of them could remember.
Gabriel pulled out a tunic, holding it up. It would fit. He looked at Koen, then back into the chest, pulling out a second, slightly smaller tunic and trousers. “Here. These are pragmatically sized.”
They dressed in silence, turning their backs to each other with an unspoken modesty. The fabrics were soft from many washings. Koen struggled with the lacing on his trousers, his fingers clumsy. Gabriel, already dressed, his wings poking through slits he’d found in the tunic’s back, watched for a moment before swatting Koen’s hands away.
“You’re doing it wrong. The tension must be even.” Gabriel’s small fingers made quick, efficient work of the ties. He stepped back, assessing Koen with a critical eye. “Adequate. You look less like a lost sack of grain.”
Koen looked down at himself, then at Gabriel. A small, real smile touched his lips. He patted the fabric of his new-old tunic. “Gratias,” he whispered.
Before Gabriel could formulate a response—likely a correction on the use of Common—a heavy knock echoed through the cottage. It wasn’t the front door. It came from the direction of the kitchen, a solid, confident rap-rap-rap on what sounded like the back window frame.
Both children froze.
Another series of knocks, followed by a familiar, resonant voice that carried through the glass and walls. “Gabriel? I saw your light. You in there? Open up, I’ve got those scrolls you wanted translated.”
Gabriel’s small body went rigid. His blue eyes widened, not with fear, but with sudden, blazing recognition. That voice. It stirred a deep, cellular memory, a feeling of safety and minor irritation buried under centuries of experience he no longer possessed.
“Raphael,” he breathed, the name a solid, known thing in the shifting unknown.
He didn’t wait. He turned and ran, not with his earlier wading gait, but with the sudden, direct purpose of a child who has seen a landmark. His small feet pattered on the hardwood. Koen, after a second of panic, scrambled after him, afraid to be left alone in the giant room.
They burst into the kitchen, a space of towering counters and a fireplace like a dark maw. The back door, a slab of heavy oak, was shut. But the window beside it was filled with a figure.
He was tall, silhouetted against the afternoon light, with a cascade of sandy, wavy hair and a kind, amused face now etched with bewilderment. He wore simple, elegant robes, and an aura of gentle, immense power radiated from him like warmth from a hearth. Raphael, the Healer, the Scholar. He peered inside, his eyes adjusting to the dimmer interior.
His gaze swept the empty kitchen, then dropped.
And found two children staring up at him: one a cherub with defiant blue eyes and familiar blonde hair, the other a dark-haired half-demon hybrid with orange, anxious eyes and sharp little canines.
Raphael blinked. He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching the glass. His expression cycled from polite confusion to dawning, impossible scrutiny. The cherub’s features… the set of his jaw, the arch of his brow… it was a miniature, softer version of his brother’s perpetual smirk. And the other one… the freckles, the specific hue of those eyes…
His own eyes, a warm, earthy brown, widened to an almost comical degree.
Gabriel stepped forward, planting his small feet apart, and crossed his arms over his chest in a gesture that was quintessentially, exasperatingly Gabriel. He tilted his chin up, meeting his enormous older brother’s stunned gaze through the windowpane.
“Raphael,” the cherub said, his high voice dripping with practiced, familial impatience. “It’s about time. The logistics of this form are irritating. Get in here and explain what’s happened.”
Raphael’s eyebrows shot up. A slow, delighted grin spread across his face, erasing the bewilderment. He chuckled, a warm, rolling sound that vibrated through the glass. “Oh, this is priceless.” With a casual flick of his wrist, the back door’s lock clicked open, and he let himself in, ducking his head under the frame.
He straightened up in the kitchen, his warm gaze sweeping over the scene. The discarded mountains of adult clothing, the two small boys in borrowed tunics, the utterly bewildered domestic silence. A delighted, incredulous laugh bubbled out of him. “Well. This isn’t what I expected to find when you missed the celestial memorandum deadline.”
He crouched down, bringing himself closer to their eye level, his robes pooling around him. His attention fixed on the scowling cherub. “Gabriel. Truly? A full ontological regression? You haven’t been this small since the Bronze Age consensus meetings.” He reached out, unable to resist, and gently pinched Gabriel’s cheek. “You were so fussy even then.”
Gabriel swatted his hand away, his tiny wings puffing up. “Unhand me! This is a severe metaphysical incident, not an occasion for your infantile nostalgia.” His blue eyes flashed. “You will explain the mechanics of this reversal immediately. My cognitive faculties are intact, but the data stream from my higher archives is inaccessible.”
“Your higher archives are currently the size of a walnut, little brother,” Raphael said, his grin widening. He looked past Gabriel, his eyes landing on Koen. The humor in his expression softened into genuine, awe-struck curiosity. “And you must be Koen. Oh, this is remarkable.” His voice was gentle, admiring. “Gabriel’s descriptions never did your eyes justice. They’re like banked coals.”
Koen had been hanging back, half-hidden behind Gabriel’s shoulder, a silent observer. The initial shock of Raphael’s arrival was fading, replaced by a creeping, sensory invasion. It wasn’t malice. It was worse.
It was purity.
Raphael’s presence wasn’t just a person in a room. It was a concentration of something vast, clean, and unbearably bright. To Koen’s juvenile half-demon senses, still raw and untrained, it felt like staring directly into the heart of a silent sun. The cedar-and-herb scent of him was overpowering. The gentle light that seemed to cling to his robes wasn’t just light; it was a pressure, a resonant hum that vibrated in Koen’s teeth and behind his eyes.
The comfortable, dark silence of his own mind began to shred.
Gabriel was huffing. “His ocular pigmentation is irrelevant. Focus, Raphael. We require a reversal protocol. I have correspondence to manage.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Raphael chuckled, still looking at Koen with wonder. “To see you both like this… it’s honestly adorable.” He reached out again, this time to gently ruffle Koen’s ashen hair.
The contact was the trigger.
The gentle hand was a brand. The hum became a scream. The world didn’t just recede; it shattered, then reassembled into a flat, distant tableau. Colors bleached of meaning. Raphael’s voice became a distorted, echoey thing, miles away. Koen’s own breathing was too loud, a mechanical rasp in his ears. His body was no longer his own—it was a puppet made of clay and static, left standing in a room that wasn’t real.
He didn’t tremble. He didn’t cry. He simply… stopped. His orange eyes glazed over, fixed on a point somewhere beyond Raphael’s shoulder. All the wary curiosity, the faint smiles, the clumsy attempts at communication drained away, leaving a terrifying, hollow silence.
“—so the temporal locus must be here in the cottage, probably the living room,” Raphael was saying, turning back to Gabriel. “You always did overcharge the sigils when you were impatient. Must be a core trait.” He smiled, expecting a retort.
Gabriel’s frown deepened, but not at Raphael’s tease. He followed his brother’s earlier glance back to Koen. He saw the absolute stillness. The dead eyes. The complete absence of the strange, quiet child who had whispered “gratias” moments before.
“Koen?” Gabriel’s imperious tone wavered, just slightly.
Raphael looked back. His amused expression evaporated. He saw it now: the dissociation, the mute panic, the small body locked in a terror so profound it had bypassed flight or fight entirely. He understood instantly. His own aura, so benign and normal to him, was an overwhelming cosmic force to a child whose demonic half was screaming in the presence of raw, unfiltered divinity.
“Oh, hell,” Raphael murmured, all teasing gone.
He moved instantly, but not closer. He shifted back, putting clear distance between himself and Koen. He drew his power in, pulling it tight to his core with the practiced ease of a healer minimizing a glaring light. The oppressive sense of radiant presence diminished, becoming merely a man in a room again.
The oppressive sense of radiant presence diminished, becoming merely a man in a room again.
Raphael stayed perfectly still, his hands held where Koen could see them. He didn’t speak Common. He didn’t try to touch him. He just breathed, slow and audible, a steady rhythm in the quiet kitchen. He let his expression do the work, softening the lines around his eyes, letting the quiet concern there become the only thing on his face.
“Koen,” he said, and the name was a blanket, not a question. His voice was a low, warm register, stripped of all celestial resonance. It was just sound, gentle and patterned. “You’re in the kitchen. You’re safe. The floor is under your feet. Can you feel it?”
Gabriel watched, his small arms still crossed, but the smugness had drained away. He saw the vacant terror in Koen’s eyes and recognized it, not from memory, but from a deep, instinctual place. It was the look of a creature cornered by something infinitely larger than itself. He took a half-step forward, then stopped, uncertain.
“What is wrong with him?” Gabriel asked, his own voice hushed.
“My fault,” Raphael murmured, not taking his eyes off Koen. “I’m too much, like this. It’s like shouting in a silent room. He can’t filter it out.” He slowly sank from his crouch to sit cross-legged on the floor, making himself smaller, less defined. “Hey there. Just here. No surprises.”
A long minute passed. The clock on the mantle ticked. A fly buzzed against a windowpane. Koen’s breathing hitched, lost its mechanical rhythm, and became shaky again. The distant point beyond Raphael’s shoulder blurred. His gaze slid, millimeter by millimeter, down to Raphael’s face.
“There you are,” Raphael said, a soft smile touching his lips. He didn’t move. “Welcome back. It’s a lot, I know.”
A tremor ran through Koen’s small frame. His hands, which had hung limp at his sides, twitched. His lower lip quivered. The overwhelming sensory scream was gone, replaced by a crushing, childish wave of embarrassment and residual fear. He’d broken in front of a stranger, in front of Gabriel. He’d stopped. He’d vanished.
A small, devastated sound escaped him.
“Ah, no, none of that,” Raphael soothed, his tone feather-light. “It’s okay. You did just fine. That was a very big, very shiny thing to walk into. You’re doing perfectly.”
He finally moved, but with glacial slowness. He simply opened his arms, a clear, unthreatening invitation, and held the pose. He didn’t reach. He just offered.
KOEN VERY SLOWLY COMES BACK TO HIS SENSES WITH RAPHAEL’S HELP. EVEN THOUGH KOEN DOESN’T KNOW WHAT RAPHAEL IS SAYING THE TONE IS VERY COMFORTING AND KOEN BURIES HIS FACE IN RAPHAEL’S SIDE, HOLDING ONTO HIS SHIRT VERY TIGHTLY. He let out a shuddering breath that was half a sob, his small fingers twisting into the soft linen of Raphael’s robes. The fabric smelled of sunlight and dried sage, a quiet, earthly scent now. The terrifying brightness was locked away, leaving only the solid, steady fact of someone holding very still and letting him hide.
Raphael closed his arms loosely around him, a secure, grounded weight. “That’s it,” he murmured, resting his chin lightly on top of Koen’s head. “You’re alright.”
Gabriel stood frozen, observing this interaction with the intense scrutiny of a scientist presented with an unsolvable equation. His brows were knit. The demonling—Koen—was seeking comfort. From an archangel. Not hiding, not fighting, but clinging. And Raphael, who Gabriel only knew as his brilliant, annoyingly relaxed older brother, was providing it without a second thought, as if this were a normal Tuesday.
“You know him,” Gabriel stated, the pieces clicking into a configuration that made no sense.
“I do,” Raphael said, still gently swaying a little with Koen attached to his side. “And so do you. Or, you will. It’s complicated.”
“Explain it simply.”
Raphael laughed quietly, the sound vibrating through Koen. “Simply? You blew yourself up with a time spell. You’re both about four hundred years too young. This,” he said, nodding down at the small, trembling form against him, “is your best friend. And you are his.”
Gabriel’s nose scrunched in sheer, undiluted disbelief. He looked at the back of Koen’s head, at the way his small shoulders were hunched. “My… friend. With a demonling.”
“Half,” Raphael corrected gently. “And yes. The best one. Fiercely loyal. A bit of an idiot. Throws himself headfirst into trouble. You find it endlessly entertaining.” He paused, choosing his next words with care. “He’s the one who taught you what loyalty actually costs. He’s the reason you started to sound like a person instead of a doctrine.”
Gabriel said nothing. He just stared, his cherubic face a mask of conflicted processing. The idea was preposterous. It violated foundational principles. Yet, the evidence was in front of him: his own brother’s unwavering certainty, and the strange, quiet child who had known the word for ‘wings.’
Koen’s grip had loosened slightly. The tears were done, leaving behind a hollow, shaky exhaustion. He was aware again of the room, of Gabriel’s stare, of the profound awkwardness of clinging to a stranger. He began to pull back, wiping his nose roughly on his sleeve.
Raphael let him go easily. “Better?”
Koen nodded, not meeting anyone’s eyes. He focused on a knot in the wooden floorboard.
“Good man.” Raphael brushed a bit of lint from Koen’s shoulder, a casual, familial gesture. He then turned his attention back to Gabriel, his demeanor shifting to something more practical. “Right. We need to fix this. The epicenter’s in the living room, you said?”
“The metaphysical residue is strongest there, yes,” Gabriel confirmed, seizing the return to logistical problems with relief. “A reversal will require recasting the original sigil with a counter-harmonic. My current capacity is… insufficient.”
“Understatement,” Raphael said, pushing himself to his feet. He offered a hand to Koen, who, after a second’s hesitation, took it and was pulled up. “You’ve got the power output of a distracted firefly. I’ll handle the heavy lifting. You two just try not to touch anything. Especially you,” he said, pointing a finger at Gabriel. “No ‘helpful’ corrections.”
Gabriel looked offended. “My insights are precise.”
“Your insights are currently housed in a noggin the size of an apple. Come on.”
Raphael led them back into the living room. The pools of clothing looked even more ridiculous in the clear afternoon light. He walked to the center of the room, knelt, and placed his palm flat on the floorboards. His eyes glowed faintly, a soft gold, as he sensed the tangled weave of magic. “Yep. You really botched it, Gabe. It’s a backwards knot. No wonder it rebounded.”
“I designed it for efficiency,” Gabriel muttered, standing a few feet away with his arms crossed again.
“You designed it for speed. There’s a difference.” Raphael stood, brushing his hands together. “Okay. I can undo it. It’ll take a few minutes of concentration. You two… sit. Be small. Try not to argue.”
He gave them both a look that brooked no argument, then closed his eyes. His breathing deepened. A complex, faintly glowing pattern began to etch itself into the air before him, lines of gentle light weaving together in a silent, reversing dance.
Koen sat down heavily on the floor, hugging his knees. He watched the light, mesmerized.
Gabriel sat beside him, not too close, his small wings twitching. He watched Raphael work, his analytical mind dissecting each graceful movement. The silence between them stretched, filled only by the almost-inaudible hum of Raphael’s power.
“You are not what I expected,” Gabriel said abruptly, not looking at Koen.
Koen glanced at him, then back at the light.
“Raphael is rarely incorrect about substantive things,” Gabriel continued, as if admitting to a grave personal flaw. “It is… statistically improbable that he would be wrong about this.” He frowned. “Do you truly not speak Common?”
Koen shook his head. He tapped his own temple, then made a vague, frustrated gesture with his hands towards his mouth.
“Aphasic. Or selectively mute. Likely trauma-induced.” Gabriel nodded, filing it away. “Infernal is an inelegant language. Guttural. But your pronunciation of ‘alae’ was acceptable.”
It was the closest to a compliment he could manage. Koen seemed to understand that. He looked at Gabriel, really looked at him—the stubborn set of his tiny jaw, the intelligence blazing in those blue eyes—and gave a small, tentative shrug. A shadow of his earlier, awed smile flickered.
In the center of the room, Raphael’s weaving light pulsed once, brightly. The air pressure changed, dropping suddenly like before a storm.
“Hold on,” Raphael said, his voice strained with focus. “This is the tricky part.”