A week or so later, Alex’s evening reading was interrupted by a knock on her door. “Come in!” She called, placing her bookmark and closing the book.

Raphael gingerly stepped through the door, taking care not to show her back to Alex as she closed the door. She was holding her arms behind her back too, and Alex was pretty sure she knew what was going on.

Still, it was important to let Raphael take things at her own pace, so she pretended she didn’t notice. “Raphael!” She said warmly. “Are you here to watch TV again?”

“N-no.” Raphael stammered. “Um…I have something to show you, promise you won’t freak out?”

“I promise I won’t freak out.” Alex said, setting down her book. “What do you want to show me?”

Raphael took her hands away, and a small spade tail sprung out from behind her back. “I, um…I asked Kali for it back.” She said. “I thought…I thought if I was going to enjoy being a demon, I should commit.”

Alex gave her a reassuring smile. “Well, I think it looks cute.” She said. “It’s your body and your life, so you should get to choose what goes on with it. Have you showed anyone else yet?”

Raphael shook her head, blushing. “N-no. I thought I would come show you first because we had already…you know, talked about this. Um…do you think anyone else is going to freak out?”

Alex chuckled, patting the bed next to her. “Come take a seat.” She said.

Raphael sat, looking up at Alex nervously. “So…”

“No, no one’s going to freak out.” Alex replied. “They’re probably gonna be a little surprised about you being a demon now, but they’re not gonna suddenly hate you or anything just because you look a little different. I mean, look at Lilith, she’s got the whole angel and demon look going on and no one bats an eye at that.”

“Yeah, but…she’s a Perfect Chimera, that’s different.” Raphael said.

“How?”

“They’re…they’re exceptions!”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “To what?”

Raphael froze. “I…right. I…forgot.”

Alex smiled, throwing an arm around the younger girl. “Don’t worry about it.” She said. “Everyone here will accept you without a second thought.”

“How can you be so sure?” Raphael asked in a small voice. “I’ve seen people who I thought were good be…really nasty about this sort of thing.”

Alex pulled Raphael a little closer. “This is different. The people here are…well, they accepted me readily enough, and I attacked them. And I’d say they’re pretty fine with demons, too, Lilith’s even dating one! Honestly, I would be more worried about your angel side, were it not for the fact that we know they’re fine with it.”

“I…okay.”

“Would it make you feel better if I came with you when you show everyone?”

Raphael looked up hopefully. “Really?! You would do that?”

“Of course I would! What else are friends for?”

Raphael stood up. “Um, can we do it now, then?”

“Sure.” Alex replied, standing up and grabbing Raphael’s hand. “Let’s go.”

The two left the room and made their way to one of the living rooms. Usually, if people weren’t doing anything specific and didn’t want to be alone, they would gather in a living room, where they would watch TV or chat with the others.

It looked like that night Carmen, Lilith, and Siph were the only ones in the room, which wasn’t too surprising. Siph’s father had been training Lilith’s parents hard, so they usually went to bed early, Vithi liked to keep to herself, and Emily spent most of her evenings studying.

“Ah, you two.” Siph said. “We were looking for a couple more people to play cards, are you interested?”

“Um…” Raphael began. “I…have an announcement.” She was hiding her tail behind her back again, trying to keep it as out of sight as possible using her free hand.

Lilith put her phone away, looking up curiously. “What’s up?” She asked.

“Um…” Raphael trailed off, and Alex gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “Um…I…I’m kind of not just an angel anymore.” She began. “I…when I asked Kali to prove who she was, she made me a demon too.”

Raphael nervously took her hand away and let her tail come into full view. “I’m a succubus too. I, um…I decided I didn’t want to hide it anymore, since I was liking how having the two Dom- I mean, Racial Classes made me feel. I wanted to…commit.”

Carmen gave her a smile. “Well, I’m glad to hear you’re feeling up to sharing with us.” She said. “If you’re ever wondering about anything, feel free to ask me or Lilith about it, we know a thing or two about adapting to becoming a demon.”

“She’s exactly right.” Lilith said. “Is there anything else?”

“No, I…that’s all.” Raphael said. “I just wanted to get it out there.”

“Well, I’m proud of you.” Carmen said. “It’s brave of you to do so, really.”

Raphael giggled bashfully. “Thanks.”

“Hey, Alex, that reminds me.” Carmen said. “Do you want the Catkin Racial Class? I had Kali teach me how to give Racial Classes to people who have already  been transformed, and I can spare the Worship for it. I figured that, if you’re going to be one, you might as well…be one, you know?”

Alex blinked in surprise. “I…yeah. That would be good, actually.”

Carmen nodded. “Awesome, give me a moment here.” She closed the book she was reading before standing up and walking over to Alex. She placed a finger on Alex’s forehead, and then…

“All done.” Carmen said.

“That’s it?” Alex asked, a little taken aback by how casually her very essence had been altered.

“That’s it. It’s not a particularly complicated Racial Class, so it’s not a big deal. So, you two up for cards?”

“I’ll play.” Raphael volunteered.

“And I suppose I will as well.”

“Perfect.” Siph replied. “Come over to the table, I have the deck shuffled already, we just need to deal.”

---

Elenoa followed Baern into his workshop, eager to see what he had made. Apparently, the last couple weeks had already helped to get him past a couple of things that had previously been blocking the progress of his research. They passed through several different security checks Baern had set up, and after a solid five minutes they were finally in the cavernous area he used to store things he wasn’t actively working on.

The first thing he had her look at was the one that he had been working on for the longest, a weapon that, originally, would have been used to finally push back the monsters arounds the cities of Haven, clearing more land for people to use and allowing them to finally escape the tight confines they had become accustomed to.

It was a large, spherical object made of a sleek, black metal. She wasn’t sure which metal, and the detail didn’t really bother her. She trusted Baern to choose the most suitable one for the job, so what it actually was mattered little in the grand scheme of things.

It was floating a couple of feet off of the ground, staying perfectly still in the air.

“Watch this.” Baern said gruffly, hefting a small chunk of metal and tossing it at the sphere.

Elenoa watched in fascination as the metal approached the sphere and then, when it was about a foot away, emerged from the opposite side of the sphere, continuing its trajectory like nothing had happened.

“We’ve managed to set up a permanent exclusion field around the whole thing.” Baern said proudly. “Anything that comes close, even magic, will exit out the other side. Unlike most enchantments, it takes Mana to keep it running, but it makes whatever’s inside practically invulnerable as long as it’s up.”

“Excellent work.” Elenoa said. “What’s providing the Mana?”

“That leads me to my next leap.” Baern replied, an uncharacteristic look of excitement on his face. “You’re familiar with how djinn lamps work, right?”

“Yes. The djinn is forced into a contract with an inanimate object, and then forced to store Mana inside it constantly. Correct?”

“Correct. We’ve been trying for years to replicate it under different circumstances, but it never quite worked out. Usually, without a constant connection to the person providing Mana, the Mana would just leak out over time.” He reached into a pouch and pulled out a flask of purple liquid. “After the Shift, alchemists found they were able to create potions that would restore Mana to whoever drank it.”

“Your point?”

He walked to another part of the room, motioning for her to follow. He interacted with a terminal, and soon the floor in front of him opened up, a stand holding a large block of purple ice rising up from below.

“This is frozen Mana potion.” He said, rapping a knuckle against it. “And, unlike other materials, when you put mana in here, it stays in here. And, also unlike other materials, it seems to have a maximum capacity. I’ll spare you the exact details since they’re not important, just know that if you put too much Mana in the thing shatters and becomes useless.” He punched in a command to the terminal again, and the block of ice went back into the floor, replaced by another block of ice, this one pierced by several wires which hooked up to a display. “This gadget will tell us roughly how full the block is, and in our little tank we’ve hooked it up so that it’ll cut off access to the reserve before it gets to a dangerous level of Mana.”

Another set of inputs, another pedestal. “And this is how we get the Mana out of the ice.” He said, picking up the beaker contained within. “When Mana potion evaporates, the Mana stored within is dispersed into the surrounding area. And, when condensed, the gas retains the property that allows it to store Mana without retaining any of the Mana it used to hold. So, you evaporate the potion, get the mana, and then turn it back into the potion.”

“We found that, when storing Mana, it’s not evenly concentrated, instead gathering towards the bottom of the material. It’s why you have to drink most of the potion if you want it to have any significant effect. So, we have a sort of conveyor belt linked up, bringing “empty” liquid to the bottom of the main tank, freezing it while it’s in contact with the tank and connecting the two, and then unfreezing that portion and taking it away to be evaporated once it’s full. We even managed to set it up so that it only brings in a new set of liquid to be evaporated when needed, improving the mana efficiency greatly.”

Elenoa rubbed her hands together. “Well done.”

Baern, glowing with pride, put the beaker back and lowered the pedestal, then moved back towards the prototype tank. “You may be wondering how we get into the tank, and how we shoot out of it.” He said, prompting a nod from Elenoa. He tossed her a small remote, containing a single button and a square chunk of ice below it. It was cold to the touch, and she looked at it curiously.

“This was a little tricky to put together, but it works wonders. You put your finger on the ice and charge it up with Mana. When it’s full, the ice will retract into the remote, and then you press the button and it’ll teleport you to the inside of the tank. You have to be within 10 yards for it to work, and to get out we’ve got a similar button inside the tank that’ll let you out exactly 5 feet in front of it. This is the only way to teleport inside the tank while the exclusion field is operational. Each remote is keyed to the individual tank, and any other attempts to teleport objects in will be blocked by the exclusion field at the expense of Mana equivalent to however much the teleport cost. But the tank can hold about fifty thousand Mana, so unless it’s been running for a while it should be effectively immune to attempts to get inside.”

“Now, the hard part was getting the firing mechanism to work. We eventually ended up placing another field inside the guns that would teleport whatever’s fired directly in front of the exclusion field, which is a bit of a mana drain but the only thing we could really do. We’ve got a few regular guns set up, but we also have another tube the operator can fire spells into, and they’ll come out of the front just like gunfire would.”

“I’ll give you a look inside later, but don’t worry. The cockpit is stabilized, and the “front” of the tank can be rotated around at will. There’s no openings when firing, so no one should be able to tell what way the tank is “facing”. We’ve still got a few bugs to work out but expect it to be operational within the month.”

Elenoa grinned. “And the other matter?”

Baern led her back to his terminal, which he used to bring up another pedestal.

This one contained a silvery sword, which he reverently took off of the stand and handed to Elenoa.

“This, by all rights, shouldn’t have worked.” He said, slightly awed. “But I did it. You’ll have to test it on Winston, but…it should be effective.”

It was long with an almost wood-like grain on the blade that, on closer inspection, was actually a multitude of tiny carved magic arrays. She went to rub a finger down its length, but withdrew the moment she made contact, the tip of her finger burnt horribly. Cold Iron. Alchemical Silver. Regular silver. Devil’s Copper. She could have spent probably ten minutes just listing all the materials that went into this one little sword.

They all had one thing in common – they all were the weakness of something. Baern had, somehow, managed to make a weapon that would be especially effective on just about anything that had a material weakness.

So, what would it do to something that, however miniscule the effects were, however much they were counterbalanced by other races’ strengths, had all those weaknesses?

She couldn’t wait to find out. Soon, very soon, she would have the tools needed to begin her fight.