"Best for us to leave? Why is that?" the elf asked. He looked at Silva the way you looked at someone who had committed a crime and had a lot to hide.

"That’s simple. A primordial being is headed this way, Ragna, and when he arrives, he will want to fight with me. Now, I do not know what he will do with others that are around here, so I suggest you leave as fast as you can," Silva explained.

The three looked at him with pure shock. Never in their lives would they have thought that the reason a primordial being was headed this way was because of a demigod.

"This has to be some sort of joke, right?" the lady asked. "You want us to believe that a primordial being is headed here because of you?"

"You don’t have to do anything," Silva said. "Believe it, don’t believe it. I don’t have time to waste, though. I have a dance with a pretty annoyed being." After he said that, he turned and looked into the distance. He could feel it. Ragna was close, and not in the way he had been close before when he sent the weeping angels, but rather a very present figure that was closing in.

Before any of them could utter another word, the space bent a small distance away. They all felt it, the powerful pull of space.

Out of nowhere, it appeared. A massive ship the size of a small planet. Its exterior seemed to be made of some kind of rocky metal, rough and filled with texture.

The ship was extremely long, so much so that you could not see the end from where you stood. This was indeed the ship of a primordial being, if they were meant to have one, because Silva never knew they did.

[Ragna had arrived, Ragna had ordered you to board his ship]

Suddenly, a hatch from the side of the ship opened, and two figures flew out. Eight-winged weeping angels, but they were moving regardless of the fact that Silva was looking at them.

The two weeping angels descended toward them like falling stars, their eight wings spread wide, each feather carved from something between stone and light. They moved freely, openly, without any care for the eyes watching them.

Silva kept his gaze on them the entire time.

It did nothing. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

They did not freeze. They did not lock into stillness the way the others had when he had looked at them before. They continued their descent, smooth and unhurried, as though his perception meant absolutely nothing to them.

The elf took a step back. "Why aren’t they stopping? Aren’t those weeping angels?"

"Because the rule has conditions," Silva said, his voice calm, his eyes still fixed on the angels. "A weeping angel cannot move when it is being perceived. That is the nature of what they are. But the rule exists to govern a fight, and a fight has to be agreed upon first. Until both sides have acknowledged the engagement, you don’t have to agree, just acknowledge, the rule does not apply." He paused. "And right now, we have not fought. They are simply here to escort me. Well, I think that’s how it works. After all, they only used it to attack me."

"Escort?" Kren repeated the word like it had personally offended him.

"Ragna follows a code," Silva continued.

"Old, rigid, and absolute. He will not simply attack me in the open while I stand here with others around me. That is not how he operates. He sent warriors. Those two warriors to take me in. After all, he knows I could handle them easily, so I’m guessing the time for the fight is yet to come."

The lady stared at him. "You know the customs of a primordial being."

"I have had the unfortunate pleasure of his attention for longer than I would like to admit."

The angels reached the ground without a sound. Up close, they were enormous, each one taller than any structure in the immediate area, their faces smooth and featureless except for the suggestion of something buried beneath the stone, something ancient and patient. They stood before Silva and did not look at the others. The others did not exist to them.

One of the angels extended a single massive hand, palm upward. The gesture was unmistakable.

Come.

The elf turned to Silva with an expression that had moved well past suspicion and arrived somewhere closer to awe. "Who are you?"

Kren said nothing. He was looking between the ship above them, the angels, and Silva, and the calculation happening behind his eyes was visible. He was reassembling everything he thought he had understood about the person standing next to him.

The lady had gone very still.

Silva looked at the three of them. He took in their expressions, the shock sitting openly on their faces, the questions they did not yet know how to form. He had seen that look before on others. The moment when someone realized that the person in front of them occupied a different layer of the world than they had assumed.

He smiled at them.

It was a real smile, unhurried, almost warm, carrying something in it that was difficult to name. Not arrogance. Not reassurance exactly. Something closer to acknowledgment. Yes. This is what it is. And I am still the same person you were speaking to a moment ago.

"Leave the area," he said. "However far feels right to you, go that far and then a little more."

He turned back to the angel and stepped forward, placing one foot onto the enormous outstretched palm. The angel rose, lifting him smoothly, carrying him upward toward the open hatch in the side of the ship. The second angel fell into position beside them, flanking.

Below him, the three demigods stood in the shadow of a vessel the size of a small planet, watching a demigod be carried aboard a primordial’s ship like a scheduled appointment.

The hatch swallowed him whole.

The metal closed behind him with a sound like a mountain deciding to stop moving.