Aísē: My Five Supernatural Wives

Chapter 157 157: That Old Man

The Faust estate came into view and Mariabell exhaled."Finally," she said. "It's been long but...finally home."

Victor glanced at her. Then quietly reached over and took her hand.

She looked down at it. Laced her fingers through his. Said nothing.

...

I felt the presence before we even reached the gate.

Not the crushing weight from the first time.....that greeting that had nearly put me on one knee in his own hallway. This was different. Just presence. Old and deep and settled.

'That old man is back,' I thought.

Beside me Victor's shoulders had changed. Pulled in slightly. Tighter than usual.

He felt it too.

Not surprising.

Braham Faust. Archlord. One level below the absolute ceiling of mortal power. The rung above Archlord didn't have a mortal name because what lived there wasn't mortal anymore.

I had met him once before. and I remember clearly.

And Victor who knew him long before me knows this better.

How Terrifying an Archmage can be.

"He's inside," I said.

Victor glanced at me. Nodded once. Said nothing.

...

Victor opened the front door.

Aisha clicked her tongue the moment she stepped in. Old habit. She'd done it the first time too.

The portrait of the man with long white hair and purple eyes was still above the stairs.

Before anyone could say anything else.....

The air shifted. Not footsteps. Something crossed the distance from the far end of the hall too fast for footsteps.

And then Braham was just there.

Staff in hand. Long beard. Ancient face. He had moved at a speed that had no business belonging to a man who looked the way he looked.

But he wasn't looking at me.

He was looking at Mariabell.

"My dear Maria!!!"

Arms wide open.

Mariabell had no time at all.

He crossed the remaining distance and pulled her into a hug with the energy of a man reuniting with the most important thing in his life after a long separation.

"Grandpa—"

"Ahhhh my dear sweet Maria! How long! Come come, give Grampa a smooch, just one on the cheek—"

"Grandpa!"

"I've been so lonely Maria, so lonely! No one takes care of Gramps when you're gone, the house is quiet and I've been eating alone and reading sad old books—"

"I was gone less than two weeks!!"

"Fourteen days," Braham said. Like a verdict. "Fourteen days three hours and some minutes Maria. Do you know how that feels at my age? Every moment with you is precious—"

"GRANDPA."

She shoved both hands flat against his chest and pushed back hard.

"I swear," she said, looking directly at him, "I will actually hate you if you don't stop right now."

Braham Faust went completely still.

All that weight. All that presence. The man who had pressed down on my whole body like gravity had a personal grudge against me.

Gone.

His face had the expression of a man who had just been told everything he ever cared about was at risk.

"...Maria," he said. Hollow.

"I mean it."

"...You wouldn't."

"Try me."

His hands came up slowly. Total surrender.

"You're right," he said immediately. "You're completely right. Gramps was being unreasonable. I apologize. I apologize wholeheartedly my dear, from the bottom of this old heart that loves you more than anything—"

"Grandpa."

"Done. Apologizing. That's all. Nothing else. Done."

Mariabell closed her eyes. Opened them. Sighed long and deep.

"Fine," she said. Then stepped sideways and went to stand next to Victor, who had been frozen since the hug started with the expression of a man watching something he'd been warned about and had still underestimated badly.

...

Braham's gaze moved to Victor.

The whole personality flipped again.

The desperate grandfather was gone. What looked at Victor now was quiet and even and had not finished forming its conclusions yet.

"Hey," Braham said. Lower. "Kid."

Victor's spine went rigid.

"Sir," Victor said.

"My cute Maria." Each word came out carefully. "While you were all out there. You didn't let anything happen to her yes? Not a scratch. Not a single hair."

Victor's mouth opened.

"No," he said. Then louder, like volume made it more true: "No sir. No. Not a scratch. Not anything. Nothing at all. I would never. Not even an ant. The ant would have had to go through me first and I would not have allowed the ant."

He was sweating.

I had never seen Victor sweat before.

'He's genuinely scared,' I thought.

Not that I blamed him.

Braham could make a Level 7 Duke look like a rounding error. Victor had done the math and his body was done waiting for his brain to catch up.

Braham held the look one beat longer than comfortable.

Then nodded once. "Good." And turned away from him.

Victor exhaled like he'd been holding it since the question started.

Mariabell patted his arm without looking.

...

I stepped forward.

Braham turned to me before I said anything. He had been waiting for this since we walked in. His eyes went to my face first. Then briefly to the glasses.

Something in his expression shifted.

"Archmage," I said.

He said nothing. Waiting.

"I'll skip the part where I pretend you left for unrelated reasons," I said. "And the part where we spend twenty minutes circling what we actually need to talk about."

I held his gaze.

"You weren't gone without reason. And the reason wasn't just yours. It was the Association's."

The room behind me was quiet. Aisha. Liliana. Mephistopheles. Everyone still.

"So," I said. "What does the Mages Association want from me."

My eyes stayed level on his face.

Whatever came out of his mouth next mattered. It was going to shape how I dealt with every mage going forward. It was going to tell me exactly how much of these past weeks...Austin, the exposure, Mephistopheles, all of it...had been arranged around me by hands I hadn't seen.

He knew it mattered. I could see that he knew.

Braham Faust looked at me for a long moment.

Then he exhaled. Something in his face settled into a different kind of serious. Not the grandfather. Not the Archlord running a test. Just an old man who had been carrying something for a long time and had finally arrived at the point where it needed to come out.

"Let me start," he said quietly, "from the beginning."

.........

.....

Somewhere unknown.

A dim room. No windows. The kind of dark that was a preference not an accident.

Azazel sat in a chair.

His right arm ended at the elbow.

He looked at where his hand used to be. Tilted his head slightly. Then he laughed.

"Hahahaha."

A genuine laugh. The laugh of a man who found something surprising and decided the surprise was funny.

"That old man," he said, still looking at the stump with something close to admiration. "That old stubborn decrepit man. To think he'd actually make me lose an arm." He shook his head. "Hahahaha."

From behind him, from the shadows:

"Kekeke...Lord Azazel. Seems today was clearly not our day huh."

Crow. Standing just far enough into the light to be visible. Masked. Head tilted at its usual angle. The cheerful amusement on him like a coat he never took off.

Azazel's red eyes didn't move from the stump. But his expression shifted in a way that Crow, who had been around him long enough, clocked immediately and said nothing further about.

In the corner of the room, on his knees, Austin Astor was looking at the floor.

Greying hair. Sharp eyes that had gone somewhat less sharp than usual. He was doing the thing he did when he was computing something he didn't want the answer to.....running it back. The timeline. The details. How easy it had all been.

Azazel stood.

He moved toward Austin with the easy unhurried pace of a man who had decided he didn't need to rush because Austin wasn't going anywhere.

"I kept you," Azazel said pleasantly, "because you were a good spy."

Austin's jaw tightened slightly.

"But it seems," Azazel continued, stopping in front of him, "that I overestimated you." He crouched down to eye level. The red eyes were warm the way a fire was warm.....pleasant to look at from a distance, a problem up close. "You couldn't even tell that the Mages Association was using you this whole time."

Austin's head came up. "There's no way."

Then he stopped.

His face did the thing it did when the calculation landed somewhere he hadn't wanted it to land. Quiet. Still. The look of a man who had just audited twenty years of intelligence work and found a consistent discrepancy he had been too confident to look for.

"Don't tell me," he said quietly.

"Yes," Azazel said.

He stood back up. One arm. Completely unbothered by it.

"Every move you made. The Sealed Tome, Mephistopheles, the boy. You thought you were running the operation." He almost sounded fond. "You were the operation, Austin. Braham Faust needed a reason to bring Vanir Alucard into the human world. He needed Mephistopheles free and accountable. He needed Valerian.....that Golden Child whose body carries five bloodlines of the strongest mortal races who ever existed.....he needed that boy standing somewhere visible so everyone in The Mages Faction had to formally acknowledge he existed."

He looked down at Austin.

"You gave him all of it. Wrapped up neatly. For free."

Austin said nothing.

"And the Tome," Azazel said. "Did you really believe walking into the heart of the Mages Association and walking out with a sealed artefact was actually that easy?" He tilted his head. "Braham Faust has been running that organisation for longer than most nations have existed. You walked into his vault and found exactly what he wanted you to find."

A pause.

"Because of you," Azazel said, glancing at the stump where his arm ended, "I now need to find a new hand for this vessel."

He said it the way you mentioned a mild inconvenience. The way you mentioned needing to replace a broken cup.

From the shadows Crow made a small sound. Attempting to lighten the atmosphere. Something about it being a hard day for everyone, Lord Azazel, these things happened.

It didn't help.

The pressure in the room increased. Not dramatically. Just enough that Austin's breathing changed and his knees, already on the floor, pressed harder into the stone as though the stone had gotten heavier.

"Another chance," Azazel said softly. Not a question. He was reading what was on Austin's face.

Austin looked up at him.

"Give me another chance," he said. His voice had gone smaller than he intended it to. "I know things still. Contacts. Information they haven't burned yet. I can fix this. I can—"

Azazel smiled.

"Ho," he said. "After all this mess. You want another chance."

Austin's eyes moved across his face trying to read it. The red eyes were warm. The smile was warm. Everything about Azazel was warm in the way that things were warm right before they stopped being safe.

"Alright then," Azazel said.

And his hand moved.

Through Austin's chest. Clean. Direct. No hesitation in it. His fingers closed around something and pulled back out and what was in his hand was dark and wet and pulsing with a faint unnatural light that had no business existing inside a biological thing.

Austin's eyes went very wide.

He looked down.

Then at Azazel.

Azazel examined the heart in his hand with mild genuine interest.

"Your heart," he said, "which now carries trace resonance from contact with that boy...that's worth something." He closed his fingers around it carefully. "Consider it your apology for the arm."

Austin's mouth was open. Nothing was coming out.

"Don't panic," Azazel said pleasantly. "I know how to keep a tool functional without its heart. You're not finished with your services yet." He glanced down. "You wanted another chance? You have one."

Austin's eyes were growing heavy. The room was tilting. The edges of his vision were pulling inward like curtains being drawn.

He hit the floor.

Still conscious. Just barely. The kind of conscious that couldn't do anything with itself.

"Kukuku...Boss, you really have no mercy huh!"

Azazel looked at the heart resting in his palm.

Then he looked up toward Crow in the shadows.

He seemed genuinely puzzled.

"What are you talking about," he said.

He turned back toward the dark at the far end of the room.

"Have you ever seen an angel as merciful as me."