Charis adjusted her purple heart shaped sunglasses in the driver’s seat, presenting the police with her most dazzling smile as she pulled the car forward and paused at the checkpoint. She thought for a fleeting moment that she wished she had a scarf that she could tie around her hair. It would have been hilarious to see the cop’s reaction since she currently looked just like a young Audrey Hepburn.

  The cop frowned slightly when he looked at her, no doubt recognizing her features. After a moment he shook his head and got down to business. They were stopping everyone heading toward the freeway. The other occupants of the car stared through the windows, quiet and tense. She hoped the cops wouldn’t notice.

  The uniformed officer checking her car glanced at the page he held. She could see the outline of David Tolin’s face through the paper, next to Scott’s glaring expression. He looked up from the paper and looked right at Dave who sat directly behind Charis in the back seat.

  What the cop saw in the brown Cadillac was a rumpled obviously poor Hispanic family staring back… with Audrey Hepburn behind the wheel.

  He waved them through.

  There was a collective sigh of relief from everyone crammed into the blocky brown 1986 Cadillac Fleetwood. Charis and Scott shared the expansive front seats while Miradon and David trapped little Dusty between them in the back. The aging car wallowed over every bump in the road, betraying its worn-out shocks. The steel beast wasn’t the nicest thing she’d ever driven, but it was certainly big enough for five adults.

  “Man, we could probably fit four more people in the trunk,” Dusty commented as if reading her thoughts. He put his feet up, crossing his Vans between herself and Scott on the plush blue velvet armrest cushion that folded down between the front seats. “This thing could be so cool if you lowered it and tricked it out, man. Black flake paint job, rims, neon underbody lighting, speakers in the trunk...”

  “Gah. This thing smells like dog. Wet dog,” David grumbled. He kept shifting around as if he couldn’t get comfortable, although the massive cushy seats were the most comfy thing Charis had sat in in days. “This crappy blue velvet stuff makes my clothes stick to it. Hey, is that dog hair?”

  “Relax, David,” Charis growled, settling the car into the fast lane behind a pickup truck. She sighed and glanced at the sky, feeling that things had gone too well. Just another couple of hours and they’d be in Seattle and safe. It was too easy. Maybe it was paranoia talking, but considering all the life-threatening situations Charis had survived she’d earned the right to be paranoid.

  “Alright. So what was I seeing when I looked into the sky in San Francisco?”

  David again, pumping Dusty and Miradon for information about the unseen realms. Scott rolled his eyes but Charis shrugged. Of all of them, Professor Ebenezer was probably the best one to ask.

  “Well, why don’t you try to describe what you saw when you looked up.” Miradon Ebenezer had near-infinite patience for stupid questions from noobs like Dave.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Um… lights. A huge blue guy, blue like the sky, looking down at me with suns for eyes. Behind him I saw a huge fiery halo around the sun that took up half the sky, and there was a man made of fire in it. And behind them I saw…” David hesitated and struggled for words. “…Layers and wheels. And lights. And stuff. And behind that I thought I saw… doors? And… um… things…” he trailed off, disturbed.

  “This is a surprisingly powerful Mantle. Evidently it allows you to see the inner workings of the universe for a remarkable distance! You were seeing right out of the Middle Earth into the Upper Earth and beyond, up to the third, fourth, and fifth heavens, if what you are describing is accurate.”

  “Fifth Heaven? I thought there was only one.”

  “Oh no, dear boy. There are ten major ones. Ten heavens, but you can call them dimensions or layers. Vibration shelves, really. The physical world is merely the first heaven… but I suppose this is not the time for a lecture on the structure of the universe. It is quite involved. But if you are ever in my school drop by and…”

  “So those huge bald men, the sky-man and the sun-man,” Dave interrupted, “they are in some other heaven?”

  “The third most likely.”

  “What are they?”

  “Those are most likely the spirit of the sky, and the spirit of the sun. The living powers which direct the sky and the sun. The sun and sky’s ‘program’, to use a computer term. You see, everything has a spark of life to it, a spirit. Even a rock. The great spirits look like humans because the human form is the Master form, that which was made to control all others.”

  “Spirits of rocks look human?” Dave sounded skeptical. “What about the monsters. They don’t.”

  “Well no. And spirits of rocks don’t necessarily look human, the human form is only for higher level creatures. As for what you call demons, they’ve usually twisted themselves either purposefully into hideous monstrosities, or their perversion has twisted them. They all used to look human, or human-like, to start with. Most demons are half-human, actually. At least, originally.”

  “What?”

  “Read the Book of Enoch,” Scott said darkly.

  “So good spirits look human and demons don’t? That’s what you’re saying.”

  “Well that’s oversimplification by a broad margin—”

  “Okay,” Scott raised his voice over the noise of the old car and the road, “we’re done with the lesson for today, everyone shut up. Thank you.”

  “Who made you God?” Dave grumbled.

  “Can I just zap him?” Scott pleaded with Charis, fingering the red stone in his pocket. “It will just knock him unconscious for a while. Then we can get some peace.”

  “No.” She kept her eyes straight ahead, inwardly groaning with the stress of what was turning out to be the longest day of her life, willing it to be over soon. She knew it was just her exhaustion talking. She’d been away from Nythe for days now, and her elogic energy was at an all time low. It made her short-tempered and irritable.

  Dave again: “So there are spirits inside rocks?”

  Charis felt like hitting her forehead on the steering wheel a few times.

  Dusty jumped in, drawing his words out slowly as if they were infinitely ‘deep’. “They are like the soul of a thing, man. Like the soul of rock and roll.”

  “Don’t tell me there’s a spirit guy out there made out of rock and roll.”

  “Sure there is.” Dusty grinned.

  “What?!” Dave had just bashed into the limits of his belief again.

  “We call them Archons,” Miradon explained. “The self-willed and sometimes physical embodiment of an idea or a state of being. They’re angels, of a sort. For instance, there are several Archons who live at the Academy and often help us on missions. Like Falke, the Archon of the Wild. Or Kyrolis, the Archon of the Internet.”

  “You have the Angel of the Internet at your school?” Dave was appropriately awed.

  “Or Madrik,” Dusty added thoughtfully, “although nobody can ever find him, because he’s the Archon of the Lost. He’s always lost.”

  Scott growled deep in his throat and turned on the radio. Loud. For a while school was over as Bon Jovi screamed over the roar of the wheels on the road. They could barely hear Dave shout over the wailing guitar, “is there an Archon of Bon Jovi?”

  Everyone ignored him.