“What did we even do all that for if you are going out instead of down with me?” Rave asked as she put on her leggings. The question how she managed to move freely in pants that were so tight that she visibly struggled to get them over her supermodel legs and, the way greater hindrance, spectacular butt was answered by magical cloth. It still remained one John wasn’t exactly able to wrap his brain around. How could so much sexy even be contained?

It was like some glorious genius had combined yoga-pants and leggings. Praise be upon him or her. Adding to that outfit were her usual pink sneakers (a.k.a. her battle suit in minimized form) and a skimpy top. Changing from the usual formula, however, was the fact that she had put on her brunette, brown-eyed camouflage from. She didn’t want to be recognized, and that should have done the trick, especially in a club with frantic movements and flashing lights.

“I am being captain obvious before I answer that and tell you that you look beautiful,” John said and let his hand slide through the silky hair. “Also, you always call this an illusion, but isn’t it more like shapeshifting?”

“Ja, nope, perhaps?” Rave shrugged. “My eyes are definitely just an illusion, and I am pretty sure that the hair would stay brown even if you pluck it out… don’t try or else!” That was aimed at a slowly, but not at all quietly, approaching Sylph who then turned tail. “So, shapeshifting maybe? It’s only that great at it because it’s directly in my body anyway.” She stuck out her tongue and presented the little metal ball on top.

“How the fuck does this work then?” Eliza wanted to know and raised her scarf. Unlike anything else she picked up, she handled the soft fabric with more care than what was needed.

“Well, you only change colours, so I guess just illusions are good enough,” John told her. “Meaning that you wouldn’t need to go as far as making it part of your body as nothing about your body actually changes.”

“Right, magic is fucking weird, but that makes sense,” the blood mage said and dropped it again. “Anyway, what were you two, as the parasitic fuck-unit, on about? Something about not going into that super loud shithole again?”

“Right, yeah, I want to look at actual Amsterdam while I am here,” John said. He wasn’t one big on travelling and sightseeing, he would much prefer just sitting in the hotel room and playing video games or doing the other thing he was really good at. However, the room, as comfortable as it was, was clearly just meant to be relaxed in in between sessions of dancing or something else, as it had no table and gaming on bed with his laptop on his lap wasn’t that comfortable. “Might as well,” he presented his reasoning.

“I will gladly accompany you, Master,” Aclysia said. The elementals, save Gnome who loved the idea of looking around, decided to stay in the room or go down into the club with Rave and Metra. Eliza and Nia went with John instead, so their group split again.

“Mhm,” John hummed, after they appeared in the real world. Looking around he was halfway impressed and halfway disappointed. The winter afternoon lighting, already close to nightly darkness, didn’t do the city any favours. Sure, the way the water cut through the inner-city plaza and separated building blocks was interesting, and the wide red building with golden clocks and other decorations that was the central train station (or Centraal Station as it read on the building itself) was interesting, but both of those just seemed like the lesser version of the Abyssal side.

What mostly contributed to that impression was, as John realized, the fact that they didn’t have the slimes crawling about the place and eating all the trash. Thus, the water in the channels had that brownish-green murky stain that was the normal, but way less attractive looking, colouration bodies of waters reached. Small pieces of junk, wrapping papers and the like, tumbled over the ground or were stuck in small pieces of snow.

For all the romance people held for living in large cities, few people ever talked about the sheer amount of dirt several hundred-thousand people produced in a day.

On the different side of the coin, the commerce was booming and people looked friendly. The air was surprisingly fresh to breathe and there were a bunch of things even in his direct vision that he wanted to look at.

“Do we have any plan of where to go? Should I acquire one?” Aclysia wanted to know.

“Nah, let’s just run around,” John answered and spied his first target in the form of a cathedral. The Church of Saint Nicolas was pretty impressive from the outside.

“I am not going to take a single fucking step in there,” Eliza announced. Standing there in a black trench coat over long pants of the same colour (both of which they had bought back in Rome but never had a reason to have her put on) and the illusion making her hair appear raven. All in all she looked like the kind of girl that didn’t want to be inside a church.

Nia was already walking inside on her own. Nobody normal saw or stopped her, so her pale form hovered up the steps and into the building like a ghost. Gnome was quick on her tail, following a mental signal from John that he didn’t want to lose Nia a day before they wanted to leave. The stone elemental had been put into Rave’s overly flashy and rather voluminous jacket in addition to some jeans that luckily fit her. The yellow summer dress wasn’t exactly something fitting for the current climate.

Luckily Aclysia already had her own winter clothes: yoga pants topped by an open, brown jacket and a grey sweater. Meanwhile, John had just put an extra layer on top of his suit and called it a day, although he did have to remember to remove everything obviously magically looking from his equipment. He had moved it over to auto-equip. Assaults in this environment were unlikely, but one couldn’t be too cautious.

“Churches and the people that visit them voluntarily creep me the fuck out.” She got a pretty clear stink-eye by a backpacker who was on a modern-day pilgrimage for that. In return, she just gave him the finger. The backpacker stopped for half a second, then seemingly remembered that his religion preached forgiveness and that he was in front of a holy house and then just went about his business while shaking his head.

“Look, I don’t exactly believe in the big G in the sky myself,” John said, “but you don’t have to bash everything you don’t like.”

“Fuck that, fuck you, fuck off,” Eliza declared and earned herself a chop to the forehead by John. “What the cock-gargling shit-boot is that about?!”

“I just don’t like you criticizing a way of life that is not invasive to yours in any way right in front of one of their holy sites.” He wasn’t going to drop this just like that. “It’s REALLY bad manners and unbecoming of you.”

“Religion is just opioid for the masses, fuck it and everything that has to do with it.” The blood mage didn’t let it go herself.

“You should know better than just quoting Karl Marx like that,” John insisted, “seeing how great an influence to your life his particular brand of thinking has been.” Not that the father of communism was necessarily against religion, his stance there looked rather undecided to the limited knowledge John had on the subject (which really didn’t exceed far beyond the basics but far enough to make decision on what he thought of the ideology). Communists in general really disliked religion, that much was for certain.

“You expect me to take people that raise their hands into the air and pray to some bearded fuck in the sky seriously?” Eliza wanted to know.

“No, I want you to not tear them a new one at every opportunity you get to talk about it,” John tried to be as precise as possible. “If one of them goes all inquisition on you, by all means, abuse them verbally as much as you want, but most of these people just like to believe that there is something above all of us that gives life intrinsic value. As long as they keep that faith to themselves, why not let them?”

Eliza’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. Then she laughed maniacally, “Ah, wszystko jedno, I don’t give a fuck. Sure, they can believe in their stupid shit, maybe God will suck them off once they are done with their life. Probably better than getting 72 fucking virgins, sounds like a terrible time in the afterlife to have all of these sexually inexperienced sluts hanging around you.”

“Well, at least you are bashing all religions equally,” John mumbled. “Anyway, you still staying outside?”

“Yesssss,” Eliza hissed with unchanged disdain, “these cathedrals are creepy as fuck, so unless you want me to announce that I am going to fight in another dumb tournament and shit all over the competition, I will just stand right here.”

John glanced over to Aclysia, who just nodded to confirm that she would stay here as well. John didn’t want to run the risk of anything happening while he didn’t have eyes on it.

Once inside the cathedral, John had to admit that it wasn’t quite that great. The summary of Jesus’ story via a series of pictures together with the fitting psalms underneath them was kind of nice but lost on him aside from their artistic value. Same could be said for the building itself.

But the silence inside, that left an impact in him.

There was nothing quite like the silence inside a church. Something about the way they were built, John reasoned to escape the spiritual, must have been designed to invoke just the correct kind of silence in which every step echoed and the presence of something beyond had to be felt. Thousands of years of building bastions of faith could logically reach that final wisdom. He made his round through, speaking very little to not disturb the quiet. It felt unbecoming to touch something that, even though he didn’t believe in the figurehead, had some kind of impact on his very soul.

He heard a flutter, faint and distanced, of wings of gold that opened, hovering in the edge of his vision at the far end of the cathedral, above the altar that was fenced off to protect the mass of gold out of which it was made from the masses of people that desired it. Feathers that sung quietly into the silence in whispering choirs of calming beauty, a wondrous addition to the sound of nothing at all. A humanoid shape between them, he imagined.

John stopped dead in his track and whirled his head around, wide eyed. The figure wasn’t there.

‘What was that?’ he wanted to know. Evidently nobody but him had seen what had just happened, and it wasn’t like he had been pulled into an Illusion Barrier either. Why would an angel just appear right now before a non-believer? Something was seriously amiss. Was his mind playing tricks on him? Did someone put a spell on him?

And now Gaia, the tangibly existing supreme deity of this world, was teasing him. ‘Great, way to ruin the church mood,’ John thought and wondered just what Gaia wanted to achieve with sending him a religious experience. At least that reduced the pounding in his chest, he really didn’t like having experiences he couldn’t explain.

He finished his lap around the benches and stepped out of the cathedral being minorly creeped out. Especially since not one single person, neither Abyssal nor real, had noticed that thing happening. Not even Gnome had seen the whole thing and was expectedly surprised when he brought it up. Eliza just laughed at his face for having seen an angel.

“Now what I find interesting,” John told everyone as they crossed the streets to get to the sex museum so that they got their fair share of sin after being exposed to that much virtue, “is that this puts Gaia and Christianity into at least some connection.”

“Why is that interesting?” Aclysia asked, just to hear him talk more.

“Well, because we now know what is actually behind her all-dominating powers. Well, actually we only know half of it, but that aside. Does this mean that angels are like summoned creatures by the World Soul?”

“That fucking thing is the manifestation of faith itself, so yes… so would be demons then though,” Eliza answered. “Also what the fuck do you mean we only know half?”

“We know, or at least to the best of Romulus’ knowledge it is so, that the extremely powerful part of Gaia is the World Soul, but we don’t have any idea what goddess she herself is. Remember, she had to be made one before she could connect to the thing,” John reminded her, “and Remus just went for the most powerful source he could find. I wonder which one that was?

That question went unanswered, and they continued with lighter talks as they continued through the city.

Without any other idea what to do with it, the SEP went into the backburner for now.