Chapter 33: Plane

"The Spiritual Plane?"

"That's right! There's a high chance that whoever you're looking for is right over there," Ellariel said.

I knitted my eyebrows in skepticism, "How can you tell?"

"How rude! An Angel's intuition is never wrong!"

I decided not to criticize her baseless statement and focused instead on solving the problem at hand.

"So how do we get there?"

"Simple. We just need to wait until twilight and open up a rift from here to there."

"That's it?"

"Yeah. That's it."

To be honest, I kinda expected it to have a crapload of prerequisites, such as a specific alignment of the stars or the requirement to perform a kind of ancient ritual. Who knew that traversing between realms would be such a cinch. But then again, it seems a little bit too easy. When things turn out to be too good to be true, one must be suspicious of whether or not there are hidden dangers that lurk unseen.

"Tell me more about the Spiritual Plane," I said.

Ellariel briefly explained about it. The Spiritual Plane is actually a realm that overlaps with the mortal plane and is home to every spirit (not to be confused with the soul of the dead) in existence. I asked her to elaborate more regarding the laws in that world, the inhabitants, and what-to-what-not-to-do. But unfortunately, she didn't really know much since she's never been there herself. Youth is wasted on the young and immortality is wasted on the ignorant. I grimaced at how little Ellariel knows despite living for so long - a dozen centuries, according to her. Luckily, she at least knows how to enter and exit the Spiritual Plane. Which is good news, considering we might encounter more of those non-friendly Caspers who wanted to suck my soul dry like the Miords did.

I, in turn, explained about what had happened so far. About how the Miords wanted me dead and how I was able to use Lia as my power supply. She jeered at me for running desperately from such low level spirits and I glared at her in retaliation.

The plan is simple. Wait for twilight hour, open the portal, enter the portal, grab who we needed to grab, and scram as fast as possible. As for self-defense, Ellariel assured me that her divine powers works just fine in any realm. It would really suck if we arrived there just to be completely helpless in a foreign realm. Just like in a dream where we can't completely control how things go even though it happened inside our head.

"You said that mortals usually can't traverse to other realms on their own. Are you implying that there might be something that brought him there?" I asked Ellariel.

"Most likely so. Unless he managed to forge a contract with beings capable of cross-planar transitions."

"Does that include Angels?"

"Indeed. But I doubt there are many of my kind who would ever considered forming a contract with mortals. If it hadn't been for that Abyssal who destroyed my body, I wouldn't have been reduced to this state where I have to rely on a mortal as a vessel to preserve my soul."

"Get off your high-horse. It's not like I even wanna have anything to do with you in the first place. Besides, you're the one who came crawling, asking for my consent to bind a pact with me. If you don't like your position, then find another sucker to possess and do your bidding," I said coldly. I wasn't in the mood to deal with any more of her childish rant. Being chased all night and almost getting killed could do that to a person's temper.

Her expression turned ugly but she didn't say a word. Seems like my previous conjecture is correct. She can't. She's stuck with me whether she likes it or not. And there's probably nothing she can do about it, else she would have threatened me with the consequences of violating the agreement.

I smirked at her, attempting to enrage her even more despite knowing how stupid it is to piss off a celestial who's in charge of opening a portal to realm which I may not return from. Seriously. Sleep deprivation is a serious thing. It makes you irrationally irritable and prone to make mistakes. Always try to sleep and wake up at a regular hour.

I prepared myself for some verbal backlash and empty threats. Contrary to my expectations, tears started to well in her eyes and I suddenly felt a surge of guilt through my system. It's kind of a guy thing when he makes a girl cry, no matter how justified it is.

Her form blurred into a mist and flowed back into me. I could feel my chest tightened for an instance before she shut her consciousness away and went under.

I turned to Lia and wondered if I had said too much. And based on the disappointed look she gave me, turns out, I did. Even so, I didn't try to convince her otherwise. I didn't need to. "It was necessary," I told myself. So I ignored Lia and tried to catch some rest. Another long night is ahead of us and I best be prepared for it. All that's left to do is to wait until twilight.