Lady of The Knight

Chapter VIII : The Prisoners

Painting : Dante & Virgil in The Ninth Circle of Hell by Gustave Doré

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"What a day." Love sighs. She was hoping she'd feel at least sleepy after a long day she had, but around 10 pm, she only got bored and nearly dropped the candles on her altar.

So, she decided to take a long, night walk while writing on her grimoire. Somehow in the back of her mind, the thought of Julian missing nags her over and over again even after attempting to shrug the thought away by thinking of somebody else.

It's around 1 pm when she finally got back to the dormitory building and saw Laurent sitting right outside of her door with a book on his lap. "Hey, Laurie." Love greets, fishing her room's key out of her wallet, "aren't you suppose to be asleep?"

Laurent slowly gets up from the ground. "Aren't you?"

"I'm insomniac, and probably a vampire. I can never sleep." Love chuckles, inserting the key to the hole and rotates. "Interesting thing. Did you know that the vampy community is having some sort of sex party just two blocks away from here?"

Laurie laughs, "yes. I do know that. I was invited by a few, actually. None of that interests me."

"The s-e-x part?"

He nods his head without further explanation. "So, I heard you're going to go astral today."

"How'd you know that?" Love opens the door to the room before removing the key from the slot.

"Intuition, of course. Also, It's a great night to be astral projecting." He shrugs, "where are you headed tonight?"

Love shrugs, resting her side on the doorway. "I'm going to Tartarus. You been there before?"

"Nope. I actually rarely astral project. I don't do one of those work for deities thing." Laurent says, "but I do worship Nyx. My family and I do."

Love eyes him for a bit. Curious, and also surprised that someone as eccentric as Laurent rarely astral projects. "and you have never ever been to Tartarus before?"

"No! It's where Goddess Nyx resides, and honestly? I've never found anyone who, at least, stumbled upon the area. The farthest they have gotten is probably River Styx."

"Ugh." Love gestures for him to come in. Laurent follows her behind, putting his book back into the backpack. "It was horrendous. I was barefoot, and there were so many skulls."

"What else did you see?" Laurent wides his eyes, entertained. He closes the door behind him. "Did you see Charon? ... did you go to Unburied Dead? Did Hekate let you go to Her temple?"

"Unburied Dead? You mean a place for the lost souls?" Love drops her totebag on the ground before collapsing on the bed.

"Yep."

"Why, no. Maybe I should-" Love raises her brows when she notices Hekate's candle is lit. "Huh, I definitely did not leave that on before." She gets up from the bed to approach her altar, "to answer your question, no I did not go to Hekate's temple. She forbids me. But I did meet Charon, he offered me a ride as if his boat is a fucking taxi or something."

"It technically is." Laurent chuckles as he admires Love's altar. "Sorry for dropping by so late at night, by the way. There was a lot of crap going on at school today, and you and Lev were involved in one! Also, it's been feeling kind of strange around here. Like somebody's dying."

"Well, you're right," Love takes the tarot card from the bookshelf and shuffles them. "The Soulless have been wandering around Crimson Cove for a while, I think. They pretended to be a student, used glamours, and well, you know the rest. I think Mrs. Laveau mentioned once that there have been 'mysterious disappearances' as well."