Divine Celebrity 2 (Patreon)

The chill of the night hit mercilessly as I left the building. 

There was no one around, which was not surprising. The museum was located in a forgotten corner of the university — which, considering the campus was located in the middle of the nowhere in America, two hours of drive away from the closest city, reflected the true meaning of desolate. 

Around the museum, there were a few other educational buildings, of course, like the library, but the students rarely visited those places, more interested in frequenting the frat houses and college bars to see how close they could come to alcohol poisoning rather than studying. Party college was the perfect description for this place, and only two things mattered for the majority of the students. 

Partying, and the football. 

I walked on the pavement, half of the lights broken, hating the silence. The inner city was a tough place to grow up as an orphan, with all the mess of constant street fights, shouting marital arguments, streetwalkers trying to find their Johns, and the constant traffic… 

Ironically, after a while, all that noise melts into the background like the throbbing of a heartbeat, allowing any resident to understand the ebbs and flows of the city life. If you lived in the inner city, you loved the constant noise, because it worked as an early alarm system, any change of pace warning you to be careful. 

And the worst thing to experience back in the city was the silence. Nothing good happened when a city got silent. 

So, whenever I walked on the campus during the night, I was tense, expecting a disaster that would not happen. 

Luckily — and wasn’t that an ironic use of the word — I had something to focus on tonight. An incorporeal — and possibly hallucinatory — angel floating near me, with all the enthusiasm of a tourist, examining the light streaming down from the street lamps. 

“How amazing,” she gasped gleefully as she floated toward the nearest lamp. Which gave me an amazing view of her incorporeal hips, clapped tightly with her leather pants, making my own pants equally tight. Though, her words were more than enough to keep me focused at the moment. “I can’t believe the magic developed that much in a few years, cores everywhere just to keep an empty street illuminated. And their crafting is amazing. I can’t feel even a flicker of magic radiating out.” 

I thought about explaining that they were not magic, but then decided against them. Still, I found her comment useful, because it implied that she couldn’t somehow access my brain effortlessly to pull the information she needed — I hoped. 

A couple of cars had passed since we had left the museum, but none of them even slowed down. Considering the sight of a floating winged person that looked like she had lost her way on the way of a naughty photoshoot would have been enough to earn some gawking stares — or at least, a few quick photos to earn some social media reactions — it wasn’t hard to assume I was the only one I could see her. I didn’t want to be identified as a crazy person talking to himself in the middle of the night. 

Although, whether such a description wouldn’t have been accurate was another thing. Rationally, the only explanation was that she was a fidget of my imagination, as a result of whatever weird shit had tainted one of the discarded historical items I had acquired somehow drugging me. 

Interestingly, despite being against the only reasonable explanation, I didn’t believe her to be an illusion. I had no real reason for it, nothing more than my instincts. 

However, those instincts definitely saved my life again and again in the past, when I was struggling like a little orphan hustler in the jungle of the inner city, and I trusted them much more than any incompetent doctor or psychologist that worked for a third-rate party college. 

I walked silently, watching the sexy angel flying around, examining the weirdest things, fascinated by the crushed cans of coke — for their exquisite forging and finishing — discarded piles of papers, and other trash, more than she was fascinated by the actual buildings or even cars — other than a fleeting glance. 

She chirped around, seemingly uncaring of my silence even once for the ten minutes walk between my dorm and the museum. In the process, however, I did notice one interesting detail. She had never moved more than fifty feet away from me. Whether she couldn’t, or preferred not to, was a question I wondered. 

I was lucky not to have a roommate, because the room was barely big enough for me — well, me and the ethereal erotic angel unable to touch anything but me. “So,” I murmured, taking the attention of my new hyperactive guest. 

“So, you were about to tell me about the Divine System?” I prompted, finally allowing her to speak after the walk helped me to center myself. 

“Yes,” she said with clear enthusiasm, which was in great contrast to her earlier reluctance to talk about herself. “The Divine System is a gift from the Great Realm of the Light, beyond the Boundary, gifting the mortal races power to stand against the Great Darkness. It acts a focal core for the creation of the divine entities.” 

Ironically, the first thing I noticed about her statement was a mysterious realm, ‘gifting’ a lower realm with something valuable. If there was one thing I had learned to live as an orphan trying to thrive in a dangerous environment, it was never to trust the powerful. 

Especially when they were bearing gifts. 

However, criticizing the bosses of a mysterious sexy angel was hardly the smartest thing to do when I was trying to get some information from her. “Divine entities, like God, or like Zeus?” I asked. She frowned at my question, and I suddenly felt a chill. It wasn’t like the frozen feeling I had received when I touched that mysterious orb. It was far more similar to the time I had collided with one of the gang leaders when I was dashing around as a child. 

It was the feeling of being the target of someone else’s annoyance. Someone far stronger. 

Idiot, I thought, cursing myself in my thoughts. Referring to pagan gods in front of an angel — even if the said angel was had a more risque design than the official church dogma — was sheer idiocy. Unfortunately, watching her examine weird little mundane objects while commenting on their excellent magical crafting went a long way to make me ignore her supernatural nature, and a mysterious power that made me feel the chill of the death just because she was annoyed.

And she wasn’t even trying to be threatening, like that gang leader had been when I collided. No, she was slightly annoyed. 

Good going, Terry. 

Luckily, her frustration only lasted a second, disappearing immediately. “Don’t mention that jerk to me,” she said, though this time, her frustration reminding me of a sorority girl lashing out against a handsy football player rather than the righteous fury of a supposed angel, the earlier threatening aura disappearing.

“Z-, the lightning guy?” I stammered, barely correcting my statement halfway after another flicker of threatening frustration. 

Her nod certainly didn’t help my confusion any. I certainly wasn’t expecting that my mysterious angel companion to confirm both the existence of mythological Greek gods and reveal some kind of personal connection. 

Just the realization I needed to make the night even more incomprehensible. 

“Right,” I murmured. Hundreds of questions burst into my mind about the history of the world, an understanding that she destroyed by an offhand comment. I wouldn’t classify myself as a history enthusiast, but — reluctantly — working for the museum, I did have a solid understanding of it. 

Or what I thought as a solid understanding, before an offhand comment threatened to destroy every single thing I had known about it. 

And when one had too many questions, it was hard to decide to ask the first one. So, I skipped all of them about the history, focusing back on the mysterious system. “And how does this Divine System works?” 

“The Divine System provides a gathering point for the prayers of the worshipers, and the transference of the acolytes,” she explained. 

“And I need to make people worship me, like a-“ I stammered, only to stop at the last moment. I was about to say a deranged cult leader, but maybe, it was not the smartest way to describe that to her. 

I was getting really, really tired. 

“Yes, like a demigod, or even a god, if you can establish a proper temple,” she explained cheerfully. 

Excellent, I couldn’t wait to tell people that I was being ordained as a cult leader, by an angel that looked like she was about to leave for her day job as a high-class dominatrix. I couldn’t imagine it going wrong. 

At all. 

“Should we go out and start?” she exclaimed, unable to hide her enthusiasm. 

“Maybe tomorrow afternoon. I have a big day tomorrow,” I murmured. 

“Oh, really? Okay,” she answered, her wings dipping down along with her enthusiasm, making me feel bad for my words, like I had just told a child that Santa didn’t exist. 

It wasn’t technically a lie, but I was more interested in its nature as an excuse to reject the request of my ‘guide’ to establish a cult in the middle of the night, without annoying her in the process. 

Angering a mysteriously powerful, obviously supernatural existence by directly rejecting her plan was not the smartest idea. She looked silly and sexy, but I distinctly remembered the threatening aura that almost drowned me just because of the slight annoyance she felt. 

I turned off the lights, but despite the pulled-off curtains, the room was still illuminated, in the form of a soft inner glow from the wings of the angel. 

Maybe I should ask her to turn off her lights, I thought with a smirk even as I turned my back, the sleep taking me rather easily. This might have been surprising to someone else, but I had managed to sleep through many gunfights throughout my childhood. 

The light from a magic angel was nothing I couldn’t handle…