Do you ever have a sense of impending doom that you just can't shake? Like when the music changes in a video game and there is a very obvious save point and health potions? I'd been feeling that for weeks instead of the Christmas spirit that should have been filling all of us. It was hard to watch everyone so divided and struggling to be social. Don't get me wrong, I went out of my way to include everyone in something. I'd been hanging out with Erik more, going to hockey games again. He was quiet and distant, even when our team was winning. Ethan seemed distracted and somehow, just as vacant as Erik. I worried about them both; Erik and Ethan were both excellent fighters, full of confidence and heroism. Seeing them both so broken was painful. When the kinda guys you look up to, are the ones who have fallen, who else is left to lead the pack? I didn't want to initiate that conversation with Erik again, about leadership. He was in charge, but he was hardly around.

  Thinking about it now, Anders was gone too; off on some mission with Miss Sera, leaving Auria behind with my folks. I wondered what had happened, but no one knew, or if they did, they weren't filling us in. Chase was missing too, but that was less suspicious. He slipped in and out of very dark corner of this place, so I was sure he would turn up. Without Anders or Chase, and Erik, we were very much leaderless, floundering about. We all seemed to just do basic day to day stuff; keeping up with chores and training, doing the shopping and resupplies, blah blah blah.

  Come to think of it, I hadn't seen Dyson much either. Where was everyone?

  I slid my chair back from my desk, my brow furrowed. I got up, looking at the pictures of my friends, of happy memories on my wall and smiled sadly. Someone was going to have to do something, and I had the feeling deep down in my stomach that it was going to be me. The lights in the hallway flicker to life with my movements, and I listen at every closed door that I knew I had friends in. It was quiet, but not strangely so. I made my way to the Rec Room, and popped my head inside. I found my Mom having coffee with the two younger ones, my Sister and Auria, quietly watching cartoons on the projector tv. I slipped back out just as quietly, not wanting to disturb my Mom's peace.

  When I got to the Training Room, I found only Tadashi, without Ethan, which was surprising. He greeted me with his usual head nod and resumed his katana forms. I scanned the room, expecting someone else to pop out, Erik, Ethan, or Chase, but no one else was there. When Tadashi noticed me lingering, he stopped.

  "No one has come. Mr. Morgan has not been here in days now." He said quietly. I nodded, figuring as much, but it only gave me more questions.

  "Ethan?" I asked, but Tadashi was already shaking his head. It was unlike Ethan to be distant from even Tadashi, the one person who he was constantly around.

  "What is going on around here?" I mumbled, mostly to myself, but Tadashi heard me and grunted.

  "Discourse. Our team lacks harmony, and leadership currently." He added. It was weird hearing him speak, as he had spent his first years at the Cathedral being mostly silent.

  "Yea, I can't seem to get anyone to do anything. I feel like there should have been a mission by now." I said, leaning into the door frame. Tadashi nodded, but offered no further words, returning to his training, so I figured I would leave him to it.

  The Library at the Cathedral was one of my favorite places. But since my folks had arrived and my Dad was made the official Librarian, it had stopped becoming a quiet place to escape to. While my Dad mostly had his nose in a tablet or a book, it wasn't uncommon for him to seek out the only other person in the Library and spout off random facts that he had consumed recently. I pushed one of the heavy wooden doors open and looked around at all the lacquered shelves. Books about monsters and heroes lined the shelves; some rooted in fiction and others were complete retellings of those fictions, with the actual accounts of said monsters and heroes. We had whole sections dedicated to the eradication of particular Non-Humans. There were books on the Gods and Goddesses of all Faiths known to man, and even some that weren't.

  I found my Dad seated at a wide table, covered in a banquet of books and scrolls, some ancient and dusty. His tablet sat close by, information scrolling across the screen faster than even my eyes could keep up.

  "Orion, good to see you. I was just researching some inaccuracies during the Trojan War. Did you know Odysseus..." I had to cut him off before he started, or I'd never get a word in.

  "Have you seen Anders or Chase? I can't find anyone and the stillness of this place is going to drive me crazy." I told him. He looked disheartened at first, that I cut him off, but he smiled through it.

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  "Anders is still on his mission. Chase has a bad habit of..."

  "Disappearing, yea I know." I cut him off again. I watched my Dad's eyes peer up at me from under his brow and glasses. This time he wasn't smiling.

  "Seems like you already have all your answers my boy." He stared at me, unblinking.

  "Sorry." I crumpled.

  "Take the downtime and enjoy it. Go out with your friends, go Christmas shopping. Go...play some video games." The last part was said with a particular distain. My Dad had never been supportive of how much time I spent in front of a screen, but I had always excelled in the areas he expected me to. As long as I was doing my studies, he never cared. And I never did.

  "You know I can't just sit still. There should have been something left for us if they were both going to be gone for such a long time." I whined. My Dad was none too impressed.

  "It has only been a few days Orion." He said, rolling his eyes. "You are impatient. Come, help me record these inconsistencies."

  "No thanks, I'm good Dad." I told him, shifting back and forth and trying to think of a hundred things I'd rather be doing. He could see it printed clearly on my face, and stood, stretching his back and groaning loudly.

  "Let's go to Anders's office and see if there is anything left behind. But I will not authorize some big mission without him here. Do you understand?" He told me, coming around the corner and putting a hand on my shoulder to stabilize me as I paced back and forth on the spot.

  "Sounds good." I told him, eagerly moving quickly down to the doors and down the hall.

  When we arrived, Anders's stuff was in disarray, which was unlike him; the man was meticulously organized. There were piles of files out and around his desk, and even his cabinet was open. There was a stack of three personnel dossiers on his desk and I moved to flip through them. My Dad stood at the door, a puzzled look on his face.

  "What's up?" I asked, thumbing through the files with a sticky note on them that said ".

  "I honestly didn't expect his door to be unlocked." He said, looking over the door knob, opening and closing the door.

  "You meant to lead me here, expecting it to be locked?" I scoffed. My Dad chuckled, nodding.

  "I wonder when these new recruits are expected to show up? He put out the request for transfer months ago." I mused. My Dad stopped fiddling with the door and came over to the desk, but I had made my way to the open filing cabinet, which was even more uncharacteristic of Anders. I pulled out the draw all the way, or tried to. It yanked me forward as the drawer caught on something inside. I peered inside and saw a file stuffed into the back haphazardly and knew for sure that Anders had not left the office in this state. Someone else had been in here. I reached in and pulled out a file marked with a pink sticky note on the front that said ‘Damien? Demi-God? Still alive?’.

  It was another personnel dossier, listed for a It was for a deceased member of Anders's team, from back in the day. I noticed my Dad looming behind me, silently. More uncharacteristic behavior.

  "Did you know this guy?" I asked, turning to face my Dad. His face had gone pale.

  "I did. Griffin, as we knew him, was quite accomplished on paper, as you will see." He said, motioning to the dossier. "But he always had a hard time fitting in. Magnus tormented him endlessly. "He was an unfortunate casualty that night on the oil rig. This note would imply that Anders thought that he was the same person as this Demi-God figured you encountered in Greece."

  "I mean, he did call himself Damien. And if this guy's first name is the same...may he wasn't as dead as you guys thought?" I scratched at my hair as I did in fact look over all of Damien Griffin's accomplishments. In his time, active with the Order, he had been part of over one hundred Artifact recoveries, was one of the rare few who could bond to multiple Artifacts and had somehow managed to get into a program to study magic. Most Chosen couldn't do both, but just knowing that Chase had been one of those exceptions made me believe that this guy was a powerhouse. But the photo attached to the dossier was of a scrawny young adult, with silver hair, and sad eyes. In the picture, he was wearing what looked like a long leather trench coat or duster jacket over an anime tee-shirt.

  "Sephiroth." I said, shocked. My Dad furrowed his brows and looked at me, waiting for an explanation of the mysterious word that had left my lips. I had told Anders in our debrief that Damien, the Modern day Demi-God, had acted like he was some kind of video game villain, specifically that he had reminded me of Sephiroth from Final Fantasy Seven.

  "Did this guy play a lot of video games?" I asked my Dad, who was still frowning at me.

  "I suppose so." He shrugged, moving from pale and concerned to suddenly dissatisfied.

  "Did he play a game called..." I started to ask, but it was my Dad's turn to cut me off.

  "Orion, what is this about? What do video games have to do with this?" He asked. I turned to fully face him, and gripped his shoulders.

  "Everything. I think this guy has modelled himself entirely after a bad guy from a video game. You said it yourself, he was bullied constantly and assumedly left for dead on a mission. This Damien guy knew who all of us were, had knowledge about the Order and how it functions and was able to control the Spear of Longinus. It's like the perfect bad guy backstory." I told him, shaking him a bit.

  "We shouldn't be in here." My Dad said suddenly, moving from my grip to stand by the door, ushering me out.

  "Dad, this is big! We should be planning a way to get this guy. He could be dangerous." I tried to convince him. "Let us do some recon at least?" I begged.

  "Out. Now." He said with such finality that I almost dropped the dossier. But I clung to it as I moved out of the office and into the hallway. Anders obviously had been planning something, and without him here to issue orders, I guessed the Chosen of the Cathedral would have to take matters into their own hands.