“She wasn't very tough,” Sapphire said, undoing the wrappings around her arms.

“I've heard the eye colour is important,” Katy mused, “The one I beat had green eyes and wasn't very strong either. Does the eye-colour actually matter that much?”

“Demons with green eyes are still pretty young. They were probably only a few decades old.” Kito had caught up with them, tugging his gloves off, his sword back at his hip.

Katy fell into step with Kito, an arm around his waist, “Is it age then, not power?”

“Same thing to a Demon,” Kito explained, “Demons have access to a purer form of magic than us and it takes time to master that – even beings who have a higher standard level of intellect than us.”

“Is this basic Demonology, or the more complex stuff? For low intellect beings, like we lowly humans?.” Sapphire looked back, shooting a wide grin at Kito.

Kito smiled back, “The eye colour is as good an indicator of power as it is age. Green-eyed Demons are under one-hundred years old and fairly powerful, then they have blue up to about six-hundred where their strength tends to triple, then it turns purple and triples their power again. Then red, orange, yellow,” Kito looked ahead of them, at nothing in particular, “And finally black.”

“What age do Demons get black eyes?” Sapphire looked back quizzically, “I've never seen one.”

“I've never even seen an orange-eyed Demon.” Katy had both brows raised, gazing at her husband.

“They need to be close to a hundred thousand for their eyes to turn black. They're usually called 'the Ancient Ones', or 'the First'. You've probably heard legends. They exist here and there. Your boss would know one.”

“Sabre, the Demon he and the other Alliance leaders killed?” A voice behind them chimed in. A pretty young woman with dark skin and a long gash above her right eye where a Dreg had taken a lucky shot. Amalia: a fellow General.

“By all accounts, he had eyes blacker than night.” Kito explained with an amused expression, “Allohallimelle fought a bunch of yellow-eyed Demons in his time. Generally, only people like him could beat Demons of that power.”

“I fought an orange-eyed Demon once...” Sapphire had her hand on her chin, “To think there are two levels of power beyond that. Crazy.”

“And that’s just the basic stuff. Demonology gets way more complex than that.” Kito's voice was bright as he explained, “Like, for instance, you know we're not entirely sure why their eyes change with age – we know it correlates, but...”

“Correlation doesn't always mean causation.” Amalia nodded behind him, and he shot her a smile.

“Exactly. It rarely does, in fact. A wet beach doesn't cause the tide to flow in.”

“So it could be,” Katy was looking ahead now too, in thought, “That the eye colour is just a byproduct of how in tune any given Demon is with the type of magic they use? That as a Demon opens up to those magical energies, the more magical they actually become? And this happens naturally as they grow older?”

“The soul is influenced by the types of energy it takes in,” Kito nodded, “Demons are nothing but souls in pure form – they have a keener control of it than we do, given they can manifest their physical body whenever they please. It would make sense that their eyes reflect their level of control and power over their unique magic.”

“Whereas our physical form is what our souls spend most of their power on,” Sapphire chuckled, “This is basic magic studies stuff. Our souls focus on maintaining our physical form. It's the same for many other physical races and creatures in our world. Though if we train our bodies and souls in conjunction – we can filter other energies through our soul to make magic. Too much and it might forget to maintain our physical forms and our body would dissolve. Boom, like Kito was at risk of, you become a Wandering Spirit. That’s why we limit ourselves to distinct Disciplines and limit each person to three.”

“Angels and Demons are different,” Katy continued, the explanation keeping them occupied while the adrenaline of the fighting wore off, “Angels and Demons, like Kito said, have a much keener control of their soul because the Realms they live in consist entirely of energy, they don’t need physical forms unless they come here.”

“As such, when they do come here,” Kito took over once again, “The energies that we influence to create magic influences them too. If they stay in their spiritual form for too long, they start to dissipate. Hence why they choose to take physical forms. Demons have been experimenting with what they can do with this pure magic for almost a million years – the tiers of power that eye colour seems to indicate is almost entirely unique to them. Angel eyes tend to be only silver.”

“So it makes sense to say that age comes into play...” Katy was still clearly in thought, “But it's actually Demons' deeper understanding into magic that could be the reason?”

“That's the prevailing theory nowadays,” Kito was scratching his chin. This was one of the fields of theoretical magical research that he was working on, “Though there are holes. We've never come across a Demon with purple eyes that can use the abilities of a red-eyed Demon, unlike how we’ve come to be able to teach very advanced techniques to increasingly young people. You would think as their understanding as a race increased, the age they were at certain levels of power would decrease exponentially. We actually have proof of the opposite. A few years ago the Guardians found a Demon that was over two-thousand years old, but his eyes were still blue.”

“How did they know he was that old then?” Sapphire raised an eyebrow.

“The Sight Discipline, I’m guessing,” Kito explained, “I’m getting better with it, but I’m still not quite that good. I know it’s possible to see things like how old a person is by observing them with Sight active.”

“Huh,” Katy’s eyebrows rose, “Good thing I didn’t lie about my age like I was gonna, huh.”

“You were going to lie about your age?” Kito smiled inquisitively at her.

“I heard you were into younger women. If you could see I was older it would’ve been a disaster.”

“I wouldn’t have thought Sight would work on Demons the same as humans.” Sapphire interrupted.

“A lot of Disciplines don’t,” Kito turned slightly to her, “We know White magic and Dark magic don’t work on Angels or Demons. From everything I’ve read, though, Sight seems to be more effective if anything. That’s the thing, we have limited knowledge of how Demons really tick.”

“Demons are weird.” Amalia shrugged.

“This did start out as a fun talk about basic school stuff,” Katy mumbled, “Until this guy had a nerd attack on us.”

“Oi, qualified Demonologist here. What did you expect?” Kito pouted defensively.

“Well, I’m fully qualified in kicking Demon ass. Which one would you say is more useful, nerd?” Katy’s smile was firmly back in place as she winked up at her husband.

“In any case,” Sapphire piped up after a moment, “There have been a worryingly large amount of Crossings lately.”

“It's just like twenty-two years ago...” Katy said a little quietly.

“Well, we dealt with all sixteen then,” Kito smiled brightly, “Nothing stopping us from doing it again.”

“Let's hope it's just been an active spell.” Sapphire sighed as they continued on, “The Alliance has enough to deal with these days, what with this whole Resistance business.”

***

Rebellia HQ was quite a short airship ride away, all things considered. Three hours after their animated conversation, they were back in the towering headquarters of the Rebellia Barr Sabre. An enormous and constantly busy building with fifteen floors of metal and glass – soldiers and officials walking brusquely through the halls – busy and cheerful. Kito returned the polite nods and cheerful greetings he received with little waves and the odd awkward lowering of his head. Realising he was walking down what seemed to be the same corridors, again and again, a frown started to creep its way into his features. All of these corridors looked far too similar. It was a gorgeous building, but apparently very difficult to navigate. Kito couldn't even follow the others because they were down in the armoury removing their gear after the fight. Since he never really needed gear in the first place, his sword was in its scabbard on his hip now as he walked. He peeked into a few rooms as he passed them, seeing very little besides small office spaces and more Rebellia employees busy and hard at work. One of the rooms looked slightly promising with a large heavy table and a nice whiteboard, but it was not a briefing room. Made clear by the odd looks he got from soldiers clearly on break, holding coffees and chatting casually. Kito shook his head and ruffled his hair as he found himself walking along yet another corridor identical to the last. Though finally, he looked into a room with a long table and a map on the wall behind it. Chairs lined the table and a few people already sat, looking around as Kito entered with a sheepish smile.

When they arrived, Katy sat next to Kito and Sapphire across from him. The debriefing was about to begin. To Kito's surprise, Allohallimelle himself walked through the door and took his place at the head of the table. Wearing a smooth, plain, white robe and sandals, Allohallimelle was quite the intimidating figure; over six and a half feet tall, he was broad and strong with a mane of shaggy, silver hair and bright, golden eyes. Kito had developed somewhat of a friendship with the immense man, yet when those golden eyes fell on him it still seemed like they were staring deep into him, or maybe even straight through him. Though his gaze was soft and his smile light as he looked at his generals. That warm appraisal fell upon Katy, and she was soothed by a deep and resounding voice.

“I believe the mission was a success?” Allohallimelle said without hurry.

“Minimal issues, sir.” Katy nodded, sitting straighter in the impressive man's presence.

“That's good,” He nodded, “I understand we lost a few?”

“Four, sir,” A redhead at Kito’s side said, “The families have been notified.”

“Send them to me should they come, Hiralda.”

“Of course, sir.” The woman nodded and stood, bowing to Allohallimelle before leaving the room, a tradition that had endured for as long as the Rebellia had been around.

“It’s never easy informing grieving families of these kinds of tragedies. All the more painful if those deaths were to have been for nothing.” Allohallimelle raised his eyebrow to Sapphire as he finished.

“None of the Demons got away.” She nodded, “None of those deaths were for nothing.”

“What do we know, then?” Allohallimelle looked down at the report and took a pen, poised in an awkward grip that showed he wasn’t used to holding things as small as pens.

“Green eyes,” Kito spoke up, leaning forward in his seat, “It doesn't look like anything to be overly worried about on the surface.” Kito trailed off slightly, looking down at the table.

Allohallimelle looked up and caught Kito's slight hesitation, “Your hypothesis?”

“Not quite a hypothesis yet,” Kito avoided those golden eyes, instead looking at the pen in Allohallimelle's hand absent-mindedly, “There are just variables that might add up is all. The two Demons present had control over a massive number of Dregs. It's just, for an attack of that scale it seems a little... Uncoordinated is all.”

“I would usually be happy about that,” Katy leaned back, glancing at her husband, “Uncoordinated sounds good, so why the frown?”

“You think they’re planning something bigger?” A blonde woman at the far end of the table addressed Kito with a frown.

“I’m not gonna say anything definitive on that,” Kito said, “There isn’t really enough info.”

“Yet,” Allohallimelle said, finishing Kito's thought without him needing to voice it, “Sapphire. I'd like you to keep an eye on this for the time being. Lead any teams sent to stop Crossings.”

“Of course, sir.” Sapphire stood, bowing to her boss and moving off with a wink at Kito and Katy.

“Amalia,” Allohallimelle's smile widened slightly, “Get that cut checked out, would you?”

“Yes, sir.” Amalia chuckled, and with a bow herself, she left the room.

“Are there any special orders for us, sir?” Katy regarded her boss now that they were alone, the other people who were present bowing and filing out with Allohallimelle nodding to them with that light smile.

“If another mission should come to my attention, I will let you know with haste.” Allohallimelle said, his gaze flickering between the two, “I'd like to know about you, Kito.”

“Yes, sir?” Kito lifted his vacant stare from Allohallimelle’s pen to meet that intimidating gaze, surprised.

“Your powers. Have there been any incidents so far?”

“None,” Kito shook his head, eyes resting on the smooth wood of the table, “My muscle memory still seems a little rusty. I'm getting stronger by the day though. I've been taking it slow as you advised.”

“He should be back in fighting shape within a few weeks I'd say,” Katy said, giving Kito a shoulder squeeze.

“And hopefully with no more disastrously powerful mages to combat,” Allohallimelle stood, Kito and Katy rising with him, “You'll actually be able to enjoy that strength this time.”

“You know I'll be there if the worst is to happen again.” Kito smiled at the huge man, bowing before leaving the room with Katy behind him, her bow a little deeper. Allohallimelle nodded his head slightly to them as they left and returned to his seat to look over the report from the battle in more depth. The large man focused intently on his work, the vacant look in Kito’s eye playing on his mind as he read the report. Not only that, but the way Kito’s focus seemed to flare at the end was telling that he was getting back into a fit condition. Of course, Katy’s estimate was perhaps being a little too generous. Kito’s own thoughts mirrored Allohallimelle’s as he left the building alongside Katy. That it would be nigh impossible to reach the levels of power he had those few decades prior in only a few weeks.