20. Tassarion
Tassarion
“Blood for blood.” My Nanmiess chanted as I flew through the Beauradèl Wood. “Blood for blood!”
I dipped beneath the twists and bends of colossal trees.
The branches were mangled together down to their revolting roots.
Most Vainyens had a wood in their backyards that they shared with distant neighbors.
Vainyen neighbors often came to signed agreements that each family would tend to the regions of the wood that were attached to their property, which served the overall upkeep of the island itself.
Marcèllian had stopped tending to the Beauradèl Wood.
It was overgrown and littered with corrupted roots that gave the depths of the wood a hideous appearance.
Flying further away from the small clearing where I’d found the youngling Beauradèls, I flapped my wings as I flew after the last born, my cape fluttering in the light breeze.
Island humidity drew sweat to my temples and irritation to my bones, which only stoked my wells of rage even further.
It was one thing to be so angry that your teeth were set on edge.
It was another thing to be this angry and hot.
Usually, Vainyen woods were cooler. But the Beauradèl Wood felt like flying through the Six Hèls.
Taking my time, I leisurely flew through the woods.
I was in no hurry. I gave young Beauradèl the space and time he needed to get as far away as possible. To make the hunt somewhat interesting.
Flying through the woods, I passed an abandoned chateau, big enough for a family of five.
It was cozy, but perfect for a getaway. I knew from memory, not long off was a flowing river that led to a waterfall that provided endless hours of fun.
The chateau looked old and forlorn, with gnarled roots and long thorns twisting around the structure, choking it from every side.
A shame. It looked like it could’ve been an amazing place to escape to for a few dawns of rest. Now it was a shell of itself and whatever life it had seen in the past.
I was passing a desolate bridge, upheld by old stone over a dried-up river, when I spotted the trail. Tiny, little, sand-colored feathers that tumbled to the floor from a certain youngling who still didn’t know how to use his wings. I chuckled silently, relishing his idiocy.
I blinked, keeping my eyes open as I drew on Soul Bending and opened my Spirit Sight.
It was a form of enhanced vision Higherrank Angels possessed if they used and trained it.
With my Spirit Sight, I could see beyond bodies.
The enhanced vision allowed me to easily see souls within bodily vessels, and their spirits, too.
I looked through the copse of thick trees, searching until I found him.
The spirit of Richard Beauradèl.
Marcèllian’s last-born.
If memory served me well of the Vainyen Lord, this youngling was his pride and joy, beyond his other younglings. As such, it was only fitting that Richard become the first in a wave of harrowing despair in Marcèllian’s pathetic life.
I easily trailed the youngling’s flight through the Beauradèl Wood. Richard flew as fast as he could, but the little angel struggled. His wings were too big for his back. He couldn’t fly far, nor for long, by himself. He hadn’t grown into his wings fully yet.
Pity.
“Richard,” I cooed.
I reached the youngling and found him resting on a tree root, exhausted from his flight.
His cheeks were flushed. His curls stuck to his face from sweat.
I landed on my feet with such force that the ground shook.
I pushed to my full height, towering over the small male.
Richard trembled before me, paralyzed with fear.
“Who... who are you? Wha... what do you want?”
I tilted my head at the boy, watching him for a long time.
I remembered being his age, his size, full of hope and excitement.
Believing the world was ahead of me. I would sit on his Papi’s lap, as Marcèllian fed me bullrot, convincing me he cared.
That he had my back. That he would mentor me and help prepare me for the future to come.
“What do I want?” I chuckled darkly. “Something only you can give, young Richard.”
The youngling swallowed, shuddering beneath the weight of my stare.
“And what’s that?” He asked.
I stayed quiet for a long time. Then.
“The broken, ruinous, irredeemable spirit of the male you call Papi.”
Nanmiess filled the intimate glade, swarming the space until their diaphanous bodies blocked out the light from the suns above. Richard shot to his feet, reeling at the sight of all the disembodied souls.
“Coward,” I muttered. “Just like your Papi.”
“Shut up, monster! You know nothing about my Papi. Get away from me, you beast.”
The boy spat at my feet, stomping a foot into the ground. His wings hung limp, too large for him to do anything but let them hang there.
“He calls me a beast.” I laughed fiendishly. “I’ve done nothing but call you what you are, yet you reject me as if I’ve told a lie. How do you know I’m not here to help you? That I don’t want to be your friend?”
“You’re hideous! Grotesque. Utterly repulsive. I would never befriend a monstrosity like you. Horrifying creature. Be gone.”
The urge to break the little hèlsborn’s neck was all-consuming. The little demon had a way with words. Apples never fell far from their trees, and this spawn of Hèls was almost a carbon copy of his insufferable sire.
My chest constricted at the bombs of his immediate rejection. His accusations. All because of my deformities. To be judged because of what I looked like, before ever being fully known, was a personal Hèls even the strength of my shoulders could no longer carry.
“You call me a monster when I’ve done no wrong to you?”
Richard’s eyes widened.
Then he froze in place, narrowing his eyes at me.
As if he recognized me from somewhere.
He pointed a small finger, a sneer contorting his boyish face with poignant hatred.
“You. Aren’t you the bastard of that fool, Tazzias? The one who fled to the Fallen King, bending both knee and backside for his favor?”
The more Richard spoke, the louder the accursed, soul-tied beast inside of me snarled, malignant hatred for the boy coloring my soul the deepest black.
“Have you seen yourself? Probably not. You must shatter every mirror you pass. No angel can have all of those stitches, scars, and not be some kind of monstrosity. Papi always said so. You could never be a friend to any of us. You could never be wanted, you odious creature. Foul thing. Just look at you.”
The little angel lifted his chin, his face curled with hatred the longer he looked at me. Looked at the scars I bore from the hèls of a king who’d kidnapped me because of the knave he called Papi.
“You are an abomination. A scoundrel!” Richard spat at me again. “A slave.“
I stilled. The blow rattled me to my core. It was obvious what kind of drivel Marcèllian had poured into his mind since he was a seedling. Hatred wasn’t born. It was taught. Passed on from generation to generation like a torch that had to be kept alight by any means necessary.
He was a child, yet he viewed me as an abomination.
A title, a curse, reserved for the Fallen Angels. For hèlsborn. For Spirit Harvesters. This self-righteous brat called me an abomination.
On my island.
“Have you no respect for your king?”
I snarled. The Nanmiess grew, blackening the glade. The sunlight could no longer pierce through, leaving the boy and I in total darkness. Richard found his courage and lifted his chin higher.
“You are no king. You have no throne. We reject your crown and your blood. We curse the very sound of your name, Everthorn Bastard. Monstrous thing. You are nothing.”
The beast inside demanded control.
And I handed it over.
In good, living consciousness, it would be a difficult thing for me to snuff out the life of a seedling as little as fifty cycles. But the creature in my soul from Zemshaza’s curse...
I blinked. Richard went from standing above the root he was sitting on earlier to floating in the air.
Obsidian tendrils reached for his body, curling around his slight frame.
The boy screamed. I gleefully listened to the music.
Richard began begging, pleading for his life.
He screamed at me to let go. Screamed to be released back to his Papi.
I screamed like that once.
Zemshaza had looked at me in that dirty cave he called a cell, and laughed.
He found my pain amusing. Thought my blood was delightful.
He clapped cheerfully at the crack of my bones, and the tears through my flesh.
Because Marcèllian wanted Mortevain Island, he handed over every Everthorn he could to get it.
Richard begged for mercy.
Instead, he was given my justice.
It was a long time before my vision cleared.
I saw the wreckage of what the beast inside had done through me.
The glade was bathed in the golden ichor of Richard’s blood, and the scattered feathers of his torn wings.
Souls flitted around the angel’s body, hissing and gnashing their teeth. I looked at him. Broken. Mangled. Dead.
I searched within myself for pity.
I had none.
“Blood for blood,” my Nanmiess hissed in song.
I nodded. I’d only begun to wreak the havoc that would adequately avenge the wrongful destruction of my family.
“Richard?” A voice cried out.
It was male. Deep. Mature.
Was I really so lucky to have all three Beauradèls handed to me all in the same dawn?
I used Spirit Sight to track the source of the voice. I found a silhouette of a grown male, past their First Millennia, searching the Beauradèl Wood. Instinctively, I knew. It was Jacques Beauradèl.
An idea formed in my mind. Leaving Richard where he lay, I disappeared into the camouflaged cover of the Nanmiess, headed towards Marcèllian’s firstborn.
“Master Jacques, I don’t think Richard is out here.”
I found Jacques quickly, a few clearings over. His servant, a young Babephim—Lowerranks of the Twelfth Rank—also searched with an expression of defeat.
“We’ve searched nearly every inch of the wood. Yvette is already back. I’m sure the young master is simply playing around and he’ll return soon.”
I snorted.
Jacques frowned.
“You know I won’t hear the end of it if I return without the brat. Always running off like he has no home training. I loathe the dawns I have to share the air I breathe with him. I need to find him, or Papi won’t let me rest without bringing it up over and over for the next millennia.”
While Jacques griped about Richard, I went to work.
Hidden in the folds of the Nanmiess, I flexed a palm, drawing a singular soul to me.
I coaxed it from my power and hummed a command.
Obeying every word, the soul slithered toward Jacques, remaining almost invisible.
While Jacques was distracted, the soul slipped off his signet ring from his finger.
Quick as a flash, the soul returned to me with the signet.
Grinning, I spun away, leaving the babbling idiots behind. I flew back to Richard’s body. I frowned. What a shame he had to pay the price for his Papi’s actions.
I took Jacques’s signet ring, coated it in Richard’s blood, and placed the ring a few wing lengths away. I lowered to the ground, creating footprints that led towards and away from Richard’s body. Grinning from ear to ear, I laughed in vindication.
“It’s too easy to make you scream, Marcèllian. But by the time I’m through, you will sing.”