140. Azrael
AZRAEL
LATER THAT NIGHT
After a long day in the sun, sleep finds me easily.
I’m in the half-waking, half-sleeping state when I feel the air pressure in the room change.
My skin prickles against a foreign magic, and awareness drags me away from encroaching slumber.
The bedside lamp flicks on at the same moment my eyes pop open to find...
Mareina?
Unease has my muscles tensing as I sit up in bed.
Arms folded across her chest, she’s perched with a hip on the edge of the writing desk, one leg swinging lazily off the edge. Though she’s still dressed in fighting leathers, only two daggers are sheathed at her thighs.
Her expression is calm, but unreadable. “I have something for you.”
Intuition tells me it isn’t anything pleasant. I mask my discomfort with humor, arching an eyebrow and feigning surprise.
“A gift? Por moi?”
She huffs a laugh, though no smile accompanies it.
“Indeed. But I need to show you something first.”
Alarm rings in the back of my mind.
She straightens and takes measured steps towards me. “Something from your... past life. Before your little swim in the river.”
My past?
Despite everything inside me screaming against it, my curiosity is too great.
Standing beside the bed, she offers me her hand, and I look down to find the tattoo-like visage of a dark red serpent slithering down her arm. Sentient eyes watch me. Waiting. “To bridge our minds.”
Before I can think better of it, my hand engulfs hers. Goosebumps erupt as the serpent travels from her hand to mine, coiling its way around my arm until it reaches my neck, my head, and suddenly, I’m no longer sitting in one of Mors and Persephone’s guest bedrooms.
Five red suns hang in the sky, casting unsettling light over an arid battlefield.
Horror fills me as I watch myself slaughtering soldiers in droves.
Akash almighty.
Wielding a black sword with glowing ruins, tendrils of black and gold magic dissipate from its length as I carve indiscriminately through flesh and bone, leaving only pools of blood, and mutilated corpses in my wake.
Gods, no... This can’t be me.
This has to be some kind of manipulation... an illusion.
The scene around me shifts for me to find Mareina slaughtering what I somehow inherently recognize to be my nephilim warriors.
My lips part, breath held, as I watch myself diving from on-high, sword poised to administer a final blow.
Before I can reach her, a drakonati with turquoise and golden scales swoops down to absorb it.
The flesh of its throat parts, spraying viscous blood across me before spilling to feed the dusty soil beneath as he plummets.
I don’t know who this drakonati is outside someone of great significance, because a blood-curdling and tortured scream erupts from Mareina’s chest as the ground rumbles beneath us, followed by the cracking thunder of new gorges splitting, spiderwebbing out into the horizon.
Another roar of anguish sounds from nearby as her crowned mate descends, striking the ground like a meteor.
The scene shifts again to reveal the worst memory of them all.
Mareina clutches onto the face of the dragon, its vacant eyes tilted heavenward, as violent sobs wrack her body. Barely intelligible words spill from her lips, “No, no, no. Please, you can’t leave..."
The grief consuming her devours me—is somehow pouring into me. My body burns with the wrongness of this fate—her fate. With the need to turn back time, and the horror and helplessness at being unable to do so.
All at once, my mind is yanked away and returned to the guest bedroom.
Hollowness pervades my entire being.
Eyes reddened, Mareina’s emotion spills down her cheeks—a mirror to my own, or perhaps, vice versa—as her serpent returns and she drops my hand.
However insufficient, I can’t help but offer the words. “I wish more than anything?—”
With a subtle shake of her head, she silences me. “You don’t deserve the reprieve of death. What I revealed to you, is only a fragment of the suffering you have inflicted upon me. Upon the realms.”
Her tone softens in a way that emphasizes the verity of her words. “Soon enough, you’ll come to realize for yourself that this world would be a better place without you, and you’ll be grateful for my gift.”
Mareina wills a gleaming silver pin that radiates a foreboding magic into her hand. “I had my mother imbue it with her power for you."
With a trembling hand I accept the pin. Its magic hums through me like being hooked up to an electrical outlet.
“... God-killing magic.”
Persephone’s previous admission echoes in my mind—my former self’s desire for death.
And now I understand why.
Pity, of all things, softens the edges of Mareina’s hardened stare as she watches me. “For when that time comes.”
Mareina folds away, leaving me to be tortured by visions of a past I don’t recognize and all the guilt that follows.
The pin grows blurred in my tear-laden vision.
No wonder I wanted to die.
I’m a fucking monster.
A tremor takes residence in my hands as I consider her gift and the salvation it promises from this pain.
The world would be a better place without you.
Something deep inside me knows it to be true.
I lift a finger towards the tip of the pin.
And hesitate.
I do not wish to cause anymore suffering, nor do I wish to endure it.
Still, I hesitate, as something new forms in the back of my mind.
The edges of it are blurry at first, but it brightens like a beam of light carving a memory with crystal clarity into my mind.
A tall, well built male with dark skin and pale eyes hands me a pin—this one gold and humming with a benevolent energy, dare I say love, that seems to transcend time and space. His smile is soft, but his ethereal eyes glitter with promise.
“I was instructed to give you this by someone whose love for you is so powerful that no matter what you do, you cannot escape—not even in death. No matter your sins or karma. No matter what fate has planned, you belong to her, and she will find you. Your union with her is inevitable as entropy. You just need to be patient.”
My burning eyes drop from the male in front of me, to the gilded pin in my hand. Vertically along its length, written in a fine script are the words, Even in death...
The memory fades but a cord seems to trail from that moment, all the way to the present, and from it a sense of knowing.
Of love.
Of destiny in waiting.
Of destiny unfolding and blossoming to deliver me this female—this person who loves me beyond measure and without condition.
A pair of violet eyes appear in my mind, though I can envision no other detail.
I drop Mareina’s pin like I’ve been scalded, and without consciously knowing how, will it away. The guilt and despair I’d felt at witnessing the unforgivable violence I’d committed remains, but its sharp edges have dulled. Have made room for something else.
Hope.