[Author's Note: A Raziel introspection short. Nothing more.]
My mind turns to vengeance, unbidden. But it doesn't help. They say that vengeance steals your life.
They are wrong, for what am I but living proof?
Chill Death came to claim me, and into the breach stepped hot Rage and her brother, burning Vengeance. They fought back Death over a period of a thousand years and finally triumphed, salvaging me. But such a fight is never without consequences, even for the victors, for none can strike at Death and hope to come away unscathed. The siblings' heat was extinguished by their long fight in Death's cold kingdom. Rage became frozen Hate, and Vengeance's fire became instead insidious, paralyzing frost.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger, the old saying goes, and it was as true for the siblings as it has been true for me. A burning anger will burn itself out, when its fuel is gone, and vengeance in its turn, lacking anger to feed on, will weaken and fade. Fire is flickering, intangible and transitory: ice is solid, patient, and all-pervading. Cast a memory into the flame and watch it vanish, consumed: lock a memory in ice and view it forever, unchanging, untouched by time, removed from the world.
And here I am, a memory, locked in the cold of the Abyss. Ravaged by my fall, perhaps, but not by time. My body is gone. My spirit clothes itself in the form it knew best. Intangible, like fire, the spirit. I must learn to clothe it in ice.
The voice said: "Raziel. You are worthy."
I feel nothing - worthy, least of all.
And then, with time comes knowledge and the matter of flesh, the ice to clothe my raw bones and give me the strength I need to re-enter the world. Flesh comes uneasily and I do not welcome it. With it comes feeling once again, a neck to crack, skin to crawl with dust.
The past itches. It seethes in my mind like nested, chittering ants under a stone when the careless foot turns it over. It itches where I have it swathed around me: my shoulders, my neck, the bones of my face where they lie under the thin new flesh. It used to be my flag, my badge, my honour and my joy. Now, it is an itch so deep it feels as if it has driven a thousand tiny holes into each of my ravaged bones and through each hole the winds of the spectral realm howl.
I feel again, but it is not the feeling of life nor even of undeath, only this ceaseless, mindless itching which drives me on.
My claws come up to scratch at the cowl, unbidden. But it doesn't help. If I could scratch myself to the quick, if I could peel off the flesh I have striven so long and hard to gather around me, it would still not be enough to take away the itch inside.