*AI*
Wow. After three weeks of absence, I still have reviewers! *backflip of joy*
Lilith- Thanks for sticking around; I hope your stay in the vacuum wasn't too unpleasant. As for precociousness... yes! I shall take over the world when you are old and weak! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!
AmuseMe- Yup, here's more of the story. ;) But I have a question- how did you get an Easter egg into any shape other than an egg? @_@
MikotoTribal- As a matter of fact, I do plan on majoring in English. But that's some years ahead. ;) Thanks for the feedback, I'll try to work on making the prose clearer and easier to understand.
*
One more thanks to all those who stuck around, despite my period of unwritingness. :( As for the rest of you. *waves a copy of Patch Adams threateningly* Review or feel the wrath of an excessively sentimental Robin Williams!
*/AI*
10- The Gravity of Choice
Ishtar listened as Raziel's soft footfalls faded and disappeared entirely with his teleportation to the top level of the cathedral. His wings would need to dry before he could take flight, but that would not take long. The blue blood that came from his body evaporated within moments.
At the base of her spine, her muscles involuntarily shivered. It always came down to the wings.
"I must say," her companion said nearby, "your part was magnificently played."
"Hardly a part, Kain," she said. "Unless you mean my role as an impromptu mediator. Which, might I add, would have been much easier had you not taunted him at every turn."
"Let it never be said that I am guilty of such a crime," Kain said. God, how nice it would have been to see that mocking smirk split down the middle.
"Even if it is true," Ishtar said. She turned toward the teleporter and stepped slowly toward it.
"Surely you do not mean to establish an interconnection in your darkening hours."
She stopped and turned in the direction of his voice. "I have one more night."
"Exactly."
It silenced her, as Kain knew it would. The pause was too potent, too meaningful. Even without brushing the dark power inside her, she felt in the silence the void that had terrified her. They both knew her destiny... and the conclusion it would meet before the next dawn.
"I will not hide," Ishtar said at last. "You and I have both seen what future this world will bring us. But you had power, the authority to grant or take the lives of thousands. And I." Her voice dropped. "I have wrestled with this power over centuries. And all I have done is watch and wait." She paused, and he said nothing. "I tire of idleness."
When Kain spoke again, his voice sounded closer. "So," he said, "the full notion of sacrifice has finally occurred to you. One more instance of waiting is not much to ask."
Ishtar's lip curled in an impatient sneer, exposing her unnaturally long fangs. "And what have you done that makes you so noble? Do you really think of it as a sacrifice to languish on your throne, trying desperately to think of new ways to pass the time?"
"Do you think of it as simplicity itself to murder your firstborn?"
Her drawn eyebrows slowly rose. When he spoke again, Kain's voice was on the verge of being sympathetic- no doubt the closest he had come in centuries.
"All I ask, Ishtar, is that you spend this night with the full knowledge of what your actions will entail. Know what you will ask of him." He paused, and his voice took on a hard edge. "And know that I, too, am well-acquainted with sacrifice."
"If you would not presume to dictate when I will suffer mine."
The tension suddenly broke as Kain let out an appreciate chuckle. "Ah, it is reassuring to know that the father of such petulant wit will remain in this world even if we do not."
"Yes... and I should like to use that wit while I may." Ishtar turned her back on him and shuffled toward the teleporter.
"Very well, Ishtar. Enjoy your last hours. Perhaps then, the new world will be made more pleasant in your memory."
Ishtar ignored him as best she could. That was the doubt that had plagued her when she first used the dark power, back when she could still see with her eyes. Her death had been the first thing she had foreseen, a muddled mosiac of blood and black wings. She had to talk to Raziel, somehow. Wouldn't that make it easier? She had to see those wings before...
The chill that ran down her spine did not leave her until the cathedral was far behind.
********************************************************
Raziel couldn't help but laugh aloud as the night landscape whirled around him in a senseless blur. His wings cut circles into the air, propelling him through the sky in a wildly tilting flight that made his head spin. He swooped low, letting his hooves rush inches above the ground, before bringing his wings down in a powerful surge of movement that sent him lurching through the sky. Luckily the moon had emerged from the clouds, or he would not have been able to tell the difference between air and the ground.
At last, Raziel tilted his wings so they brought him in a low swoop toward a ridge he saw below. His wings, tucked tightly to his sides, barely felt the fatigue of his long flight. They did, however, refuse to keep him balanced in the air. He had enough time to brace himself for the impact before he careened into the ridge in a splash of mud.
The reaver of souls sat up with an effort. Well, he thought as he scraped a fistful of mud off his cowl. Perhaps I could use some practice.
"Ha. I had forgotten the first difficulties of flight."
Raziel turned. "Ishtar?"
He saw his daughter standing nearby, her black skin almost luminous in the moonlight. She was smiling. "I thought I'd join you."
"How did you reach this place?"
"The same way as you." She sat down next to him, heedless of the mud that squelched around her body. "I flew."
He cast a sidelong glance at her; apparently, her landing must have been much smoother. "It had not occurred to me that it would present such difficulties."
"Indeed!" Ishtar laughed. "Well... I see you've done much thinking on Kain's proposal."
Raziel removed another clump of mud. "No, I have not. I have instead discovered the surprising tedium brought on by intense introspection."
"But how it passes the time."
"Far more likely that it wastes time."
"So... are you no closer to a decision?"
His claws paused in the middle of removing more mud and hung still. "No," Raziel said quietly.
They sat in silence, both preoccupied by their own thoughts.
"...to think that was the game all along," Raziel said. He hesitated, his mind struggling to fit the elusive thoughts into words. "How many centuries has Kain spent in preparation for this absurd scheme? When he first stole upon the Sarafan tomb... did he hold the same intentions he does now?"
"Not that long ago."
Raziel nodded, strangely enough, in relief. "Undoubtedly you will find it simple to believe that... my mind accepts Kain as benevolent only with reluctance."
"You are quite right, father." She leaned her head back on her shoulders, her eye sockets lit starkly by the moonlight. "But we are no masters of time, and time is against us. You cannot linger in indecision forever."
"I do not intend to." Raziel felt the night slip from his senses as his mind turned to the past. "But did you watch, Ishtar?"
Ishtar's tail flicked back and forth in the mud. "Yes. I saw. I have seen it over endlessly... How Rahab is the first to see you. How Kain flinches, even though he has foreseen your gift. Melchiah looks almost horrified at the prospect of wings... yes... he would have to skin birds to sustain himself." Her tail stopped. "But you are not proud. Evolved before your master, a gift as dramatic as wings... and you are not proud. That is why you draw back when Kain examines the new evolution. Melchiah's look changes... he has the fullest view of Kain's expression. In it, he sees what is to come."
Ishtar bent forward, her wings forming a dome around her as if for protection. "My god, my god. Kain's eyes narrow. Could he think that, could he think that of his own son... who himself, is beginning to doubt what will come. My god! Claws on both wings...." Raziel could do nothing but look at her, watch her slowly sit up, claws curled in her lap, wings sagging. She turned in his direction, her features warped with pain.
"And then the snapping sound..."
The spell broke, and he became aware of the mud drying on his cowl. The reaver of souls lowered his head as if to catch his breath. Centuries, centuries, and still it was like yesterday.
"I do not need my memory refreshed," he said.
"It was not for your benefit." Ishtar exhaled and her wings fully relaxed. "Something with the power... ever since your resurrection, it has been, shall we say, unpredictable."
"How?"
"Well. Before, it could not exhaust itself. A good thing- I had nothing else to do for most of the night. Lately, though. It seems to take every opportunity to fizzle out. Almost as if it were *trying* to get away."
"Do you think it can?"
She turned away. "I don't know."
"Ah. That would be a fine travesty, depriving my last offspring of all you have left. There is no reason not to fail my clan one last time."
"Ohhh, Raziel, don't you understand." Ishtar cast a pitying look at his chest. "We were doomed from the beginning. In this future, the god-essence destroyed us when Kain did not. In the other future, where you did not grant the request of the pillars, the leaking of the pillars was indiscriminate. The effects would grip all the vampires of Nosgoth, wittling down our senses until finally destroying us. Whatever choice you made... our fate was already sealed."
Raziel could barely contain the wave of half-anguished bitterness that swept over him. So Turel had been right. There was no meaning, not in his vampiric rebirth, not in the creation of his clan, not in his current misguided quest for revenge. Even Kain, of all the bastards in Nosgoth, had been right: the future had always been written. Every step of his had been predetermined from the beginning.
"Such delight," he said. "If these are the 'pre-ordained paths' Kain is forever referring to, he and his sooth-saying compatriots are welcome to take all the space they need. I am done with them."
Ishtar gave him a sad smile. "It is not that easy."
"No. No, it can never be." Raziel leaned back with a frustrated sigh. It seemed he would spend the rest of existence running from a fate that refused to let him go. Not quite a comforting thought. "The prospect of dodging this prophecy or that cryptic mumbling for eternity is not quite to my liking."
"You make godhood sound so tedious."
"Perhaps... because it is? Not in the first years, I'd imagine. Too busy drunkenly reveling in the egotistical bliss of divinity. But the century after? Or the century following? Or the *endless* parade of millennia clambering by after that?"
"Have you never learned to appreciate your immortality through all these years?"
Raziel considered. "It had the illusion of significance." He paused, then shook his head. "No, I see it now as it truly was. There were scattered moments of appreciation for my prodigiously extended years. But surpassing those were the intolerable hours of boredom, a deadening monotony that forever clouded my endless existence. We called it the ennui of unquestionable dominance. No... it was the same soporific plague that even humans sense at the fading of their lives: the incurable tedium of a life that has lingered too long."
"And you are not half the age of Kain..."
"Perhaps boundless meddling and bombastic speeches delay the effects."
Ishtar chuckled. "Ahh, you are too cynical. Certain lives are very, *very* hard to tire of."
"Is that the case?"
"It is. And fortunately, if all goes well at the end of our scheming, you will be the recipient of such a life."
"What leads you to think it is any more fascinating?"
"It is immortality. True immortality, Raziel, which is not as common as vampires believe. We can still be killed, by fire or water... Even you, if I may, my lord, are trapped in the shell of what had been mortal. The tedium stems from *limits*, what boundaries are imposed on us. If you should find the way out of the iron cage..." She leaned her head back and smiled blindly toward the moon. "Ah, you would not tire so easily."
"Hm. I have my doubts."
"Of course, you always do. But that won't change anything. Think of... the first moments of feeding, when you were a vampire. The blinding rush that felt as if you were propelled from your body. Take it, magnify it ten times over, and extend those first ecstatic moments into centuries- that is godhood." She chuckled to herself. "At least... that is a *taste* of mine."
"Your enchantment is simply inspiring," he said drily.
"I imagine it will be, when you can finally hear that depiction without doubting every word."
They sat in companionable silence. Raziel glanced at her sidelong, watching as her claws idly toyed with the tail she had looped across her lap. It reminded him of standing at the edge of an ocean whose end he could not see, a black spiral whose center flared with restrained potency. She could have been ten feet tall- a hundred feet tall- and he would still get that sense of a condensed nugget of power burning at her core. It was both unsettling and oddly euphoric.
The reaver of souls emerged from his preoccupation to find Ishtar looking toward him expectantly.
"Hm?"
"May I... see your wings?"
"...can't you?"
"Not eye-sight, no. The... Elder God will be most displeased with our actions, I'm afraid. I will have to save what power I can. I meant, Raziel, how the blind see."
There was something terribly earnest in her voice, her manner, that Raziel found it difficult to even think of refusing. "If it is so tremendously significant..."
Ishtar shifted her weight onto her knees. She was uncomfortably close, but again the same half-formed desperation kept him from protesting. Moments ago, the night had seemed tranquil enough. Now it was as if some horrible thought had occurred to her, something that filled her with quiet urgency. What had made the difference?
Thought evaporated as he felt her claws on his wings. It was not the cursory examination Kain had given them moments before tearing them from his back, but a slow exploration, as Ishtar let her claws linger over his skin. The urgency faded, but the intensity did not; her face, though blind, was tight with concentration, as if she were memorizing the feel of his wing. He felt his muscles tremble involuntarily when her claws drifted to the bone... his body had not forgotten the old betrayal. But she stopped there until his wing calmed again, and only then did she move on, up to the scaly arms whose surface rolled with compact muscle. He looked up at his wing, at her claws gently exploring his wing, back to the intent expression on her face. She seemed to glow silver in the moonlight.
Ishtar's claws drifted behind his back, at the point where his wings joined his shoulders, and stopped. She turned her head upward, her expression unreadable as her eye-sockets looked somewhere at his forehead. Raziel relaxed his wings, letting his flesh slacken beneath her claws. As if given permission, she moved up his back using his exposed spine as a guide. Her claws traveled over the cowl, tracing the back of his pointed ear while the other hand slid through his hair and down the back of his head. His neck tingled as he felt her move beneath his cowl and grab hold of it, slowly dragging the fabric from him and loosening it around his face. Raziel reached up and helped her unwind the cloth from around his head, and the air felt cold against his exposed flesh, but inexplicably welcome. Ishtar carefully laid the cowl on her lap with one hand while the other remained at its place against the back of his head. His eyes didn't move from her face as he felt her claws slide to the side of his head, her thumb tracing the hairless ridge of his brow. He closed his eyes and felt her thumbs lightly brush against his eyelids, then slide down the black markings that ran down from his eyes like tears. He felt her claws drift toward his mouth, her palms half on his skin and half in the empty space where his lower jaw had been. Here she stopped, her claws hesitantly caressing what was left of his cheeks.
Ishtar bit her lower lip and let her arms fall into her lap. Raziel looked at her, dazed as if just awoken from a vivid dream.
"Why," she said hoarsely, "you're beautiful."
"As are you."
He stared at her several moments, into the shadows gathering in her eye sockets. Then he turned, awkwardly ducking his head. The weight was so poorly balanced when half his throat was missing, he thought furiously. It was inconvenient. Hugely inconvenient, yes. Was his lower jaw somewhere on the floor of the Abyss? His mind ground to a halt. His head jerked up and he proceeded to memorize the look of the moon.
"We should return," Raziel said without looking at her. "Already the sky grows light."
Ishtar smiled faintly. "Yes." She held out the cowl, which Raziel took. "We should." She stood, turned from him, and walked a few steps away. He rewound the cowl around his head, concealing his incomplete facial features.
Such a fragile moment, he thought vaguely. So easily shattered. But he couldn't be sure what exactly he was referring to.
Neither of them said a word on their way back to the cathedral.
Wow. After three weeks of absence, I still have reviewers! *backflip of joy*
Lilith- Thanks for sticking around; I hope your stay in the vacuum wasn't too unpleasant. As for precociousness... yes! I shall take over the world when you are old and weak! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!
AmuseMe- Yup, here's more of the story. ;) But I have a question- how did you get an Easter egg into any shape other than an egg? @_@
MikotoTribal- As a matter of fact, I do plan on majoring in English. But that's some years ahead. ;) Thanks for the feedback, I'll try to work on making the prose clearer and easier to understand.
*
One more thanks to all those who stuck around, despite my period of unwritingness. :( As for the rest of you. *waves a copy of Patch Adams threateningly* Review or feel the wrath of an excessively sentimental Robin Williams!
*/AI*
10- The Gravity of Choice
Ishtar listened as Raziel's soft footfalls faded and disappeared entirely with his teleportation to the top level of the cathedral. His wings would need to dry before he could take flight, but that would not take long. The blue blood that came from his body evaporated within moments.
At the base of her spine, her muscles involuntarily shivered. It always came down to the wings.
"I must say," her companion said nearby, "your part was magnificently played."
"Hardly a part, Kain," she said. "Unless you mean my role as an impromptu mediator. Which, might I add, would have been much easier had you not taunted him at every turn."
"Let it never be said that I am guilty of such a crime," Kain said. God, how nice it would have been to see that mocking smirk split down the middle.
"Even if it is true," Ishtar said. She turned toward the teleporter and stepped slowly toward it.
"Surely you do not mean to establish an interconnection in your darkening hours."
She stopped and turned in the direction of his voice. "I have one more night."
"Exactly."
It silenced her, as Kain knew it would. The pause was too potent, too meaningful. Even without brushing the dark power inside her, she felt in the silence the void that had terrified her. They both knew her destiny... and the conclusion it would meet before the next dawn.
"I will not hide," Ishtar said at last. "You and I have both seen what future this world will bring us. But you had power, the authority to grant or take the lives of thousands. And I." Her voice dropped. "I have wrestled with this power over centuries. And all I have done is watch and wait." She paused, and he said nothing. "I tire of idleness."
When Kain spoke again, his voice sounded closer. "So," he said, "the full notion of sacrifice has finally occurred to you. One more instance of waiting is not much to ask."
Ishtar's lip curled in an impatient sneer, exposing her unnaturally long fangs. "And what have you done that makes you so noble? Do you really think of it as a sacrifice to languish on your throne, trying desperately to think of new ways to pass the time?"
"Do you think of it as simplicity itself to murder your firstborn?"
Her drawn eyebrows slowly rose. When he spoke again, Kain's voice was on the verge of being sympathetic- no doubt the closest he had come in centuries.
"All I ask, Ishtar, is that you spend this night with the full knowledge of what your actions will entail. Know what you will ask of him." He paused, and his voice took on a hard edge. "And know that I, too, am well-acquainted with sacrifice."
"If you would not presume to dictate when I will suffer mine."
The tension suddenly broke as Kain let out an appreciate chuckle. "Ah, it is reassuring to know that the father of such petulant wit will remain in this world even if we do not."
"Yes... and I should like to use that wit while I may." Ishtar turned her back on him and shuffled toward the teleporter.
"Very well, Ishtar. Enjoy your last hours. Perhaps then, the new world will be made more pleasant in your memory."
Ishtar ignored him as best she could. That was the doubt that had plagued her when she first used the dark power, back when she could still see with her eyes. Her death had been the first thing she had foreseen, a muddled mosiac of blood and black wings. She had to talk to Raziel, somehow. Wouldn't that make it easier? She had to see those wings before...
The chill that ran down her spine did not leave her until the cathedral was far behind.
********************************************************
Raziel couldn't help but laugh aloud as the night landscape whirled around him in a senseless blur. His wings cut circles into the air, propelling him through the sky in a wildly tilting flight that made his head spin. He swooped low, letting his hooves rush inches above the ground, before bringing his wings down in a powerful surge of movement that sent him lurching through the sky. Luckily the moon had emerged from the clouds, or he would not have been able to tell the difference between air and the ground.
At last, Raziel tilted his wings so they brought him in a low swoop toward a ridge he saw below. His wings, tucked tightly to his sides, barely felt the fatigue of his long flight. They did, however, refuse to keep him balanced in the air. He had enough time to brace himself for the impact before he careened into the ridge in a splash of mud.
The reaver of souls sat up with an effort. Well, he thought as he scraped a fistful of mud off his cowl. Perhaps I could use some practice.
"Ha. I had forgotten the first difficulties of flight."
Raziel turned. "Ishtar?"
He saw his daughter standing nearby, her black skin almost luminous in the moonlight. She was smiling. "I thought I'd join you."
"How did you reach this place?"
"The same way as you." She sat down next to him, heedless of the mud that squelched around her body. "I flew."
He cast a sidelong glance at her; apparently, her landing must have been much smoother. "It had not occurred to me that it would present such difficulties."
"Indeed!" Ishtar laughed. "Well... I see you've done much thinking on Kain's proposal."
Raziel removed another clump of mud. "No, I have not. I have instead discovered the surprising tedium brought on by intense introspection."
"But how it passes the time."
"Far more likely that it wastes time."
"So... are you no closer to a decision?"
His claws paused in the middle of removing more mud and hung still. "No," Raziel said quietly.
They sat in silence, both preoccupied by their own thoughts.
"...to think that was the game all along," Raziel said. He hesitated, his mind struggling to fit the elusive thoughts into words. "How many centuries has Kain spent in preparation for this absurd scheme? When he first stole upon the Sarafan tomb... did he hold the same intentions he does now?"
"Not that long ago."
Raziel nodded, strangely enough, in relief. "Undoubtedly you will find it simple to believe that... my mind accepts Kain as benevolent only with reluctance."
"You are quite right, father." She leaned her head back on her shoulders, her eye sockets lit starkly by the moonlight. "But we are no masters of time, and time is against us. You cannot linger in indecision forever."
"I do not intend to." Raziel felt the night slip from his senses as his mind turned to the past. "But did you watch, Ishtar?"
Ishtar's tail flicked back and forth in the mud. "Yes. I saw. I have seen it over endlessly... How Rahab is the first to see you. How Kain flinches, even though he has foreseen your gift. Melchiah looks almost horrified at the prospect of wings... yes... he would have to skin birds to sustain himself." Her tail stopped. "But you are not proud. Evolved before your master, a gift as dramatic as wings... and you are not proud. That is why you draw back when Kain examines the new evolution. Melchiah's look changes... he has the fullest view of Kain's expression. In it, he sees what is to come."
Ishtar bent forward, her wings forming a dome around her as if for protection. "My god, my god. Kain's eyes narrow. Could he think that, could he think that of his own son... who himself, is beginning to doubt what will come. My god! Claws on both wings...." Raziel could do nothing but look at her, watch her slowly sit up, claws curled in her lap, wings sagging. She turned in his direction, her features warped with pain.
"And then the snapping sound..."
The spell broke, and he became aware of the mud drying on his cowl. The reaver of souls lowered his head as if to catch his breath. Centuries, centuries, and still it was like yesterday.
"I do not need my memory refreshed," he said.
"It was not for your benefit." Ishtar exhaled and her wings fully relaxed. "Something with the power... ever since your resurrection, it has been, shall we say, unpredictable."
"How?"
"Well. Before, it could not exhaust itself. A good thing- I had nothing else to do for most of the night. Lately, though. It seems to take every opportunity to fizzle out. Almost as if it were *trying* to get away."
"Do you think it can?"
She turned away. "I don't know."
"Ah. That would be a fine travesty, depriving my last offspring of all you have left. There is no reason not to fail my clan one last time."
"Ohhh, Raziel, don't you understand." Ishtar cast a pitying look at his chest. "We were doomed from the beginning. In this future, the god-essence destroyed us when Kain did not. In the other future, where you did not grant the request of the pillars, the leaking of the pillars was indiscriminate. The effects would grip all the vampires of Nosgoth, wittling down our senses until finally destroying us. Whatever choice you made... our fate was already sealed."
Raziel could barely contain the wave of half-anguished bitterness that swept over him. So Turel had been right. There was no meaning, not in his vampiric rebirth, not in the creation of his clan, not in his current misguided quest for revenge. Even Kain, of all the bastards in Nosgoth, had been right: the future had always been written. Every step of his had been predetermined from the beginning.
"Such delight," he said. "If these are the 'pre-ordained paths' Kain is forever referring to, he and his sooth-saying compatriots are welcome to take all the space they need. I am done with them."
Ishtar gave him a sad smile. "It is not that easy."
"No. No, it can never be." Raziel leaned back with a frustrated sigh. It seemed he would spend the rest of existence running from a fate that refused to let him go. Not quite a comforting thought. "The prospect of dodging this prophecy or that cryptic mumbling for eternity is not quite to my liking."
"You make godhood sound so tedious."
"Perhaps... because it is? Not in the first years, I'd imagine. Too busy drunkenly reveling in the egotistical bliss of divinity. But the century after? Or the century following? Or the *endless* parade of millennia clambering by after that?"
"Have you never learned to appreciate your immortality through all these years?"
Raziel considered. "It had the illusion of significance." He paused, then shook his head. "No, I see it now as it truly was. There were scattered moments of appreciation for my prodigiously extended years. But surpassing those were the intolerable hours of boredom, a deadening monotony that forever clouded my endless existence. We called it the ennui of unquestionable dominance. No... it was the same soporific plague that even humans sense at the fading of their lives: the incurable tedium of a life that has lingered too long."
"And you are not half the age of Kain..."
"Perhaps boundless meddling and bombastic speeches delay the effects."
Ishtar chuckled. "Ahh, you are too cynical. Certain lives are very, *very* hard to tire of."
"Is that the case?"
"It is. And fortunately, if all goes well at the end of our scheming, you will be the recipient of such a life."
"What leads you to think it is any more fascinating?"
"It is immortality. True immortality, Raziel, which is not as common as vampires believe. We can still be killed, by fire or water... Even you, if I may, my lord, are trapped in the shell of what had been mortal. The tedium stems from *limits*, what boundaries are imposed on us. If you should find the way out of the iron cage..." She leaned her head back and smiled blindly toward the moon. "Ah, you would not tire so easily."
"Hm. I have my doubts."
"Of course, you always do. But that won't change anything. Think of... the first moments of feeding, when you were a vampire. The blinding rush that felt as if you were propelled from your body. Take it, magnify it ten times over, and extend those first ecstatic moments into centuries- that is godhood." She chuckled to herself. "At least... that is a *taste* of mine."
"Your enchantment is simply inspiring," he said drily.
"I imagine it will be, when you can finally hear that depiction without doubting every word."
They sat in companionable silence. Raziel glanced at her sidelong, watching as her claws idly toyed with the tail she had looped across her lap. It reminded him of standing at the edge of an ocean whose end he could not see, a black spiral whose center flared with restrained potency. She could have been ten feet tall- a hundred feet tall- and he would still get that sense of a condensed nugget of power burning at her core. It was both unsettling and oddly euphoric.
The reaver of souls emerged from his preoccupation to find Ishtar looking toward him expectantly.
"Hm?"
"May I... see your wings?"
"...can't you?"
"Not eye-sight, no. The... Elder God will be most displeased with our actions, I'm afraid. I will have to save what power I can. I meant, Raziel, how the blind see."
There was something terribly earnest in her voice, her manner, that Raziel found it difficult to even think of refusing. "If it is so tremendously significant..."
Ishtar shifted her weight onto her knees. She was uncomfortably close, but again the same half-formed desperation kept him from protesting. Moments ago, the night had seemed tranquil enough. Now it was as if some horrible thought had occurred to her, something that filled her with quiet urgency. What had made the difference?
Thought evaporated as he felt her claws on his wings. It was not the cursory examination Kain had given them moments before tearing them from his back, but a slow exploration, as Ishtar let her claws linger over his skin. The urgency faded, but the intensity did not; her face, though blind, was tight with concentration, as if she were memorizing the feel of his wing. He felt his muscles tremble involuntarily when her claws drifted to the bone... his body had not forgotten the old betrayal. But she stopped there until his wing calmed again, and only then did she move on, up to the scaly arms whose surface rolled with compact muscle. He looked up at his wing, at her claws gently exploring his wing, back to the intent expression on her face. She seemed to glow silver in the moonlight.
Ishtar's claws drifted behind his back, at the point where his wings joined his shoulders, and stopped. She turned her head upward, her expression unreadable as her eye-sockets looked somewhere at his forehead. Raziel relaxed his wings, letting his flesh slacken beneath her claws. As if given permission, she moved up his back using his exposed spine as a guide. Her claws traveled over the cowl, tracing the back of his pointed ear while the other hand slid through his hair and down the back of his head. His neck tingled as he felt her move beneath his cowl and grab hold of it, slowly dragging the fabric from him and loosening it around his face. Raziel reached up and helped her unwind the cloth from around his head, and the air felt cold against his exposed flesh, but inexplicably welcome. Ishtar carefully laid the cowl on her lap with one hand while the other remained at its place against the back of his head. His eyes didn't move from her face as he felt her claws slide to the side of his head, her thumb tracing the hairless ridge of his brow. He closed his eyes and felt her thumbs lightly brush against his eyelids, then slide down the black markings that ran down from his eyes like tears. He felt her claws drift toward his mouth, her palms half on his skin and half in the empty space where his lower jaw had been. Here she stopped, her claws hesitantly caressing what was left of his cheeks.
Ishtar bit her lower lip and let her arms fall into her lap. Raziel looked at her, dazed as if just awoken from a vivid dream.
"Why," she said hoarsely, "you're beautiful."
"As are you."
He stared at her several moments, into the shadows gathering in her eye sockets. Then he turned, awkwardly ducking his head. The weight was so poorly balanced when half his throat was missing, he thought furiously. It was inconvenient. Hugely inconvenient, yes. Was his lower jaw somewhere on the floor of the Abyss? His mind ground to a halt. His head jerked up and he proceeded to memorize the look of the moon.
"We should return," Raziel said without looking at her. "Already the sky grows light."
Ishtar smiled faintly. "Yes." She held out the cowl, which Raziel took. "We should." She stood, turned from him, and walked a few steps away. He rewound the cowl around his head, concealing his incomplete facial features.
Such a fragile moment, he thought vaguely. So easily shattered. But he couldn't be sure what exactly he was referring to.
Neither of them said a word on their way back to the cathedral.