Chapter 10

Exile

Azazel crouched silently among the pine trees. The people that tossed him out here were long gone, but he didn't feel that it was safe enough to move just yet. It was a dark and cold October night and unfortunately he wasn't dressed for it. His shirt and pants were torn and thin but he didn't feel as cold as he thought he should, it must be the fur. Normally when he could see his breath he needed a thick sweatshirt, but right now he only felt slightly cooler than normal. While that was most definitely a good thing in his current situation it didn't cheer him up any.

An owl hooted somewhere jolting Azazel out of his thoughts. All around him were trees, trees, and more trees. But something about what he was seeing didn't look quite right. According to his wrist watch it was past midnight but to his eyes it looked more like it was noon on a very cloudy day. There were no deep shadows that he couldn't see through and that made no sense at all. He saw no colors, only shades of gray. It was almost like he was looking through night vision goggles without the green tint. Maybe he could see in the dark now. Or maybe his eyes were just messed up. He had no way to know for certain.

Slowly Azazel stood swaying a little bit, still unused to his altered balance. He rubbed at his wrists and neck where the chains had been wincing when he touched raw spots. He'd only had this fur for three days and already he had bald spots. Yet another bit of bad luck to add to his impressive collection. With a sigh he began stretching out his limbs while trying not to lose his balance. He started from the top and worked his way down. The arms came first, then the head and neck. But as he was un-kinking his back he caught sight of his worst new feature, his tail.

Of all the changes in his body that was by far the worst. It was messed with his sense of balance, it tripped him up, and it was very sensitive. Every time it brushed against something he would feel it and it was driving him nuts. And the worst part was that when he tried to control the damn thing it twitched like crazy and touched even more stuff. He snarled in frustration, but the sound that came out of his throat was more animal than human and it made him flinch. Not only did he not look human anymore, he apparently didn't sound human anymore either.

He sighed, feeling rather depressed. Well, now that he was banned from town he should figure out which way was home and go in the opposite direction. So how did you figure out your location in the dark? With the forest as dense as it was not enough sunlight penetrated the canopy to make the moss on the trees grow on only one side so his best bet was to do some stargazing. But again the dense canopy presented a problem. How do you see stars when the trees block your way? Climb the trees of course, and that was what Azazel had to do now. So without further ado he selected a nearby tree and tried to climb it.

His first attempt was less than successful. While the tree looked the easiest to climb of all the nearby pines, none of the branches were close enough for him to reach from the ground. He circled the trunk but failed to find any good handholds to cling to. So he tried to climb the tree liked he'd seen a monkey do once in a biology class video. He wrapped his hands up high around the trunk and tried to jump up with his feet. For a second his grip held, but then he slid right back down to land painfully on his tail. Azazel howled in pain and flailed around until it stopped hurting.

When it did stop he tried to climb the tree again. He started out the same way as before only this time he pressed harder with his fingertips and feet against the tree trunk. Surprisingly his grip held this time and he slowly inched up moving hand over hand. Once he reached a branch strong enough to bear his weight he abandoned creeping up the trunk to clambering up the branches. He'd always been good at climbing trees, if the branches were set at the right level he could get up to the top in five minutes at the most. This time he was a bit on the slow side on account of his troublesome tail. It kept wrapping itself around branches.

It ended up taking him over ten minutes to break free of the shelter of the canopy, far longer than he was used to. But the view was well worth the trouble. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and it was a full moon tonight. However, something was wrong with what he was seeing. He checked his watch again, it read about 12:30. It looked almost as bright as day out here but the moon and stars were out. Azazel frowned and pondered this odd new twist. He really didn't think that he was seeing things. Maybe he really did have night vision now.

The stars above were strange looking to his new eyes but thankfully still recognizable. In seconds he located the north star and easily determined the three other directions. In his mind he added in the direction that he had been dragged and compared it to the view that he had up at the top of the tree. He'd been pulled along from town from the southwest so he should head northeast. But as he was figuring this out, a funny thing happened to him.

He felt what he thought was a breeze, but he noticed that no branches or leaves were moving. It came from behind him and seemed to flow through him towards the north star. The more he focused on the sensation, the more solid and subtle it became in his mind. It was like a river of charged air that was invisible to the eye. For some reason, it reminded him of compasses and his physics class. A magnetic field surrounds the earth and its energy flows from south to north. The 'breeze' he felt came the south and flowed north. Could he be sensing the earth's magnetic field?

It was a crazy idea, but with all the crap that had been happening to him lately it just might be true. For now he decided to believe that that's what he was feeling and use it like his own internal compass. With his direction nailed down Azazel slipped down the tree without much of a problem, his tail only got caught once. When he reached the lowest branch he forgot about the drop and let go. The instant he began to fall he realized his mistake and panicked. But when he hit the ground there was no broken ankle, strained knee, or any real pain at all. He just dropped almost ten feet and nothing hurt. This was just plain insane.

First it was the night vision. Then it was the magnetic sense. And now he could survive a fall that would normally disable another person. Add this to his changed appearance and being cast out of town and it was too much for one day. Azazel stumbled along still thrown off by his tail and found a sheltered spot next to a fallen log. He cleared away some dead leaves and curled up awkwardly in the makeshift nest. It was late and what he needed most of all at this point was rest. When the sun came up tomorrow he would move on. His mind made up he closed his eyes and promptly fell asleep.


One week, one miserable week since he had been exiled, and Azazel hadn't gotten anywhere. He wasn't exactly lost; he'd followed his sense in the same direction without fail. He just hadn't gotten to anyplace useful to him. He hadn't eaten anything beyond some bitter berries that gave him a stomachache two days ago. He could barely stand and the stream water that he'd been drinking had probably made him sick. His head hurt and if he'd had anything in his stomach he would've thrown it up. Gott, why didn't they just kill me?

Azazel drunkenly staggered from tree to tree faithfully following the course that he had set for himself. When he stumbled and fell he would wait for his head to stop spinning before getting up and continuing on. When he had to dry heave he waited until he could stand up straight before he dared to keep walking. When he grew too tired to keep on his feet he would take a cat nap in the most secluded place handy. Despite his increasingly poor condition he knew he had to keep moving no matter what. If any hunter from Winzeldorf caught up with him he was dead and over the past week his desire to live had been renewed.

He couldn't help but laugh out loud. When he was hurting from his headaches he wished he would die. When the change happened, and shortly thereafter, he wanted to die. Now that he was sick he wanted to die, and yet he kept going. While he longed for the simplicity and release of death he also wanted so badly to live. His life was just turning into a study of irony. The obedient son of very religious parents gains the affections of the most sought after girl in town. Then he turns into a demon, is disowned, and cast out of town forever. If that wasn't irony, then he was a five year old girl named Lana.

Mechanically he forged ahead, step by step. He ignored the trees as they blurred and danced before his eyes. He ignored the yellowed pine needles as they wrapped around his ankles like spaghetti noodle boa constrictors. He ignored the raven that had landed on his back and was pecking out his brains. He ignored the piranha-toothed squirrel that had latched onto his tail. He ignored the wraith-like wasps that stung his eyes and buzzed in his ears. He ignored the ground tilting up to hit his face. And he ignored the blue-skinned woman with the fire-hair and the misty gray eyes who watched him from the distance. All that mattered was the magnetic flow that whooshed through his head and he had to follow it. And he did follow it, right into the endless ocean of black.