Of Brothers and Angels
Chapter 5
When Ice Breaks Rock
She sat at the bank of the Rhine watching as it continued its endless journey towards the sea. This was the river that, according to legend was the resting place for a great and powerful ring. Great and powerful, golden and tantalizing, dangerous and terrifying. This ring reminded her of someone. She was thinking of him again. She thought about him a lot and she hated him for it. For what he had done to her friends she hated him. For what she had done to her thoughts, her mind, she hated him. But there was something else squirming through her that she couldn't place. Every time she pondered it she could not come to a resolution as to what it was.
She knew whatever it was she had to be completely honest with herself about it. Se hated people that lied to themselves, deceived themselves to avoid a little pain. She had hated them since she was little more then a girl. It had all started when her father started cheating on mother with another women in the village. Everyone knew about, even her mother. But her mother I had lied to herself about it pretending he worked late every night or making some other excuses for his arrivals at home that were well after dark. It continued for years and it had tortured the young girl. She could see her mother wasting away, unable to sustain herself on her own self-deceptions. Her mother spent her lonely nights cry and sometimes the sound would make its way to the girl's room and she would curse her mother for weakness. She knew her mother could escape from this if she wanted to but the fact that she let this happen to her was unforgivable. What was worse was when her mother was done crying she would consol herself about how she didn't have enough faith in her husband and how she shouldn't let this get to her. It made the girl want to puke.
Finally, one day she confronted her mother about this. She told her mother that her husband did cheat on her and how everyone knew it, how she shouldn't take it meekly and how she should stop pretending like she didn't see what was patently in front of her face. Her mother had started at her for the longest time, her face blank and unreadable. And then, suddenly, like the quiet, snow swept mountain that suddenly burst forth into an avalanche, her mothers face twisted with hatred and she smacked her daughter. Her mother continued to beat her and the twisted matron shouted, "How dare you Jenell? How can you not have faith in the man that has fathered and reared you? How can you show him such disrespect for him? You are a shame to accuse him in such a way! You are a whore! The whore of Babylon!"
Jenell could see that, underneath the thick coat of hatred her mother had plastered over herself, a black core of pain. Deeply hidden, even from the women who possessed it, she had let it fester and her mother had rotted from the inside out and now was little more then a shell. This is the price that her mother's own lies had bought her. She had traded a temporary release from pain and responsibility for a hollow existence, a mere mockery of her former self.
Chased from her own home Jenell had run out to live the traveling life of a beggar and a thief, changing between the two occupations based on opportunity. She managed to survive but she was alone. She made some friends among other thieves and wanderers. With them she was able to waylay lone travelers by luring them in and ambushing them. That is until, of course…
She sighed and went back to watching the calming river at lapped at the banks. It was to late though; she had already started a string of thoughts that would bring her back to him. The day that she stopped traveling, he was the one who had ended it and there she was back to square one. She hated him so much! He was like an omnipresent bastard son of a demon and an angel. A demon in his obvious evil and an angel in his obvious good. He was a riddle with two answers that seemed mutually exclusive. They made you think that you had gotten the wrong two answers.
But she had to be honest with herself. So what was it that she felt? Looking at eddies that twisted into miniature whirlpools, spinning around and around aimlessly before collapsing into non-existence, she thought she knew. She hated him. She might have some vague confusion probably brought about by the boy's appearance (admittedly handsome, and cruelly, apathetically, fiendishly innocent).
She felt a brief respite when she came to that decision. That must be it. She must hate him. Why would she feel anything? Standing up she turned her back to the flowing water.
Luzifer had just finished relating to Siegfried the story of his fight with Tira. He had held back a number of details, such as her name, what she had said to him at the end of the fight, and the part about him being a descendent of Azazel. Otherwise, though it was a faithful and unembellished description of the events that had occurred. When, Luzifer told Siegfried that he had not killed the girl Siegfried did not seemed particularly surprised. Luzifer had always pegged Siegfried as empathetic and knowledgeable of the emotions of other and that confirmed it. Siegfried had predicted somewhere in his mind that Luzifer would have trouble killing women (or maybe people in general) and had been proven right.
He had relayed this to Siegfried while they were walking on their way to the next town. Luzifer had spent most of last night in his room thinking. He was growing weak. Despair was eroding at him like rain on a cliff face. Only, instead of being worn smooth and beautiful he would break and crumble. He didn't know how much more of this he could take. His emotions were eating him alive.
He had tried to push away his thoughts by reading, but the pages only seemed stained with Blasa's blood. He tried to sleep but the silence only reminded him of how Blasa had not screamed when he had cut through her, hadn't screamed even when she realized she was going to die. The stars played a merry dance in his window, mockingly, and he wondered why Tira had decided to do what he had asked and not bother him for the rest of the day. Surely there was nothing staying her hand? No, she probably wanted to torture him and what greater suffering could be inflicted on a boy like him then to be synthetically kept alive by the mercy of others.
And that only served to remind him that for the second time in his life he had failed as a warrior. He had let his emotions get the better of him and he had granted mercy. He remembered the first time and the girl he had met. He hoped that she had stopped acting like a whore in order draw passersby into traps. Luzifer had always though acting weak was only for those who actually were weak. She probably had heeded his words, she seemed like a smart young women.
Luzifer only half-realized that he had talked down to her like she was younger then him when she was at least a couple years older.
He had looked at his moonlit reflection in a basin of wash water. He saw a late adolescent, whose form had taken the basic shape it would have in later years but had not yet set its more subtle features. There would still be change. The thought brought Luzifer a small inkling of hope that he could not precisely explain but comforted him nonetheless. There would still be a chance for Luzifer to change. But how would he change? Would it be a slow thing, a gradual shifting in his mannerisms. Or would it be a sudden breaking that would force his soul to reform or die out completely. Luzifer didn't care as long as it came. But it would never come for the face he had seen in the basin was the same one he would have seen a year before.
He had woken up the next day, physically exhausted but having a small emotional solace that he had not had in the longest time. He had sat on the edge of his bed for as long as he could and let his mind and body relax. Suddenly, Siegfried opened his door and walked in. At that point, Siegfried only knew that Luzifer had successfully beaten his opponent but knew no more. And the only reason Siegfried knew what little he did was by assumption that since Luzifer was still alive when they met back up at the towns' inn, he must have survived. That inn in this town was a much grander affair then the previous one, which had boasted only Siegfried and Luzifer and was of similar, though a two floor variant, construction to those houses around it. The inn they had been in at that moment was much more upscale then those adjacent structures, even to the extent of having a shingled roof, and had a larger congregation of travelers staying there.
Siegfried had walked up to the sitting Luzifer and gave him stiff punch to the chest, "Ready to go, Brother?" he said the last word with a slight change of tone that made Luzifer remember there were still pretending to be brothers.
Luzifer grinned sleepily and stood up. The two of them had left from the town on their way to the next, which was located along the Rhine River. They were still mostly wandering, trying to stay ahead of whoever might be pursuing them (whoever in addition to Tira, speaking of which, I haven't seen her in a while. Is she still behind us?). That's how he had found himself on this random road explaining the events of yesterday in as few words as he could.
They continued the rest of the walk in silence, as they usually did. Siegfried looked at the scenery, trying to let its natural beauty take his mind off his many sins, while Luzifer looked straight ahead, haughtily uncaring about the land around him. As far as Luzifer was concerned he had enough of his own affairs to worry about without taking time to think about the pathetic condition of his surrounding environs. Slowly the sun move across the sky as they moved across the ground and was half way from its apex to its crash when they are arrived at a town where they could crash that night.
Luzifer stood at the edge of the town for a moment. Siegfried continued for a moment before he noticed that Luzifer was no longer with him and stopped, turning to see what was holding him up. Luzifer let his gaze sweep across the bustle of rivermen, who took goods up and down the Rhine from here, and the traders who took the imports from the town inland and the exports from inland to the riverside. He was next to certain he had seen someone, someone he could vaguely recall. A face that had a made a brief but shaping touch on his life that he could not at that moment place. He shook his head and caught back up with Siegfried. It was probably nothing.
She had seen him! She had been quietly returning from the riverside to the tavern where she was to spend the night and she had caught a glint in the back of her eye. Sparing a brief glance she almost had not noticed Luzifer for he seemed not to stand out next to the glimmering and illuminating knight that he was walking with. She also had not recognized him immediately. His brown-blond hair was still scraggly and falling wispily over his face but this time it was far less mated and disheveled. Even though it was caked with a day's sweat and dirt it appeared to have been cleaned the night before. The last time she had seen him she could have sworn he looked like he had never even heard of the concept of using water to clean one's self.
His clothes were also much more colorful though they had obviously seen months of travel. He hardly looked any older, which struck her as odd since it had been two years since she had seen him. In fact, physical he look no older, still an adolescent, towards the end of adolescence, but in his mid-teens no the less. She herself was only nineteen but he had looked almost slightly old then her before, not much more, but still it was there. Now he look like her junior except if you really look at him. If you did you would notice that he had the mannerism of someone far older then the body would indicate, the conservative, wise, arrogant, and evil way of walking that caught the eye of those who could pick up on such subtleties. The sword on his back was different, both larger and more ornate looking but she had no doubt it was only more dangerous then the one that had killed…
She slipped behind a building as soon as she saw him. She didn't want him to see her before she could get close. Her mind was moving at a thousand thoughts per second and not all of them were ones that she had given clearance to be there. He was distracting her again, muddling her mind with thoughts and feelings that were false. She still hated him, she must still hate him, right? She couldn't possibly feel anything else. She couldn't accept the very concept of not hating him.
She didn't know what she was going to do now that she had found him but whatever it was it would have to involve the boy alone. She would need to wait for the knight to go his own way so that she would have unrestricted access to the boy.
Just then the two men passed by the building she was hiding behind and she could stare at there backs through the people that occasionally offered up their bodies to the blocking of her view. She hadn't noticed this earlier but the two were incredibly similar. They both seemed to have weighted steps that sent shockwaves through the earth that they walked on and both had an otherworldly air about them. However, where Luzifer had his demonic innocence, the knight's was more angelic and holy. They looked like brothers.
She followed behind them at a distance using the crowd to keep from being noticed as she followed them. Suddenly, they stopped outside a tavern and they talked for a moment, more precisely it was the knight that did the talking as the boy merely nodded or shook his head to the mans words. After the paladin had finished, he walked into the inn and the boy started walking down the road. This was the opportunity that she had been waiting and hoping for.
She began to walk with lithe ground-devouring strides and she soon began to catch up with the boy. She overtook him in the center of the street as it passed a few blacksmith shops and the smell of sulfur and smoke kept all but those with business out, granting Jenell a little extra space. She stepped in front of him, causing him to instantly stop while his right hand shot to his sword. He said nothing, but looked somewhat dejected and depressed.
She smiled, but there was no mirth behind it, "I haven't seen you in so long." He began to back up but in his eyes there was no guilt, no remorse. It seems that what ever had been eating at him a moment before it was not the fact that he had kill all her friends. He had done something worse? Her head began to pound with emotions all banging to be set free. She couldn't focus and her mouth moved on it own accord, "You killed them all! All my friends and then you left me there!" She moved in and punched him square in the chest, less to hurt him then to relieve her pent up frustrations, " Left me their to that snobby bastard who tried to rape me! My life has been a living hell since then. Struggling day-to-day just to survive. Sometimes, going days without food, starving on the roadside. What kind of mercy is that? To leave me alive to a life of suffering!" By this time she had launched her fifth punch but she wasn't trying hard aim it hard and missed. Her momentum carried her forward, slamming her head into the boy's chest. She nestled it there and cried hard, she clung to him. This was the first time she had said anything like this to anyone, all her bottled up frustrations poured out. She couldn't understand her own words as they were distorted by his shirt and chest but somehow he heard every word. About her mother and father, her life as a lonely girl, and even some events that she didn't even know bothered her like when she had been punished in front of the congregation of her town's church for stealing the priest bible on a dare.
When she looked up at him she saw pain. Pure anguish was written into his face and all his guilt was brought forth as his out-of-focus yellow eyes stared into the distance. She then noticed that a number of people were staring at them, she felt her cheeks heat and she pushed away from him and began to walk away, still crying as she pushed through the gawking gatherers. Couldn't people mind their own business? That's when she heard the scream.
Feral and pathetic it scratched at her mind and she immediately looked at the boy who was holding his head in his hand. His knees had buckled and his back was arched as the scream tore into her thoughts. It could be heard for miles and at the distance she was at the sound was agonizing. Suddenly, the noise gained words, "WHY? Every time I try to help someone I only cause more pain! I grant mercy and bring misery! I kill those I care about!" His fist pounded the ground but the earth did not seem to mind enduring his seething outburst as he struggled to get his emotions under control again. That's when a few startled gasps could be heard through the stunned silent crowd, which was growing as people came to investigate the noise. The cause of the gasps revealed itself as a blacksmith's fire left its furnace and crawled along the ground towards the boy. Other fires appeared from all the other blacksmith shops that made up this section of the town and soon the covered him. Jenell watched in horror as the boy just knelt their hands on the ground and his chin digging into his chest as the flames baptized him. Her mouth was dry but surprisingly no scent of burning flesh pervaded her nostrils. She could hear shouts of witchcraft and demonic influence from the crowd but all she felt was concern. Concern for the boy. One shouter yelled out, "Its Luzifer!" and the boy reacted with a slight uplift of his head but then let it fall down. She didn't care if his name was Luzifer or whatever; all she cared about was…him.
She loved him. Guilt pulsed through her at the thought that she had been lying to herself but she didn't let it sink in as she turned her thoughts to figuring out a way to get him out of her before the people could overcome their fear of him and kill him. She called out to him, "I forgive you Luzifer!" He looked up at her his golden eyes were strangely illuminated by the glowing fire. Then he collapsed with a resonating thump and the fires gave out.
She ran up to him and knelt beside his unburnt body, which seemed frighteningly cool. The crowd began to scream for her to leave him alone before he killed her but she ignored them. That was when the knight from earlier burst through the crowd. Kneeling down next to her he grabbed the boy in one hand and held his massive sword in the other, warding off the crowd, causing them to move and grant him passage. She followed the knight as he made his way through the crowd, hoping that he was there to save Luzifer. The people who watched this were like dogs at by casting hateful glances at them as they passed, words were yelled about demon-lovers and Satanists. She whispered softly to the knight as they passed the last of crowd and broke in to a sprint leaving the town behind, "You're here to protect him right?"
The paladin looked at her askance through a shroud of blonde hair that partially covered his eyes, but he didn't reply initially. He looked back towards the town and let up on his run. She followed suit and asked why he was stopping. He barely paid her a moments attention as he went to walking, Luzifer still slung limp over his shoulder, "If they haven't started following us yet they never will, especially this close nightfall. People are suspicious by nature, to them the woods are full of spirits, they won't risk following a 'demon' in to the forest at night." He put a sarcastic emphasis on the word "demon" to show how much he agreed with their diagnosis. "Still we should get as far as we can before nightfall. They might try to follow us at daybreak. Nothing to serious they won't leave their fields untended to pursue a 'demon' in what they believe is his ancient home." He was walking away completely capable of leaving her alone if she didn't keep up on her own accord.
As she caught up to him, she began thinking again about how, even after she had promised not to lie to herself she had. She was even weaker then her mother who she had scorned to no end for being pathetic in the face of pain. Looking back she could see other times that she had skirted away from the truth when it was most convenient. Like when she had tried to steal the priest's bible so long ago. She had always blamed those who had dared her to do it for here actions, she couldn't accept that she had actually wanted to do it. That had always been her problem, in retrospect, she could never accept her own emotions and had always come up with an excuse as to why she felt the way she did.
Siegfried looked over at her and saw her moody feelings of depression softened toward her, he couldn't be, in good conscience, so apathetic towards his fellow humans when they seemed to be suffering. Not like his brother. The knight almost laughed, he was even starting to think of Luzifer as a brother. He wanted to get the girls thoughts off of whatever depressive things were keeping her down. He felt that she might, in some way, be important to Luzifer and he would not like it if he let her stay so melancholy. So Siegfried decided to ask her a question, "How do you know, my brother?"
She looked at him with pained eyes but for a brief moment she was distracted from her inner chastisement to ask Siegfried a question, "You're his brother? When I knew-er saw him he was always alone. Did he find you or something?"
Siegfried was about to ask her to answer his question but he thought better of it. The girl's past with Luzifer might be the cause or a part of her depression and it would be best if he avoided letting her think of that. But first he needed to think of answer to that. Well, he could give a basic answer to the question 'no' but he needed to drag this conversation out. That require coming up with a reason. Was it that he felt some bond with a fellow warrior who let himself be tortured by the acts that he had commit? They both had dark pasts that became their obsessions. Siegfried knew he, himself, would not be happy until he had earned forgiveness in the eyes of the world. Luzifer, while in having similar view, did not believe in anything outside himself and thus seemed to be looking for self-redemption or death. Siegfried wasn't too sure on that point. But the silent boy obviously wanted something badly enough to keep living, even if no one, including he, knew what it was. They were brothers in that. Living for no other reason then to prolong their existence, when they didn't particularly like their existence.
"We are not brothers by blood or anything of that nature but we think alike." Siegfried said, thinking over what he was saying carefully so he didn't misspeak. "Both have similar enough past", even if I don't know what his past is, "and we both have the same goals. We are more brothers in arms and mentality, then any literal brotherhood. But then brotherhood by blood is meaningless, its nothing but a bond of luck so I suppose that makes the entire concept of brotherhood meaningless, which, in a way, makes this entire conversations was meaningless."
She looked at him briefly then back at Luzifer and when her gaze lighted on the boy she spoke with eyes unconscious of her words, "Nothing is meaningless but, then, that makes everything meaningless." And for a long time Siegfried was confused.
The flame was down to the barest embers but the air still had summers warmth and the pre-full moon gave enough light that she could clearly see Luzifer tossing in front of her. Her attention was drawn away when a twig snapped in the distant but what ever it is was keeping silent or had moved on. Probably an animal. She turned back to Luzifer and put a hand to his for hand only to feel wetness as he continued to sweat profusely.
He'd been having nightmares for hours and Siegfried had long since gone to sleep. She couldn't sleep, partly because of worry but mostly because of guilt. She had done this to him. She must have. What she said to him must have damaged his keystone brick to such an extent that he could not stay conscious while dealing with whatever mental problems it had unleashed. Now he was thrashing in what only seemed like sleep, she doubted any rest was involved.
Why had it happened like this? Because she couldn't accept her own emotions. Had she figured out the truth and not lied to herself she could have told him what she felt and he wouldn't have blamed himself for her problems. She put a hand to her head. She couldn't believe that she, after all she had always said about lying to yourself, had done it. She was even worse then her mother. Her mother had only harmed herself, Jenell had harmed Luzifer, another. No, not just another, the only person in this rotten world she even cared about. She was pathetic. All she did was cause harm to others. It was her fault that she had brought Luzifer into that ambush, her fault that he had been forced to kill her friends. It wasn't his fault, it was self-defense. You can't blame someone for killing those who attack him, can you? However, you can fault someone who lets, in fact causes, the events that result in the deaths to occur. Incompetence is not an excuse. There isn't an excuse for anything, everything was your own fault and if something you didn't foresee happens you didn't look enough into the future. She had failed so many times, she realized now. So many little failures she had never before counted. Each a boulder tied to her neck, weighing her to the ground. Again her lying came to her, again she thought of the harm it had cause and she leaned heavily against the twitching Luzifer as she spiraled deeper in despair. A loud minority of her demanded release from pain and, against the implore of her rational mind, her hand eased towards the knife that hung at her belt and as she did the sounds of the forest seemed to die. It was her, Luzifer and the knife that now hovered in front of her, pointed at her breast.
She froze motionless, sitting over Luzifer like a maiden desiring her own sacrifice for the return of the one the lay before her, only this was tinged with her own sorrow and madness. Every rational faculty she still possessed screamed for her to set the stiletto aside but her weakness called for her complete submission to the travails of her life. The two forces inside claw and stabbed at one another neither side gained the advantage. Her muscles remained tense but motionless, forced into a rigidity not unlike rigor mortis. Slowly, the emotions began to recede, their endurance spent and her muscles relaxed.
It was at just that moment that Luzifer woke up.
He bolted up right, tearing himself from the nightmare he had been encased in. His rising chest slammed into the pummel of the knife and her relaxed muscles weren't prepared to stop it from entering her chest. How ironic, she had always thought that people only bolted asleep in stories.
She was leading against him and bleeding profusely. He had just woken up and suddenly she collapsed into his arms with a knife logged in her chest. She was still alive and conscious but he could hear in her breathing that she was bleeding internally. The way the air sounded coming up laden with blood clawed at him. She spoke in a deathly whisper that tickled the hairs of his neck, "Its alright, Luzifer. I forgive you and," she coughed up blood onto his neck, "I…love you." With that her chest stilled and her breath no longer tingled against his skin.
Those last words hung in the air. Again! Not again! Never again! Again! Again! Why did she commit suicide? I drove her to it! It took everything away and then spared her life! What was she going to do with her life when left with nothing? Again! I drove her to it! Again! Don't scream! Again! Not again! No more weakness ever! Not again! Bottle it up! The he lost all mental consciousness but his body remained awake functioning on instinct.
"Siegfried!" he yelled, his voice cold and harsh in the still night. He heard Siegfried who had been sleeping through the entire ordeal finally get up and stand a moment as his eyes took in the night. The knight then made his way to Luzifer and, as soon as his eyes could take in the details of Luzifer and Jenell's forms, he gasped in sudden shock, a gasp, which was soon eaten by the silence of the night. It was Luzifer who was the first to speak, "She committed suicide." Pain oozed from his lips like so much mental blood but it was blood that was thick and chilled.
"How? Why?" Siegfried asked his eyes spoke the pity that was hidden underneath the obvious concern for the events that had occurred. Pity for his brother that opportunity had allowed him to mask.
"I don't know, she didn't say anything" Luzifer lied, his face taut and straight, lips moving robotically.
"Are you okay? Do you need my help? Hell!", Siegfried managed to choke out.
"Fine. Yes, start preparing to leave, I don't sleep will be occurring and more tonight. I'm going to go bury her. I have to." Luzifer knew in his mind that suicides should not be buried since suicide, according to dogma was a sin. But then all that could go to hell. Jenell would want to be buried and that's all that mattered, besides he had lost his faith years ago, or, in his mind, gained his sanity.
Siegfried began preparing to leave hardly a thought going to what he was doing, when he heard Luzifer say something. "Your lucky Siegfried, you have strength of mind. I don't. I am weak and for that I have died." Siegfried looked up to see Luzifer disappear into the darkness of the night.
Not real proud of this chapter but I suppose it could be a whole lot worse. Next chapter will only have a minor part with Siegfried and Luzifer as I'm going to turn my attention to the "minor" characters who we haven't heard from in a while. You didn't think I forgot them did you? Hopefully, as the storyline progresses it will get a bit less Luzifer-centric and attention to characters a bit more evenly spread. Sorry this took so long.
Any way read review and all that rot.