I have malevolence. My shame only makes it worse.

I've been too long without a vessel. Sora believes I kept Sorey as mine for centuries as he slept, connected to they very continent through Maotelus and able to keep me safe through all my travels. Between my leaving Glennwood and Sora being given life, I've lost my tether to keep me pure. Water is the most easily tainted of the elements after all. It's time for me to settle down. It's time to remember and accept what I am.

Seraphs don't explore ruins unless they take one as their home. Seraphs don't travel alone-and certainly not great distances without some manner of precaution. I was born a human and, though I have no memories of that time, perhaps part of me holds to the same wanderlust that Sorey had. I never sought to settle down and bestow a blessing to a place I could call home. I never sought praise from humans. My dream was coexistence by desire, not necessity. But I'm a seraph. Even in the ancient times, the relationship between my kind and the rest of the world was symbiosis. So much power contained in something so vulnerable; so much to be grateful to and yet afraid of. In a way, it's no wonder we're revered. But I'm full of jealousy.

Jealousy and anger and sadness and despair. The wisps of purple that encircle me from time to time repulse everyone with resonance and I'm no less appalled. But I am resolute. And I know what I must do.

I must find a place to settle down. I must find a vessel and become venerated. Many universities in the past have asked that I bestow on them my blessing. It won't be terrible, I tell myself. I'll adapt to being sedentary, I lie. I've seen everything there was and that no longer is, after all. The world no longer offers me the hope of renewed interests. I have nothing anymore except the tired duty of prolonging this existence.

I hate the way Sora looks at me when he thinks I cannot see him. I don't need to ask him why his eyes water or why his face becomes pinched and sad in every reflection I steal a glance from. He thinks this is his fault. It's not. He thinks I resent him. I don't. I hate Maotelus more every day but I have nothing but love for Sora or Sorey. I hate Shepherd Michael. I hate Heldalf. I hate that, in a world without them, I would have grown up human beside Sorey. We would have had much the same life together only this time we would have been able to fully understand each other. I hate that my thoughts are so often plagued by darker things that I thought I'd long since moved past. There's something about Camlann that brings out my worst. I hate it. I hate everything about it. Even now, in Ladylake, I cannot separate myself from that place and those memories. And the swirling miasma grows.

"Find a Shepherd," Zaveid instructs. I'm not stupid. I know what I need to do.

"I won't be surprised if one finds us first," Sora says, his voice full of concern and no longer care free. "Ladylake is supposed to be Shepherd headquarters. This is probably the best place to deal with this sort of thing."

I don't want to see a Shepherd. I don't want to see those vestments anywhere near me ever again. "I'm not a hellion," I bark, both my companions jumping slightly at the bite of my tongue. Those with resonance do the same, giving me a wide berth as we walk through the streets with amethyst at my feet.

Zaveid puts his hands up but shakes his head, looking side to side over the crowd. "Look, if anyone could pull himself back from this sort of thing, I fully believe you'd be one of them. But we're not exactly in the middle of nowhere here. You go full on hellion and people will get hurt. So just chill out and stop taking everything so personally."

Chill out? His sense of humor is as bad as Lailah's. Who could possibly 'chill out' in a city like this anyway? So many tall buildings-all of them squares or rectangles with little in variation of architectural interest. Walls of windows reflect the sun in all directions while cars and buses roar down wide streets. I almost always avoid cities when I can. They only serve to remind me how much time has truly passed. I don't like the music that comes from invisible minstrels and the smell in the air is tainted with a sourness that stings my sinuses and throat. It's loud. Cities were always loud but it was loud because of people, a constant white-noise of conversations ringing out in the background. This was just noise. Honks and beeps and buzzing all over. Progress. And for this, they paved over the beautiful monuments of history. For their paved squares where they stable their self-propelled carriages, they buried away a past that belongs to everyone but was destroyed just for their convenience.

I'm old fashioned, Sora likes to say. He has no idea.

It takes no time at all for a Shepherd to find us-to find me. He isn't one of Lailah's. I don't recognize any of his seraphim. He armitizes and I feel warm as his hand rests on my shoulder. I recoil but only for a moment. And in that moment, I feel as though I might cry. This will make me feel better, I think. This will make the feelings and thoughts go away. It's not at all what I expect, though. It's not a miracle cure. He lifts his hand and I'm still just me. It's easier not to hate and the world doesn't feel like it's slowly folding in over me but... but the seed is still there just waiting to take root again. Because it's not outside sources that are pulling me towards malevolence. I can't be so easily rid of something I've created inside me.

"You should be alright now," the Shepherd says. His seraphim don't look as certain.

Sora thanks him profusely while Zaveid pulls for my attention. I allow him to pull me quietly aside.

"You go to the inn. I'll show the kid around," he says.

I bristle at the idea of being left behind. "You heard him," I insist. "I'm fine now. No one said anything about me needing to sit anything out."

"Have you had any time to yourself since you found him?" Zaveid asks. "Have you taken any time at all yet to mourn?"

I open my mouth to argue with him but close it quickly, clinging to anger to plow through the sadness. "I..." I clench my fists and look away. Of course I haven't mourned him. Sora might see and it might make him worry. And now that he knew about who he once was, such sadness could be seen as his fault for not being Sorey anymore. Of course I haven't mourned him. If I start, I might never stop. "There hasn't been time," I lie, because he doesn't deserve to hear how deep this pain now goes. It is centuries in the making.

He turns me by my shoulders, pointing me towards the inn that I wouldn't have otherwise recognized. "Sora's going to want to do a lot of sight seeing. Probably going to be out till nightfall. So get us a room and do what you need to do while we're out teasing all the lovely ladies we can find."

I scowl but, as was always the dynamic, my opinion is disregarded. He asks the Shepard for a favor: to make sure I get a room just in case the receptionist has no resonance. Sora looks relieved to hear I'm going to rest. His smile is more peaceful now and less pinched. He believes everything is going to be okay now. He's still so innocent and pure.

The Shepherd has words of warning for me before he leaves me with my room but it's nothing I don't already know. Find a vessel. Settle down. Let the prayers of the people keep me cleansed. My malevolence runs too deep to be purged by purification flames alone. I am on a dark path. That I'm not scared makes the seraphim wince.

Perhaps I've simply spent too long romanticizing becoming a hellion. I've fought them. They're very real things to me. Real things aren't as scary, I suppose, as they once were when they were unknown.

The inn room is shiny. The bed is stiff. The colors and plants are all reminiscent of the lakeside though the view from the window is of more windows across the street. The windows don't open and there's a box that wants me to tell it what the temperature should be. I feel alien-even more so than I did the first time Sorey and I left our home to explore the world and the humans in it.

I sit on the bed, running my hand over the course blanket, and catch a glimpse at myself in the mirror.

Just me.

Alone.

Like I have been for centuries.

I rest my head on my knees as I hug my legs in close. And I wait. And it occurs to me that, perhaps, I don't know how to stop waiting.