Blood Lazarus

13 \ raze the sanctuary

While the world sinks into conflict, Blake is online in Blighted Life.

This time, however, she is not on a demon hunt. She scours Norukew for the one and only person she keeps in contact with, the one she's forgotten for a while after staying too long in the real world. She dashes through streets and parks, waddles her way to tourist attractions like the city square and the pagoda opposite the hill, but she just can't find him. It is as though he is deliberately avoiding her as a little revenge gift for her inattention to him.

With whitening knuckles, she takes her avatar through the forest where countless creatures roam free without a care for poachers or loving zookeepers. If he's not in the city, then he has to be there, deep in nature's belly. For him she ducks livid branches and springs over lashing roots. For him she navigates intestines of flowering trees and skips past the heart where the oldest tree stands with its bored crown, journeying further into the forest's anus. Diverging rows of trees shun a stone ordure that form the borders of a library remembered by few. Deer and avians flock to the books and flip pages with hooves or beaks, but Blake has no time for adorable distractions. She seeks only the aloof human standing with a book in hand, a hand in pocket, in the middle of the scenery.

"Do phoenixes prance around forests?" He turns to face her with a smirk.

"I need more evidence."

The boy puts his book down and takes a step toward the Botanist. "You can't prove a lie, can ya?"

"What do you mean?" She takes his book and glances at the cover, face contorting. "Why bother reading your backstory?"

"Proof of existence." He snatches it from her. "Anyways, simple. I lied. He's not the killer."

"How can that be?" Blake's outcry causes the animals to stare.

"He's the victim. This... Asher was killed and resurrected."

Blake gasps and her shaking hands flee from the keyboard, slow and wary. How could he have known this? Besides, there's no magic in the real world, so he could've lied again. Who is he to defend her brother with a lie? She blinks.

Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't.

So she trusts the devil standing before her, not the one living under the same roof as she.

Blake clenches and unclenches her hands and sips her soda. When she puts the glass down, she is PhoenixFire666, Fiery Assassin, in a vermillion cloak with a phoenix hairpin.

"What's this? Kafka's The Metamorphosis?"

Blake hisses. "Shut up. I just want to understand him."

PhoenixFire666 circles the library, cloak flying behind her. She wants answers; needs them. The only way to understand a killer is to think like one, to be like one.

"You don't trust me," the boy says and tosses her his book. "Read the highlighted portion."

Blake frowns. What can a book tell her about Asher? The question rattles her senses and her avatar scans the text, noticing a familiar description of a serpent-angel, the daggers Asher must have used to kill his victims, the ones mentioned on the receipt.

"Symbolises the devil masquerading as an angel... There's no such thing as a good person, but only an image of goodness... Everyone is a demon. These elites are incorrigible and should be eliminated."

Blake shakes her head. This would only mean that Asher is the victim, or he would have killed himself. Has she truly been mistaken all along? No, not at all. It's a situation of the pot calling the kettle black. Say, even if he was resurrected, who could have killed him?