❝this tree was grown with rotted roots.❞
Nerluce is Darkest Shadow. He is that great and terrible entity, prophesied over a thousand years before, more like a hurricane than a man. His hair falls crooked, poorly cut by his family's blade. His finger...
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As he entered the classroom, Aristide resisted the instinct to squint. Why was it so damn bright?
He skimmed the room, hunting for the culprit, but the only source of light came from the windows. He narrowed in on them. Had they always been that size? Had there been curtains before? Could it be that because the glass panes had been pushed open, the windows were somehow letting in more light? Illogical, Aristide scolded himself. Open windows didn't let in more light. They did, however, let in the stench of the fall: rotting leaves and mildew causing nausea to burn at the back of Aristide's throat.
The size of the classroom made everything worse. It felt so much smaller than it used to, not that Aristide had grown any. Twenty-two and still suffering from a childhood without enough to eat. Twenty-two and still suffering from practicing Magick too young. Therefore, it must've been the desks. Aristide was certain there were more desks than when he was a student.
Or maybe it was the children who sat behind those desks that made the room too bright and too small. They were certainly what made it too loud.
Their voices swelled when they noticed him, wearing his blue teacher's robes—the color signifying his Affinity for water Magick and the sleeves long enough to hide how Aristide's fingers curled around nothing, nails carving the landscape of his palm. The voices became even louder as they recognized him—from statues or paintings or descriptions passed through stories—and began to contaminate the room with those damned names and all the expectations they carried with them.
"General Azrael," the children said, voices hissing like steam.
"The Angel of Death," the children said, voices rumbling like thunder.
In a remarkable display of self-control, Aristide made it to his desk and managed to sit down without snapping. He smoothed his robes but he still couldn't peel his fingers from their ill-formed fists. He took a deep breath but he still could feel the thrashing of his heart in his chest, like he'd caught and caged some feral animal between his ribs. It was idiotic. It was illogical. Why was he acting like this over children?
As much as he hated the titles they, in themselves, were not lies. Aristide was General Azrael, the Angel of Death. And for all the stories' exaggerated heroics, they got some things right. Aristide had fought. He'd watched Socosab, the city where he was born, burn twice. He'd grown up knowing only hollowed houses, like corpses robbed of organs. He'd watched a thousand people suffocate, entombed in ice. He'd been the one to kill them. He knew more dead people than living ones. So why was he was so fucking scared of children?
"Magick." Aristide's voice sounded strange, too tight and too high. He'd never been good at speaking. He killed things, not taught them. But at least him beginning to speak made the children stop their yapping. "Magick is an extremely versatile power and there are as many ways to wield it as there are Magickians."
These words did not belong to Aristide. They were a script written for him six years prior by his own teacher, Taayir. He'd sat in the front of her classroom, determined to not be distracted by the smile or teasing of the boy who sat behind her. A part of him hated that he mimicked her.
