This Isn't About Reya

Chapter Twenty-Three

When it was finished, Azrael stood tall in the center of the clearing, blue blood staining his arms from the elbows down and spattered across the rest of his body artistically. He faced away from Reya, staring down at his final kill, which he had plucked each individual leg from before finally slaying. His long hair wavered slightly in the breeze that dipped into the clearing from above the forest, and Reya watched lines of blue blood trickle down the edges of his swords. At some point, he had reformed them into single blades, and they hung, like thick razor bones, unceremoniously from his arms.

Reya was quiet and afraid. Her back was against a tree, and the blue blood on her clothes was dry and flaked off of her whenever she moved. So she did not move.

Azrael was still heaving deep breaths. Reya was not sure if it was exhaustion or adrenaline that fueled them. She wasn't sure which one she preferred, either.

All she knew was that she had just witnessed Azrael's true form, his true personality. The Azrael that had just slaughtered twenty pale spiders, alone and without even a wound to show for it, was the one that slumbered deep within Reya's Shadow in the Woods this whole time. She knew now that the Shadow she had known was little more than a mask for the Azrael she had just beheld.

And she was afraid of him.

It did not matter that Azrael had only loosed his withheld beast upon the spiders in order to protect her. All Reya could think about was the fact that Azrael could easily - so very easily - kill her whenever he wanted, and nobody would ever know. Even if someone came looking for her, what would they find? A monster? A monster and the shredded corpse of a fifteen-year-old girl? And then what would they do?

What could they do?

Nothing. They would be killed quicker than the spiders.

So she sat, her body frozen in shock, her mind frozen in the same manner, and did mostly nothing except breathe and stare at Azrael's back without really seeing anything.

Eventually, Azrael's breathing slowed, and he turned to face Reya.

He did not meet her gaze, which was good, because Reya wasn't sure she could have hidden the fear in her eyes. So she stared, horrified, and waited for Azrael to speak first.

The clearing was silent for a long time. The clouds were growing darker by the minute.

"This is what I am."

He spoke to the blue-streaked snow at his feet. Behind him, a few high boughs of pine needles shivered in the wind that managed to sneak over the peaks of the other trees. 

Reya refused to answer Azrael, drawing her knees tighter into her body, away from him.

He blinked a few times, as if that might make up for the absence of parting mouths. Then, after realizing that Reya would not respond, he looked up at her, and he saw the fear in her eyes. 

"I'm sorry," he said, and the pain in his face was not forced out of the social conventions that Reya had taught him - it was genuine. He'd never made an expression like that before.

His eyes had returned to their normal blue hue.

And, despite herself, Reya felt her chest loosen a little. Her breathing eased, just slightly, and her eyes, wide with fear, softened a bit.

"I was built to be a killer," Azrael continued, "and I can't help that." He broke off from Reya's eyes, then, and lifted his bladed arms in front of his face. "I can't help what I was designed for, or what I was grown to do. I'm just a weapon, after all." 

As Reya watched him, the blades began to crumble, and grey particles, like blackened sand, began to fall off of Azrael's arms. 

"And weapons don't have souls," he muttered.