This Isn't About Reya

Chapter Seventeen

Azrael's face was once again covered by the veil of his cloak. He preferred it that way; it gave him a sense of anonymity, a certain lack of existence, as though that thin piece of fabric might keep him hidden from the whole of the universe. It was naive thinking, surely, but the logic itself was irrelevant. Only his perception mattered. With the right perception - with the necessary way of thinking - he could do anything he wanted, and anything Gabriel needed. 

The fabric was thin, and his eyesight was more than capable of penetrating such a thin piece of cloth. No vision was sacrificed, and if anyone ever did spot him, they would only see a formless, black shadow - nothing anyone could use to track him down. A human boy's face, on the other hand, and someone might wonder if the child abduction cases around the planet were related...

It was better this way, certainly. Azrael was hardly able to stand being unhooded even around Reya. He felt naked, but for her, he could manage.

He levitated outside her window a moment longer, his veiled face watching the slight movements of her body, ensuring that she was asleep. 

Her chest moved slightly, evenly. Her breathing was calm.

He nodded slightly to himself and let his form fall slowly back to the ground, back to the safety of the shadows cast by the tall, metal buildings on either side of him.

It was time to move.

Azrael's shadowed form lurked through the shadows of the buildings and then up and over the great wall surrounding the entire city. Once in the snow banks outside the limits, he let loose, and darted into the woods like a streak of black lightning.

There he left the many folds of his great cloak hanging from the tree limbs, and he assumed his predatory state of mind. The adrenaline coursed through him like bolts of electricity, the blood pumping with the rhythm of a great tidal sea. His heart beat like a thunderclap deep in his chest.

His lungs began to ache, not from exhaustion, but lack of exhaustion. They felt confined, restrained. Azrael ached to set them free.

The night was dark, and though the snows had fallen during the day and subsequently remained in the clouds that night, a few stray specks of ice did linger in the air, falling like forgotten whispers. Azrael stood on the eastern edge of the woods and inspected the untouched plains of snow before him.

Huge, sinewy muscles twitched all over his body. He stared intensely at the horizon. He was going... where? Velekiysud? No, Ozero. His target this night was Ozero. His consciousness extended, found the city, and fixed it in the eye of his mind. 

With a great rumbling breath, Azrael set forth, running on all fours, impossibly fast.

He'd make it a quick excursion, fast and silent like a dagger thrust. Nobody would see, nobody would hear, and most importantly, nobody would tell.

It didn't matter that his human face now stared blatantly out at the world for all to see. Ozero was far enough from Dragotsennost' that no one would ever think to check his woods, and if they did, then Azrael could kill them. 

Besides, it would be good for someone to see him in his true form. No human ever had.

Perhaps it was time they learned.

Gabriel's armies were nearly ready, and Azrael knew that Michael and the other Archangels were uprooting the balance of power in the NSU. All would be ready soon. The humans could learn to fear him now, to know his shape, so that when the hammer of Hell fell across the face of their empire, they would know who swung the hammer's head.

Azrael felt his throat hum, a snarl bubbling up from the pit of his chest. It felt like fire in him, and he relished in it. He loosed it as a thundering roar that echoed through the forests of Aquilo-Nix, reverberating in the silence of night.