The brink of the forest is where I break down. Rain falls from the bone-gray sky, navy clouds dripping out their despair onto my cheeks. Omen's coat is damp with the droplets. I slide off his back, my boots thudding onto the ground, all my limbs weak with defeat. Only now does the severity of it all bear down on me, with Cassian's life hanging in the balance, in the palm of my hands.
I stand at the edge of the dark forest, where Nekros Falls lies ahead, and thus Erebus. To face him with the failure of our quest. My bones feel cold and soaked, the winter rain seeping through the layers of my armor. Or perhaps it is just me, locked in this state of unfeeling, of numbness, because I simply cannot endure the reality of it all.
Cassian will die if I do not succeed.
With how many days I've been gone - no explanation, nothing - he would hate me now. And I don't know which is worse.
"Come, Omen," I urge, quietly, running my fingers through his wet mane, and starting towards the rocky bridge.
Flowers don't grow over it this time, and I see death for what it truly is - black rubble, burnt ash, rot and engulfing fire between the edges of the bridge. Only, I do not see it this way, not for Cassian. Cassian will get all the flowers and all the sun and glory. When it is his time, and his time is not now. Not if I can help it.
Omen trots ahead of me now, into the dark palace, away to rest. My aching feet carry me up the stairs to the throne room, where Erebus perches. He rises slowly, as soon as he sees me, the shadowy features of his face darker than ever.
"You did all you could," Erebus says, finally, his low voice echoing through the empty, dead palace.
Ravens crow somewhere in the distance, past the broken walls, flying through the sodden sky.
I wipe the water dripping from my nose, my steps slowing to a stop at the bottom of the platform. "It's not over until he's safe," I oppose, moving over to the crumbled balcony, and slumping my back against the wall.
Erebus follows, standing before me, staring out into his kingdom buried in fog. "Satori is right about you," he begins, his voice low but gentle, the only sound in this immense silence. "Do you know what your name means? Where it came from?"
I stare down at the ground, the glisten of the rain on the rubble. "No," I say, "but I don't particularly care. Not anymore. Perhaps when I was a boy, I might've. When I was living in the streets, wanting to die every day. I wondered where I came from then, until I found Cassian. He became my family, and I stopped wondering about why mine had abandoned me."
Erebus sighs, and lowers himself to the ground to sit across me, knees tucked towards his chest, covered by his black cloak. For a moment, he is my father, he is human before me, and not a God. "I always watched over you, Azael. Always."
I look at him, unfeeling, any anger dampened out. "Yet you never came to my aid."
Something twinges across his face. "You didn't need it." He fiddles with a gold ring on his finger, and looks out to the sky again. As he always does, as if he's contemplating something great and deep. "Your mother chose your name. All of it. There's no one else with your last name, as you are the only heir. It was a twisted secret of hers, the meaning behind it all."
Drizzles of rain flick the side of my face. "How so?"
The muscles of his stubbled jaw tighten, then loosen as he speaks. He's so mortal today, and I don't know what that means for everything. "Azael, made of God," he answers, a slight smirk tugging at his mouth. "Aeron, carnage; slaughter. Your destiny is in your name."
My insides feel like iron, rusting and sitting inside me. I don't know how to feel anything but the steel in my veins. "Tallon said it was a regal name, when I was first brought to him, and he could never find where I came from."
Erebus laughs, deep and hollow, and it's the first I've ever heard him do so, and smiles, as if he's won. But it quickly fades. "And he will figure it out all too late," he remarks, quietly, "at the end of it all."
"So I was born for bloodshed?" I ask him, my head raised in questioning.
A chilly breeze wisps strands of his black hair across his face, masking the blink of his void-eyes. "Sometimes, Azael, the world forgets that the dark cannot exist without the light, and that more often than not, the only thing that can truly defeat a monster is another monster."
I swallow the contempt in my throat. "I am evil then. That's all I was made for?" The contempt stings liquid into my eyes, lodges a lump in my airway.
Erebus sees this. His face softens, for once, despite the harshness etched into his very bones. "I'm sorry, son," he whispers now, as if he can't say it any louder, in fear of it being more true and piercing. He reaches for my head, and I find myself shuffling towards him, burying my head in the cups of his large hands. "You are a weapon," he continues, his voice almost nonexistent against the strain of the tears that slip from my eyes. He rests his chin on top of my head, firmly, his fingers wrapping around the sides of my head in sorrow. "And weapons can't weep, Azael. It is your fate."
The name father rotted in my mouth until now.