Aznarr Duskveil

The sun setting low cast long shadows all around the pair as they moved slowly but with purpose along the roads of Elwynn Forest. All the better, he thought. He couldn’t stand the crowds and stares of the city. He couldn’t before and he certainly couldn’t now.

There was a tension between them as they walked that even their idle chatter could not dispel. Its source was no mystery either. This was the first they had reconnected, save their reunion on the bridge, since he had abandoned her in a fit of madness and self-hatred.

He had been quite prepared to wander forever, surviving as he always had. His self-imposed sentence for his crimes. He owed her his life. Not because she had saved it, necessarily, but because he had selfishly cast it away and left her alone. For that, he would pledge his life to her. Whether that be by her side, or waiting endlessly until the end of all things, he would relish or endure it as necessary.

If it took a thousand years or more for her to reach out to him again, he would wait. He felt fortunate not to wait that long, receiving her note only weeks after she had left him on that bridge. Now he accompanied her on a quest of personal importance.

The tension remained between them as the minutes bled to hours through the trees. She was angry at him, still, he was sure. Her answers had, on the whole, been short and to the point when his questions were asked. He did not press or prod more than was necessary.

After a long period of silence, the words that came to him from her lips were the most shocking of all. “Tell me...tell me you’ll stay with me this time.”

It was enough to stop him dead in his tracks in the twilight shadow of a large tree by the road. He turned to face her, and all at once she looked the powerful huntress she had become and the timid girl she had once been. It was like a knife ripped open his chest again. The damage he had done. He hated himself enough to throw himself into that chasm once more. But no, he reminded himself, that was not his purpose. “There is no power on this or any world that will tear me from you again, save your command. Not even death.”

She nodded once, but doubt still visibly weighed upon her. “”I thought...you’d hate me, for what I had become.”

He placed a hand on her shoulder, thumb tracing the fel brands peeking out from her armor along her collarbone. His spectral eyes saw, despite her moment of modesty, a radiating power more beautiful than he had even known before. His words flowed easily, as if they had been waiting for this moment to be spoken. “”Surprised...yes. Hate, no. I realize now I hated only myself. I see the truth now, as if a veil lifted from my eyes. I see a power that you were destined to have. Beauty and strength which are not burdens of your chosen path, but the fulfillment of your destiny.” 

He spoke the truth. From the moment he had met her, years before, she had radiated a quiet strength and power, often hidden by timidity, but present nonetheless. But that radiance, he now saw, was a mere smoldering fire, burning low in preparation to be awoken and set free. Now that it had, his vision fell upon an angel, a rainbow of radiating energies.

“If ever there was anyone who made me feel beautiful...it’s you.” She said.

He shook his head. “I am merely an observer of your beauty, you are the one who has embodied it all this time.”

He heard it then in her voice, a trace of a little something different. Less demure, insecure, but confident and maybe a little cocky. “That’s not the first time you’ve said that...and I certainly hope it won’t be the last...”

Their first proper reunion had been a tense one in so many respects. She made him angry, possibly on purpose, trying to draw out of him something he hadn’t felt in years: a sense of meaning.

Her hurtful words drew his blood up to a boil, and got him to admit something that perhaps he hadn’t admitted to himself. He had died once, and had no intention of doing so again. However, his lone wandering since she had left him on that bridge in the rain, unsure if she would ever return to him or if he had lost her forever, had taught him one inescapable truth, hidden in the back of his mind until her prodding drew it out in a different sort of rage. It wasn’t enough to survive. He had to live, and so did she.

They had collapsed there, on the island where they had shared so many rendezvous years before, flesh pressed to burning flesh, still joined together completely. Sometime in the night she had slipped off his chest and was curled instead against his side. For his part, it was the first real sleep he had known in years.

He rose from the ground carefully, not waking her. He moved down to the water and splashed it over himself briefly, cleaning off the sweat and stickiness, the result of their lovemaking. He almost chuckled to himself at the thought of that word...it was an interesting choice to describe those events.

Finally clean, he found his leather breeches and pulled them into place, keeping his chest bare as always. The dead remains of their campfire were surrounded by four glaives stuck in the dirt, his pair and hers.

The first he picked up were hers. They were impressive as he studied them, but felt unbalanced in his hands. They weren’t made for him. Still, his mouth curled in a smirk as he looked from the blades to her, now stirring out of her slumber. She sat up slowly and looked around.

As her head turned toward him, he threw her glaives toward her, embedding them in the dirt next to her. He extracted his own and crouched in a combat stance, smirking at her. “Let’s see just how far you’ve come...” He taunted her, holding his blades out in a gesture that added, ‘Hit me if you can.’

Aznarr would’ve preferred an entire legion of demons to sink his blades into, over the demons of his own making. It seemed to him like every decision of his life was one of catastrophe, destruction.

He had taken to wandering again. It was the only thing he knew how to do. If he had a choice, he would be at her side. He wasn’t sure he would ever have that option again. But he would wait. Forever if that’s what it took.

He literally owed that to her in debt, at a minimum. After everything he had put her through.

Every decision he had made was, in his thoughts, for her best interest. But after everything that had happened...even death itself, he knew he could not have been more wrong.

When he at last found her again, he wasn’t sure she’d come. She did. They spoke. She said she needed time. And though it broke him anew, he let her go. His only comfort that she would indeed come to him when the time was right. Or he would spend the rest of eternity in penance for his crimes against her.

Though he would take his punishment as he should, it did not lessen his fury. The rage he directed at himself for all he had done.

Hands wrapped in thick bandages, deep in the thickest part of the forest, he took a deep breath, and lunged forward. His fist connected with the trunk of one of the smaller trees. It shook the tree from root to peak, sending several birds scattering. It would’ve shattered the bones of a mortal. He barely registered pain.

Another strike, the bark cracked, and the wood splintered. Again and again he slammed his fist against the tree. Each one had more force than the last. His blood boiled and the flame rose in his gut. He began to growl as he unleashed everything inside him, unloading his rage, his shame, his self-loathing.

He was even starting to sweat as he reached a fever pitch, a massive divot slammed into the tree. Unable to hold it back, an animalistic roar echoed out and his demonic energy erupted from his eyes. The unleashed fel ripped through the tree like warm butter, and within seconds, the trunk fell to the side and collapsed to the forest floor.

He stood there, heaving breaths, chest rising and falling with each. He looked down at his hands again. He felt quelled, for the moment, but far from satisfied. How long would he suffer? As long as you have to. He told himself.