Life of Devilry

 Aether, of the Angels of Eldenar, awoke beside a corpse as a failure of a heretic. His torn once white robes were marred with blood and dirt. The sandals that had withheld his feet’s blessing lay broken below the cliff’s shadow. His hands once clean of impurity, now bulged with necrotic disease. His dark hair drifted in the pooling water around his head. The rocky shore pierced his bones that ached. Where now was the.strength of the faithful? Where now was the flame that had burned within him? 

His eyes blinked darkness away, yet sparks of radiance danced in his vision. Those sweet golden specks, that was as close as he would get to obtaining holiness. Aether willed himself to move. Sitting up, he felt a rush of liquid in his throat. Blood and bile dashed across the shore as he cleared his lungs and stomach of filth. Gasping for air, he found his breaths as shallow as his devotion. Aether felt as if he had died and returned from the beyond. His fall had rendered him unconscious. He did not know how long he had laid there. And it was then that he saw the corpse. 

He stomach retched at the wide unseeing eyes of a white robed man. Aether shut the eyes of the man with a trembling hand. His mind raced. Was there a Mandate that prohibited touching the dead? With such a thought, Aether’s stomach churned further. There would be no more Mandates Unbreakable for him to follow. Sorrow within sorrow flooded his soul. There would be no more devotion required of him. No way of life for him to return to. 

“Do not indulge in the power of the forbidden,” The first of the mandates said. And yet it had been that witch child who had healed his wounds. Just a child not understanding the craft in which it partook. Innocent and condemned. “Do not corrupt that which is simple.” The second mandate said. This too Aether had broken. For the price of heresy is death, yet the matter of the child had disillusioned him to complicate it all. “Do not forsake the protection of the Ageless.” The third mandate said. This was the most grievous of his failings. Aether had abandoned his duty as an Angel to protect the witch child. 

Suddenly Aether sat up. Aether looked this way and that until his vision blurred in the rush of movement. Holding his hands to his head, Aether remembered he had fallen. His mind was not ready to process a whirlwind of sights. And in that moment of stillness, Aether remembered the screams. He remembered the roar of the flames and the blinding light. His body remembered the stench of flesh becoming ash. And it would be long before Aether could forget how the weight in his arms faded with a horrid silence.  

Even now, Aether had no tears. He knew not how to feel. Perhaps he had been deceived, and he should rejoice at the vanquishing of a poison on the world. Yet even in his exhaustion he shuddered and writhed at the memory of what had happened. Aether found no relief in shut eyes or open eyes. For behind shut eyes flooded the haunting of what had been, and with open eyes he saw the corpse of the angel who had fallen with him. 

Heresy upon heresy Aether had committed. For killing an Angel would bring death not only in this life, but also in the next. Aether trembled and knelt with his forehead to the ground. But there would be no forgiveness. He stumbled to his feet. Where does a heretic go?

Something twisted inside him. Aether leaned against the cliff wall. Once broken, the Mandates could be followed again. There would be consequences, but perhaps the angels would allow him the simplest of lives. He debated if a life of watched imprisonment would be better than a life without the Mandates. 

Aether shook his head. No. If he returned to any city in Eldenar to repent of his failings, he would have to speak of the angel he had killed. The punishment for all his deeds would be death upon death upon death. Aether stumbled away from the cliff and the pool of water. There would be no going back. Not without death. Even now he clung to the little life left in him. How could he give that up? 

There then came a new thought into his head. What if his decision was right? Aether stopped in his tracks. His brow furrowed in his thinking. Perhaps it was a better choice to defy rules in protection of a child who did not understand what it was doing. It was a dangerous thought and Aether began to push it out of his mind as he would do with any heresy. But then he stopped. He had already made choices that condemned him. Aether strained to think of how it could have been right. 

If Aether was right, then the Ageless would be wrong. The teachings of the Mandates bring discretion. But would not discretion disagree with senseless acts of devotion? Is faith meant to be so thoughtless? Aether did not know. Should not the devoted have the conscience to decide when things are not simple? Aether stumbled on a rock. But do not the Mandates say to not complicate that which is simple. Aether picked himself back up. But are there not complexities to the world that are not simple?

Aether set foot on grass and sat under a tree. Exhausted beyond exhaustion, Aether stumbled upon something altogether different. What if the Mandates Unbreakable did not speak to all situations. Aether rested his head against rough bark. 

“Perhaps the situation was already complex,” Aether said, his voice thin and unused. “And perhaps I did not betray the protection when instead I extended it to the child.”

Aether shook his head. It didn’t matter. Blood still stained his hands regardless. But perhaps he was not as faithless as he had imagined. It was then when he felt a bite at his neck. A knife was at his throat. Figures began emerging from the brink of the forest. They were clad with elaborate colors and garments of multiple cloths. Heretics. Outsiders. A voice whispered in his ear a language he did not speak. Aether closed his eyes and awaited his death.

"We're not alone," Aether said. “Be swift.”

And his world went black.