Who: Vaizel, others (Aion) What: Trial night When: Trial night! (May 4 Backdated) Where: Third Circle, Indulgence Status: Narrative, complete Warnings: War, violence, death, guilt, briefly referenced sex, dishonest relationship practices, alcohol, and blackmail, conflict with authority, evasive coping
“Vaz, our daevas are vanishing out there. Every minute you ignore this is more blood on your hands.”
Vaizel shimmered; the scaled skin and weighty armor of an enemy quartermaster melted away. They knelt in front of Lady Ariel, shining, golden, and every bit the supreme commander she was made out to be. Nezekan’s templars and Kaisinel’s sorcerers flanked each side of her, battle-ready and laden with weapons, artifacts, and orders.
It wasn’t Vaizel’s mess to fix. This wasn’t their duty. Vaizel was a spymaster. It was Lord Zikel’s temper that had gotten them in this situation, it was Kaisinel who had provoked Lady Lumiel, and Nezekan who had struck Divine Fortress now with an exhausted, half-dead legion of daevas.
It wasn’t right. This battle wouldn’t end well. Vaizel knew what would come next. It had happened long ago, but it never stopped repeating in their dreams.
Vaizel wasn’t a soldier, conditioned to take orders like a common mercenary. But Ariel was getting desperate. Her ever-present, serene smile looked strained at the corners; it was a hairsbreadth too wide and flat.
“You swore an oath.”
And she was right, Vaizel had. And Vaizel had also shared a meal with one of the other side’s archons— one whose son was stationed at Divine now, likely getting run through by one of Nezekan’s centurions. His name was Ukar, and his mother worried for him. Ukar had only joined the ranks of legionaries a season ago, and could hardly tell courage from stupidity.
Vaizel could hear explosions off in the distance. Magical ruptures fizzled like an electric storm in the skyless Abyss.
They would agree. They would don Asmodian leathers and sweet talk their way to the turrets in familiar tones while wearing enemy armor. They would kneel down, and draw their bow back, and look down the long shaft of a sniper’s arrow. It would glint with green divinity in the ambient light. When the others noticed that the tip was pointed entirely the wrong direction, it would be far too late for them to stop it.
It would strike the general in the back. Just one would be enough.
The Asmodian forces would nearly escape. Vaizel would pick them off as they fled, green and silver arrows with gold-dipped fletching sticking from them like quills. First one, then the next, then the next, then the next. Panikon would thrum like a harp, singing notes of death from all angles.
Vaizel would lock eyes with Lumiel, their beloved Lumiel, and she would hate them, because for every ten soldiers that Vaizel killed, one would never come back. Vaizel would never meet with that archon again, because her son’s Vanishment would harden her heart in the war. One of their own informants would lose an arm to her blade in the years to come.
Vaizel would leave to go play darts in the Outer Port and listen to the fiddlers play bawdy folk tunes.
The silence must have reigned for too long, because Ariel shifted in a way that she had never done in their dreams. Her gown of light swayed with her as she moved, pouring from her hips like a waterfall.
“That is an order, Vaz.”
Euripedes would buy Vaizel drinks in the Outer Port, and the two transformation experts would swap faces and physiques at each other until they were both blue and half-dead from fruit cheese and booze. Together, they would find a spot behind the shipping crates where they would throw off their clothes and cast the war away. Nezekan would hear of it, and chide Vaizel about the dangers of indulgence as if they were a child.
Vaizel would volley back a retort about Nezekan’s own forbidden son, a dig that smelled like blackmail, and Nezekan would take over Vaizel’s scouting assignments and public appearances for the next year. Vaizel would indulge in sweet, musky odella highs and vespine honey cakes, lick snow from the needles of Asmodae’s pine trees, freefall from the skies of New Heiron Gate only to erupt into flight moments before they would have hit the ground.
Vaizel would ignore the next round of orders. They would hear of the other Lords--Ariel ever more pressed to lead and with nary a hair out of place. Kaisinel shutting himself away to marinate in fantasies of vengeance, Yustiel nearly losing her mind over Lumiel’s coldness. Nezekan and Triniel would hate each other publicly more and more until there was little left of either of them.
Vaizel would use summer tributes to buy a manor under a made-up name, and it would sit, glamorous and empty for decades while its owner careened around the wilds, on the arm of a decorated templar, a meek scholar, a flirty hunter, a humble potions-brewer who would never be the wiser.
“No.”
Ariel blinked. For a second, Vaizel could see the bags under her immortal, dewy eyes.
“I’m sorry?” she asked. The archer stood.
“Sorry, my Lady. I won’t fight. This war is wrong. It’s-- ,”
That archon’s face flashed through their mind. She was their sworn enemy. Vaizel was meant to ensure her demise, not feel her warm fingertips or listen to stories of her son.
“It’s wrong to me,” they repeated.
Ariel’s gaze softened, and she loosened her grip on her staff. She thought she smelled something in Vaizel that she could identify, found a thread that she could pull to unravel them. Too many Elyos saw Ariel as Lady Perfection, Lady Flawless, eternally kind and always benevolent. When it came to matters of politics, she was more intelligent and steel willed than any other Seraphim at the table.
“I know, Vaz. This-- this isn’t the time to talk about it, but I promise that we will. We have to make sacrifices for peace, and the good of everyone in Atreia. Surrendering the fortress will only cost lives.” She paused. Vaizel looked at her shoes. They were golden sandals, magically constructed so that they would never see so much as a scuff of blood.
“Please,” she said, in quiet tones. “I know you can run. But don’t abandon your people now. They need you.”
Vaizel was already shaking their head. “I’m not running away. I’m telling you that I won’t. That’s all. I won’t do it, and that’s my free choice.”
Her face pinched. It was in the widening of her nostrils and the creasing of a brow. Her radiant hair curled around her head like a tiny sun, and the intensity cast sharp lines across her face. The hand she placed on Vaizel’s shoulder smelled like jasmine and mint-- Yustiel’s perfumes. Vaizel held back a bitter smile. Yustiel wanted peace more than any of them, and the irony was not lost on them.
“Your daevas are going to suffer if you don’t act. It’s your duty as one of the pillars of Elysea.”
Vaizel pulled her hand off of their shoulder and stood, already glittering with a new form. Brown hair, they thought. They would like that. Claws for good measure. Not because they were running away to drown in indulgence, or shirking responsibilities, but because--because they wanted to. Vaizel had devoted themself to peace long ago, not to this war against their own siblings. There was a difference between ignoring orders, and refusing them.