[P] babylon burning

[Raziel]

R A Z I E L


—

S

weat penetrates the smell of generously applied perfume, making fools of those who care too much for appearances and too little for common sense. It is not a pleasant marriage, even less so when the blood-toll bowls between them like a whore down to her last dime. The odorous amalgamation stings Raziel's nose and he shoots Gahenna a scornful glance - did it always smell this fucking bad? She laughs in the way only a dog can. 

The pair snake their way through the bodies, angling toward a row that seems sparsely occupied. 

Raziel is hungry and not for food. There is something purgative here, in an amphitheatre that houses a slaughterous nation and he is not exempt. He never has been. To watch these men die is more than entertainment; (if it ever was) it is communion. It takes his pain like consecrated bread and breaks it in two. The blood, the bones, the brutality: it is sacrament and he is anointed by the sound of their screams. 

For there is history in his lungs and misery in his heart.  

The unicorn sinks into his seat with Gahenna spilling out like black booze at his feet. They wait silently, heads bowed as if in prayer. To who? Solis? The sun god has no hands left to hold. He is black, black and charred all the way through. 

"Nazaret?"

It shouldn't come as a surprise to be recognised; the Nazaret family were at one point wealthier than both the Azhade and Ieshan combined and were subsequently just as influential. But that had been decades ago; a time before Raziel's birth he had studied in historical tomes. Since the reign of Lady Marcissa Arisetta, and the declining health of Raziel's grandfather, the cartographers had withdrawn into themselves. Saudagar was an amaranthine sanctuary.  

But surprised he is, to turn and face a girl with manzanilla-olive eyes and long hair strung up tight by spines that reminded him of teeth. Her horn leans in and had she been an inch closer his own might have tapped against it as though they were porpoises hemmed into a net. Gahenna smiles to herself. She remembers this girl. Raziel, with a head full of violence, struggles. 

"Yes?"



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History has its eyes on you

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