The house was in as pristine shape just as she remembered it the day she last saw it. Considering how many years had passed since her death, she was surprised they’d kept it in this condition. Aria often wondered why the Aeon Terrans welcomed her with so much enthusiasm. Her face was the face of the war; from propaganda posters, from charging headfirst into battle, to commanding troops from afar. Even the slaaf-‘ne system should give them enough reason to demand she leave. They had no reason to trust her or even like her. They should hate her.
But they didn’t.
As they stepped up to her door, Babu Tito pulled out a large, rust covered ring filled with a variety of keys, some broken off, some worn down and useless. “Yours was one of the doors that was never converted to the passkey system. Gotta use the ancient way.” Aria frowned at the word “ancient”. He located the key, a cooper one with a long engraved slash in it, before he inserted it, turning until the lock slid back.
Aria stepped forward, her bottom lip between her teeth as she pressed the door open. She stepped into the blue-tinted foyer and released a breath she didn’t know she was holding.
Their house was simple, almost bare, Spartan compared to Mosi Neith’s at the center of the Aeon Terra. It wasn’t the house most thought a hero, the hero, should live in, but it had been all her family had needed.
It had three floors. The top floor was quiet and empty, used for meditation and reading. Sometimes, Yeong would catch her up there and they would dance to nothing but the sound of the beating of their hearts. The basement was Yeong’s. He had entire workstation down there and would spend hours, lost in a craft he’d picked up living as a human on earth. There were shelves filled with figurines and wood sculptures. If he wasn’t doing that, he was immersed in watching the news via their halotrons, but most times it was him, his knife, and a block of wood.
The middle floor was the heart of the house. It had two bedrooms, a small office with a library full of books and artifacts, a kitchen they rarely used, and a living room with a large fireplace and a fur rug Yeong had brought with him to Caeli that used to belong to his Gaian wife, Yoo, before she died of old age. She passed by the living room and remembered celebrating the Floweret Festival. Vegetation was sparse in Aeon Terra so the Floweret Festival celebrated the few flowers that bloomed. Here, giving someone a specific flower was a proposal. Sharing tea made from the petals was considered an integral part of the mating ceremony. The Ghost Flowers at her door were from the seeds of the flower Yeong had given her. She’d giggled and blushed that day. She felt wanted and loved, and not like a weapon of Caeli.
The group followed closely behind her as she approached the double doors of the office. She placed her hand up against the cool wood scratched from use, and pushed. The door didn’t budge as expected but an apparition appeared at her side, completely identical to her, except it wore the Terran clothes she was known to wear, the hair she loved.
“Password,” it said in a flat demanding voice.
Aria didn’t hesitate, the word flowing out of her mouth as if it were the easiest word in the world to say. “Azrael.”
The apparition shifted and the image morphed, matching her words. A young man, resembling a teenager who looked nothing like her, but still adopted her smirk, looked back at her. “Welcome home, mother. You look different.”
Reem came to her side as the doors began to push themselves open. “I almost forgot what he looked like,” he remarked, smiling fondly.
“I remember,” Babu Tito snarled, his lip curling as he stared down at the apparition.
Aria grabbed Babu Tito’s hand, linking their fingers, trying to soothe his anger by pressing as much love as she could create into his palm. “Here I was thinking his blood brother would be a little more forgiving. It’s been so long since anyone has seen him. They told me you looked for him, frantically, after he fled Caeli, all the way to Later Ụwa.”
“He killed you,” Babu Tito growled.
“Yet you looked for him anyway.”
“All the good it did. He’s either lost somewhere in that jungle or dead.” When Aria flinched, Babu Tito tightened his grip on her hand. “I know what I’m saying is harsh but…I can’t forgive him, Sek.”
Aria turned towards him, aware of the younger version of Azrael behind her, “looking” on. “I know,” she said softly. “Although I bare him no grudge, I don’t blame you for being angry.”
“I’m not angry, I’m resolved,” he huffed as he pulled his hand away. The look slid from his face as he looked away from both Aria and the apparition of Azrael and deeper into her library. “I’ve never been in here before.”
Aria walked in and her hands came to her arms to rub them, a chill seeping through her clothes and into her bones. “There is a lot of aggression in this room. I tried to keep people out.”
The office was the only room in the house that was not as simple as the rest of it. It was quite the opposite.
“This is your Causatum chamber, isn’t it,” Elle said, her eyes wide.
“Affirmative!” Azrael’s apparition followed them into the room. He ran up to the far wall and stood next to a small console. “I’ll need the command to activate it!” The apparition smiled, his image fading in and out for a moment.
“Having him as a permanent tour guide is just creepy,” Reem replied, shivering.
“He’d left to study at MATE,” she said sullenly, her lip poking out. “I missed him, so I had Ara modify the light field and interface pattern to make this. He works as the central computer processor in here. ”
Reem gave her a look that let her know he didn’t understand and wasn’t trying to. “Well, you wanted to come back here for a reason,” he said as he walked deeper in the room. He came across a shelf that held her FIRE OF ISIS statuette. It was awarded to her for valor and a long list of things she’d forgotten. She used it as a paperweight. “What’s the reason? We have to be back in Caeli by nightfall.”
Aria nodded wistfully. “Azrael,” she said. “Password, ‘Wooldachi’. Location, compartment fourteen.”
“Affirmative!” Azrael nodded and his eyes closed, his lashes fluttering as he processed the command. With a thunk, the top half of the bookcase next to him unlocked and began to descend, revealing a hidden compartment.
Elle gasped from her position at the door. “Your…your weapons,” she whispered, her trembling fingers coming to her mouth, it slack with awe. “I’ve…I’ve only seen your sword in a display case in the Amory. But…your spear, your aegis.”
Aria was unaware of a lot of things. Like the fact that they were keeping her sword locked up or that anyone would want to keep the damn thing to begin with. It was useless unless paired with her or her other weapons. Nostalgic fools. She approached the display. She eyed the spearhead, its pole and its red, gold and black tassel placed next to it like they were artifacts in a museum.
However, it was the aegis that she’d come looking for.
“I’m sorry, Jin,” she said under her breath as she reached for it.
Her true aegis, the one that had been commissioned for her by an Egyptian craftsman and blessed with power, looked as heavy as it was. She looked over the golden necklace, admiring the detailed handiwork in the carvings covering the broad necklace in a half circle. The top was embellished with the head of a lioness and on her head, a solar disk.
Sekhmet was a name that was bestowed onto her after showing fierceness in battle many had never seen before. “Before Whom Evil Trembles,” became a mantra after Seti, a Mutare war strategist, called out Sekhmet’s name at the end of a battle, his reverence directed at Aria. Later he told her, he told everyone, damn him, that his ancestors worshipped a royal goddess named Sekhmet and she gave them protection during war. Aria rolled her eyes and forbade anyone from calling her that.
That only made the name more popular to say.
The real awe, besides its connection to a goddess, was the power her aegis helped her control–Soul Step. Better than Ahn calling
me a puppet master.
Luckily, with the damn thing being so heavy, she’d been able to duplicate the power in a smaller golden amulet that glowed when activated. Aria placed the heavy collar down and fingered the necklace that the amulet was connected to before picking it up and placing it around her neck.
The amulet glowed then dimmed. It was done. Her soul was locked into this body.
Penume had spoken of astral projection, but Aria wouldn’t hear it. Her aegis would handle it. As if a hand was being waved, Jin’s hair morphed into Aria’s twisted locs. Her scarification itched at the base of her neck and she felt the familiarity of all of her scars. Her clothes changed too, resembling the wardrobe that she was most comfortable and confident in.
Azrael came up to her side, looking down at her weapons with a wash of childlike zeal. He’d never been permitted to touch them. “Never revere another’s sword. It is an extension of their body, so you are in turn wishing for something you should never want. Find your own way, your own weapon,” she would tell him.
“Mother…where is Father?”
Aria’s head snapped to where he stood. The apparition was modeled to recognize and monitor the both of them, their vitals, distress calls, and absences in the house. Again, Aria wanted to cave to her desire to leave Caeli and wash up on the shores of Antris. Her duty to this realm, to those who’d sacrificed so she could live again, to Jin, however, was stronger. Not by much, though. She composed herself quickly, felt the wall coming down, separating herself from those feelings. “He’s away, sweetheart. He misses you.” Before she could see the image’s disappointment, one she was sure would bring her to tears, she clenched her fist and gave the command. “Azrael, power down.”
He reacted to the command instantly. The light dimmed from his eyes and he vanished, just like a computer turning off. Not her son…a computer program. Aria stared at the space where he once was, her resolve, her composure, cracking.
She snatched the spear and the pole from its slot and pushed the compartment closed. “Let’s go,” she commanded, her voice rough with emotion.
She turned from her memories and never looked back.
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
Lucan’s office
Brooklyn, New York
Lucan had dreams. That was such a simple, diluted way of saying what he had because everyone had dreams. Lucan had one dream. Of the millions of dreams the vast and strangely autonomous brain could come up with, his plagued him with one dream. Sometimes he would go weeks, months without dreaming at all, just aimlessly wandering through a starless night sky, a black empty void where he floated until the next morning. Then, like a fist to the gut, he would be wracked with dreams every night, relentless, and dark. They were oppressively vivid, reeked of Wanderlust and always caused a curl of nausea to swirl around the bottom of his stomach.
They were never of him as he was, Lucan, a man with no past and no
family. They were of another person, a young boy lost to him, a boy with a family, with friends, with people he trusted with his life once upon a time.
When he was Hopti Azrael, blood brother of Babu Tito, son of Aria Jinni and Choe Yeong.
He sat at the border of Aeon Terra, the skyline of Elysian faint in the distance. Elysian was beautiful to him. Every time his mother took him there, he felt a pull to the place that smelled of metal and water.
“Metal hellhole full of metal breeding freaks” is what Babu Tito called it until the elders made him stop.
The place that intrigued him the most was Elysian Central, or more rather, The Grand Capitol Room, the chamber for The Fallen. Once, while he waited patiently for his mother to finish a hearing, he stared into the room. The place was grand, similar to Timnath-Heres in all of the gold, but more restrained, understated, like an old brooch that was rusted and worn. Her seat sat at the end of a long metal floating table. It–not the table, the table was amazing, but the seat–was plain, a study dark mahogany chair with no ornamentation or fancy carving; not the sort of furnishing you would think the seat of authority that governed the entire realm would take. His mother always told him not to covet someone else’s sword, but as simple and plain as it was, he coveted that seat. Not because he wanted it, but because he wanted to be like his mother.
He wanted to fight like her. He wanted to love like her. He wanted to rule like her.
Babu Tito said Hopti Azrael’s love for his mother was unnatural, that he loved her differently than most sons loved their mothers. Idolatry. But Babu Tito also said that Aria was too beautiful to be loved in a conventional way so he understood.
As with everything, Babu Tito was wrong. He didn’t care about her beauty. He cared about her power and wisdom.
“Do not covet someone else’s sword, Azrael.”
In an effort to be like his mother, to learn from her, he always, always tried to follow her teachings no matter how hard it was. So he tried hard not to desire the leadership of The Fallen, he tried to fight the temptation of wanting power altogether. He would go to MATE, he would be a Mutare soldier, and he would fight for the lives of humans. That’s where his destiny was. He would be happy.
Ose told him differently.
He could never remember where he met Ose. He knew of them, everyone did, but where and why they came to him, he never figured out. He just knew one day, the person with the weird burnt scent and weird voice wasn’t there and the next day they were everywhere. Every time Azrael was by himself, Ose was there. At first, their presence was frightening. They talked funny, Azrael never saw their face, and they offered no motive in seeking him out.
His introduction to Wanderlust changed everything. It mellowed him out, made Ose’s presence soothing, and made Azrael feel powerful. He felt as if he could run faster, climb higher, and soar further. Wanderlust made him feel like he could fly.
“You are powerful,” Ose would say every time, and every time Lucan would shake his head with a laugh and stumble home to sleep off the effects.
He never told anyone about Ose, not even Babu Tito and he told Babu Tito everything. Babu Tito was his best friend. Babu Tito would understand, right? He would understand how Ose empowered him, nurtured his simple desire for ambition, and recognized it was growing without turning it into something he should be ashamed of. Ose understood how it was becoming harder to listen to his mother’s warnings. That he realized he didn’t want to be like her…
He wanted to be her.
Azrael shook his head. Babu Tito wouldn’t understand. Babu Tito would be jealous, he was always jealous. He knew how Babu Tito wished that Aria was his mother, he knew he was jealous of how his father was a strong and righteous Nonpareil. He knew how Babu Tito wanted everything that Azrael had. But neither of them had power and he wouldn’t understand Azrael desire for more. No one would understand. No one would understand how he felt that something in his blood said power should be his. That it should be his and his alone.
Ose understood. Ose was sincere. Ose told him the truth.
“Do you know why you covet power so much? Why your mother’s seat calls to you so?” they said one night. He had snuck off from home in the middle of the night to meet Ose and now they were looking at the bridge that crossed the bay.
“No,” Azrael mumbled. “I just know that I do.”
“This Ose has the answer. And that answer is,” Ose hissed, “it belongs to you.”
Azrael turned to look at the masked figure. “No, it does not. The seat does not pass through lineal succession anymore. It stopped after the war.”
“Yes, you are correct. Do you remember much of the war from your studies?”
Azrael squinted. “You’re talkative today. I do not like when you talk this much.” He held his hand out. “Where is what you promised me?”
Ose chuckled, a disjointed, gravelly voice that was hard on the ears. “Your precious wanderlust? I did not bring you that today. This Ose brought you something much more powerful.”
Azrael perked up. “Really? Is ther
e such a thing?”
“Yes. Yes, there is.” Ose paused and Azrael could tell, even with the mask covering their face, they were staring at him. “This Ose has brought you something I should have given you a long time ago. Something that this entire realm has been keeping from. A secret that your mother and your father have been keeping from you.”
Azrael rolled his eyes. “What, that I’m adopted?” He laughed because he could tell that admission startled Ose. Of course, not by their face, but how their shoulders froze, or the little gasp of surprise so sharp it sounded like it hurt. “Yes, I know my parents are not my birth parents. My parents died when I was a child.”
Ose recoiled. It was almost comical, like a vampire shying away from the light. “You know who your parents are?” they said, their voice full of shock.
Azrael’s smile was sad but full of pride. “T’Chesu and Su’Yami of Later Ụwa. They died in the war fighting against the rebels.”
Ose was quiet for a long time. Crickets were out so he knew that the vernal equinox was approaching. The silence continued until their grating laughing filled the air.
“Why is that so funny?” Azrael growled, anger welling in his. “They were honorable people! They gave their lives for this realm and you disrespect them with your laughter?”
Ose held up a gloved hand. “This Ose is not laughing at their memories, boy. T’Chesu and Su’Yami were indeed Later Ụwaians and they did fight against the rebels as lieutenants but…you honestly believe they are your parents?”
Azrael pulled his chin in, affronted. “Of course they were my parents. Onyu showed me their pictures when we visited Discord. They were holding me.”
“That woman vexes me so damn much,” Ose hissed, “and this conniving realm never ceases to amaze me.”
A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck Page 28