How it really happened
Winter had come screaming down the mountain with fangs of ice and claws of snow.
Wiser beings had long since sought what cover there was to be found when the sky had darkened and the quickly chilling air sending an electric tingle of warning strumming along the nerves of anyone who still trusted the sanctity of instinct but Cressida strides out to meet the leading edge of storm with a smile, rising from the shadows of the city a silver ribbon of scales and horns and teeth - a dragon in every classical sense. Wingless, but not graceless, he streams like an eel through the turbulent winds that buffet him from first one direction and than the other as they make their way through the erratic landscape of narrow spaces and broad obstructions that Verona presents it, a silver lining to the gray bellies of the snow laden clouds. He makes for the northern edge of the city where the blizzard is gathering its strength, fire burning between the curling branches of his antlers, small at first, nothing more than a flicker but it grows, curling in on itself and gaining strength. The air stills suddenly and his ears ring, eyes a burning light reflected off the ice blue of his scaled face as he darts just past the city's limits and rising up, a slender wall before the hammer fall of the storm which breaks before the him with a tsunami wave of fury.
He calls up an inferno, throwing his meager talent for flames to the mastery of his air element and sending a matching wave of fire forward to meet the storm.
It is not enough to cancel out the blizzard - he was not foolish enough to fight the natural order of things - but it blunted the initial strike which would have howled down the streets of Verona and left her residents coping with a full blown gale. By no means would they escape entirely unscathed, but it would be a quieter affair than the one it had threatened to be.
Was it an unnecessary use of power? Most decidedly. If the cobblestones of the gray city were still standing after over a centuries worth of neglect than a single winter storm would not unmake it.
Would anyone thank him? Most probably not. It was not as if he were doing anyone any real favors.
He'd done it because he wanted to - and most importantly, for the simple reason that he could. What good is power unused? It was a question that best described the fundamental difference between the dappled king and his high consul, Cressida descending to earth slowly, like a ribbon caught up in the fickle winds of the quieter, but still blowing storm. Just before his clawed feet touch ground, he throws his antlered head back, stalling for a moment in mid-air and returning, in that instant, to himself. His booted feet crunch lightly on the thin layer of snow already accumulating on the brick and stone street. Steam rolls from his skin in billowing waves for the fire in him still burns at a fever pitch and would do so for the rest of the frozen season. He wonders, and not for the first time, if decades would cool his blood and he would find the temperance that Benedict so often chided him for.
The demon laughs aloud and starts down the empty street.
Not bloody likely.
~~~
The flagrant waste of power woke him. He had been dozing in his personal residence, content that the residents of Verona were nestled up in their various cubbyholes, prepared as possible for the oncoming storm. The demon leapt to his paws and moved to the roof between one blink and the next, curiosity burning like a candle on the sill. Cressida. What was the High Consul doing?
The Lord of Verona watched as a dragon rose up before the storm, as an all too familiar power blanketed the city with its backlash. The panther arched his back in the vague warmth, too quickly replaced by the howl of a winter wind which had been denied flesh. The storm bucked and bowed, seeking easier targets than the strange ruin beneath the stars. Verona became the eye of the storm. A gentle snow began to drift down upon the sleeping cobbles and slumbering domes.
He sent a trail of reprisal towards Cressida, heavily colored with a vague amusement. Then the Lord of Verona vanished from his rooftop and appeared some blocks over, his presence recognizable only to the High Consul. This was a meeting meant simply for the two of them, and one which Benedict had been avoiding for far too long already.
The panther stalked into underground parking garage. At some point he had intended to knock the eye-sore down. Benedict had never adapted well to the age of cars, and he had not been particularly surprised that the race of Man had fallen after the advent of the automobile. The humans gluttony had overrode whatever iota of common sense they had once possessed.
The Lord of Verona wasted no time. He called to his earth spheres, to the ancient bedrock which had allowed this city some element of immortality. First to arrive were the trees and berry bushes, the wild alfalfa and the grains. Where he walked fragrant grass rioted outward. Wildflowers were a riot of color and scent. Vines heavy with fruit laced across the concrete ceilings and dropped their burden low. A corner of the floor dropped out and filled with burning water, the air thickening as the hot spring perfumed the ruin with sulfur. He changed to a cat, lithe body brushing up against a tall sycamore which had crashed through this floor and spilled similar wealth onto the one above. The foliage here would last the residents well through the storm and winter beyond.
Eden would have weapt in jealousy.
The feline king leapt with casual effort to a wide stone ledge over the heated pool. It amused him to think of this place as a Garden, as a place so potent and ripe for betrayal. Had He known all His creations would betray Him? First the seraphim and then the mortal fools He loved so much. Benedict yawned more from boredom than from exertion. As a final concession to the underground nature of his garden, he revived the electric lights which remained. Cold unnatural illumination spilled across the utopia.
His eyes sought the bone-colored demon. Cressida was not the only one who possessed great power. Come brother, he purred, deep voice carrying despite the storm outside. Dine with me.
~~~
He had no sooner settled in his human bones than he feels Benedict's mental scolding, hand lifting to comb through raven dark hair in amusement and annoyance at the predictably sharp reprimand....and the warm under current of reluctantly entertained interest which accompanied it. For all his frowns and posturing, Cressida knew the demon king was pleased by him in some form or another; the friendship that had formed between them over this long year was sharply edged, multifaceted, and impossible to understand, yet so natural that he had simply stopped questioning it and took it for what it was. As always, he hesitates when his darker counter part calls to him - a single tug backed by an iron will - sighing softly into the thickly falling snow. Despite popular belief (and his own efforts to perpetuate the falsehood), he was not inexhaustible. His efforts at diverting the worst of the storm had left him with the dull, all over ache of a job well done and he was not sure he had the energy to weather what was certain to be a lengthy lecture with his usual good humor.
And, as always, he turns his reluctant toes and points them in Benedict's direction.
He hears the rumblings of unsettled earth - feels the tremble of Verona's quickening pulse as if it were his own as he draws nearer his destination and he is taken aback, golden eyes narrowing as he stops once more, head tilting warily.
What exactly was the demon king up to?
He receives his answer when tree limbs surge upwards, heavy with out of season growth, into the city skyline. With a single bark of laughter, he picks up his pace, strides a rolling gambol as the echo of them is muted first by snow and then grass as he entered the stone enclosed haven. He slows then to admire the man's handy work, for the clustered weaving of vines and swaying grasses were an artwork worthy of any canvas. Samael's secret oasis in the heart of Ferraden did not even come close to this. He wondered for a moment if Benedict knew of it - and if he would be pleased to know Cressida had counted his superior.
There is an uneasiness in him though, as he turns golden eyes to the lounging panther. What was the meaning of this display? A not so subtle reminder of his place in Verona? Had he grown jealous of the whispers that accompanied his high consul's name and wished to remind the world at large that there were two demons who called this city home? Or had he followed Cressida's example and done it simply because he could? The last was so outlandish a theory he dismisses it out of hand.
No, Benedict was up to something and for once Cressida was not sure he wanted to be part of his game.
"Dine you say - I would be glad to, only in that form it would seem I'm the one on the menu, no?" he inquires archly, moving to stand at the gently rippling edge of the steaming aquifer just opposite the demon king.
Whatever it was, he intended to meet it head on, as he did everything.
~~~
He that was a panther but not-a-panther gazed at the garden of his creation with a languorous approval. Perhaps Cressida did not understand the Lord of Verona as well as both of them assumed. Benedict was not immune to displays of power, though in truth he preferred to keep his hand closer than that. Here in the city of the dead, however, there were few enemies. Better for the citizens to know their Lord was powerful, to watch him with the same wary gaze which Cressida turned upon him now.
My taste for blood has waned, he remarked blandly, turning his gaze to some invisible point beyond the concrete walls. Once he had been as violent as the rest--his first century outside the sepulchre of hell had been soaked in a crimson haze. The following millenia had tempered him in a rare way for demons. Benedict retained little of what defined their breed.
His dark gaze flicked back to Cressida. There is something we must discuss. The words curled and sank between them like the smoke of an opiate, his rough baritone scarpign against feline vocal chords and emerging as a shadow amongst shadows. This conversation had waited entirely too long, but like a master of the game Benedict had waited until each pawn took its proper place. He had needed to be sure.
Some of the wariness was to be deserved. If it was not an outright lie, the Fallen King had certainly been omitting a few key facts from his High Consul. The situation would have to be remedied, and because Benedict knew Cressida more intimately than even the bone-demon knew, well....the panther only hoped there would be no major casualties as a result of this conversation.
The words were not those which he had prepared. Benedict had meant to ask what Cressida remembered of his time before Nocturne, before this time and this city of crumbling ruin, before Tamiel and Helah, before High Consulship and before their friendship. Instead a single black ear flicked in what may have been some sign of sorrow before he said: I knew a demon once. I considered him a friend. The word was as rare as Benedict's smile, and perhaps as fleeting. A brother in arms.
Words are such fickle things. They are strings of consonants and vowels slurred together and spat out through sharpened teeth. They are necessary and useless by the same token. The images were visceral in his memory, each line permanently imprinted. Benedict had never forgotten, not even for an instant. He had no words for what transpired so many years ago, yet he looked for them anyway.
Cowardice had not been in his nature, not even when he lived among the humans and took on so many of their habits. The Lord of Verona turned his gaze back to Cressida. You remind me of him.
The blood, the death, the carnage before God. If there was still a deity to believe in Benedict had lost his faith that day so very long ago, the day which now arose from the ruins of the past to haunt him. To make him remember just how far a damned soul could fall.
~~~
His skin was crawling - and not metaphorically speaking either. Great swaths of it rippled and shuddered and fell away from his frame like the paper covering off a mechanical doll, the skin turned to ash and char before it ever reached the ground. Rather than a skeleton of steel however, what was revealed were scales, iridescent and glittering armor as his already lanky frame elongated even more. He is expressionless for all of that, as still in his stance as the air is suddenly alive, invisible hands to worry at leaves and vines and fruit alike as the silken ends of his dark hair stir in his anxiety but he takes no notice of any of this.
He has eyes only for Benedict, his awareness narrowed down to every syllable of the demon king's carefully worded confession.
For that is what this was - a confession of a secret so long held that Cressida had almost convinced himself it didn't matter; that he didn't care. But he did, he always had, and the words he'd spoken to Ophilia ring with crystal clarity in his mind as he meets Benedict's gaze and reads there everything he does not say.
He was terrified.
He was infuriated.
Benedict knew. HE. KNEW.
He does then what he had never once considered and never would again, reaching with mental claws to rend every barrier between their minds asunder with a single minded furry, prying his way into the other demon's mind with a force that would not be denied. There, just beyond the final crumbling gap he sees it - amid the murky shadows of Benedict's thoughts (they were dark, watchful, cruel things, the thoughts which lay quiet beneath his assault) is something light, something alien, something that does not belong there and he reaches for it, crushes it into the palm of his figurative hand and then, quite suddenly, Cressida knows. The man gasps, shudders, and sways as the weight of nearly eight hundred years of memories deals him a deafening blow. His ears are ringing, his skin was on fire, and some part of him realized half of the tumult was outside of him, his own powers raging as out of control as his emotions but he didn't care.
There was so much and it all hurt but it was his again.
His true name - Ambrose.
He remembered everything, every conquest, every smile, every argument, every moment he had ever spent at Benedict's side, eyes molten and burning and bright as the core of the sun as he, for a second time, shed what was left of his human form and rose all talons and scales and passion, the fires which had started only gaining strength, fed by both anger and air and turning what had been eden into hell. Foundations shook, buckled, and fell, the air dry and choked with the ash and smoke of burning vegetation but the dragon payed them no heed as it surged forward, trapping the panther in a cadge of ivory claws even as the world came crashing down around them.
"WHERE WERE YOU!? I WAS ALONE WHEN I FACED URIEL AND HE THREW ME DOWN. HE THREW ME DOWN SO FAR I FORGOT MYSELF. WHERE WERE YOU BENEDICT, WHERE WERE YOU !?"
His voice is the roar at the heart of the inferno - and the hollow, aching echo of a soul betrayed.
~~~
There was pain, a great blistering burn which settled at the back of his throat and crawled down into the great echoing cavern of his chest. He watched with glass eyes as Cressida became something altogether different, a writhing mass of scales set aflame by cold white fire.
And I saw an angel come down from heaven...
These are the words which have gone so long unspoken, and when the white beast rips into him with claws and teeth unsheathed there remained physical distance between them. Benedict held himself motionless, his brother standing wroth before him, a glory of righteous fury. The Lord of Verona is no longer a king, no longer a Fallen, no longer a creature throned by might. Under this mental assault he is simply a hare before the hounds, and he gazed down past the fangs and into the throat of his past, into the very crux of the matter, into the cross he had crafted a thousand years prior and never born to the hills of Calvary.
...having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand
His mind was a tombstone, a stone epitaph prepared for the reading. Yet the pain of another presence in what had so long been a solitary place was horrendous. His black pelt contracted around the shoulders. His talons bit into stone. This debt would be paid, and the bloodprice was to be paid in the bitterest memories he had ever collected. Whatever needed to be reaped was there for the taking, not a secret stone left to be unturned in the ancient sepulhre that was Benedict, that was three thousand years of pain and suffer, three thousand years of guilt and betrayal. Always, always a betrayal.
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan...
Ambrose. The name drifts between them as the world descended into hell. The panther did not raise a single defense as the dragon surged forward, his ivory claws caging a feline which seemed very small in comparison. Benedict allowed himself one small motion only; around his garden--around this place so newly created and destined to burn-there rose a shield so powerful that the stones of Verona moaned. Fire, yes, but earth that would not burn and wind to feed the conflagration. Water to soak the ground, electricity to purge the water, and over all of it the deep and penetrating reek of shadows, of death and the demons who rode out before the pale horse in order to prepare the living for damnation.
…and bound him a thousand years…
Tonight they would quake in fear, wake soaked to the skin with terror, but the citizens of Verona would not suffer the wrath meant for one soul. Their suffering would come. The protection of two demons would never save them from the end, from the fate of all mortals. This midnight was not for them, this pain and this unholy yet justified fate. He could save them as he had not saved Ambrose. There was power enough for that-all but two of the elements could be bent entirely to his will. This burning crypt of concrete, this howling inferno, this is for Benedict.
nd cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him,
This is for the demon who could not save his brother, for the poor human who woke up one morning unaware that the next eight hundred years would be spent alone. The summer wheat was blistering in the field, but Benedict did not know something was amiss until the wheel had turned against him. Perhaps he was not meant to save Ambrose. Perhaps the angel Uriel had planned suffering for the both of them. Benedict had raced to save the only creature who had stayed the course, who had kept marvelous company between them while the mortals died all around. He had run until the earth crumbled beneath his bloody feet, but the way was barred by fiery steel. Too late, the angels had whispered. You’re already too late.
that he should deceive the nations no more,
I failed you, he said at length, his grave-cold flesh almost warm compared to the frozen syllables which scraped from his throat. He did not apologize, did not think to try. Benedict was a creature who took great pain to acknowledge reality, to sculpt it when necessary and face it calmly at all moments. There had been no reality in the deepest regions of hell, in the place without names and without familiar graces, in the place where he had condemned his brother. To each a thousand years. To each a hundred thousand lifetimes of agony both living and dead.
till the thousand years should be fulfilled:
So his tongue did not give service to lies, to the words which might have redeemed or condemned him. The panther simply stood in the claws of the dragon. His dark eyes bore steadfastly down on the kingdom which he had created, and on the demon he had entrusted it to. If the penance for his crime was to be paid in full Benedict would be the one betrayed tonight.
and after that he must be loosed …
~~~
I failed you
He says it so softly the words are almost lost amidst the conflagration that surrounds them but he heard them, those three simple words cutting through the tumult like a blade through cotton sheets to rescue his drowning consciousness, separating him from the hurt and the memories and the beast that screamed for his blood, for revenge, for the satisfaction of seeing those steel eyes grow still and his body turned to ash, for Benedict to suffer as he had, for the antlered, ancient king to know the horror of having skin flayed from muscle and then muscle from bone, of having your own heart held, still beating in another's hands.
To know what it was to fall into darkness and be forgotten, to forget, to lose.
I failed you
He did not want to hear them.
He did not want to forgive him.
The words echo in his mind and his claws carve grooves into the stone to which the panther remained pinned as they close, threatening to disembowel the dark cat then and there, scaled lips curled in a feral snarl - and then Cressida is lifting him, the talons which had only seconds before threatened to end him curling carefully around the silent demon and cradling him to the hard scales of his chest as he leaps upwards, shattering through stone and shadow and fire alike to burst, silver and howling into the gray sky.
Howling because he doesn't remember what it is to cry.
The garage that had so newly been re-made into paradise was returned back to ruin, what walls that had withstood the initial explosion shuddering and finally collapsing under the weight of their combined energies - under the weight of eight hundred years of guilt and sorrow and pain and rage. The dragon circles once, passenger still held precariously in its claws, before it drifts south, away from the still burning wreckage of the past. In the days and decades that would follow, Cressida would only ever view this plot of land in passing and always from high, high above.
Never again would he venture into this part of Verona.
He lands in a nondescript plaza and he sets Benedict, still whole, on the cobbles, serpent eyes still slitted, still aglow with smoldering emotions. He can think of nothing to say - does not trust himself to speak even if he could. There were no apologies to be made, no forgiveness to be given, no reassurances or displays of kindness - their relationship had never been of that sort. The dragon shifts, circling itself like an over sized dog around the panther before sinking heavily - wearily - to the earth, tired beyond reason. Just as Benedict had converted the ruined garage into paradise, so to had he remade Cressida; he is no longer just the silver tongued demon without a past. He is Ambrose and he is spent, and battered, and exhausted unto his very bones with the efforts of his "rebirth". He sighs, rests his scaled face beside a dark paw, and closes his eyes.
And sleeps.
Wiser beings had long since sought what cover there was to be found when the sky had darkened and the quickly chilling air sending an electric tingle of warning strumming along the nerves of anyone who still trusted the sanctity of instinct but Cressida strides out to meet the leading edge of storm with a smile, rising from the shadows of the city a silver ribbon of scales and horns and teeth - a dragon in every classical sense. Wingless, but not graceless, he streams like an eel through the turbulent winds that buffet him from first one direction and than the other as they make their way through the erratic landscape of narrow spaces and broad obstructions that Verona presents it, a silver lining to the gray bellies of the snow laden clouds. He makes for the northern edge of the city where the blizzard is gathering its strength, fire burning between the curling branches of his antlers, small at first, nothing more than a flicker but it grows, curling in on itself and gaining strength. The air stills suddenly and his ears ring, eyes a burning light reflected off the ice blue of his scaled face as he darts just past the city's limits and rising up, a slender wall before the hammer fall of the storm which breaks before the him with a tsunami wave of fury.
He calls up an inferno, throwing his meager talent for flames to the mastery of his air element and sending a matching wave of fire forward to meet the storm.
It is not enough to cancel out the blizzard - he was not foolish enough to fight the natural order of things - but it blunted the initial strike which would have howled down the streets of Verona and left her residents coping with a full blown gale. By no means would they escape entirely unscathed, but it would be a quieter affair than the one it had threatened to be.
Was it an unnecessary use of power? Most decidedly. If the cobblestones of the gray city were still standing after over a centuries worth of neglect than a single winter storm would not unmake it.
Would anyone thank him? Most probably not. It was not as if he were doing anyone any real favors.
He'd done it because he wanted to - and most importantly, for the simple reason that he could. What good is power unused? It was a question that best described the fundamental difference between the dappled king and his high consul, Cressida descending to earth slowly, like a ribbon caught up in the fickle winds of the quieter, but still blowing storm. Just before his clawed feet touch ground, he throws his antlered head back, stalling for a moment in mid-air and returning, in that instant, to himself. His booted feet crunch lightly on the thin layer of snow already accumulating on the brick and stone street. Steam rolls from his skin in billowing waves for the fire in him still burns at a fever pitch and would do so for the rest of the frozen season. He wonders, and not for the first time, if decades would cool his blood and he would find the temperance that Benedict so often chided him for.
The demon laughs aloud and starts down the empty street.
Not bloody likely.
~~~
The flagrant waste of power woke him. He had been dozing in his personal residence, content that the residents of Verona were nestled up in their various cubbyholes, prepared as possible for the oncoming storm. The demon leapt to his paws and moved to the roof between one blink and the next, curiosity burning like a candle on the sill. Cressida. What was the High Consul doing?
The Lord of Verona watched as a dragon rose up before the storm, as an all too familiar power blanketed the city with its backlash. The panther arched his back in the vague warmth, too quickly replaced by the howl of a winter wind which had been denied flesh. The storm bucked and bowed, seeking easier targets than the strange ruin beneath the stars. Verona became the eye of the storm. A gentle snow began to drift down upon the sleeping cobbles and slumbering domes.
He sent a trail of reprisal towards Cressida, heavily colored with a vague amusement. Then the Lord of Verona vanished from his rooftop and appeared some blocks over, his presence recognizable only to the High Consul. This was a meeting meant simply for the two of them, and one which Benedict had been avoiding for far too long already.
The panther stalked into underground parking garage. At some point he had intended to knock the eye-sore down. Benedict had never adapted well to the age of cars, and he had not been particularly surprised that the race of Man had fallen after the advent of the automobile. The humans gluttony had overrode whatever iota of common sense they had once possessed.
The Lord of Verona wasted no time. He called to his earth spheres, to the ancient bedrock which had allowed this city some element of immortality. First to arrive were the trees and berry bushes, the wild alfalfa and the grains. Where he walked fragrant grass rioted outward. Wildflowers were a riot of color and scent. Vines heavy with fruit laced across the concrete ceilings and dropped their burden low. A corner of the floor dropped out and filled with burning water, the air thickening as the hot spring perfumed the ruin with sulfur. He changed to a cat, lithe body brushing up against a tall sycamore which had crashed through this floor and spilled similar wealth onto the one above. The foliage here would last the residents well through the storm and winter beyond.
Eden would have weapt in jealousy.
The feline king leapt with casual effort to a wide stone ledge over the heated pool. It amused him to think of this place as a Garden, as a place so potent and ripe for betrayal. Had He known all His creations would betray Him? First the seraphim and then the mortal fools He loved so much. Benedict yawned more from boredom than from exertion. As a final concession to the underground nature of his garden, he revived the electric lights which remained. Cold unnatural illumination spilled across the utopia.
His eyes sought the bone-colored demon. Cressida was not the only one who possessed great power. Come brother, he purred, deep voice carrying despite the storm outside. Dine with me.
~~~
He had no sooner settled in his human bones than he feels Benedict's mental scolding, hand lifting to comb through raven dark hair in amusement and annoyance at the predictably sharp reprimand....and the warm under current of reluctantly entertained interest which accompanied it. For all his frowns and posturing, Cressida knew the demon king was pleased by him in some form or another; the friendship that had formed between them over this long year was sharply edged, multifaceted, and impossible to understand, yet so natural that he had simply stopped questioning it and took it for what it was. As always, he hesitates when his darker counter part calls to him - a single tug backed by an iron will - sighing softly into the thickly falling snow. Despite popular belief (and his own efforts to perpetuate the falsehood), he was not inexhaustible. His efforts at diverting the worst of the storm had left him with the dull, all over ache of a job well done and he was not sure he had the energy to weather what was certain to be a lengthy lecture with his usual good humor.
And, as always, he turns his reluctant toes and points them in Benedict's direction.
He hears the rumblings of unsettled earth - feels the tremble of Verona's quickening pulse as if it were his own as he draws nearer his destination and he is taken aback, golden eyes narrowing as he stops once more, head tilting warily.
What exactly was the demon king up to?
He receives his answer when tree limbs surge upwards, heavy with out of season growth, into the city skyline. With a single bark of laughter, he picks up his pace, strides a rolling gambol as the echo of them is muted first by snow and then grass as he entered the stone enclosed haven. He slows then to admire the man's handy work, for the clustered weaving of vines and swaying grasses were an artwork worthy of any canvas. Samael's secret oasis in the heart of Ferraden did not even come close to this. He wondered for a moment if Benedict knew of it - and if he would be pleased to know Cressida had counted his superior.
There is an uneasiness in him though, as he turns golden eyes to the lounging panther. What was the meaning of this display? A not so subtle reminder of his place in Verona? Had he grown jealous of the whispers that accompanied his high consul's name and wished to remind the world at large that there were two demons who called this city home? Or had he followed Cressida's example and done it simply because he could? The last was so outlandish a theory he dismisses it out of hand.
No, Benedict was up to something and for once Cressida was not sure he wanted to be part of his game.
"Dine you say - I would be glad to, only in that form it would seem I'm the one on the menu, no?" he inquires archly, moving to stand at the gently rippling edge of the steaming aquifer just opposite the demon king.
Whatever it was, he intended to meet it head on, as he did everything.
~~~
He that was a panther but not-a-panther gazed at the garden of his creation with a languorous approval. Perhaps Cressida did not understand the Lord of Verona as well as both of them assumed. Benedict was not immune to displays of power, though in truth he preferred to keep his hand closer than that. Here in the city of the dead, however, there were few enemies. Better for the citizens to know their Lord was powerful, to watch him with the same wary gaze which Cressida turned upon him now.
My taste for blood has waned, he remarked blandly, turning his gaze to some invisible point beyond the concrete walls. Once he had been as violent as the rest--his first century outside the sepulchre of hell had been soaked in a crimson haze. The following millenia had tempered him in a rare way for demons. Benedict retained little of what defined their breed.
His dark gaze flicked back to Cressida. There is something we must discuss. The words curled and sank between them like the smoke of an opiate, his rough baritone scarpign against feline vocal chords and emerging as a shadow amongst shadows. This conversation had waited entirely too long, but like a master of the game Benedict had waited until each pawn took its proper place. He had needed to be sure.
Some of the wariness was to be deserved. If it was not an outright lie, the Fallen King had certainly been omitting a few key facts from his High Consul. The situation would have to be remedied, and because Benedict knew Cressida more intimately than even the bone-demon knew, well....the panther only hoped there would be no major casualties as a result of this conversation.
The words were not those which he had prepared. Benedict had meant to ask what Cressida remembered of his time before Nocturne, before this time and this city of crumbling ruin, before Tamiel and Helah, before High Consulship and before their friendship. Instead a single black ear flicked in what may have been some sign of sorrow before he said: I knew a demon once. I considered him a friend. The word was as rare as Benedict's smile, and perhaps as fleeting. A brother in arms.
Words are such fickle things. They are strings of consonants and vowels slurred together and spat out through sharpened teeth. They are necessary and useless by the same token. The images were visceral in his memory, each line permanently imprinted. Benedict had never forgotten, not even for an instant. He had no words for what transpired so many years ago, yet he looked for them anyway.
Cowardice had not been in his nature, not even when he lived among the humans and took on so many of their habits. The Lord of Verona turned his gaze back to Cressida. You remind me of him.
The blood, the death, the carnage before God. If there was still a deity to believe in Benedict had lost his faith that day so very long ago, the day which now arose from the ruins of the past to haunt him. To make him remember just how far a damned soul could fall.
~~~
His skin was crawling - and not metaphorically speaking either. Great swaths of it rippled and shuddered and fell away from his frame like the paper covering off a mechanical doll, the skin turned to ash and char before it ever reached the ground. Rather than a skeleton of steel however, what was revealed were scales, iridescent and glittering armor as his already lanky frame elongated even more. He is expressionless for all of that, as still in his stance as the air is suddenly alive, invisible hands to worry at leaves and vines and fruit alike as the silken ends of his dark hair stir in his anxiety but he takes no notice of any of this.
He has eyes only for Benedict, his awareness narrowed down to every syllable of the demon king's carefully worded confession.
For that is what this was - a confession of a secret so long held that Cressida had almost convinced himself it didn't matter; that he didn't care. But he did, he always had, and the words he'd spoken to Ophilia ring with crystal clarity in his mind as he meets Benedict's gaze and reads there everything he does not say.
He was terrified.
He was infuriated.
Benedict knew. HE. KNEW.
He does then what he had never once considered and never would again, reaching with mental claws to rend every barrier between their minds asunder with a single minded furry, prying his way into the other demon's mind with a force that would not be denied. There, just beyond the final crumbling gap he sees it - amid the murky shadows of Benedict's thoughts (they were dark, watchful, cruel things, the thoughts which lay quiet beneath his assault) is something light, something alien, something that does not belong there and he reaches for it, crushes it into the palm of his figurative hand and then, quite suddenly, Cressida knows. The man gasps, shudders, and sways as the weight of nearly eight hundred years of memories deals him a deafening blow. His ears are ringing, his skin was on fire, and some part of him realized half of the tumult was outside of him, his own powers raging as out of control as his emotions but he didn't care.
There was so much and it all hurt but it was his again.
His true name - Ambrose.
He remembered everything, every conquest, every smile, every argument, every moment he had ever spent at Benedict's side, eyes molten and burning and bright as the core of the sun as he, for a second time, shed what was left of his human form and rose all talons and scales and passion, the fires which had started only gaining strength, fed by both anger and air and turning what had been eden into hell. Foundations shook, buckled, and fell, the air dry and choked with the ash and smoke of burning vegetation but the dragon payed them no heed as it surged forward, trapping the panther in a cadge of ivory claws even as the world came crashing down around them.
"WHERE WERE YOU!? I WAS ALONE WHEN I FACED URIEL AND HE THREW ME DOWN. HE THREW ME DOWN SO FAR I FORGOT MYSELF. WHERE WERE YOU BENEDICT, WHERE WERE YOU !?"
His voice is the roar at the heart of the inferno - and the hollow, aching echo of a soul betrayed.
~~~
There was pain, a great blistering burn which settled at the back of his throat and crawled down into the great echoing cavern of his chest. He watched with glass eyes as Cressida became something altogether different, a writhing mass of scales set aflame by cold white fire.
And I saw an angel come down from heaven...
These are the words which have gone so long unspoken, and when the white beast rips into him with claws and teeth unsheathed there remained physical distance between them. Benedict held himself motionless, his brother standing wroth before him, a glory of righteous fury. The Lord of Verona is no longer a king, no longer a Fallen, no longer a creature throned by might. Under this mental assault he is simply a hare before the hounds, and he gazed down past the fangs and into the throat of his past, into the very crux of the matter, into the cross he had crafted a thousand years prior and never born to the hills of Calvary.
...having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand
His mind was a tombstone, a stone epitaph prepared for the reading. Yet the pain of another presence in what had so long been a solitary place was horrendous. His black pelt contracted around the shoulders. His talons bit into stone. This debt would be paid, and the bloodprice was to be paid in the bitterest memories he had ever collected. Whatever needed to be reaped was there for the taking, not a secret stone left to be unturned in the ancient sepulhre that was Benedict, that was three thousand years of pain and suffer, three thousand years of guilt and betrayal. Always, always a betrayal.
And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan...
Ambrose. The name drifts between them as the world descended into hell. The panther did not raise a single defense as the dragon surged forward, his ivory claws caging a feline which seemed very small in comparison. Benedict allowed himself one small motion only; around his garden--around this place so newly created and destined to burn-there rose a shield so powerful that the stones of Verona moaned. Fire, yes, but earth that would not burn and wind to feed the conflagration. Water to soak the ground, electricity to purge the water, and over all of it the deep and penetrating reek of shadows, of death and the demons who rode out before the pale horse in order to prepare the living for damnation.
…and bound him a thousand years…
Tonight they would quake in fear, wake soaked to the skin with terror, but the citizens of Verona would not suffer the wrath meant for one soul. Their suffering would come. The protection of two demons would never save them from the end, from the fate of all mortals. This midnight was not for them, this pain and this unholy yet justified fate. He could save them as he had not saved Ambrose. There was power enough for that-all but two of the elements could be bent entirely to his will. This burning crypt of concrete, this howling inferno, this is for Benedict.
nd cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him,
This is for the demon who could not save his brother, for the poor human who woke up one morning unaware that the next eight hundred years would be spent alone. The summer wheat was blistering in the field, but Benedict did not know something was amiss until the wheel had turned against him. Perhaps he was not meant to save Ambrose. Perhaps the angel Uriel had planned suffering for the both of them. Benedict had raced to save the only creature who had stayed the course, who had kept marvelous company between them while the mortals died all around. He had run until the earth crumbled beneath his bloody feet, but the way was barred by fiery steel. Too late, the angels had whispered. You’re already too late.
that he should deceive the nations no more,
I failed you, he said at length, his grave-cold flesh almost warm compared to the frozen syllables which scraped from his throat. He did not apologize, did not think to try. Benedict was a creature who took great pain to acknowledge reality, to sculpt it when necessary and face it calmly at all moments. There had been no reality in the deepest regions of hell, in the place without names and without familiar graces, in the place where he had condemned his brother. To each a thousand years. To each a hundred thousand lifetimes of agony both living and dead.
till the thousand years should be fulfilled:
So his tongue did not give service to lies, to the words which might have redeemed or condemned him. The panther simply stood in the claws of the dragon. His dark eyes bore steadfastly down on the kingdom which he had created, and on the demon he had entrusted it to. If the penance for his crime was to be paid in full Benedict would be the one betrayed tonight.
and after that he must be loosed …
~~~
I failed you
He says it so softly the words are almost lost amidst the conflagration that surrounds them but he heard them, those three simple words cutting through the tumult like a blade through cotton sheets to rescue his drowning consciousness, separating him from the hurt and the memories and the beast that screamed for his blood, for revenge, for the satisfaction of seeing those steel eyes grow still and his body turned to ash, for Benedict to suffer as he had, for the antlered, ancient king to know the horror of having skin flayed from muscle and then muscle from bone, of having your own heart held, still beating in another's hands.
To know what it was to fall into darkness and be forgotten, to forget, to lose.
I failed you
He did not want to hear them.
He did not want to forgive him.
The words echo in his mind and his claws carve grooves into the stone to which the panther remained pinned as they close, threatening to disembowel the dark cat then and there, scaled lips curled in a feral snarl - and then Cressida is lifting him, the talons which had only seconds before threatened to end him curling carefully around the silent demon and cradling him to the hard scales of his chest as he leaps upwards, shattering through stone and shadow and fire alike to burst, silver and howling into the gray sky.
Howling because he doesn't remember what it is to cry.
The garage that had so newly been re-made into paradise was returned back to ruin, what walls that had withstood the initial explosion shuddering and finally collapsing under the weight of their combined energies - under the weight of eight hundred years of guilt and sorrow and pain and rage. The dragon circles once, passenger still held precariously in its claws, before it drifts south, away from the still burning wreckage of the past. In the days and decades that would follow, Cressida would only ever view this plot of land in passing and always from high, high above.
Never again would he venture into this part of Verona.
He lands in a nondescript plaza and he sets Benedict, still whole, on the cobbles, serpent eyes still slitted, still aglow with smoldering emotions. He can think of nothing to say - does not trust himself to speak even if he could. There were no apologies to be made, no forgiveness to be given, no reassurances or displays of kindness - their relationship had never been of that sort. The dragon shifts, circling itself like an over sized dog around the panther before sinking heavily - wearily - to the earth, tired beyond reason. Just as Benedict had converted the ruined garage into paradise, so to had he remade Cressida; he is no longer just the silver tongued demon without a past. He is Ambrose and he is spent, and battered, and exhausted unto his very bones with the efforts of his "rebirth". He sighs, rests his scaled face beside a dark paw, and closes his eyes.
And sleeps.