Angel Tongue

trīgintā duo

By the time that they reached the final flight of stairs, Isaac had been slipping in and out of consciousness for some time. It was taking him all that he had to navigate the torchlit halls as Sierra, though rendered weak herself, practically had to drag him through the maze that was Zaquiel's fortress.

When they reached the narrow hallway that led to the cell, Isaac let out a sigh of relief, finally letting his body cave into the pressure and partially fall forward, stumbling through the rest of the dimly lit corridor as behind him, Sierra seemed to stop in her tracks, doing a double take upon seeing who was in the cell.

"Pax?" Isaac's ears seemed to hear her voice through a filter of milky confusion. "Is that you?" Even through his veneer, however, he could make out the blonde-haired boy sitting alone in the small box. He fished for the key in his pocket, wordlessly giving it to Sierra just before she sprinted toward Pax.

"Sierra!" Pax's voice rang out, somehow ringing clear and muffled at the same time, as Isaac teetered on the edge of consciousness at the same time that his body swayed, his mind waging a war to keep awake. "You're okay," when Pax said this, his voice was much softer, as though he was trying to reassure himself that what he was seeing, Sierra running towards him in the dungeons of a Prince of Helle, was real.

A soft click and a clang of metal followed, and the cell doors slammed open. Isaac watched with blurred vision as Sierra ran in and tackled the other boy in a ferocious hug, a small smile marking his features. With this however, traitorous thoughts began to swarm him once more. Will anyone ever be this happy to see him again, will anyone ever experience the consolation that now flooded his friends' features? Will anyone ever be any shade of happy to see him, especially if they knew about who he was, and what despicable roots he came from. These kept him at bay, maintaining a distance from the reunion, a great wall of restraint from emotion.

He watched Pax rummage through the contents of the bag they had hastily packed before producing a single black candle, that which Aesculus had given them prior to their departure for Zarion.

Then, Pax and Sierra ran out of the cell and into the corridor. For a moment, Pax thought it was so they could include him in the reunion, but halfway, they stopped, and it dawned on him that all they had set out to do was light the candle with the torch that was hung along the stone wall.

Unsure of himself, he took a few steps toward the two, at the same time that Sierra looked up at him, the lit candle in her hand. The smile on her face took him by surprise, lighting up the rest of her, which was so obviously marred by the consequences of being taken hostage by Zaquiel. Isaac found himself smiling back, and for a moment, he was transported back to that one moonlit night. A fire lit itself up inside of him, warmth flooding his chest in time with his breathing. His heart sped up, slamming into his ribcage.

But then, her features morphed.

Where the smile had been, a look of abject terror now took over. Her eyes widened, brows rising with fear as she gazed right through Isaac's soul.

This is it. She sees me now for what I truly am.

Beside her, Pax's face changed as well, fright making itself clear. What was he doing? What masquerade was he playing at, acting as the innocent friend who did not know a thing?

Isaac took an uneven step back, only for his shoulder to be met with a rough grip. It was cold, cold as the ice that his adoptive father always had brought down from the tops of the mountains to keep their drinks cool on blistering summer days, a cold that he remembered. For a moment, he imagined all the air in his lungs leaving him in forceful gales.

That was just in his head, however, for in truth he had frozen, his mouth gaping, his face a mirror of Pax and Sierra's. He was breathing alright, he thought in relief. The hand, however, stayed where it was, and that was enough to keep his blood cold. Slowly, he turned around to face his newest visitor.

The one in black let out a laugh as Isaac brought to face him. His cloak was as clean as ever, the billowing folds of the fabric pristine and the hood, for some reason, not even betraying a glimpse into its owner's features. In front of him, Isaac seemed almost a piece of dirt, with his patchwork of bruises and cuts and sweat-stained brows. He felt that way too, knowing that at any moment now, the cloaked man would be able to touch him and send him to his death if he wanted to. He would have shuddered at the thought, if he could find it in himself to move at all.

The hand on his shoulder tightened, just as Ishmael raised his other hand, bearing a crossbow, and aimed it, not at Isaac, but at the two who stood behind him, shocked as well into inaction.

Isaac felt his chest thumping, thumping so loud that he was reminded of that time that when Behemoth first came looking for him. "What do you want?" he asked, his voice barely even a whisper.

Ishmael kept his hand on the crossbow, somehow handling it perfectly with just one, and causing Isaac to fear that he would follow through on his threat. When he spoke, though, it was not anything that he had expected.

"Take me with you." The voice rang through the hallway, confident.

"What?" If Isaac had been in any other situation, he would have taken a few steps back to guffaw at the intruder's demand. He could not move though, for he feared that even just a twitch of a muscle would be a death sentence to Sierra and Pax. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean," Ishmael replied, but this time, Isaac sensed the undertone of something, an emotion that he could not point a finger on but which resonated in him all the same. "Take me with you," he repeated, a telltale sense of desperation breaking through the icy mask of his words.

And with the speed of a trained assassin, Ishmael pulled his hand off of Isaac's shoulder, only to bring it back down around his neck, albeit with surprising gentleness.

Immediately, as if a switch had been flipped inside of him, Isaac closed his eyes. Nothing could stop, however, the overload of senses that had suddenly assaulted him. The sights, the sounds, the smells, and the pain, so much pain attacked him, swarming him and stabbing at his skin as everything around him and Ishmael melted away into an inky black cesspool. His knees wobbled, and for a moment, in that alternate reality, Isaac wondered if this was Ishmael's way of ending him: letting Isaac feel the pain that he himself had been dealt.

As quickly as it had started, however, the torture dissipated, with Ishmael pulling his hand off of Isaac, for real this time, and letting it fall to his side. Isaac could have made his move then, maybe intercepted the crossbow to give his friends a chance to make their escape, but he stayed firmly rooted to his spot, gazing into the dark depths of Ishmael's hood. The last thing he would have expected, coming into this, was to have pity on a trained killer, but as he gazed at Ishmael's cloaked figure, that was exactly what he felt.

"You," Isaac began, the gears in his mind moving as he processed what he just saw. Before he could continue, however, Ishmael already raised his right hand, the hand that just moments ago was around Isaac's neck, up to his hood, and pulled.

Isaac already had an inkling as to what he would see, but as the hood gracefully fell back, finally revealing Ishmael's true self, he still found himself gaping, disbelief tinting his eyesight.

Ishmael's hair was fair as sunlight in the morning, and his eyes were dark, dark as the shadows that threatened to engulf them and eat them up whole, but even that could not, would not distract from the fact that with the razored edge of his jaw, the delicate bones of his cheeks and the cupid's bow of his lips, this man-this boy-was the spitting image of Isaac.

"Hello, brother."

finis