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The midnight bell sang amongst the cries of the winter rain, the two sides merging together to form a chorus for those of the lone wind, those who did not care to listen having already turned to their beds. The sages of the high temple struck the great bell twenty eight times that night, each and every toll heard from even the far borders of the city. Twenty eight times; twenty eight years since the beginning of the war, twenty eight years since the birth of the Fire Lord Azulon. Celebrations are sure to begin at dawn, but for now, the capital rests.
The royal palace laid in the very core of the capital, standing proud above the cobblestone streets as a monument of omniscient power and will; the palace was the roots in which the country grew from.
At this hour, the walls of the fire lord’s keep are quiet and still, save for the hourly rotations of guards and the final labors of servants. Azulon preferred it this way, when it was so silent you could hear the flickering of a candle’s flame. He found that it was the perfect time to pray, to commit some words to the divine and holy, of whom he served with his life. He’s tainted himself with sin just to come closer to Agni’s light, he’s murdered, conquered, and butchered in the sacred name he coveted.
He kneeled in front of the candle-lit altar, hands shakily clasped together against his heart. It was uncommon for him to be short-winded in his prayers, yet for once in his life, he couldn’t think of anything to pray for. Kneeling with submission before the grand shrine, he felt dread, or maybe fear; something that bordered on guilt, yet far more violent. His jaws clamped onto the tender inside of his cheek, attempting to tear or choke some sort of confession out of himself as his nails dug into his knuckles.
The great temple bell quavered in the back of Azulon’s mind, its song loud and beautiful like a heart fueled by adrenaline with each toll a heartbeat. His eyes, cloudy and mortal, were slowly brought to the face of Agni’s murti, the volcanic gold the statue was sculpted from illuminated by the candlelight. And he continued to stare into the statue’s wrathful eyes, until the last strike of the bell sounded.
Without the bell, the presence of the rain became all the more apparent. The rain drummed against the palace rooves like the thundering hooves of a horse, sudden and loud, yet not unfamiliar. Azulon’s palms were warm and clammy when he unfolded them, and he never realized how much he had been sweating until then. He eyed the moisture-laden skin with a furrowed brow and curled lip, briskly flexing his fingers to get rid of the clamminess. He extinguished the candles as quickly as he had lit them and then fled the praying hall.
Oxygen came suddenly upon his lungs, his chest racked by choking gasps and heaves as he staggered out of the doorway. He reached and cradled his neck with a quivering hand, shaking fingers desperately searching for his pulse. It was quick against his touch, each beat tripping over the next; like the rain, like the hooves. Those wretched, wretched hooves.
Azulon soon swallowed his last gasp, releasing the tandem breath through clenched teeth, nails dragging against his throat as he slowly pulled his hand from his neck. There was something so sickening about feeling his own pulse, it reminded him of his own mortality, how weak he was truly designed.
His eyes, wide with shock, raised to the extravagant corridor before him, drenched in the national reds and blacks and adorned with the portraits of departed leaders and demised sovereigns. Each step pressed to the moonlit floor was heavy and uncoordinated, yet the closer he got towards the end of the corridor and the farther he got from the praying hall, the easier his legs were controlled. He cursed himself quietly, feeling akin to a newborn foal with his steps so flimsy.
Azulon’s hand reached and combed back threads of brunet hair that had fallen loose in front of his face, deft fingers lacing strands with strands at his nape and behind his ear. He figured there was some form of spiritual corruption festering within that hall, a form of corruption that could choke out his very soul and salvation. He would get the sages to deal with it tomorrow, after the celebrations, as his mind inevitably yearned for rest. And he knew that the bride he had abandoned for seven long months of war inevitably yearned for him as well.
The corridor was a short staircase away from Azulon and his wife’s chambers, the handrails, balusters, and steps carved from fine, dark cedar which were sheltered by crimson carpets weaved from pure, silken cotton. The fiery sconces displayed upon the high walls sent their luster onto each step as he walked, the light warping around his figure and creating a long, splaying shadow behind him.
Their private chambers were in a rather secluded wing of the palace, encased in tender ambiance and private decorum. It was a quality they both preferred; being able to slink away from the public eye and indulge in the luxuries of their royalty.
The crisp, evocative scent of jasmine and mitti attar slowly seeped into his nostrils as he guided the sliding doors of their personal rooms open, his head bowing towards the floor as he immersed himself in the aroma, savoring each breath with gratitude. It smelled of innocence, of tranquility, it was so far from the repulsive stenches of war, the stenches of smoldering meat and burning farmland and nauseating smoke.
Azulon stepped into the room with the doors quietly sliding shut behind him, passing through the adjacent room of his study before finally reaching their bedchamber. It was dark and ill-lit, the sole light source being the candles and lit incense scattered about, their amber flames and ivory smoke swaying and flickering like will-o'-wisps in the night. He approached their bed first, stepping up onto the platform it was placed on. His knuckles grazed against the silk draperies as he pushed them into their holdbacks, narrowed eyes searching the covers for the winding curls of his wife’s onyx hair, the swarthy richness of his wife’s skin, or the scrunched posture of his wife’s figure. Finding nothing but a few stray pillows, he pulled back.
“You’re not as soundless as you like to believe you are.” A woman remarked, her voice piercing the silence Azulon had constructed around himself. And when he turned, he found his wife, standing before him in her night robe. Her eyes, a delicate gold in color, held drowsiness in their depths, telling him the story of how she had dismissed sleep just to see him.
“Ilah, incense, at this ungodly hour?” Azulon responded, lip curling in a narrow smirk. His arms reached and pulled her against his frame, fingers splaying over the small of her back as he pressed his cheek to her skull.
Ilah shrugged in his embrace. “I couldn’t claim sleep, I’m afraid.”
She was telling the truth, in fact. Ever since her husband had left seven months ago, she had fought with her sleep like two belligerent states; tossing and turning into the odd hours of the night.
Azulon laughed faintly, pulling away as his hand drifted to her face, tenderly cupping her cheek in his palm. “Very well, but I am here now.” He said, slowly guiding her to sit down on their bed and then settling down beside her. Ilah pushed herself back against the pillows, settling into her respective side of the bed. She expected that her husband would come and join her, yet he sat idle, elbows propped up on his knees with a head bowed to the floor. Her brows furrowed. Azulon has always had emotions that shifted like the tide, and she knew that, yet it always perplexed her to even the slightest bit.
“Azulo-”
“I have a confession to speak of, Ilah.”
His normally proud and steady voice was weak and quivery, each syllable being forced out from between his teeth like rain expelling from storm clouds. The room dipped into silence after that, Ilah staring at Azulon, and Azulon staring at his own feet.
“Then speak it.”
Azulon looked at her then, holding the same cryptic look in his eyes that she had. He sucked in a whistling breath, looking past her instead of at her as his mind lassoed each and every ravaging thought within his psyche. And then finally, the confession had found its way onto his tongue.
“…Overseas, the… the war, … in Garsai-” He paused suddenly, staring at the air once more. His mouth felt dry, overwhelmingly dry, like he just took in a mouthful of sand. The two sides of his mind warred within him, one denying and the other admitting, and both were fighting for dominion over what he would say next. And then he felt Ilah’s eyes on him.
“I’ve killed, my love.” Azulon said bluntly, like a child admitting to knocking a prized vase over. She looked at him, puzzled, her face scrunched in confusion. She knew of his crimes; the war wasn’t a secret that was kept from her.
“Is that not what happens in war?” Ilah asserted.
“No, you don't understand. I’ve … massacred, slaughtered.” He swallowed thickly. “I’ve done things that would make the very sun cast its light far from me. I’ve washed their blood from my hands thousands of times, but it stains. It stains and it sticks.”
The room fell silent once more, Azulon staring at Ilah, and Ilah staring at her own feet. Her delicate features were marred by a grimace, her lips pursing and scrunching as her brows knitted together. It wasn’t what he said that disturbed her, it was what he didn’t say; what he chose to leave out. He was always the ambiguous one, whether intentionally or not.
“...Children?” She asked, finally breaking the oppressive silence. Her voice was small, gentle, and almost inaudible within the cover of the downpour outside.
“Aye.” He confirmed. “As young as infants.” He looked away when he said that, either too ashamed to face her or simply feigning shame, yet he avoided her gaze nonetheless. He could feel the focus of her eyes upon his back, burning and searing like a branding iron, smoldering away at his flesh and down to the pure white bone beneath.
“Infants? What, were the wails for their mothers heathen?” Ilah’s voice seemed to break like a twig snapping underfoot, scaring off the docile doe Azulon coveted. He looked at her with disbelief; he was stunned by the question, believing that it accused the sanity of his code. She sat up as she scoured his face for anything other than confused contempt, looking for any sliver or remnant of true shame, despair, or repentance.
“They were of the enemy, Ilah. The impure, the sin-born!” Azulon hissed back, standing from the bed in a sudden shift. “You know of my purpose, of my ambitions and transgressions, so why does this affect you so?” He turned away from her as he paced, propping a knuckle against the bridge of his nose and letting the rain drown out the thoughts he refrained from speaking.
“I just want to know who will be the first I hand my newborn to.” Ilah countered sharply. She had perched herself on the edge of the bed, half-way in the motion of following after him. His pacing came to a halt then, his hand slowly peeling away from his brow and curling into a weak fist.
“You are with child?” Azulon asked, his voice entwining around the very last word. It was an awaiting, almost expectant tone, one that flowed like honey yet burned like ice. His head turned, looking at her from over his shoulder, eyes searching and wondering.
An heir was the most vital result Azulon had expected from his marriage; a perfect, promising son that would be able to take the torch from his father’s hands without getting burned. That was his initial desire, but throughout time his goals had deepened far past the shallow pool they once were. He appreciated his wife beyond the purpose of their union, yet he still couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit persuaded by the idea.
“... No.” Ilah muttered. “Not yet, but I know it will inevitably happen.” She rose to her feet and joined him on the floor, shying away from the hand that reached to hold her face. She didn’t catch the curl of her husband’s lip as she went by, far too engrossed in her own frustration to recognize his. Her point came slow to register in his head like a barge docking at port, slowly easing its way in at a snail’s pace before coming to a sudden halt.
“You think I would have the blackened heart to harm my own heir?” Azulon scorned, his voice rising above its usual baritone range. “You think I would have the constitution to commit such a crime against my own blood? You evoke me as a monster.” He approached her with heavy footfalls, his shoulders hunching as his head craned down to her level. It was an accusation infested with fleas of anger and disbelief. It nipped and bit at the flesh of the air, gnawing at his breath and leaving blotches of red upon his vision.
“You committed the crime against the heirs of others! Infant children, who have not yet known of the very concept of sin! You cannot persecute one so young for an evil they have no grasp on and then claim it morally just!” Ilah argued back, meeting his footfalls with a harsh hand to his sternum. “I am not naming you a monster; I am naming you an imposter, perhaps even a scourge. You carry the words of your god even as you slaughter and butcher mercilessly, do you think that the blood you spill shall become the river you cross to reach the afterlife?”
Azulon did not have a rebuttal. Instead, he laughed.
He laughed with such a strained voice. Each tonal spike strung together like the bowing of a tuneless violin, unnerving and penetrating. Ilah’s mind was clean and simple, he believed, she had not been confronted with the realities and truths of warfare and bloodshed; she would not know of the pressures and impositions of the flame and sword. He could not bring himself to be angry with her, because he could not blame her.
He spoke to her with a softer tone now, tattered hands reaching and cupping the sides of her skull. “I forget that your petals had not yet withered from your bloom, my flower. How could I have expected you to understand?” He asked himself, lips stretching into a narrow smile. “I shouldn’t have brought the horrible matter up in the first place.”
Ilah looked up at him with a doe’s eyes, wide and dazed, yet weary. The tide had shifted again and she was left grasping at the cold sand of the shoreline for purchase. His fingers curled around her head with serpentine precision, cold and firm and trapping in their grip, almost as if he meant to suffocate the memories she held of ten seconds before. Her voice stayed snagged within her throat as her mind ran about, trying to wrap itself around the sudden change of tone in the conversation. A part of herself questioned her own perception, wondering if she had simply imagined his previous belligerence.
“You look disconcerted, it seems sleep deprivation plagues you.” Azulon’s contact shifted to her shoulders, digits clutching soft, undefined biceps and guiding backwards. “Rest, won’t you?” He urged. “You’ll need it for tomorrow’s celebrations, it’s not exactly favorable for a woman to sleep upon her husband’s arm whilst amongst the common eye.”
Ilah was turned and led towards the bed, her feet seemingly acting upon her husband’s will and not her own. She had forgotten the commemorations planned for his twenty eighth name day; she had been too hellbent on worrying if he would actually reach it.
“You . . . will not join me?” She asked, fazed, her legs folding as she settled down on the edge of the bed. It would be even less favorable for the man to be the one sleeping upon his wife’s arm. It was puzzling, the way she still called for his presence even after such a macabre confession. Perhaps she was just a hypocrite, or perhaps she knew that she couldn’t ever part from him anyways. Irony was a humorous, yet sickening thing.
“I have to attend to a certain matter in the worship hall, I have realized something, something pertinent. When I return, you shall already be sleeping, and I will join you then.” Azulon clarified, his touch soon coming to part from her shoulders, leaving a smeared residue of warmth behind.
She did not stop him from walking from the bed, snuffing out the incense, and leaving. She could not stop him, for she could not stop the sea.