Finding Azrael

The world here, is empty. Or so people have said. I don\'t remember what it was like before what the elders call the Apocalypse. It couldn\'t have been the Apocalypse, though. We\'re still alive.

Anyway, there isn\'t much in this world. There\'s an endless desert filled with long-forgotten relics and ruins from a time I didn\'t know, a few scattered cities, brimming with hulking towers of metal. There\'s a few villages scattered throughout, though they\'re wasting away. The plague took care of most people who survived the war.

My mother told me about the war, once. She said that the world fought against itself and that God had decided that it was time for humanity to start over. We\'d grown too pretentious for our own good. So God had destroyed us. He sent a green fire hurtling through the land of the Humans and filled the world with death.

er ser said she was a little girl when God damned us. She\'d always say things like that; God damned us, Joseph, you have to live for yourself. God hates us, Joseph, so you\'ll have to take care of your sister. Father would always take her outside and tell us to keep away for awhile. I never understood why she\'d get so upset.

I have a sister. She\'s younger. She\'s a pain sometimes, but I love her anyway. She\'s all I have left, now. You see, the war left people sick and changed. Some people weren\'t affected, but there were a lot who didn\'t act human anymore. They killed people.

They killed my parents.

I remember it clearly. Mother and father had put Juli\' and myself to bed earlier than usual. Juli\' had just turned ten two days before. We were going to head into the village next to us to buy her a present and mother wanted us both rested for the journey. We lived a good three hours from the village and we had to travel on foot.

Mother and father were in the other room of the small house we\'d built, talking quietly, like they always did. Juliana fell asleep quickly, but I always had trouble sleeping.

Anyway, I heard the door open and there was a gunshot. Juliana bolted upright at that, breathing hard. My mother screamed. I told Juli\' to stay where she was when I slipped out of bed and headed to the door that led to the other room.

Through the crack between the door and the frame, I could see red. It was everywhere, splattered on the chair, the floor, the walls. Flecks of flesh and bone were scattered among the pools of crimson. Blood. My father\'s blood.

I panicked and my mother screamed again. She was thrown to the floor, falling into my line of vision. Her nightgown had been torn open and her shoulder was bleeding. She looked scared. I\'d never seen her so terrified, even when she talked about the war.

The man who had come in looked deformed, horrid. His skin was tanned, but rough, like dried, untreated leather. Sores grew on the skin and a few of them oozed blood and pus. It was disgusting. I could smell him. He smelled like death and acid and rancid meat. He raped my mother and then killed her, just like he had my father. When he was done with her, she didn\'t look likeher her anymore. Her skull was cracked, shattered in a thousand little pieces and he wrenched her innards from the ruined body and ate them.

Juli\' had snuck up beside me. She saw what happened to mother and she started to panic, too. But I remembered what mother always said. I had to take care of Juliana.

My sister and I hid in a closet until we heard him shuffle outside. Until we were sure he had left.

It wasn\'t until later that I realized just how much things would change.

We buried my parents the next day and left the house as it was. We couldn\'t live there, not with having seen our parents murdered. Juli\' didn\'t say anything, she hadn\'t since we got out of the closet. I didn\'t think much of it, really. Not then.

We journeyed the path we would have taken with our parents that morning silently, carrying what few belongings we saw fit to bring. I didn\'t know how to use it very well, but I brought my father\'s rifle, just in case.

The village was small, but about ten minutes away was a place that everyone knew about. It was the headquarters of the Azraelites. They were the sort of crusaders around there. The Azraelites were led by a man named Sian Elliot. He\'d fallen ill with the plague, apparently, back when it was really prevalent. He was the first man to survive it. He was dying and he had a dream, so he says, of a man with feathered wings who healed him in return for spreading the word of his teachings.

The man who healed Father Elliot was named Azrael.

Since then, Father Elliot wandered, healing people with the touch of his hands, with a little whisper. I didn\'t believe it at first. Neither did anyone in my family, but the Azraelites served as an emotional sanctity after losing our parents. Juli\' and I went there, to Father Elliot. Not for hopes of joining his ranks, but for hope of comfort.

The building looked like just about any other, besides the size of it. And outside the metal structure stood an inverted cross, the sign of the Azraelites.

We entered, Juliana and I, to find it a stark change from the nearly oppressive heat outside. My sister and I were parched and tired, aching from the journey and lack of sleep from the night before. A man greeted us, dressed in a white tabard with the symbol of the Azraelites emblazoned on the stark surface. The lines on his face were many, but his smile was warm and he led us to a room for food and water, which we meekly accepted.

After we had nourishment, he took us to see Father Elliot. I was faced with a legend.

Sian Elliot is a man that carries himself like a kind king. He is respected and many are in awe of him, but he is humble in his infamy. He is tall and broad-shouldered, thin, but graceful in his movements, much like a feline. His skin, like most now, is tanned from the domineering sunlight that beats down constantly upon us, his hair is worn to his shoulders in straight locks of a shocking red-orange. But his eyes are the feature that grabs you first. His stare is hard, but kind, critical. His eyes are as blue as any I could ever remember seeing, bright and intelligent behind bushy brows. Sian Elliot is a man that cannot be matched, cannot istaistaken. He is a magnificently gentle soul who takes sympathy with the suffering and eases their wounds like any cleric can.

He could not heal my sister\'s, but that is further on.

He welcomed us to the building and told us we could rest there. I, then, began to explain why it was that we were there. When I spoke of my mother and her death, Juliana began to laugh, almost hysterically. I was startled, frightened by her outburst. It was the first sound I?ve heard out of her for the entire day. My story-telling faltered and went silent as I stared at her in horror.

Father Elliot just smiled and motioned for one of the other Azraelites to lead her off. \"She must rest, young Joseph.\"

It didn\'t strike me as odd, necessarily that he knew my name. Not a man like this, not this man; it was only right that he would know all who came into his temple. I stared after Juliana, shocked, and Isuresure it showed.

And suddenly he was there before me, moving gracefully next to me and resting one of his strong hands on my shoulder. \"I saw this, Joseph. Continue with your story, your sister shall be fine with a bit of rest. This time has been stressful for the both of you, it is only expected that your behavior be slightly odd.\"

I stared at him. Up close, he was even more impressive. He stood perhaps half a head taller than myself, and his hair stood out like fire among the darkness that was creeping up now that the sun was setting. I hadn\'t noticed it until then.

I managed a bleak nod and swallowed several times before I was able to get my throat to work. When I was able to, I explained how we had buried my parents\' bodies and left, how we\'d come here.

\"Seeking comfort,\" he had said and he had been correct. He asked me a variety of questions then, all about myself and my sister. I was in my sixteenth year then and I told him so. He simply smiled. I had no family elsewhere, or none that I knew of, and no place to go. I had only my sister.

\"You have the strength of the Azraelites behind you, Joseph. Accept Azrael and he shall accept you. We will give you and your sister shelter here until you are able to find your own.\"

His words were kind and soft, comforting even in their simplicity. I gave a nod to him, I thanked him and then, I was at a loss.

This man, a man I never knew, showed me such immediate kindness. It was amazing. He shifted, resting one strong hand on my shoulder.

\"Joseph, my son, you don\'t always have to be strong. I understand this is a trying time for you and your sister both.\"

\"She needs me.\" My response was soft and I remember that I was more so trying to reassure myself than he. But his response shocked me, stayed any argument I would have had.

\"It is alright to cry, Joseph. People find more comfort in knowing their so-called protectors feel the same pain as they. That they have the strength to cry is a reassurance.\" He moved to rest his other hand upon my other shoulder, trying to still the quivering that started to slip through me like some kind of electric current. \"You can cry. Cry for your family, for your loss. Cry for the pains that have been done unto you and then, rest.\" Sian smiled gently at the tears that had risen, unwanted, in my eyes, and pulled me close.

It was something my father had done fe ane and this small move comforted me more than the things that had been said earlier. The pain that had welled up within me, that I had kept hidden from Juliana, rose and spilled forth in the forms of my tears. I grasped the starch white tabard Father Elliot wore and I cried, as he had said to do.

I do not know how long I sobbed against him, with nothing more and needing nothing more than his arms comforting around me. And when I had been calmed, he smiled and led me he she small room he was allowing my sister and I to stay in. She slept on the other side of the room, and was asleep when I entered, when I bid Father Elliot a hoarse, quiet good night.

My dreams that night were nothing short of unexpected.

Even now, the smatterings of images I had seen are faint and hardly remembered, but some of it was the scene of my parents\' murder. But a figure stood in the corner of the room, where there had been no one. He was tall, broad shouldered and silent, as if waiting. Hair of onyx fell to his knees between the parting spread of ebony feathered wings that stretched from his back. I could not see his face, even when he moved from the shadowed corner to the fallen body of my father and reached within his chest, his fingers passing through my father\'s flesh as if it wasn\'t even there.

In his hand as he withdrew it was held a small globe of pale, flickering light that died out as the figure lifted it to his lips. He repeated the gestures with my mother\'s carcass. When he stood from her body, he turned his head to look where I had been hiding.

He spoke to me, but I do not know what he had said, the words were garbled in some foreign language I do not know.

When the morning came, I was confused by the dream. But what confused me more was when I, having left Juli\' to rest, was asked at breakfast by Father Elliot, surrounded the other Azraelites stationed there, if I had been visited by any dreams.

I was confused, startled at first, but the feeling that I should tell the older man rose within me and I quietly told him of what I had seen.

When my tale was told, Sian Elliot smiled and nodded. \"He has chosen, then,\" he said and many of the Azraelites nodded and talked quietly, excitedly among them. I was even more confused, then.

\"The man you saw,\" said Father Elliot in explanation to my befuddled expression, \"was the deity we so follow. That man was Azrael. He has chosen you to be his next crusader, if you will accept the burden. You can help those in need of our services, you can keep others from going through what you have gone through.\"

I accepted after stepping past my shock. What else did I have? And it would give Juli\' a roof to stay under and, perhaps, the care she needed.

It was then that I was told of the Azraelites\' true purpose.

While, yes, the Azraelites seek out the suffering and give them what aid they can by the gifts bestowed upon them by Azrael, they have a different, higher purpose. They seek out the flesh body of Azrael for his resurrection. And through his resurrection, he has promised to cleanse the earth of it\'s pollution and it\'s filth.

For seven years, I have wandered, in search of this body, all in vain. I bring with me Juliana, whose illness has not and shall not be healed, I fear. But in my dreams, Azrael tells me that all will be cured of their pains and I believe him. So my search continues, with a fervor bordering on panic. I do this for her, for Juli\', and for the promise I made my mother all those years ago.

I am all she has now.