What do you Desire?
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Before the dead royal kneeled Azal, tears rolling from his eyes. His heart was constricted as the emotions from thousands of years ago returned. A sob escaped his mouth as he recalled the time he signed the contracted. That single moment allowed him to fulfill his revenge against the nobles.

Lust kneeled behind Azal and hung her body on his back, “Azal, you did it. Avide can now move on.”

Hearing Lust’s voice the tears grew worse, he could finally hear how she spoke. “It’s finally over. My mission is finally over.”

The two stayed in the bloodied chamber uncaring to the stench and environment made of a dead man.


The Azal dragged himself up the ladder, his body growing more accustom to his lingering emotions with each heavy step. The two sat on the couch together and Azal couldn’t take his gaze off the ground for the whole period.

“Azal… come on smile!” Her voice was weak barely breaking the silence, that grew louder and happier after the pause. Her hand was rubbing his arched back, but her arm was stiff, and her movements were forced and without a comforting rhythm.

The bad comforting worked, Azal smiled, a rough and broken smile, “Thank you, Lucia.”

“I know this hard for you, don’t worry I’ll be fine.” I straightened his back and laid his coarse golden hand on her pristine white leg.

He was slowly gaining control of the sadness that overwhelmed him but with sadness now fleeting other emotions were bound to appear. Warm chocolate stared into an icy blue as silence overcome the room. In the silence, you could hear their heartbeats and the two sat there.

Lucia was a demon created from the sin of lust, or maybe even envy. Azal was a man who regained his emotions less than an hour ago. With the fate of the situation, Azal had to control himself as he fought against the urge to kiss her.

The feelings of love he contained for his late wife were the only resistance he possessed to fight against the lust for the beautiful women he held a great debt towards. He shook his head and suppressed the emotions threatening to overwhelm him. He broke eye contact and walked over to the desk and looked at the poorly done drawing.

It calmed him as he possessed a new resistance against the temptation. The drawing was crude, burned, fragile, but Azal held like it was a living heart, his heart.

“Lucia, it would be helpful if you could leave for tonight.” He spoke his thoughts and informed her of how he would best be able to calm down. She nodded her head in understanding and disappeared into a black cloud just as she had appeared. In a room coated in deadly silence, he stood alone, the dispersing black clouds gave the room a darkened atmosphere.

“It’s all over.” That’s all he could tell himself, he fell to his knees and repeated that the single phrase. The phrase continuously left his lips as Azal hugged the parchment to his chest, the tears from earlier returning.

“Avide, Jules, thank you.” His voice was fragile barely above a whisper constantly cracking behind the suppressed sobs.

“I couldn’t ever appreciate the piece before now… This work of joy you worked tirelessly on.” He didn’t dare separate it from his chest in fear of damaging it with his unrestrained tears.

“Jules, was I a good father? Avide, was I a good husband? A man who couldn’t protect his family; a man who left under the orders of someone who betrayed. Avide, I’m sorry. Jules, I’m sorry.” The paper didn’t escape his grasp as he fell on the hard floor with closed red eyes.


When morning came, Azal woke up to himself on the couch and covered in the blanket from his bed. It was strange considered he never remembered making it back to his bed. It didn’t take him too long to realize the truth of the situation, Lucia had brought him to his room.

“You can still smell them.” That evil voice that allowed him to conquer his goal returned for the first time since the very beginning.

It wasn’t wrong, it never was, in this room burned down thousands of years ago, he could still smell his wife. The only explanation was the voice of the Devil.

“Congratulations are in order, you are the first Sin to complete the contract. I always did enjoy that title you gave yourselves.” Azal was in some ways reluctant to respond to this voice of temptation.

“Don’t worry there is no new contract for you. You have completed the agreement between the two of us. You did plenty to pay your half!” The voice was jubilant sounding strange with its sinister undertone.

“I’ll be blunt since you seem opposed to answering me. I want to repay you.”

“We had a contract; the payment was already laid out.” Azal finally answered for the first time.

“Oh I know, but the Devil, Boy I love that title, is a fair man. So, what do you Azal desire?”

Hearing his own name brought a sense of unease in his stomach, the way Devil said it was strange, almost lustful. If not lustful, desire, like he was only a good tool.

What could he desire though? He lost his family, he lost everything he cared about.

“Could you bring them back?” The sentence was slow and covered in heavy somberness.

“I can, but regrettably not in the way you desire.”

Since they couldn’t be brought back to them, he could only desire to travel back to them.

“Can I be sent back before this all began?”

“I can, but regrettably not in the way you desire. You can’t change the past.”

“Can I be with them again?”

“Only in death.”

“Then kill me. I’d rather be dead then.”

“Is that what you desire?”

The room was heavy, the words of the two men as a figment of himself was created before Azal. Is death truly his desire? Was he willing to truly give up right now where the story hadn’t reached its natural end? Was he okay with accepting such a fate after fighting for so long?

“I don’t know.”

“Do you desire knowing?”

“Maybe, but what is the use of knowledge when it only brings regret? I’ll be left here with the knowledge of my questions but without the ability to answer them.”

“Do you desire the ability to solve your doubts?”

“I don’t know! Damn it!”

The Devil didn’t respond to Azal’s outburst.

“I want my humanity back.”

“You never lost it.”

“Yes, I did! I was called a demon for thousands of years with the ability to only express wrath towards my enemies! How can that be called human!”

“That wasn’t done by me.”

“So, I did it myself? I locked my emotions, only for them to return after completing the contract?”

“Do you desire the answer?”

“No! I desire the ability to be human!”

“You always were.”

“Ugh!” He pulled his hair, the drawing by Jules falling to the ground. Laid flat on the ground, the crude drawing of a family stared up at him. In that moment it all returned, why this all mattered in the first place.

“I desire freedom.”

“You are free.”

“No, true freedom.”

“I can’t do that. Even I’m affected by the endless possibilities of the cosmos.”

“I desire for no more Sins to be created.”

“I can’t promise such as possible.”

“Then get rid of it all! I don’t want to remember any of this! I want to forget it all!”

“Is that what you truly desire?”

“Yes. I desire for everything to be forgotten. I can’t live as a human when I hold all these memories.”

“Then so be it!” The Devil’s laugh was the final sound as Azal’s world went white.

 

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