“Finally, they’ll become pure! Like us! Like how you created us to be virtues! How we represent the antithesis of them!” Uriel laughed.
“Evidently, that didn’t turn out to be the case.”
“No. It didn’t. But when everything becomes bound by my blood and hatred, then I will look like a saint. A scarlet paradise for all. That’s what I wish for. That was the scenery that you burned into my mind from the moment I was born.”
Michaela lowered her head mournfully.
“You have so many enemies in this world. Can you afford to keep me as one? I did everything for your sake. I kept impurities away to stop you from being tainted. We can’t understand human wants and needs. There is no need to continue pretending like you’re one of them. Because no matter what you do… you will always be blamed. You, my ancient creator, are the reason why things have to be this way.”
Michaela gazed up as something enormous passed overhead. The wingspan of a pale bird consumed the skies as thousands of bleeding eye sockets stared back at her. Amongst them were golden eyes that she recognized.
“I didn’t realize your Beholders were strong enough to nearly destroy this one. Isn’t it beautiful? It resonates strongly with me. I’ve always believed that it sprung into existence using my Nex. Michaela. I can’t have you running off too far. I wonder how many wings it’ll pluck. Your righteous punishment is due.”
Those eyes held prejudice that only Michaela could comprehend, because she – for as long as she could remember – had always found herself bearing the brunt of the blame for her wrongs.
“Will I still be blamed for these sins even in this world where I have done nothing wrong?”
“You haven’t been forgiven of your past. Nor does it look like you’ve confronted them yourself.” Uriel relished Michaela’s inevitable downfall.
To take the wings of an Angel meant to severely debilitate them, to the point where even Healing magic would not be able to return them.
Though Uriel and the other Angels did not know why this was the case, Michaela in her heart knew why. She was the one who created them, after all.
It was because their wings were not a part of the shape of their Soul.
However, this was not the case for Michaela. Not as she was now. Not the Michaela who stood as the proud Archetype of Justice.
Her wings quivered behind her, and her tails fanned evenly as she gazed up into a growing crimson orb. It syphoned the blood from the red sea, forming great, twisting tendrils. It accumulated a mass so great that it consumed everything in the skies.
And yet, Michaela’s spirit did not waver.
Instead, something deep within her chest began to throb as she held tightly onto the Piece of Paradise. She heard the faint cry of a child wishing to see their mother.
If only they knew how close they were.
“I was reborn into this world without a vagitus cry. For the first time in my life, I felt catharsis. I chose to create Puritas for the sake of amending my wrongs, but I was unable to escape the shadows of my past.”
She wasn’t compelled to, but she felt like it was necessary. A powerful surge of emotion swelled within her chest as her wings ruffled in the howling winds generated by the bird that promised to enact her castigation.
“The misery of the past was mine. I failed countless. I lacked the compassion to be a good mother for those I created. I… was the source of endless suffering. There is no hell that can take me. I experienced hell already. Thousands – millions of years of cyclic lament weathered my pride until I became a husk that existed as a set piece in this world of tales.”
//////// < WARNING > ////////
< Your Emotional State Has Risen to the Second State >
Suddenly, Michaela’s eyes ignited with an incandescent light. The feathers, which were stained with blood and blackened by the flames of Uriel’s sword, replenished their color. They became whiter in fact. Slits formed around them, revealing golden eyes with spiraling irises.
“Haven’t I suffered enough? Haven’t I paid the price to atone? I became the villain in this world, as I was in the past. I was introduced into this system as a predetermined enemy though I had already endured it all. I was tired. I felt worthless. Helpless in my cage beneath Paradise. I wanted to love. I wanted… something that wasn’t contaminated by my past or my blinded ambitions. I just wanted someone I could hold in my arms…”
Michaela embraced the scabbard with all her heart, her many tails wrapping her up into a cocoon. Her wings, unlike last time, did not decay. Nor did the eyes appear like dangling rotten apples.
“I saw through my ordeal to the end. But it was only I who had to endure. And endure I did, but those who were worse than me – and those who were of my flesh and blood – trampled on life and the things I tried to protect. This… is how the Amalgam must have felt. A predetermined villain meant to become the scapegoat of the others, so that their own sins and guilt could be vindicated. The Skewered Beast…”
< Borrowing the Active and Passive Skills of the One Thousand Eyed Bird >
Michaela resonated deeply with the concept of the One Thousand Eyed Bird. How the bird itself represented the guilty who proved their innocence by condemning others, but also how the bird could also be seen as a victim of guilt.
A once innocent bird driven to rampage by its predetermined role as a Skewered Beast – “You were decided to be the ‘Skewered Beast’ before you were skewered. Like I, I was blamed as the same Star of the White Forest, the Pale Arbiter, the Angel of Pride… one who would surely ‘elevate’ humanity in this world before I could decide it for myself.”
The One Thousand Eyed Bird’s concept did not align with Frost’s interpretations. Perhaps that was why their manifestations were so different in the first place.
“I could not blame the bird who was driven into the corner for lashing out.”
Michaela felt sorrow towards the bird. The one thousand eyes that served as its own reminded her of the Stars that she subjugated, and the Angels who once carried that same light…
… and how easily they had turned against her.
< You Have Manifested the One Thousand Eyed Bird as the Second State >
She reached out towards the air where a golden orb appeared. Another joined it. Then another. And another. Before long, a thousand hovered around her, each attached to an eye on her wings with ribbons of light.
“You, O’ fearsome bird, yearned release too. But cycles can’t be broken by death. You are my eyes now, O’ bird of vision. You are…”
“… the same as me, but you are also just like them. O’ Bird of Prejudice, we became scapegoats. How easily did those eyes determine our guilt? But likewise, how easily did we condemn countless? Our authority proved that we were right. But now, O’ Vagitus Bird, already paid the price of our guilt.”
The crimson orb transformed into a spiraling drill. It descended upon Michaela as she clasped onto her Piece of Paradise. Its warmth reminded her of the ultimate price she paid for her past wrongs.
An arc larger than ever before formed at the tip of the scabbard.
“Is that… a blade…?” Uriel uttered, noticing that the arc of light took the form of a phantom blade. “How? But the Price of Paradise belongs to Iscario… Is that… another piece of your kin!?”
An impending sense of dread overcame Uriel as she began to infuse her blood with the Castigation Bird’s bloody drill.
“The Price of Paradise never once reacted with Iscario that way!”
It was weak. So weak that the blade of light shattered upon impact with the tip of the drill.
“As I thought… it’s but a fleeting, misguided dream –! No… what is that!?”
But the drill could never penetrate Michaela. The hardened blood of the great drill splattered across the mountain as it clashed with an invisible barrier just an inch away from Michaela’s chest.
It could not touch her, as though it was ordained by a higher power.