Bereft: Demise

45 | Of a Tedious Destruction

The rain clung to his flesh. It adhered to the skin and soaked through the pricey fabric of his emerald suit. The droplets chased themselves along the curvatures of his muscles and the sharp angles of his bones until it seemed to drip through his very being and drench his soul.

Though the water was ruining his attire, the Sin of Envy did nothing to remove himself from the inclement weather.

Balthier tipped his head back and exhaled a lone plume of steam toward the brightening sky. Dawn was coming. The moor was blanketed in gray sleet, but the snow had warmed to rain after two or three in the morning and the steady patter of drops descending into icy puddles was a constant music in this bleak land.

He was perched on the lip of a rock outcrop with his arms braced upon his knees. Below, the Sin of Gluttony was huddled in the rock's nominal shelter with his head bowed to the sodden earth. Again and again his fervently whispered sermons rose to meet Balthier's ears. Again and again Envy fought the urge to kick him in the head.

The ward waited only a yard away and hummed with a life all its own.

In the distance, Crow's End hunched over the flat, mist-clad land like a drunken sentinel. Few lights were flared at this dismal hour. The manor had an audible heartbeat Balthier could discern above Berour's incessant chanting, and it rang out to him in a slow, steady thrum. If the Sin closed his eyes and shut out the music of the rain, he could concentrate upon that solitary thrum like a predator listening to his oblivious prey.

Envy recounted the years he spent in Africa when the world was younger and the wilds more unforgiving. Mankind had been thrall to their many superstitious and the lands beyond their meager villages had been deadly. Balthier remembered sitting in the grass below the Serengeti sun with his back bared to the harsh rays, his arms coated in dried mud from the river, his temples streaked with perspiration, his body held immobile to hide him from prying animal eyes.

He remembered watching the lions through the bent thrushes. He had been able to feel the stride of the huntresses as they charged across the savannah and lunged at the wild zebras and antelopes. The smell of broken foliage and viscera had risen sharply with the heat. Envy had been able to hear the heartbeat of the creatures as they went down below the snarling jaws of the lionesses.

Those hearts had beat so fiercely in defiance, but they always faltered and fell to the predator's desire. 

Envy opened his eyes, breaking the rills of frost that had formed across his lids. Crow's End was his prey. He was the predator who would not be denied. No matter how many times he must snap his jaws, the manor's neck would break between his teeth.

"Berour," he muttered, keeping his voice low to avoid attention. Sloth's wolves prowled the landscape inside the ward and would alert Peroth to Balthier's presence before Envy was ready.

Berour whimpered into the sodden dirt with his back bent in supplication.

"Are you listening to me, Gluttony?" 

"Yes, yes!" 

Balthier snapped when his response rang into the frigid mist. Berour quieted and huddled beneath the rock again, burying his adolescent face in the fabric of his overlarge sweater. The loose cross clanged upon the hard pebbles sunken in the mud.

"Listen well, Berour. You will enter the manor. You will find my host—Darius's host, the human woman with black hair and blue eyes named Sara Gaspard. You mustn't kill her, you imbecile. You understand that, do you not? Berour?"