I Am Wrath

As Avie explained that idea to me, I was thrown into a ballad of memories, all stringing themselves together to justify my actions. I was sitting there, with my mouth agape while remembering how I felt.

It wasn't too long ago I thought the same thing as her. Nobody deserved peaceful treatment from me because all they gave me was this terrible life. They wanted to kill me, they took away my friends, limited my opportunities, and turned this world against me before I got a chance to open my mouth.

Everybody, and I mean everybody, hates me. Hates my name. Hates who I am. Hates what I will become. They hate the Asterios, and I am one of the Pure Asterios left alive.

There's so much hate in this world... so much hate that I can't fight off. So much hate that Avie and I give into. So much hate I subject my friends to... when will it stop?

The cycle of revenge I constantly put myself through must come to an end, but the only end it will ever know is the kind that follows once I'm dead. Something I've been planning for all along.

As I internalized the thought, I began to think to myself...

Why do I care about not being a monster when I want to end the cycle of revenge with my own death? Why don't I let Avie use everything here, just so I can be freed?

I looked upon all of my memories, slowly falling apart in front of me and breaking off into separate streams that all fell into the Black Lake underneath my footsteps, and I was lost in a trance.

If I just let Avie take over, then that's it. She finishes this, I can die, and Quake will be defeated...

That's all it takes... just accepting it...

"Sky! Over here!" I heard. I turned my head down to look at the Black Lake.

"Quit staring..." Dani muttered. Her face was beaming red. Her face seemed... younger here, being a lot more round and childish. I watched upon her, waiting for something else to happen.

"Do you think Carl and I will live?" She sincerely asked next. I studied it further. Her eyes were tainted with the fear of death, a naïve sense of not being able to live as she normally would, and a gaze of fear upon me that upset my stomach.

"ILLYA!!! I WILL... KILL YOU!!!!" She screamed out next. Her face wasn't tainted with that fear, it was poisoned with rage, the same rage Avie and I had.

I couldn't help but stare down at those memories, waiting for the answer to pile up in front of me... but nothing showed up. All I could see were memories of people I loved getting mad in front of me.

Everybody I knew fell to rage, no matter how pure-minded, no matter how big they smiled, no matter how much they smiled...

Wrath is an incurable sickness, and we're all plagued with it.

"Are you understanding now, Sky?" A dark, sinister voice from behind me perturbed by the black lake underneath me. It caused ripples in the very water as I turned around to see what was going on.

"Let me guess, another being hiding in my head? I'm kinda getting sick of this whole thing," I told him, but he only stood slightly chuckling underneath the ocean.

"Another voice in your head? How do you know it's not the other way around? I do believe it is my body you're piloting right now," The voice told me.

"E-excuse me? I think you have the wrong person," I told him. He was making me nervous... the more he talked, the more I heard myself in his voice.

"Wrong person? Gosh, I hope not. You... don't know who I am?" It asked me again. I wasn't lying when I said I was getting sick of this.

"I don't assume you'll tell me, with the way you're speaking. I mean, honestly, how many more people can my head hold?" I asked myself, putting my palm up to my temple.

"This isn't your head, Sky. It is mine. This whole place belongs to me, and you are just a visitor," He explained, taking a quick breath, "And I'm most commonly associated with your name, from all that time ago. I'll leave it simply put for you, in case it's tough to understand. I am Sky Asterio, and I am Wrath," The voice told me.

…

"Nice try, but I'm Sky Asterio unless you're like an ancestor or something? It's interesting to hear how similar we sound," I told the voice.

"Ancestor? Perhaps... from four hundred years ago, the day before I was killed in combat by Cole Achamo?" He asked again. His voice stopped rippling in the water underneath me, and instead, started to warp upward from underground.

He came to fruition, standing in front of me with balled-up fists on his sides. He had shorter hair than I did, and small amounts of facial hair on his upper lip and chin that connected at the corners. He wore this weird, trident-shaped crown around his head, and had a green hoodie that was sleeveless.

On his body seemed to be four weapons. On his back stood a saber, just like Eirikr's that I saw a long time ago, a pure-white gun on his left side hip, a sword like the Mahina Armament on his opposite hip, and blood-red gauntlets on his forearms. It wasn't a weapon, but he was also wearing a necklace that looked to be filled with some black liquid.

He wore just normal blue jeans and white shoes and carried himself confidently as he walked around, observing my body in contrast to his own.

"Such a feeble boy... you don't possess the Mahina Armament with you, the Honua Armament, or the La Armament either... you do not hold a strong enough saber and are being beaten by Cole once more. Tell me, what have you accomplished by now?" He asked me.