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Night of Revelation – Part 2(/3)

Once again, LittleBadWolf stepped up to do an illustration for this part of “Night of Revelation”, this time back in April of 2023.

Writing fight scenes isn’t my area of expertise, but I remember reading some advice that I tried to keep in mind during the process. Specifically, that fights are conversations, but with violence instead of words. They should reflect each characters’ standing relative to each other as the story demands. And because Azurium is in a much worse position than Edmund, he’s the one of the backfoot.

I also struggled for a long time trying to figure out how I would get them to reconcile once the fight was over. I read and reread all of my notes and previous stories, making sure I wasn’t overlooking any details. Eventually, the answer hit me.

They wouldn’t and shouldn’t, at least not yet. It was too soon.

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It is doubtful that even Edmund himself could recall exactly what went through his mind as he charged his father through the wall, hurling the two of them out of the warehouse building, onto the hard industrial pavement below. Pinning the old titan to the ground, he raised his fist to score another blow on the tigerkin who abandoned him so many years ago.

Fortunately for the elder Azurium, the titan enhancement flowing through him meant that he had already recovered from the initial shock. Seizing on his opportunity, he caught the fist with his free hand, using the momentum to shove the smaller tigerkin off of him. Regaining his bearings, using the wind to soften his landing, Edmund put up his fist and lowered his center of gravity while his father hastened to create some space between them.

“I don’t want to fight you, Ed. You’re my son.”

“Kinda late to play the dad card, now. Ten years too late, ain’t it ‘Captain’.” To Azurium, his progeny’s emerald eyes told the full story, lazer-focused on the object of a decade of ire. “Mightta meant somethin’ if you had actually been there.”

Once more, the youth used his powers to rush his father, but this time the good Captain was ready. Stepping only slightly to the side, he avoided the initial punch, using his open palms to redirect Edmund’s momentum in mid-flight, angling him towards the brick wall separating their battleground just outside the warehouse headquarters from the moonlit streets of the Oplentian slums. Though he made contact, a powerful gust of air conjured by the storm mage was enough to cushion the impact, neutralizing the damage both to his fist and the brick.

“Look, I don’t blame you for bein’ angry, Ed. But I made the best choice I could for both of us.”

Turning back around to face his father, fangs barred, Edmund snarled in a way he never knew he was capable. “Fuck you, old man. Ya dun get to sit there an tell me livin’ in this shithole on mah own for almost ten fuckin’ years was best for me.”

Resigning himself to the situation, the elder Azurium raised his own fists, prepared to defend himself. “It was, Ed. You may have been on your own, but at least you could walk. At least you could go outside.”

“That’s got nuthin’ tah do with it!”

“That has everything to do with it!” Both of them were taken aback by the outburst, and yet that did not stop Volpes’s second from pressing on. “All of the other people Master Volpes has taken in think I’m the first person he turned into a titan, but I’m not. You were.”

“What’re ya fuckin’ talkin’ ‘bout!?” Charging lighting into his fist, the young tigerkin lashed out at his father with another bolt, but the guardsman anticipated the motion and weaved out of the way before the spell had been fully cast, avoiding the impact. Had he looked behind him, he would have seen the soot stain plastered on the brick wall.

“Master Volpes has a potion that makes all of us stronger, bigger, better than we used to be. We call the people who drink it ‘titans’. People like me… and like you.”

The younger tigerkin thought to himself that it wasn’t possible. He would have remembered if his father gave him some wonder drug growing up. Unless…

“Those nasty teas you fed me!?” Azurium couldn’t help but laugh, finding himself back in Edmund’s room, playing chess with the young man as he used to every night before tucking him into bed.

“Only the last one, Ed. The rest were so-called miracle cures I had found through looking in my spare time, eating up a good chunk of my salary.”

Starting to put the dots together, Edmund allowed himself to lower his fist, still alert but open to conversation.

“Den why’d ya leave, old man? Wouldn’t ya wanna stay wid yer son after fixin’ ‘im up?”

“That was the deal. Master cures you, and I work for him, betraying the guard and helping him set up the criminal conspiracy to take down the Oplentian government and seize power for the lower class.”

Edmund stiffened at the comment, head and ears trained on his father. “I don’t buy it.”

“It’s the truth, son.” The pupil not covered with an eyepatch pleaded with him to stop asking questions, but the training his mentor had put him through taught the younger one better than to relent when there was still lingering doubt.

“Workin’ against the guards in this shithole is one thing. I’ve punched out more’an a few of ‘em myself. But from what you say, there ain’t nuthin’ in that deal that kept you from writin’ tah me, or comin’ tah see me.” Raising his fist again, eyes growing moist, the young man continued. “When I went to yer office, I was sent packin’, even after bustin’ skulls. Every time I snuck intah the 13th, yer men found me an’ kicked me out. Writin’ ya got me nowhere too. It’s like ya wanted nuthin’ tah do wid me.”

“Ed… that’s not it.” Before either of them could think, another blast of lighting was cascading through the air, and this time it made contact with its target. The Guard Captain gritted his teeth, kneeling as every nerve fired at once across his physique, defined musculature twitching in response to the stimuli, his son’s palm opened towards him with the residual blue glow of his magic.

“Then what is it, ya old fuck!? Say it!”

As painful as the shock was, Azurium knew as his lips parted that what followed would hurt far more: His biggest secret, exposed at last. “I… I didn’t want to be a father, Ed.”

The words entered into Edmund’s ears, traveling through mental synapses to the brain, but still the tigerkin wasn’t sure he was capable of processing them.

“Wha… what? You fuckin’ wid me!?”

“No, Ed. Your mother and I, we were soldiers. The battlefield was our home, and we loved it. Both of us wanted to live fast and die hard, in our prime. We weren’t supposed to grow old, but then after a couple of nights of fierce drinking and even fiercer… well we found out she was pregnant.”

“Wid me?” The moisture on Edmund’s eyes had matured into tears, streaking down the fur on his face.

“Yes. We both knew we couldn’t bring a newborn into that life, so we tried to start a new one, but Clara died giving birth to you.”

“And what? Ya blame me ‘fer it!?”

What crossed the Captain’s features was an expression of pure horror at the insinuation. “What!? No. ‘Walkers watching, Edmund! I never blamed you. I never thought I’d lose her like that, but I was prepared for the day I’d lose her. That’s just what happens when your job is to fight off beasts. It was hard, I admit, but that wasn’t your fault!”

“Den why!?” The youth’s hands began to glow brighter than before, tears streaming passed the cyan aura contained within his eyes.

“I was miserable, working a job I didn’t believe in. The people under my ‘command’ were sadists who’d be better off locked up than free to terrorize people on the streets in the name of so-called ‘order’. And worse than that, I could feel my age catching up with me. You don’t know what it’s like to look at yourself in the mirror, hating what stares back at you.”

The confession did little to stem the storm raging inside Edmund, manifesting itself as fearsome winds that surrounded the both of them. “Liar! I lived wid you fer half my life. You were fine. You were always fine workin’ wid those pieces of shit.”

“I didn’t want to bring any of it home to you, Edmund. I only worked as a Guard Captain so I could pay for your medicine. I love you, son, from the bottom of my heart. But I could feel the cracks forming in my life with you. I wanted to be a good dad for you. I tried so hard to make it work, but I just… couldn’t. I was never meant to have a kid. It was never your fault, it was always mine.”

“Sure was, ‘dad’. Didn’t have the stones to stick around, so ya left me tah fend fer myself!”

“You’re right. Ed, you’re right. I thought with the enhancements, you’d be tough enough to handle yourself, and you were. But… I shouldn’t have left you alone. Can you forgive me?”

For a moment, the winds at last grew silent. The cyan light emanating from the young tigerkin’s hands and eyes vanished. Tears still streaming down his face, he gazed upon the man he once called father so long ago. Walking towards Azurium, he calmly closed the distance between them, one step at a time. Making eye contact, he extended his hand, and the older man grasped it firmly, with a slight smile on his face.

“Notta chance, pops.”

Electricity and pain surged through the elder titan, pumped directly into him by the hand making contact with his child. Even with the strength and vitality bestowed by Master Volpes, it was too much for him to bear, and he collapsed onto the ground.

“Ed? Why?”

“I believe ya, dad. But it don’t make up fer all the shitty things you and foxy up there’ve done. Ya can’t even start askin’ fer forgiveness until ya made good. Ya got ten years of shit to clean up.”

Azurium had nothing more to say. There was nothing he could say to that as one of the greatest gifts he ever gave to the world lifted him into the air with magic, keeping him off balance and unable to fight back.

“I’m takin’ ya tah Teach. He’s gotta be done with the big fox by now.”