A corner of Noth’s mouth pulled back in annoyance when he realized that he had far too many things he wanted to ask, especially with the addition of what his father had just said.

“...You said you’d answer all my questions, right?”

When he got the affirmative nod that he was looking for, the boy thought hard for a moment about what to ask first. It was difficult to pick which one to settle on at the beginning, but one question was screaming more loudly to be asked than the others. He had to know the truth about the man he was dealing with. Noth crossed his arms and levelled a harsh look at his father.

“Alright, let’s start with the worst one then. Why did you kill mother?”

The Earl’s lip quivered when he heard the question, but his shoulders squared up and he inhaled hard, his face obviously trying to go back to its old stoic look, but falling just short.

“I did what had to be done. She was going to leave me, and she was going to take you with her, and I couldn’t allow her to do that. You’re my only son, and she wouldn’t have been able to take care of you properly. She especially wouldn’t have been able to protect you with your… affliction. I love you. I love you both. But I had to make a decision for the good of the family. I had to do my duty. I had to do the right thing. People were talking to me, telling me things, saying things… She could have put you both in jeopardy, I had to make a choice, I…”

As more and more words spilled out of his father’s mouth, Noth’s eyebrows sunk further and further down. His mouth was set in a thin line. Even he, in his young age, could tell that all of these explanations were nothing more than beautiful excuses. He was sure this was nothing but the reasonings that his father rationalized to himself after the fact. When the Earl caught the look on his child’s face, the man knew exactly what it meant. He shrunk a bit in his chair and stared at his desk so he wouldn’t have to see more of that disapproving gaze.

“I’m not lying, I really am trying to put the family’s prestige first, like I was taught to do… I just… I was also just so angry at your mother at the time. We were fighting, she was going to leave me, she was going to take you away… and she said she was disappointed in me.”

The way the Earl hung his head and muttered the last words, combined with how he’d also mentioned ‘disappointment’ earlier in the conversation, told Noth just how big of a complex his father seemingly had about it. Honestly though, he couldn’t believe that this was his father’s great and grand reasoning for taking his mother away. It would have been so much better if his previous excuses had actually been the truth, than to have known that the decision ultimately came down to how much of an angry, timorous man his father was. Noth was so exasperated that he came close to yelling at the man about what a coward he was, but instead bit his tongue and growled out a different question, continuing down his list of grievances.

“...And what about me? Where am I in all of that? What was your plan for me after you’d murdered mother? You say she couldn’t have protected me, what was your great idea for it?”

His father’s shoulders trembled once again, and the man turned his head slightly towards the wall, doing his best not to look at Noth.

“Er… I… I am… ashamed. It all happened so fast, so of course I didn’t have enough time to think of a very good plan. When the… when the men came… when they came to get your m-moth… when they came to get the b-body… they told me you were still in the greenhouse. I figured that if you were still in there, instead of running back to the manor or running away, then maybe you felt the safest there, so I ordered a guard to watch over the place. You were already in danger, I figured I could just keep you in there and keep you safe. Safe from everyone. I-I was too afraid to visit you, for fear of how you’d look at me. I’m sorry. I promise I… I did my best.”

When the Earl glanced over and saw the glare Noth was levelling on him, he flinched, his next words running out from between his lips as fast as they could, as if he thought that they might appease the boy, or maybe just to get things over with quicker.

“I spread a rumour that you were just sick and recuperating, so no one would find out what you were, but that didn’t stop the staff from knowing. Of course, the church also knew, considering they’re who identified your [Gift] in the first place, or lack thereof. That was the most dangerous of all. A few higher nobles that were under their thumb also started… saying things. Advising… things. They said such awful words to me so casually.”

The trembling grew worse and worse. Tears were pattering onto the desk left and right. One of his father’s hands came up to grip the edge of the desk in a white knuckled hold.

“They kept telling me that I had to kill you and remarry! They said it was the only way to do my duty and make things right for the noble lineage. They all kept saying it and saying it and whispering and ordering and yelling and I just couldn’t take it! I didn’t want to, Noth, believe me! I don’t want to at all! But I have a duty, they’re expecting things of me, I have to do what’s right, Noth, no matter how awful it feels! Just like always… B-but I failed! I couldn’t kill you!”

Ruth Kieran collapsed down against his desk, blubbering and wailing and pounding against the wood. Noth pulled a disgusted face at the scene he was being shown, and stepped back, which only seemed to raise the volume of his father’s cries. He glared at the man in front of him with so much aversion, to the point where he started to feel sick to his stomach from it all. This just didn’t make sense. It was making him so angry! How dare he be the one crying?! Where had any of the dignity that he was supposed to have go? Why was he acting more like a child throwing a tantrum than the literal child right in front of him who’d learned such awful things only mere seconds ago? It was all just so upsetting!

All of a sudden, slender and cool arms wrapped around Noth from behind, hugging him tightly as his angel whispered into his ear.

The hug seemed to bring him a small bit of clarity, if only for the second that he was surprised by it, and he sucked in a deep breath, trying to hold back his anger so that he could think. Deciding to take the angel’s advice, he gently removed her hands and marched out of the room, without a word to the puddle that was his father. He wandered aimlessly through the halls, fisting his pants hard, not even paying a speck of attention to anyone who he might have passed by, trying his hardest to just not think of anything at all so that he could hopefully calm down a bit.

Before he’d realized it, Noth had ended up in some random guest room of the manor. He emptily glanced around for a while before deciding to climb up on a small couch, laying curled up tight on his side. He didn’t spare a glance to his angel that was kneeling by the side of the couch, gently stroking his hair. He didn’t have the time. There was too much to think about. First and foremost there was the awful showing from his father just now. What was any of that? His mother’s death was a mistake made out of anger and a hurt ego? That’s possible? The boy couldn’t imagine someone being capable of making such a deadly mistake for such stupid reasons. And yet, it had been told to him with much more sincerity than the excuses that had come pouring out of his father’s mouth before. Noth hated to admit it, but it seemed that really must have been the truth.

And so what did all these newfound sides of his father show? Ruth Kieran was a coward, Noth was 100% sure of this fact. He was a coward who could neither stand up against his complex for the family he professed to love, nor against the peer pressure and orders from his colleagues and higher ups to do something awful. He spouted out about duty and lineage like he was a child parroting something an adult told him to say. A fear of failure could only cover so much of his wrongdoings. At this point, Noth’s father had completely lost all respect that the boy had ever held for him. He could only see the man as a crybaby and a child. But did those labels stop him from being a monster like Noth had thought he’d been?

No.

Not by a mile.

Ruth Kieran would always be Noth’s monster.

Perhaps in reality monsters came in a variety of different kinds, just like the different types he’d seen and heard about from his mother’s reading. Perhaps there were lesser monsters and greater monsters out there. Perhaps there could be monsters that seemed great and imposing, but were really much smaller and weaker in secret. It seemed that his father was that type of monster indeed. The kind that hid under noble motives to do pusillanimous things. A cowardly monster. And Noth wasn’t going to be beaten by a cowardly monster, no matter what. He would become much too strong for that. He simply had to.

The boy was reminded of what his angel had said before, in what feels like ages ago now. Was he a mouse? A lion? What was he? Would he grow up to be some kind of monster like his father? Well, he was surely not a mouse; He’d confronted his fears and even been attacked head on and survived. Was he a lion? No, Noth didn’t feel quite comfortable or confident enough to think himself so high and righteous, not with this ugly feeling that was brewing in the pit of his stomach. And yet, at the same time, with what he’d withstood, his righteous convictions, and this newfound power, he felt… strong. Much stronger than a mouse, or maybe even a lion. Strong enough to survive at the very least. Maybe strong enough to wrench back some kind of life of his own instead of the life of a beast in captivity.

But does an escaped beast eventually become a monster? He felt strong enough to become a monster, for sure. Did that mean that one of his fears had come true, and he’d indeed been turned into a monster as well? Perhaps maybe he’d only become half a monster, just strong enough to defeat the monsters that had him in their sights, but not enough that he lost his… well what would the other half be? If his father was a monster and his mother was just a loving human, then did that make him half human? No, that didn’t feel right either. Maybe one too many things had happened for him to have very much ‘human’ left inside of him. But maybe with enough time it could just be another thing that he could snatch back from his broken life. Perhaps he could even come out the other end as something even higher than he’d started as. Just another thing to work towards.

Well, if Noth was going to go down this new path, he was going to need to reclaim what had been stolen from him first and foremost. What was the easiest thing he could achieve right now? The boy sat up and ran through all the possibilities, doing his best to plan out what he needed, what he could and couldn’t achieve. He smiled ruefully as he realized a hard learned lesson; If he didn’t want to follow the downfall of his lesser monster of a father, he should plan things out as effectively as he could.

Once he’d made up his mind, Noth stood up with a purpose, and was met with cheers of admiration from the angel waiting next to him. He turned to her and grabbed her hand, squeezing it as he led her through the halls, and back to his father’s office. The limp and lifeless man inside slowly lifted his head when he heard the door opening, his watery and red eyes still a bit shaky as they focused on his son. The boy confidently strode up to his father, coming behind the desk and fiercely grasping the man’s collar, staring hard into his eyes.

“You say you care about duty and lineage and what everyone says. You say it’s the only way. And now, I’m here to offer you a different way. If everything’s too hard for you to take, then don’t take it anymore. Get out of the way and I’ll take it instead.”

The Earl’s eyes were wide, and his mouth hung open at the sudden declaration. It took him almost a minute of hesitation to respond, but he tried his best to straighten out his face and grit his teeth.

“No, I can’t let you do that. If even I, a [Superior Warrior] couldn’t take it, then how am I supposed to just shove things off onto my young, unblessed son, who the God-dess hates?!”

A small growl of frustration leaked from Noth’s mouth as he roughly pulled his hand away, the boy balling his fists and raising his voice with a punctuating stomp.

“Who says the God-dess hates me?!”

A second later Ruth Kieran’s eyes and mouth grew wide at what he was witnessing. The bottom half of his son’s eyes had suddenly changed colour, turning from the coal-like shade of black he’d gotten from his mother to an almost glowing red rust. The man's head snapped up and his eyes and mouth grew as big as saucers in even greater astonishment when a miracle appeared behind Noth just a moment later, radiating a holy light. The beautifully spread wings in flight, the holy garb, the unnatural colouration of the hair, and the ephemeral way that the hair was dripping with blood. The Earl was a pious man. He’d been to church enough times to know what the vision in front of him was. He pushed back the seat he’d been sitting in frantically and dropped down onto his knees to pray so hard that they stung harshly. He couldn’t close his eyes, however. Something wouldn’t let him look away from the angel in front of him. And that same beautiful spirit's eyes seemed to be boring holes through him as they stared right back.

The angel’s every word sent reverberations through the Earl. She closed her spread wings and landed soundlessly on the floor, lovingly placing her hands on Noth’s shoulder and cheek, before she continued.

Noth put on his best triumphant face when he saw the look his father gave him at his angel’s words. Truth be told, he was a little peeved that she’d stepped in, since he was trying to hide her as his secret weapon. But, all in all this was probably the fastest way to make his dull-witted father listen, so it was probably for the best. Who would believe the silly snivelling man if he said he saw an angel anyways? Or who knows, maybe people would believe, and would take it as a sign that the boy had holy backing. Perhaps that was for the best.

After taking a few deep breaths and hard gulps, the Earl finally bowed his head and spoke, the words coming out clearly awed.

“What did you… need of me?”

Feeling like he’d finally won, the boy lightly tilted his head back and looked down his nose at the man.