There were a handful of new changes that developed during the passing years of Noth’s fervent attempt at friendship.
Firstly, Noth himself had changed.
Now that he was 14 and hitting puberty, he’d become a good deal taller and more toned than he had been as a scraggly, malnourished child. He was proud when his height finally surpassed that of his angel’s, although he still was a head shorter than his father…for now. His short hair had grown out a tad, the slight curl to it was made much more evident now that it was allowed to reach a bit past his ears. The most shocking change, however, was the colour of his hair. The base was still the same black that he’d inherited from his mother, but the ends had somehow grown into the same colour as his angel’s rusty hair. Thankfully he didn’t start dripping blood like she always did, but the fact that this change must have something to do with the assimilation that his angel had mentioned before had him worried that it was only a matter of time until it really did happen. Noth hoped that if he wasn't allowed to keep his natural black hair colour, then hopefully he could keep his black eyes forever instead as a keepsake of his mother at the very least.
The change in his hair seemed to come about from him learning greater control over his angel-given powers. On one of the first few times a year that he’d gone back to gaze upon his trophy of Jeck, he’d finally recalled the way he’d commanded the man to kneel during their confrontation. Noth had been so distracted with worrying over his father, trying to win over Elillith, and ruminating over the mysteries and omissions of his angel, that he’d honestly let the thought of it slip by. Of course, asking his angel for help proved to be full of frustrating riddles and unhelpful advice, but every now and then she’d let slip one or two choice morsels of guidance that helped to discover just what he’d done. Noth found that with enough power, the right emotion, and the right alignment of his will combined with his angel’s, he no longer had to spit out longly worded wishes. Instead, all it would take was a one word demand.
Honestly, though, he could really only manage to pull it off successfully about 60% of the time.
He knew it involved him feeling a certain way, some specific kind of anger, but Noth had never been very good at controlling his emotions.
He was no great actor who could call up a mindset at the drop of a hat.
Sure, he'd been able to do some light acting when confronting his prey, but that didn't mean that he could just do it when it wasn't necessary.
If he wasn’t directly in the moment, Noth had great difficulty using this particular power.
His angel had hinted at him a few times during his long, stressful attempts over the past few years to try to replicate what he’d done, that there was something even more impressive that he could learn to do if he learned to wield his powers well enough; He could possibly use her wishing powers without even saying a word, much like the power he’d inadvertently used that drove his father and Jeck crazy.
This leads us to the next, most worrying change:
The health of Noth’s father seemed to be declining.
The manor’s doctor claimed that it was due to stress, mixed with insomnia induced lack of sleep and anemia. The poor Earl had been looking more and more haggard as the weeks went by. Some days he just didn’t have the strength to leave his room, and even worse, some days he couldn’t keep down his food and could eat only small amounts of soup for dinner. His once intimidating body had whittled down enough to make him visually, obviously, sick.
Noth was worried more than words could express. What made the situation even more awful for Noth was how adamant his father was that he didn’t want the boy to use his powers to try and heal him. He’d said various nonsense about being unworthy, and that this was the natural flow of things, but Noth could see past the vague rambling excuses. He’d learned too much about the coward that was his father to just let himself get fooled by such easily unveilable lies. The man was obviously just scared to have Noth use his powers against him again.
After all, hadn’t the boy done this to him in the first place?
The gossiping of the servants travelled far, even if you didn't want to hear it. It was impossible for someone in the manor to not have heard the many theories about what had happened all those years ago to cause the Earl’s collapse during his dinner with his son. The few holdouts that had been sure that Jeck was to blame had quickly changed their minds on the day that Noth had gone to visit alone with his sickly father. The agonizing screaming that emanated from the room could be heard from even outside the manor, causing every unlucky listener’s skin to crawl. It was hard not to believe that the boy was somehow at fault after that. And oddly, the child had even been strong enough to do whatever it was he’d done to a [Superior Warrior]? It was all just too strange and spooky, there was no way that it wouldn’t get people talking.
Of course, Ruth Kieran didn’t want to believe a single word of any of these silly things they were saying about his son, but the more he heard the repeated suspicious circumstances behind each and every rumour, the more it was hard for him to deny them anymore. He knew about the angel his son had formed a pact with, and he knew how powerful his son most likely was because of it. He also knew that not every angel was a good and merciful angel. Even if he wanted to believe in Noth, it would have been a huge lie to say he didn’t have his doubts. Honestly, he was just plain scared, and the fact that he could ever feel that way towards his own son was eating him up inside.
Noth knew all of this. Of all the questions he’d asked his angel about what he’d done to his father and Jeck, the answer to what his father thought of him now, after suffering like this, was one of the few that she’d deigned to give him. He’d been sure he’d covered his tracks by wishing for his father to forget the incident, but he’d been stymied by his own uncaring attitude towards the manor’s servants. At this point, it was most likely a relationship that was far too gone to ever fix. Almost all the servants were scared to ever interact with him now. It was almost amusing how easily their disapproval turned to fear. Noth might have actually preferred this reaction to before when they hated him, if the fact that they still considered him a monster either way didn’t chafe so much.
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The only person who hadn’t changed during all this time was Elillith. Honestly, it would run counter to her severely stoic and taciturn nature if she had started acting like she cared. But Noth knew deep down inside that that wasn’t really the truth of things. Even if she didn’t clearly show it, he’d seen how she’d slowly opened up to him over time, and even if it had taken a few years to accomplish, the two had become wonderfully close friends. There were many things that Noth wouldn’t and couldn’t bring up in their conversations, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t also a large handful of things that he talked with the woman about. She felt almost like a quiet elder sister to him, and even if sometimes he wouldn’t get much of a reply, it felt good just knowing that he had someone who would listen to him that would never judge him.
Eventually, after they’d grown so close that Noth had learned of her past, he even brought up the panic attacks that he’d sometimes get when surrounded by too many people, thinking that maybe the quiet woman who had also once been locked away might possibly relate. When the boy had talked to his angel about it, she hadn’t seemed to really understand how he was feeling, and when he’d tried to force himself into the busy kitchen to face his weaknesses, all the kitchen staff would scurry away from him in fear. He’d needed some ideas on how he could possibly tackle this worrying problem. Luckily for Noth, it was one of the days where Elillith gave him a proper answer, instead of her usual robotic responses. She’d even somehow managed to put a slight look of concern on her typically unmoving face.
She suggested they go out to one of the Earldom’s nearby towns.
She said that walking through the streets during a time they’d be the least busy was best.
Her answer was even more worrying for Noth than solving his panic attacks.
Noth hadn’t left the grounds of the manor in about half his life, not since that fateful trip with his mom to the church. Irrational though it was, a childish fear still haunted Noth. He felt that if he left the manor, another awful event could happen. He knew how little it made sense, but at the same time, it was hard to doubt his own clearly engraved memories of the last trip he’d taken. He did his best to act nonchalant and tell Elillith that he’d let her know when he was free enough to go, but it would be a lie to say he wasn’t shaking inside.
For the first time in a while, Noth was forced to hold on to his angel and panic for a while that night.
~~~
It was only a month later that an assassin appeared.
This wasn’t the first person to try an attempt on Noth’s life. The assassins had actually started showing up in the manor about a year after Jeck’s ‘disappearance’. A small handful of people had already been sent to try and stealthily remove the boy through various means throughout the past two years. Sometimes his angel would warn him of a poisoned meal, or perhaps of a servant trying to prick him with an infected needle. Noth had to admit that some of the attempts on his life were downright creative. Every time he’d ratted out the offending assassins to his father, and every time the Earl had taken care of them.
But this time was different.
None of the assassins had ever directly attacked him before.
That is, not until this one.
The assassin snuck in while Noth was asleep, but his angel had woken him up before the attack began. The boy was scared witless at the idea of a trained attacker headed towards him, especially one that was sent to kill him. He didn’t have any clue on how to respond. The Kieran line had always been [Warriors] who needed no overt training in how to fight, their God-dess given abilities having taught them all they would need, so Noth had never had a single class on anything of the sort. He’d looked towards the angel with an extremely pleading look, hoping she’d offer him any amount of helpful advice, but she would only ever give him one unhelpful response:
Noth’s eyes grew to the size of saucers when his door was suddenly flung open, but the menacing dagger glinting off the light from the window was all he could see. In a panic, he yelled the first thing he could think of.
“I- I wish the dagger was gone!”
The dagger did in fact disappear, just like he wanted, but that only seemed to slow the confused assassin down for a few seconds, before their big, menacing hands reached out for the boy’s neck. Noth’s panicking brain had honestly thought that if their weapon went away, then the person couldn’t attack him and might just give up and leave. He felt silly for having such a childish thought. The boy did his best to crawl to the other side of the bed where his attacker couldn’t reach, but he had moved too slowly, and was swiftly caught by his calf. The grip was so strong that he could already feel the bruises forming on his leg as he was dragged back. In his desperation as the hands reached for his neck once again, Noth managed to finally choke out one last sobbing plea.
“Please save me.”
And just when Noth could feel the rough hands touch his skin, the assassin flopped onto the floor, motionless.
The boy laid there for a moment, quaking as he worked up the courage to finally move. When he calmed himself enough to sit up and crawl over to the edge of his bed, he grimaced at the sight of the pristine corpse that was now draped across his floor in an unceremonious manner. It looked like the body could hop up at any moment and be perfectly fine, if not for how overly stiff and still it was. Noth’s mind wouldn’t let him forget the sensation of the swiftly fading heat he’d felt when he’d tried to piece together his mother after she’d died, and his morbid curiosity had him reaching out to touch the body before he even realized it. A sudden soft, thumping sound snapped the boy out of his trance, however, and when he looked up at the source of the noise he found his angel standing on the floor, repeatedly weakly kicking at the unmoving sack of flesh’s stomach.
Her gaze swiftly turned to the astounded looking boy whose hand was frozen in the air just inches from the cadaver.
When Noth vehemently shook his head, the angel subsequently turned her attention back to the corpse, and gave it a few more kicks for good measure. The boy watched her with a look of disapproval, before eventually looking back down. His hand skittishly patted and nudged at the body a few times, but then he pulled back his hand and stared at his palm with an unsatisfied gaze. The bed dipped next to him as his angel sat down and leaned back, propping herself up on her arms.
Noth pulled a face at her words. Of course he would have died, what did she mean? She rolled her head slowly to look at him and giggled.
The angel gracefully leapt up from the bed and twirled around playfully, stepping around the corpse in front of them carefully before ending up in front of Noth. She lovingly nuzzled her cheek against his own, and then pulled back enough to purr her next words directly in his ear.