The Forge Room
POV: Azu The Raven
Wrath was posturing again, the floor to the Quartet's creation cracking and keening. Glowing beneath his feet in angry fire only to be dimmed again by the Shadow that was us all. Ranting and raving while the other six of us watched his tirade at Balance. Balance to his credit slithered and twisted in formless existence, easily dodging Wrath's fury as reality-shattering strike after strike missed. He only laughed and continued to toy with Brother.
"Answer me, Balance! Why do you continue to meddle with my servants! Why do you pour so much time into MY PRIESTESS!" His eyes burned with a hellfire that even I couldn't comprehend to its full degree. My my my, how our shared origin held such power, only to be sequestered in such an undeserving vessel.
Xelex answered coyly, allowing that sharp-toothed smile to form in formless smoke. "Why for the sun to rise again! For the branches to be healed, for the grass to grow, for the cracks in this world the inherited to be welded together once more!"
Bhal stretched out his arm in a fleshy tether, gripping Xelex by the throat and forming around his fist. I could smell Xelex's flesh burning, he only laughed again at Bhal. "She is my servant, just like the priestess before her and before that one, and all the ones before her."
"So I shouldn't push her into finding the caverns beneath the ruins of The Citadel? Do you think the Goblins would find it interesting to see the not rotting corpse of The Great Mother? Buried so far below that brood of skulls?" Bhal threw Xelex across the Forge Room, crashing into the Oculum that the Quartet used to watch us.
Balance dissolved into black mist to fill the room, asking us all a simple question. "Do you think Bhal was a fool to kill her?" We didn't need to ask, it was him that ruined our chances of repairing what had happened. While we were still beasts, while we were still young, while Bhal was the strongest of us all. We didn't need Xelex telling us again that Wrath had acted far too soon, killing The Great Mother.
His next words perked all of our attentions, the stark stillness of the air a contrast palpable to the fervor in the words. "She smeeeellllls like her. She acts like her. She shared that ancient power with her. Wraaaaath, I don't think you killed her." He reformed, clawed tendrils cutting Bhal's face with deep red gashes, that Sorcerer's porcelain mask back on his face. "I think she might still be around."
Bhal elbowed Balance in the face hard enough to shatter his mask. "I drank her blood, I ripped her neck open, I took her children, I took her power. She is dead." He growled low, a reverberation felt in the earth below. Earthquakes racking the distant shores of Mhuzelt.
Balance reformed in front of me, face barely an inch from mine. A far too knowing look in his eyes, like he knew what I never revealed to anyone. "And what would the Sun have to say if Night was still alive?" That was the only confirmation I needed. He knew. Syn in the back of my mind, shrinking away into the deepest parts of my soul. Hiding herself even more than what I could have given her.
"I think it would balance wonderfully." Is all I gave him, though that omniscient smile never left his face, there was no doubt. I wondered if he would keep that to himself, or if he would use it against me at some point.
"Shut it you Raven clad harlot." Bhal roared as he leveled a punch toward Balance.
I was expecting to be hit with his blow and readied myself for it. I waited and waited, but it never came. Opening my eyes, Bhal was on the ground, out cold. "Strongest amongst us he was. The hotter the fire, the darker the night, the starker the difference." Xelex responded, a bored look on his face. I shifted my wings to hide my shaking. Draping them over my shoulders, perched as I was, it hid the rest of my body. Enough to accomplish the task.
I squawked out, seeing as no one else was going to ask. "And what exactly are you doing with Ilgor? The amount of time you have spent with her hasn't been unnoticed."
Without turning to answer me, he asked a question for his answer. "Have you chosen one? Have you picked one of the Old One's children to focus?"
He knew. He knew, he knew, he knew. I tried to keep all panic from my voice, keep it level as my Siblings turned to me. "Like you have said. I also smell Prey again, yes. I'm paying attention to Neaves."
He only smiled, cracking the sides of his mask. Viscious bloody cracks, ones far too excited to begin again.
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