#maeva corolis

It was so odd; the heat from those horrid crystals had been so intense that the Shiverpeaks themselves had lost much of their snow, at least on this side of the range. She'd seen an entire glacier carve away from a mountainside, to slide down into some unsuspecting valley somewhere.

Then, when the orange glow had faded into the distance, something new. A pillar of azure light pierced the sky, rising so high it MUST have touched the clouds. It looked like a raging pillar of flame, but it didn't flicker. It just ROARED.

If that flame had done like the orange fires had done, and spread through Ascalon... it was certain there wouldn't be any survivors. The last embers of her hope to see her family faded away then. Blown away like ash in the wind.

For that, she hated the Charr. Hated that they hated humans. Hated their brutality, their monstrous appearance. Hated everything about them.

There were more nasty surprises in store for her though. The warriors and protectors guiding the refugees? Turned out they were mercenaries. Opportunistic mercenaries.

Now that they were out of Ascalon and in the middle of nowhere, they decided they needed payment. The refugees only had the clothes on their backs, and a few personal items.

They were slaughtered. Mostly.

Some, a bare few out of dozens, had been 'spared' because some of the mercenaries had turned a fair eye to them. She was one of them. It was... disgusting. Horrifying. In the first week alone, some of the others killed themselves to end their humiliation. But she hadn't.

She endured... and eventually fought back. It cost her every ounce of strength, and every single one of the bruises, burns, and gashes on her body, but she had fought back and escaped.

Now, her strength waning, she stumbled into the mouth of a cave, somewhere on some nameless mountainside. She had no idea where she was. It didn't matter. She was alive...

She collapsed against one of the walls, now that she was out of the wind and the snow and the cold. Violent shivers shook her; it was hard to focus to generate enough heat with her elemental skills. She wasn't good with them yet; she hadn't been trained by one of the elders, the mentors.

Was she going to die here, of hypothermia and exposure, after surviving all of that?

Her eyes began to unwillingly drift closed, as she felt sleep start to take her.

****

She awoke.

To heat, to warmth.

To some kind of blanket covering her aching, battered body. Blinking in confusion, she looked around; she was still in the cave, but the entrance had been sealed by a large stone. There was a pleasant, roaring fire beside her, keeping her warm. The blanket...

She recoiled when she realized what it was. There was no mistaking the set of horns, or the double ears near one edge of it. Whoever had provided her with a blanket....had skinned some Charr to do it.

Child....

Instantly she was fully awake, looking around. She'd heard the voice but... did she? It was hard to remember what it sounded like. Was it a male? Was it female? She couldn't even remember if it sounded like both simultaneously. It was just there, and gone, leaving a hole in her mind.

Child... Heal... Rest and Heal...

She was about to protest when something touched her mind, and sent her into a slumber.

***

She woke again. It felt...later. Much later.

Her body didn't ache as much. In the firelight, she could see her bruises were fading. Her wounds were healing, though she would be left with so many scars from the mercenary traitors, and their...

She bit down on that memory hard, shredding it with her mind. No. None of that now.

Yesss.... Such rage in one so young...

"Who are you?" She called into the darkness, staring around. The voice had sounded so very close this time. "Why did you save me from dying?"

Such rage...so potent. Like rich metal... but needs shaping...attuning... refining...

"....What are you talking about?" She muttered to herself. There was some undercurrent to the voice-- or was it voices? -- that she didn't like. She felt someone looking at her, or many someones. But she couldn't tell where they were.

Child... do you hunger?

The voice almost sounded playful. There was a sibiliant quality to it, like it was being gently whispered to her.

She was about to deny. Of course, her stomach betrayed her by growling fiercely. With a frown, she touched her stomach. "Yes."

There was a titter from the darkness, and for the barest moment, she saw a hand flick something into the light of the fire. It was an old dagger, incredibly old from the patina on it, with a hunk of meat skewered on it. Heavy, muscular meat, thready with fats.

It was followed by the scraping of a bowl, which slid into the light slowly, from a different patch of darkness. She didn't see the hands of the bearer though. From the way the light reflected off the fluid within, she could see it contained water.

Eat. Drink. Recover.... Then we talk...

She picked up the dagger, considering the meat in the half-light. It wasn't cooked, so far as she could tell. Where it came from...she had a pretty good idea. Even though her mind recoiled from thinking about it, her empty stomach growled angrily. She needed to eat, and at this point, it didn't care what she ate.

Summoning a faint fire barrier around her hand, she held the dagger out over the fire, and the meat began to cook...

***

"Who are you?" She asked into the darkness. It had been at least a week, maybe longer. She had slept for a time, but had no idea how long it had been. An hour? A day? Was it even the same year?

At first there was no answer, only a kind of shuffling in the darkness across the fire from her. It kind of sounded like someone in leather clothing, to be honest.

Finally, a face emerged from the shadows blurred by the shifting light and smoke. It looked like an old woman, smiling pleasantly from beneath a voluminous hood and robe. She shifted partially out of the darkness, and awkwardly waved a leather-gloved hand, before that hand vanished back beneath the folds of the robes.

"...Oh. Do you... live in these caves?" The girl asked slowly. She had not expected to see her benefactor at all. It was hard to see through the smoke, but that gloved hand she'd raised, the glove looked like it was made of mismatched scraps of leather. Like a jigsaw puzzle.

Now that she had a slightly better look at the woman's thick robe or cloak, it too appeared to be patchwork leather scraps.

"In a sense." The old woman replied, tilting her head to one side, as if curious. The hood on her head was large, billowy, but also clung to the edges of her face. Now that the girl thought about it, whoever this old woman was seemed to be bundled up in a very thick coat, right up to her jawline. Maybe it's protection against the cold? She could have FOUR coats on under that, for all I know! "It is... close to home."

There was something off about the old woman's accent. It didn't sound like anything she'd ever heard. Though she'd never been outside the walls of Ascalon, the girl didn't recognize it. Was it Elonian? Canthan? Or some odd, local dialect from the western provinces?

"Did you enjoy the meat?" The old woman asked.

The girl considered the rusted dagger sitting by the pelt that she'd ended up using as a blanket. About the meat that had been on it. About the taste of it. Part of her stomach still roiled at the thought, but the meat had been exactly what she'd needed. "....yes."

"Good. Good." The old woman nodded heavily. Almost a bow. "Is good. Not much game up on mountain. Any meat is good." She paused for a moment, and the girl could almost see the glimmering, dark eyes staring at her from the woman's mirthful face. "Any meat is good. No?"

She stared at the girl, unblinking. The girl shifted uncomfortably, her thoughts warring in her. She knew precisely where the meat had come from, and the part of her that was repelled was fighting the part of her that hated. The side of hate was starting to win. "Any meat is good. I agree."

The old woman's eyes glittered with...not joy. Not happiness. Exhultation. She shuffled back and forth, still half in and half out of the shadows. "Will bring more later. You rest now."

Then she began to shuffle backwards, away from the fire and the light. Before her face could totally fade into the darkness, the girl called to her.

"What is your name?"

This gave the old woman pause, but her face stretched in a rictus of a smile. "Call me... Grandmother."

Then she was gone...and a few moments later, the heavy, leathery shuffling seemed to expand, and become much more comfortable. Then it was gone.

The girl stared at the dagger, and shook her head. She picked up the shallow bowl of water and began to drink. It wasn't pure water; she could tell by the taste. There was something a bit brackish to it, but it was drinkable. It was cool, and cured her thirst nicely.

She tried to look into the bowl, using the firelight, but she couldn't see anything other than the reflection of the flames.

That was okay, she supposed.

***

Grandmother came back several times. Whether it was days apart, or mere hours, or even weeks, it was hard to tell. With every visit, Grandmother would ask her questions in broken Tyrian. She could tell they were meant to be more direct than they were, but they skirted around a lot of things. All of her own questions were casually deflected by nothing answers and amused sounds and head-tilts.

Every time, after they talked for a while, Grandmother would produce a different meat from somewhere in the darkness. One time it had been fresh rabbit. Another had been the paw of an arcotodus, stripped of its fur for her convenience. The fur itself had been presented as a short cloak trimmed with claws, for her to wear. It was a welcome addition, given she'd barely escaped with rags from the mercenary encampment.

With every meal, the girl would grow weary, and drift off into sleep. It never failed. She couldn't tell if Grandmother had laced her food or water with something, but she'd always woken up warm, and stronger than she had been when she fell asleep. Her bruises seemed to have long-ago healed, and her cuts were non-existant. The black eye she had been sporting had quickly healed to nothing judging from the reflection in the drinking bowl.

There were oddities she'd been noticing. When Grandmother was by the fire, sometimes she could hear shuffling and shifting out in the darkness around them. As if she and Grandmother weren't the only ones in the cave. She'd never gotten up to walk into the darkness though; there was a tinge of something in the air she didn't like at all.

She was always served water in the same stone bowl. Over time, though, she'd noticed the water was becoming...something else. She couldn't tell what. It was still cool, and still water, but there seemed to be something else mixed in with it. Something mildly unpleasant, but nothing too severe. The issue was that the mystery flavor was increasing in strength with each serving. She had always been sensitive to changes, so she could tell the flavor was just shifting ever so slightly. Maybe someone else wouldn't notice it, but she had.

The last thing was that she was starting to see in the darkness a bit. When Grandmother wasn't around, she could almost see the cave walls in the shadows, the pieces of fallen stone in the entrance...the gaping black hole that was the back of the cave. But when Grandmother returned, it always seemed like her vision diminished, leaving those same spots in permanent darkness. Since those were the times she heard furtive movements in the shadows, she obviously didn't try to figure out why.

There was a sense of danger in the idea of even asking.

****

One night--or one day, she couldn't tell which-- Grandmother abruptly straightened up while looking at her across the fire.

"Grandmother?" She asked.

The old woman seemed to glance to either side in the shadows, before nodding. "...You are strong now. Yes?"

The girl considered herself for a moment. She was better than when she had entered the cave. Much better, actually. She felt stronger, faster. She felt more magical strength than she'd ever felt flowing through her, power that had been steadily growing for the last few days. "Yes, Grandmother. Thanks to you, I feel much...better."

Grandmother nodded, before shuffling backward into the darkness. On her way out, she raised a patchwork leather-clad glove and gestured the girl to follow. "Good. Good. Is time to show you."

The girl slowly stood and followed the old woman, walking carefully and slowly into the shadows that her new vision just could not penetrate. She felt a hand reach out at some point to gently touch the small of her back, guiding her forward. It must have been Grandmother, because whoever it was hobbled or shuffled just the same.

They entered that gaping maw of darkness at the back of the cave, and the girl's heart started to race; she was being blindly led somewhere. There were twists. Turns. Rises. Descents. They must have walked for hours in silence. The only thing she could hear was the leathery shuffling of Grandmother's cloak-robe, the drip of water...and that ever-present furtive movement out in the shadows.

Eventually they came to what sounded like some kind of gallery; the sound echoed so loudly it could be nothing else but a chamber deep in the earth. A hand clasped hers lightly, bringing it up to touch...it felt like kindling on top of some kind of rounded, pillar stone. "Ignite. With fire magic."

She did as she was instructed, and channelled a little energy, sparking a flame that lit up the darkness...to a point.

Led to another pillar, topped by something sharp-edged and smooth: "Water. Make ball of water." Consternation flit across her face, but she nodded, and conjured a ball of water, floating it on top of the spike. She let it go, expecting the ethereal liquid to just collapse down in a splash of loose water, but instead, it hovered. It jiggled and wobbled, and began to glow a gentle blue as the crystal beneath it -- she could see it was a crystal the size of her forearm and deep purple in hue -- began to glow as well.

She was made to 'light up' two more pillars after that. One had an iron spike embedded at the top, which she left a short chain of electrical energy arcing upward. The energy seemed to self-preserve, forming into a kind of double-helix of power. The other had a heavy stone on its top, and she was told to make it hover like a cloud. That one pulsed slowly with yellow power when she was done.

Then, she was lead between all four pillars and Grandmother sat her down on stone bench that had been covered with the piled pelts of numerous animals. She knew she should smell them, but she couldn't; her sense of smell was blocked entirely.

"You still hate?" Grandmother asked oddly, encouragingly. That wisened grin was tight on her face.

"I do." She frowned, thinking about it. Her jaw clenched tight. "I hate the Charr. For what they did to Ascalon. But I also hate humans...norn too. Those mercenaries were Norn and human. Humans... yeah. I hate people. I .... hate."

Grandmother nodded. "Hate Asura too?"

"Money-grubbing sharkrats." She bit out, using an expletive she'd heard her parents use, when one of the short entrepeneurs tricked them legally out of something or charged them too much. Her only experiences with the race had been sour; sleazy merchants, bratty kids with way too much ego. Elders that treated everyone like morons. "They get no love from me."

"You want...revenge?"

Silence filled the gallery for a few moments. She looked inside herself, and still felt the heat of Ascalon burning. The pain of knives and lashes. The indignities and abuses she'd suffered. She felt the loss of her family keenly, like a dagger deep in her heart. Realizing that, she tried to look outward, to find anything else, anything that would keep her from answering yes. But it wasn't long before she realized she had nothing else but her pain and hate. Pain, powering hate. Hate, growing like a fire within her.

She smirked mirthlessly in the half-light. "Yes. I want revenge. I absolutely do."

Grandmother tilted her head, watching her carefully. "You...want be immortal? Never die unless destroyed?" "....Yes."

The word was filled with venom. All her pain. All her hate. All her contempt. A single syllable said it all.

"Then...we will make so." Grandmother intoned, her voice shifting audibly. The quiet, raspy voice began to give way to something thicker, darker. Something very much not human.

From the darkness, squealling shapes flapped out on heavy, leathery wings. Skinless limbs reached out pinning her arms and legs, while eyeless, mishapen heads opened fang-filled jaws. She was terrified, but didn't resist at all as they bit into her arms, legs, shoulders. The pain was tremendous, but she struggled through it, staring at Grandmother.

The beasts didn't rip chunks from her as she thought they would. Instead, their distended jaws merely secured their hold on her, though she could feel them drinking her blood.

In front of her, Grandmother stood up...and up, and up. Her leathery cloak snapped open into two great, patchwork wings, their inner sides studded with bone spikes. The elderly face she'd seen over the fire so many times, already grinning horribly with a mouth of razor sharp teeth, was pulled away by a sharp claw, tearing and shredding like wet paper. Beneath it, a long, grand head of bone and naked flesh revealled itself. The part of the wings that had formed the hood had hidden the racks of elaborate horns that swirled off the Grandmother's true head.

It was then she realized why Grandmother had shuffled; the figure of 'Grandmother' was only a small, small portion of this entity. It had literally crouched on the floor, lowering itself to her level, using its wings as a kind of mimic disguise. The old woman's face she'd seen... well it was clear it had once belonged to someone. Probably. It had been carefully held in place on the beast's nose. It's clawed hands were much too big, so when 'Grandmother' had waved a hand, or touched her, it must have been one of these other creatures, slipping under the disguise to offer a more appropriately-sized limb.

"Grandmother?" She asked, her voice a whisper. The beasts holding her flapped their wings, lifting her up to a standing position while they fed.

"I am... Matriarch." The beast intoned, its face grimacing in what must have been a pleasant smile for it. "GRAND Matriarch. You...be new daughter."

It stepped closer. "We save you. We feed you. Give you strength. Power."

One of the beasts pulled her head back until her mouth opened, while another held her jaw like that. Both continued to work their jaws slightly, drawing more blood. She felt herself beginning to get woozy. "We give you... I give you... Immortality." The Grand Matriarch raised a forearm, revealling one of the same rusted daggers the girl had eaten from. It was plunged through the creature's forearm, the tip popping out of the other side painfully. It grasped the hilt and began to pull. Not straight out; out and forward, ripping a long gash in its arm that it didn't seem to react to at all. An ichor began to seep from the gash; a smell the girl recognized for the first time. It was the same smell and taste that had flavored every bit of food and drink she'd had since she'd entered the cavern in desperation. Had the Matriarch been deliberately tainting her food with its own blood?

She knew the answer instantly, as the Matriarch reached out to carefully hold her head, while bringing the wound to her lips.

"Drink... child... Blood loss...make weak...Blood is power." The massive creature told her, as she began swallowing the unnatural fluid. "Your blood. Make them stronger. My blood...make you stronger."

There was no way for her to resist. She crushed down the urge to gag and simply accepted the ichor, thinking of it as merely warm water. That's the only way she could stomach it, right?

After a time, the Matriarch withdrew her arm, hissing with pride. It lashed that arm out in wide arcs, spraying the area between the four pillars with her blood in a seemingly random pattern. A pattern that began to smoke once the blood settled on the stone.

The air behind the girl suddenly became hotter, and a cruel, crimson light began to illuminate the chamber. She couldn't see it, but she knew some kind of portal had been opened behind her. The sound of screams, wails of pain, and moans of desperation echoed out from this portal, and she could feel the creatures clinging to her getting agitated; they could sense home.

"We take you home." The Matriarch declared, pointing one dripping claw behind the girl's head. "You immortal now. You have Thirst. Hunger. We rebuild you. Make you like us. Make you new Matriarch. Spread pain and death to living world."

"Oh... I'll definitely do that..." She said quietly, a slow, evil smile rising on her face. She stood, in spite of the weight of the clingers, and looked up at the towering monstrosity she'd called Grandmother for so long. "But I'm not going anywhere."

The Matriarch had a moment to tilt her head, an inquisitive sound murmuring from her, before a trio of flaming claw scratches cut her into pieces. They seared through flesh and bone in an instant, leaving the Matriarch's upper torso and right arm in one piece, left upper arm, shoulder, and belly in another, and her legs tumbled uselessly away from where she'd stood.

The girl continued smiling, raising the rusted dagger that had been mistakenly left to her from her meals. Never give an elementalist a focusing item. She recalled one of her teachers telling her. Now she understood why, and it just made her smile more broad.

There was a pause, a shocked minute, before the clingers began to squeal in rage. They drew back their jaws, planning to strike again, this time to kill. But they never got the chance.

The girl, reaching deep inside herself, to the newfound power these creatures had imbued her with, seemed to ignite with flames. Every creature clinging to her screamed in pain before turning instantly to ashes. The sudden burst of energy from the barrier actually disrupted the magic in the chamber; the portal behind her wobbled like struck water.

The Matriarch wasn't dead; it would take much more than that to kill her, but she was badly, badly damaged. With her remaining arm, she grunted and tried to flap wings that had been carved right off, while pulling herself to the portal. "We...offered power! Immortal! You...betray?!..."

The girl merely stepped down to where the severed arm was; it was ironically the arm she'd been forced to drink from. She knelt down and tore the dagger embedded there out with an undisguised amount of violent pleasure, and considered it. Now she had two daggers to work with. More than enough.

She looked over to the almost helpless body of the Matriarch, halfway to the portal as she dragged herself there. With a reluctant sigh, she trotted over, kneeling before the elongated head of the beast. There was something patronizing about the way she moved now. As if it was an imposition. "You were going to use me, Grandmother. And I'm done being used."

She smiled, spinning the dripping dagger in her hand. "I'll full accept the gifts you've given me. For that you have my thanks. You pulled me from the edge of death, nursed me back to health, and even granted me immortality, if I can believe you."

"You...immortal." The Matriarch confirmed, slowly nodding its head. "But...without rebuilding... the Thirst will take you. You need kill. Again and again." It reached out to her with its remaining hand. "If rebuild, you feel no pain from Thirst. Become more power. But as you are now, you need feed."

The girl's bemused expression faded as she considered the beast's words. "What do I need to feed on then?  More meat? Easy enough."

"Blood!" Matriarch hissed. "Blood is power. Blood is all. Flesh is trapping for blood. Need drink blood!" "....Fine. I can deal with that." She shrugged. Why not? She'd just experiment to find out anyway.

"...Changes still happen." The Matriarch rumbled, and started to pull herself towards the portal again. "You not Us. But you become bit more like Us. You get wings. Can't hide, with wings."

"I'll figure out a way." The girl said tiredly, grabbing the beast by a horn and hauling it closer to the portal. "For the sake of the fact you DID save me, I won't end you. I'll send you back to...wherever. You can rebuild your own body, or whatever. I'm out of here."

The Matriarch crawled the last few spaces until it crossed the bloody red border of the portal. "You...to be daughter. Greatest of Reavers. I... find you again. Daughter."

"Not from here you won't." The girl shook her head, and flicked her dagger, sending firey claw-marks over each of the ritual pillars, shredding them to dust. The pillars collapsed and the portal caved inward. The last sound she heard was the Matriarch calling her name from whatever realm she was in.

It took no time to get back to the cave entrance; with the numbing darkness gone and her vision enhanced, she didn't even have to summon a globe of fire to see by.

Standing before the large stone that blocked the way, she sighed and flicked it with one earth-attuned finger. The boulder, which had to weigh six tons, launched into the air, smashing into rubble a dozen meters away.

She stepped outside into the cold; a cold she couldn't feel, with the fire aura forming its skin-tight barrier around her. She took a breath of fresh, untainted air....and immediately doubled over in agony.

It was her back. It felt like something was clawing at her shoulder blades. Like a murellow was trying to dig its way into her. She screamed as something snapped, and the sound of ripping, tearing flesh joined the night air. Thick, wet sounds, like slabs of raw meat hitting each other. Agony beyond agonies. Blood spattered the snow as something...two somethings... reached up out of her back, shredding and mutilating the muscle as it went. It went on, and on, and ON.

Finally, it seemed to be over.  She shuddered in pain, feeling cold air on... wait, what was that? She was feeling cold air on something she had never felt before. No part of her body that she could remember felt like that.

Looking over her shoulder, her jaw dropped as she saw not one, but two grand, bat-like wings finally reach their full growth, before shivering in the cold and automatically draping down around her. They didn't move just on their own; she sensed she'd caused them to wrap around her. She could feel every inch of their webbing, and the strength therein. They felt like they were part of her... because they were.

The words of the Matriarch came back with awful clarity at that moment. "Changes still happen... Become like Us."

"Well now..." Maeva Corolis said to herself, breathing heavily. She stood up and stared out at the mountain landscape with brown eyes that had turned purple, struck through with red. "Wings... I suppose I can deal with that..."