The Dragonfall Mountain Range was a series of cloud-kissing mountains which bisected the continent of Seranim almost in half. These snow-tipped peaks weren’t just known for their size and significance, however, as they were littered with Feral Beasts.
The animals of Astreya were all considered sacred, due to the fact that it was these same animals which bonded with the souls and bodies of the people. But after the war of the Gods, a taint pervaded the five continents. This taint would take over the animals, making them feral and driving them to attack anything and everything that they could.
When these tainted animals—dubbed ‘Feral Beasts’—first appeared before the people of Astreya, it was a massacre. The animals, strengthened by the taint ripped through even the best warriors, striking fear into the hearts of everyone. This disparity in strength caused humanity to retreat into large cities because the only way for them to survive, was for them to work together.
Then, in a spark of inspiration—though some say it was through divine intervention— a warrior by the name of Jin Hai ventured out from the safety of his city into the dark depths of what would later be known as the Bloodwood Forest. A stretch of forest about 45,000 fang chi* which wrapped around his city. There Jin Hai found the animal which was bonded to his very soul, it's image visible on his chest, the Platinum ranked* Midas Lion. Rare and elusive, the Midas Lion looked almost as though it was birthed from the sun itself, graced with a shimmering coat of pale gold and a tawny mane. Its eyes were a thing of mystery, for there was no recollection of a person who took the risk and hadn’t gotten immediately turned to gold by its imposing gaze. Rumors flew, however—some proclaimed its eyes to be fiery and violent while others said it had warm, inviting ones, like pools of honey, a drastic change of pace from the predator it was known to be. The most widely believed was that the Midas Lion had hypnotic, lulling eyes, a flash of beautiful amber, but none knew for sure. The teeth and claws of the beast were sharper than any blade and capable of piercing steel armor as easily as a flame through paper.
The Midas Lion was truly a fearsome beast, so much so that the people of the city advised anyone who saw it to simply run away before they attracted its attention. If they failed to run in time, however, it was often joked that they say a quick prayer and hope they taste bad. When Jin Hai met the beast, he simply stood before it, matching its gaze evenly. The lion regarded him calmly, before simply heading back into its cave, curling into a ball and going to sleep.
It was many a year that Jin Hai had been gone from the city. So long in fact that many forgot about him. Those who did remember him were shocked at the man that appeared before them. It was said that Jin Hai arrived early one morning, with the rising sun at his back, dressed in nothing but his hemp pants and covered in numerous scars. His hair, which had before been brown and close-cropped, flowed down to the small of his back, bright blond. His eyes were amber, and slit like a cat’s, his nails lengthened and filed to sharp points. In truth when he appeared before them, many guards fled the wall, proclaiming that the Feral Beast had attained human form.
Jin Hai looked upon the city of his birth, its gates closed and the guards at the ready. But he simply closed his eyes, took a deep breath and then whispered, possibly his first words in far too long, “I’m home.”
----------------------------------------
It was often said, that the human mind is a powerful but fragile thing. Capable of enacting incredible feats of will and perseverance, but also capable of breaking when encountered with terrible or painful experiences.
To many, the thought of someone's mind breaking; the thought of someone being pushed to such an extent that they lose their sanity; the thought that it was possible to lose something that fundamentally made us who we are; is so farfetched that they think it impossible.
But were they to see the young boy trudging slowly through the snow, covered in blood, they'd rethink that possibility.
This little boy, who couldn't be more than 8 summers old moved with such a slow, swaying gait, that he seemed like a drunkard just out of a tavern, picking his way home. The boy's face showed no emotion, something that was out of place on the face of a child and made him seem more sculpture than human. His green eyes were those of a dead fish, wide and with a hidden depth that drew you into a dark, cold abyss.
Though he moved through the snow in clothes too thin to fight the cold the boy showed no reaction to it, nary a shiver going through his body. This small, unnerving boy truly seemed to be dead to everything around him, dead inside. Though his face was not as emotive as it had been the night before, it was obvious that this was Azrael.
He kept his slow, meandering pace up the mountain on which he walked, his destination unknown. The effects of the cold were starting to show as his lips and ears became blue, his fingers froze like icicles and his joints became stiff.
The sun slowly rose from the horizon as the child continued his trek, illuminating the mountainside and causing the snow to glisten. Icicles hanging from outcrops and rock walls shined a myriad of colors along the ground, painting a captivating picture of lights capable of stealing one's breath away. He paid no attention to the beautiful landscape though, keeping his dead gaze steadfastly ahead.
Azrael walked for many hours, weaving aimlessly through the few trees that littered the snowy landscape. As he made his way around yet another tree, his foot snagged on one of its many roots, causing him to trip and fall face first into the snow with nothing but a soft thump.
He made no move to get up, however, seeming content to simply lay there and die.
As he laid there, drifting slowly to unconsciousness, a simple thought popped into his head, echoing in his mind. ‘Is it my turn...Mama?’
----------------------------------------
An indeterminable amount of time after, a cry pierced the haze surrounding his brain. The first time it rang out, he chose to ignore it, the biting cold lulling him slowly along the river of unconsciousness. The second time, he found it a minor annoyance as it hijacked this experience, grasping his awareness and pulling it to the forefront of his mind. It was only until the third cry, as he slowly began to wake up, that Azrael recognized the voice to be that of a young girl.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
Curious, he mustered up the energy to lift his head a few inches off the ground, listening for the sound that may have very well saved his life. He rose shakily to his feet, looking around for the source of the noise. Luckily another cry did indeed come and for the first time since he'd began his trek, a spark of life flashed briefly in the boy’s eyes.
As he stumbled drunkenly in the direction using the sparse trees as resting points, Azrael felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. There hadn’t been any more cries since he’d started moving and for some reason, it filled him with a sense of dread.
Growing up, he had been told many stories about the mountains on which he traversed. He knew of the extremely large Feral Beast population and how lucky he’d been in not having encountered one. He also knew that someone screaming in these mountains could only mean ‘danger’ and it would be best to go as far from the sound as possible instead of toward it. But still, he trudged onward, toward his goal.
Azrael happened upon a cliff and unsure where to go from there, he glanced over the edge only to stumble backwards in surprise and horror. Not quite believing what he’d seen just a few moments ago, he crawled over the cliff’s edge, peering over it once more.
Below him, about 1 li away, was a clearing. In this clearing was a series of tents, tightly packed together in the pattern of a spiral around a large campfire. It wasn’t this that caused his horror, however. Strewn around the camp, on broken tents and piled into small mounds were tens of bodies, human bodies. Most were eviscerated and shredded, barely recognizable blobs of bloody flesh and bone. Others were half eaten, with select chunks missing from their bodies. Azrael gagged, barely keeping himself from expelling what little contents were left in his stomach. For even at the distance of 1 li, the smell of blood, entrails and feces wafted up to him.
The sound of crunching brought his attention to a shadowy being, crouch of a person, the twitching of the person’s limbs every so often showed that they were still alive. The child brought a hand up to cover his mouth, his eyes wide in terror as he noticed more and more of these beings, in similar situations. A scream, very similar to what he’d heard previously sounded from the clearing, drawing his gaze to a young girl possibly his own age and a man.
Tears streamed down the girl’s face as the man struggled to stop his intestines from falling out, and failed. The pair were surrounded by three of the shadowy beings as the boy knew deep in his heart, that they were doomed.
But Azrael felt a burning sensation, like molten lava flowing through his chest. A desire to help them, even if it’d lead to his own death. He stood, slowly from his perch, searching for a way to get down to the pair.
Then a vision flashed before his eyes. Showing a young boy, barely four summers old toiling in a small garden, pulling stones from the soil. His face handsome, but gaunt, his black hair almost brown from the dirt that caked in it, his hands bloody from the multiple sharp rocks that he was handling. His eyes, a startling shade of green, were subdued and downtrodden with tears budding in their corners. He watched as the boy stood, whimpering as he looked at his hands. He watched as a man, with some similarities walked up behind the child, smacking him in the head and screaming at him to get back to work. He watched this sad child, tears spilling freely from his eyes, do as he was told, getting back on his hands and knees and pulling the stones out of the soil and putting them in a small basket. Watching this vision, something within him broke, causing tears to roll slowly down his face. This boy…was him.
The vision changed to the same child though older, walking through the streets of a small town carrying a basket of vegetables. His bare feet were blistered and bruised from the rough ground, causing him to wince and stumble periodically. People walked past the boy, seemingly uncaring about why this young soul was doing such tasking work when he could be playing like the other children his age. The young Azrael then stumbled, tripping over his own feet, dropping the basket and causing the vegetables to spill across the street, yet no one stopped to assist him. When he arrived at his destination—a small house in a corner of the village—and showed the man from the previous vision the basket of bruised vegetables, the man yelled at him in fury, beating him brutally before throwing him out of the house and onto the street. Many people were walking past the house, and many looked at the broken boy laying before them, but again, no one moved to help.
The vision shifted again, to a scene that many would not be able to stomach. This vision showed three people in a room. Azrael, the man and a woman who could only be the young boy’s mother, for they shared many features. The man stood behind the woman who kneeled before the boy, with a knife to her throat. The woman gave her son a quick hug and then pushed him away as the man behind her rubbed the knife across her throat, splattering the young boy with her blood.
The vision ended, causing Azrael to stumble forward slightly, gasping for breath.
A voice reverberated through him, deep and a power so vast, that it encompassed his entire being.
"Humans have always brought pain to this world. Their greed knows no bounds and their distrust towards each other reigns supreme. They know that they are weak so they fear what they don’t understand, they take what they want, and they show no remorse. They care not for others, and they believe in nothing but increasing their own strength.”
The little boy, standing on the cliff collapsed to his knees. The burning in his chest cooled, becoming instead a block of ice in his chest. The desire to help the pair wilting away as he watched the three shadowy beings close in on them. The larger of the three grabbed the man by the leg, dragging his body away from the girl and chasing the others from his meal. The other two pounced upon the little girl and her screams filled the air as they fought over her, each holding an arm and a leg while biting into her torso. The little girl’s blood spouted like a fountain before with an echoing squelch and horrifying scream, her body split in two and the beings simply went their own way to sit and eat in peace.
“This world is a place where the strong triumph and the weak suffer. You have suffered for long because you have been weak because you have been ‘Human’. It is time for you to release these shackles, to become what you are truly meant to be. To become the supreme being on the face of this world. Come, my child.”
The boy rose to his feet, feeling a sense of where the voice was telling him to go. So once again he walked, stronger and more sure-footed than he had since he’d started out from his home. He walked because he had nowhere else to go. He walked because he believed it was his destiny. He walked...because he was weak.
The boy walked until he came to a large ravine, many li deep, at the bottom of which sat a large lake. The ravine emitted the same sense of power as the being which had spoken to him before. Then, as if drawn by his thoughts, the being spoke to him once again.
“What is your name child?”
The boy looked down into the large gorge, his thoughts unknown, before taking a deep breath and whispering, “Azrael.”
Then suddenly a force pushed him from behind, sending him flying into the ravine. The force of the wind rushing past him was so great that he felt unconsciousness encroaching upon him. As he slowly drifted off into oblivion he heard a final statement from the unknown entity.
“Welcome home, Azrael.”