A Court of Fate and Failure | Azriel

9: Rot and Ruin

Their fear was a knife to her heart. 

A female. Her children. But the father... his rage is what chilled her the most. So in the hesitant light of morning with the sun peeking over the horizon, Naoise awoke.

The earth trembled with her arrival at their door, wings flared wide and siphons glowing with the burning that encased her arm. Everything seemed to pause, the rushing flow of rage to confusion to frustration fueling the father. The confusion, sorrow, and fear trickling with slow dread into the hearts and the minds of a mother and her younglings. 

Naoise reveled in the flash of fear that sparked in the waters of his rage and, unintentionally, urged it deeper. Urged it to fill that river of inky rage with a thick fear, green and putrid. She wanted it to rot him from the inside out. Infect him like he intended to with those that had placed themselves under his protection.

And she felt the moment his soul began to rot under her will.

Naoise remained on their front doorstep, a chilling confusion numbing the edge of her previous wrath. She felt his emotions as vividly as before, but it was almost like she could reach out and turn the tides however she liked. Pluck and tune and change their very emotions. She might not have believed it to be true if the fear of the female had not flashed with relief, had not morphed into her own rage. 

Suddenly that trickle turned into its own pour, and Naoise did nothing to stop it. On their doorstep in the early morning she simply listened within and to the tunes of their hearts beating in her chest.

Unconsciously, she'd nudged the mother to protect her younglings from the male infected with cowardice by her hand. And she rose to the occasion.

After a fair bit of crashing and snarling and sniveling, Naoise stepped aside as the door swung open and a male crumpled to the ground beside her. In the doorway, a female stood willowy tall with skin that resembled the leaves in autumn and hair the color of flowing waterfalls. She seemed to glow with her rage, and Naoise made a conscious effort to back away from her emotions and watched as that rage ebbed almost immediately. 

However, the male of the same species as the female at her feet was not so easily consoled. Even as she held no part anymore in the tides of his emotions, he was curled in on himself. And she felt the rot she'd encourage settle with a finality into his heart. Her damage had been done, and whatever it was could not be reversed.

The female took a moment to drink in the sight of her partner laying on the doorstep, no longer capable of harming her or her younglings, and her heartbeat jumped with relief and triumph. Pride, too, for standing her ground and winning. Such an expression, such a feeling as that flooding Naoise's senses stole any guilt away in an instant. 

Then, she glanced up and seemed to notice the Illyrian standing on her doorstep for the first time. The female froze, eyes like tempted coals widening in surprise. Naoise certainly was not small by any means, if anything she could be considered imposing what with her large wings that were spread behind her back from whence she landed and her height that beat even that of this female's. Not to mention the leather she wore and the siphons that still glowed with remnants of rage and all those warring emotions. 

But she did her best to lessen that with relaxed facial features and the hint of a smile. It didn't do much, but she tried.

"I–I–"

"Well done," Naoise murmured, her voice grating from having just woken and the attempt at softening it with a decrease in volume. Yet the words had the intended effect when the female seemed to tear up, flecks of gold hovering in her eyes. Naoise spared a brief glance to the shivering male at her feet. "You and your younglings will be alright?"