Storm

Storm

---

When Storm came of age, she handled The Search by becoming a messenger. She traveled through even the worst of weather - always an excellent flier, with a reckless but sturdy side, battling her namesake just fit. Through this she found her charge - Twilit, the patriarch of a harsh little clan in the Fortress of Ends. At first, he found this ridiculous. Long, weary years of protecting the clan from its cruel and insane matriarch, and he couldn't take care of himself?? However, he soon warmed up to the idea as the two grew close while stile maintaining their independence - Twilit was never babied, and Storm often left his side to continue her career: she acted as the messenger for Clan of Cold Floes... until disaster stuck. While on delivery, a plague wiped out the whole clan, including her beloved mate and charge Twilit.

---

She's really, really far out in the Viridan Labyrinth when the prickling feeling of something wrong starts to itch across her skin and sting underneath her spines. She only has two more messages to deliver, and her Charge can handle himself. It's fine. But the itch grows and grows, worming incessantly inside her head and magic until it's painful, like fiery nails scratching at her bones. She takes off halfway through the last flight, no longer able to resist the urge, veering south towards home and her charge. Over the domain of the Flamecaller she crumples out of the sky, mind and body screaming as one. Lightning magic with a hint of frost recoils back inside her core, whirling with razor edges as the bond, half her soul and all her heart, snaps. He's dead, he's dead he's dead hesdead - no. He promised. He can't be dead. She takes off again, leaving blood smeared on harsh volcanic stone. Her wings ache in time with her pulse, sorrow staved off by a desperate hope.

When she arrives, the lair is silent. It's strange, the lair is never really quiet - someone is always moving about, the stringent tones of Nightwing ringing through the caverns or hatchlings squabbling.

The wind shusshs softly over the snow.

Storm steps forwards, claws scraping across the uneven ice. That was wrong too. The floors were always flat and smooth, and the Icewarden's magic would - should - have prevented the walls from melting like they obviously had. She breaths deeply, nostrils flaring. There's a faint hint of something warm threaded through the numbing smell of cold, something rotten and oily.

She picks up her pace, rounding the corner into the main hall at a trot, and then - Ohgodsohgodsohgods Half-digested meat rises in the far back of her throat, stinging tender flesh as she gags. A single horn juts out of Nightwing's skull as one eye glares back, milky-white. Her face is in ruins, pustulant boils bubbling up under warped and glistening flesh, the skin stripped off to reveal rotting muscle. Teeth glimmer through the gaps in her lips, stretched and cracked over her jaw.

Storm jerks her eyes upwards, determined not to look to closely, to not think about the fact that oh gods, that was a dragon - the rest of the clan is stretched out behind their matriarch, all stripped bare of skin in a hideous display of slow decomposition. But nowhere is the bulk of Storm's Charge.

Horrified eyes gaze down again. Below Nightwing is - Twilit. Her claws are driven deep into his ribs, and his face is a grotesque cross between a snarl and a grin, gleaming wet with blood dripping from his empty eye sockets.

Storm turns and flees from leering face of her mate, running as if the demons of the Shade are in pursuit. She snaps her wings open through the blind haze of panic, not even feeling the clawtips snag along the walls and then she's flying, flying, flying, escaping the place where she was once happy.

---

---

Get thylacine/stripes
Has severe ptsd, depression and fits of anger
was found by the SilverDusk Clan