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Personal Style
Apparel
Skin
Scene
Measurements
Length
4.64 m
Wingspan
7.67 m
Weight
557.29 kg
Genetics
Obsidian
Metallic
Metallic
Obsidian
Bee
Bee
Obsidian
Veined
Veined
Hatchday
Breed
Eye Type
Level 25 Wildclaw
Max Level
STR
8
AGI
9
DEF
6
QCK
5
INT
5
VIT
6
MND
6
Biography
Azazel
Scion of the Shade
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Even before his heart began to beat, the whispering was there. It crept into Azazel, oozing through the shell of his egg. What had drawn it here—some darkness in the clan, perhaps? His mother first knew that something was wrong when the bright spots upon the egg suddenly dimmed, going from blue to cloudy gray. Her clan reassured her, saying that some eggs were just a little different from others. If the hatchling was sickly, then it would need special care, that was all. “You fret too much,” they scolded. “Look at your older son, see how excited he is. Stop fretting—for your children’s sake.” So the expectant mother forced a smile onto her face. With her older son’s help, she tended the egg, waiting for her next child to come into the world. Finally, it hatched: A sharp crack ripped the air, and the mother Wildclaw turned to look. Her older son, Infernal, was already standing nearby, his face alight with excitement. It dropped when the egg split open and the hatchling slid out. The mother screamed, a shrill shriek of pure horror, as she beheld her child. That was Azazel’s first memory: Straw scraping against his skin, the cold air of outside, his mother—his own mother!—repulsed by him. His older brother loomed closer, his face ashen with concern. “Mother, it’s all right! We’ll just clean him up...No, Mother!” The wheedling tone gave way to terror as their mother extended her claws. “No!” Infernal hurled himself against their mother. On the floor, the child who would become Azazel squirmed... If “child” he could even be called. What should have been a Wildclaw hatchling was instead shrouded in inky vapor, a blot of darkness trembling on the floor. He moved feebly, narrowly missing being trod on by his struggling mother and brother. The vapors undulated around it, seeming to whisper as they moved. Their mother stumbled against the wall. Even from a tender age, Azazel recognized the look in her eyes. It was chilling, murderous... There would be no reasoning with her. The newborn hatchling felt himself scooped up—and then there was a series of jolts as his brother bore him away. There were more alarmed shouts from behind, as the rest of the clan hurried to investigate, but they couldn’t drown out his mother’s howls— “Kill him! KILL HIM!” ~ ~ ~ Infernal fled into the wilderness, carrying his little brother with him. Some of the vapors faded away in time—he hoped they’d simply withered away rather than been drawn back inside. It was he who named Azazel—raised him, in fact: one adolescent Wildclaw trying to be parents, grandparents, and clanmates all at once for this strange, dark-shrouded hatchling. Just the two of them together, in the wilds of the Tangled Wood. He made efforts to find them a new clan at first. Azazel still remembered his earliest days: His brother clutching his claws, hope shining on his face as they approached strangers’ lairs. Other dragons turning, looking...their curiosity giving way to hatred and panic the moment they clapped eyes on Azazel. And always, the words— “Monster, demon, abomination! Kill it! Kill it now!” And then running, always running, Infernal sobbing in fear at his side, claws clutched so tightly that they went numb. Hiding in fetid mud or waters, while the other dragons scoured the surrounds, intent on destroying them. When all was quiet—hours, sometimes days later—Infernal helped him clean up. The older Wildclaw was always tender with his brother, gently wiping the dirt off his scales. “We’ll try again, Azazel. We’ll find a new clan, you’ll see.” His face, always bright with hope...only for it to get cruelly dashed, again and again. Azazel grew to hate that face: the doleful eyes, the watery smile...It only meant more disappointment for them. Couldn’t his brother see that this course led to nothing but disappointment? How dare his brother persist in disappointing him so! “I think we’re ready, Azazel. Let’s go.” “Why are we doing this? They’ll just scream at us. Like all the others did.” “No, Azazel, trust me! I’ve been watching them for days, and they seem really nice! Come on, I’ve got a good feeling about them.” Infernal held out one paw in the familiar gesture. With a huff, Azazel reached out and grasped his claws. The younger Wildclaw remained darkly pessimistic as they approached the lair gates. He was sure Infernal noticed how the guards stared at them in horror— “Infernal, come on. This was a bad idea!” —but Infernal wouldn’t leave. He continued to speak, pleading with the guards: “We’re orphans! Please, we’ve been wandering for years...” Azazel felt irritated at that wheedling tone. And why did his brother keep making them out to be small and helpless and weak? They weren’t small and helpless and weak! “At least you’re not,” something seemed to whisper in his head. “Please,” Infernal continued whining, even as the guards advanced with weapons drawn. “Please have mercy!” Azazel didn’t wait for him—this time, he was the one who ran first. He wrenched his paw out of Infernal’s grasp—and the voice inside him whispered, “Yes, leave him. You’re not foolish like he is. You don’t need him to drag you down.” “Azazel...!” Infernal, at last, gave up and followed him—“And about time, too!” the younger Wildclaw thought bitterly. They ran back into the trees. Years of dodging and hiding—“I can’t believe I’ve spent all my life hiding! I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t!”—had taught them well, and soon their pursuers were far behind them. Infernal eventually caught up to him. “Sorry, Azazel,” he said with a wan smile. He reached out to pat his brother’s back, which was resolutely turned towards him. “We’ll try again next time.” Rage boiled in Azazel. He turned, slapped his brother’s paw away, then shoved him against a tree for good measure. Infernal stared back, wide-eyed with shock. “No, we won’t!” Azazel screamed. “We’re not doing this again! No more stupid clans...” “Azazel, listen to me—” “NO! You listen!” Azazel glared into his brother’s eyes. He saw the fight go out of the older Wildclaw, evaporating like morning dew. And again, the voices whispered, “This is right. It’s his turn to listen...” “We’re done with this! We don’t need any clans. We don’t need anybody!” “All right, Azazel...if you say so.” Azazel exhaled, and he turned and stormed away. It took Infernal some time to follow him, and he did so fearfully. That look in his younger brother’s eyes...He’d seen it before. Still he hurried after Azazel, and he tried to shut away the memory of his mother’s face, the same crazed look in her eyes— —and her final words: “Kill him!” ~ ~ ~ Azazel was the leader of their dyad from now on. He decided where to go and what to do. Infernal followed without question—and somehow, that irritated Azazel immensely. “That spineless oaf! Do I have to always tell him what to do?!” “You don’t need this,” the voices that clung to him whispered. They slithered up his arms, coiled around his neck and hissed into his ears. “You got this far, but he can’t keep up. Now he’ll only drag you down.” “He wouldn’t dare,” Azazel thought vehemently. Memories of nights spent hiding from angry dragons, nights hiding in the dirt, tore through his head. He clenched his teeth. “I don’t need a clan. I don’t need...!” There was no grand plan. It wasn’t something Azazel considered for any length of time. One night, the Shade told him to kill his brother, and he obeyed straightaway. Infernal had fallen asleep some hours before. He now awoke to a blast of red-hot pain searing across his throat. His first thought was that they’d been ambushed in the night. Someone was trying to kill his baby brother. When his vision cleared, he saw Azazel standing before him. Saw the claws, still dripping with blood. He didn’t fly into a rage, however, or even wonder why—somehow, he’d known that this was coming. He smiled instead, relieved to see that his brother was still unharmed, before he fell into darkness. “That idiot didn’t even fight back.” “No, he was too weak. Too squeamish for our purposes. Now we are free.” The Shade vapors enfolded Azazel in a chilling embrace. “Nothing can hold us back now. Nothing...and no one.” ~ ~ ~ Azazel was not alone for long—not in the physical sense, anyway. Whatever mitigating influence Infernal might’ve had was gone, and now more dragons came to him, drawn by the Shade’s siren call. Some of them were brigands, fleeing the law. Some were practitioners of vile magics, seeking power the eleven elements couldn’t provide. Still others were like Azazel himself: uncaring and cruel, with nothing but hatred for the world. All of them had this in common: They were ready to serve the Shade. The Shade had whispered about not needing a clan, and it was right. This wasn’t a clan. This was a cult. Whatever vestiges of resistance the other dragons had were slowly worn away by the Shade’s influence. The longer they stayed with Azazel, the stronger the Shade’s hold on all of them grew—till it was so complete that even upon death, what souls they had left would be clutched in its grasp. The Shade was right about another thing: Together, they were strong. Strong enough to drive out one of the clans of Thorndark Altar, and claim the territory for the Shade. At long last, superiority was Azazel’s. Once, dragons like this clan had scorned him, mocked him, hunted him. Now they were the ones being driven away. Those who weren’t able to escape were dragged back to the now-defiled altar. Azazel met them there, and from him, the Shade flowed forth to feed upon them. Their arrogance turning to terror, the anger turning to despair, only made his hunger for power burn brighter. The survivors of the expelled clan made a desperate bid to reclaim their home. Azazel sneered at their ragged remnants as they stormed up to the gates, demanding that he leave. He didn’t need to gesture, didn’t need to say a word: The challengers froze as they instead heard the Shade’s voice, crackling through the air like frost across glass. They almost didn’t notice the black-clothed cultists swooping down from the trees, and by the time they did, it was too late. The Shade fed well again that day. These dark deeds did not go unnoticed, and more dragons came to challenge the Shade cult. Challenge...Azazel had to laugh at that term. These arrogant worms were no challenge to the Shade. If they managed to get to the lair, it was only because the Shade let them. They were then devoured and disposed of...though some turned out to be more useful in other ways. These captives were imprisoned in the darkness beneath the altar—and there they languished, with only the Shade’s voices for company. They were down there for weeks...months...It didn’t matter how long it took; the Shade was always patient. And the end result was always the same: When the captives were brought out once more, they were ready to serve the Shade with their entire being. The Shade still clung to Azazel, and he was revered as its favored vessel. It clothed him as a living mantle, and his form was hideously distorted by it. Ghastly lights gleamed under his skin, flickering along his bones. The souls of those whom the Shade had devoured were entangled in this mantle, and occasionally, traces of them shone through: staring eyes, grasping claws, fangs bared in tortured grimaces. Azazel’s own eyes shone with unholy light—once, they had been violet with the Shadowbinder’s mark. Now they were ghastly pale, alight only with the Shade’s dreadful hunger. Fewer dragons approached the cult now. They knew who the true god of this forest was. And so the cult continued growing, a festering abscess in the dark of the Tangled Wood. “One day,” the Shade hissed to Azazel, “we’ll swallow the world whole.” ~ ~ ~ Azazel didn’t sleep. The Shade had freed him from that other constraint; when it had no need of his thoughts, he simply sat, waiting for it to awaken him. It roused him now. Azazel listened to its words, and then a cruel smile gleamed upon his face. He clicked his claws, and with the faintest whisper, a score of cultists prostrated themselves before him. He pointed towards the forest. “Intruders. Bring them to me.” The cultists glided away. The hours spun past, and then Azazel was roused again, this time by a commotion at the lair’s entrance. From his lofty position, he could make them out: three captive Wildclaws, struggling to free themselves. Shouts reached his ears— “No, not our brother...Our brother!” Brother. He had not thought about Infernal in a long time. When he did, those fleeting memories were tinged with scorn for the spineless worm his sibling had been. But even as these thoughts rose in his head, they were superseded by something else: the Shade’s all-consuming desire to feed. “The boy.” The Shade’s awareness was riveted to the youngest Wildclaw, a male who struggled weakly against his captors. As Azazel watched, a Snapper struck him with a vicious headbutt, knocking him to the ground. Time slowed around him—it was meaningless to the Shade; its whispers crackled, lightning-fast, through his skull. “The boy, use the boy. “Weak, fearful... “So much timidity. He is ready to break. “His body, so frail... “Young, ignorant. So many shadows, clouding his view of the world. “We can hide in those shadows. We can hide in his voice. “Use him as a cloak, our own mantle. Go...elsewhere... “To spread our roots, to dig deeper. “We’ll swallow the world whole.” The cultists drew back as Azazel approached. He ignored the wailing captives, focusing instead on the youngest sibling. “The brother,” he hissed to his cohorts. “Bring him to me.” ~ ~ ~ The elder Wildclaws were quickly disposed of, fed immediately to the Shade. Azazel shared in his master’s glory, reveling in the terror of their victims. Faint snatches of their memories flickered in his mind— “Not our brother...Our brother!” The brother. He was imprisoned in the deepest cell beneath the altar, and the Shade set upon him immediately, peeling back the layers of his mind, picking apart those tattered pieces. They learned his name—Azrael—and uncovered images of his early life. A hardscrabble existence, spent laboring for a clan that had promised, but never provided, something more. This unquestioning obedience was what appealed to the Shade. There would be no need to tear this miserable Wildclaw apart; the world had already done that for him. All the Shade needed to do was fill in those cracks. Azazel spoke to him. The captive Wildclaw made some weak efforts to insult him at first, but his heart wasn’t really in it; any belligerence he had quickly shriveled before Azazel’s power. The cult leader, meanwhile, spoke gently to him—more gently than he had to his own brother. He was surprised at how easy it was, despite his usual disdain for other living things—all he had to do was mimic the way Infernal had acted towards him. A smirk flickered across his twisted face: “He was good for something, after all.” And the more time Azazel spent in the cell, the deeper the Shade’s hold upon Azrael became. It smothered him, ripping out his memories of all that was good and wholesome. The kindness of his father? Worthless—the old Wildclaw’s ramblings had gotten him captured, after all. His sisters’ attempts to protect him? Foolish—they’d gotten him injured, hadn’t they? His father deserved to die; his sisters deserved to die. They’d all gotten the comeuppance they’d deserved... But he, Azrael, deserved something more. The Shade whispered this to him, driving it into his brain. Azazel, who was privy to the Shade’s inmost thoughts, agreed wholeheartedly. There was, after all, no room for disagreement with the Shade. He might have been chosen as the cult’s leader...but it was their master. He was one with the Shade, and he would do all it commanded of him. “Present him to the others. Clothe him in your finest mantle and jewels.” Azazel’s jaws moved, woodenly repeating the words. The cultists scurried away. When they came back, Azrael was standing next to their purported leader. The former captive’s face had lost its look of stark terror—now he was calm, and he stared ahead blankly as the cultists adorned him in ebony fabric and jewels. “This one is ready to serve,” the Shade, through Azazel, whispered—and the words leaped from one cultist to another, hissing through their fangs. They ran together in the air like ink across a page: “One...this...serve...ready...to...serve...this...” The cultists prostrated themselves before the new second-in-command. The faintest smile flickered across Azrael’s face; his lips twitched slightly. Azazel tilted his head to hear him better. “Not...afraid...” “No, Azrael, not anymore,” Azazel murmured. He looked at the younger Wildclaw more closely. With his face covered by the bone mask, Azrael was completely unrecognizable. Anybody could be under those raiments. Anybody— “No...only the Shade.” The whispers began again, trickling from Azazel’s lips, then from Azrael’s: “Only the Shade. Only the Shade...” The cultists swayed together, their mantles undulating in a phantom breeze. Their eyes fixed upon their leaders, pinpoints of frigid light glittering in the darkness. Azazel stepped up to the altar, and as he raised his arms in exultation, their master’s voice rippled from their mouths— “Without end, without limit...We are the Shade.” |
Original Lore was done by StormcatcherHere and is located Here
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