Hollow

Decay

She awoke.

After the illness that claimed the lives of her Swarm, she never expected to be able to do so again. The disease started off small, a cough here, a sniffle there. Exhaustion and fever came next, nausea and pain following soon after. The worst part is how quickly it spread, from Fae to Fae, with two infected one day, ten the next, twenty the day after. Within the matter of a week, everyone in her expansive Swarm were ill with whatever it was, in one way or another.

And Hollow?

She had been patient zero. She had watched her entire life drop like flies, one by one, until she was the only one left. Too weak to move, too ill to find help. Starving, dying, rotting as she lay there helplessly. Praying to the Gods, never getting an answer, never seeing a sign that anyone was around to even care. And then, finally, blissfully, one day she didn't wake.

Until she did. With a rattling gasp that shook her entire body, her eyes miraculously opened once more, life returning to her broken limbs. Alive, she was alive. Though, instantly, the thought felt wrong... She wasn't alive. Not really. Though neither was she dead. Somewhere in between. Her body seemed to be in some sort of stasis, the natural decaying process paused, leaving parts of her untouched and pristine and others... well, all things rot, in the right circumstances.

And, most curiously was a new little quirk about her. Everything she touched with her bare skin died. No, dying was to light of a word. What really happened is it began to wither, rot, decaying where it stood right before her very eyes. Nothing was safe, not plants, not other creatures, not even stone. Fungus would appear, insects burrowing through, slime and mold enveloping. And with that, she feels stronger, faster, more alive. It was almost as if she were stealing the life from the very things beneath her touch.

Frightened, though secretly delighted and with an urge to spread her decay like spores, she took to the air. Being in her current state she doesn't need sleep, or to eat, so keeping airborne for long periods of time is of little problem to her, though she does eventually falter and grow weak, having to come back down to the earth to steal more life to keep her going.

Hollow has donned many layers of cloth to have a barrier between her and others, not wanting to accidentally hurt someone while she's nearby, though it's easy enough to slip a small, hidden claw out and tap into their life-force, making them ill but not drawing enough to kill.

((A/N: she's kind of like a vampire bat who instead of drinking blood steals the very life from that which is around her, causing it to grow sick, then start to decay the more she takes.))

written by Viiperfang