ORIGIN

Azrael had built up his den a little more since giving life to the little shard, for both his comfort as he waited for it to hatch, and as a proper home for Forgraves who didn't often leave his side. Proper nests of scraps of hide and scavenged leather now inhabited the little alcove and he'd taken up carving bones in his spare time, although he wasn't exactly very good at it, often becoming frustrated and burning it to cinders.

He had been waiting, growing worried, as the gem took a long time - too long - to hatch. Had something gone wrong? Had his spell failed after all? Perhaps the bird had been dead for too long or he'd damaged the stone when he'd killed it. No, that couldn't be right, becuase it had grown to a massive size, compared to its original. There was something growing in there...and it was going to hatch.

When the day came that there was movement within the chrysalis, Azrael didn't notice it at first. He wasn't paying attention to it, instead engrossed by the bone in his hand that he was meticulously carving with one claw. When it shattered, he flinched with surprise, startled by the sudden noise, the bone flying out of his hand. But he didn't care about retrieving it, all of his attention on the child that had emerged from the gem.

He stood up with a grunt and stepped over, tilting his head as he gazed down at the young thing. It was...small, but he supposed that it was just young. And it was a strange color - he couldn't remember the bird being white. Perhaps one of them had an ancestor that had that sort of coloration. But he could recognize himself in it. In the arms and legs, the wings and the body shape. His eyes drifted to the shard of gemstone that it had lit up and he nodded to himself. They would be strong, then, in magic. This was a good sign.

He reached down with his four arms and gently made to scoop up the young creature and cradle them against his chest, gently heating up his insides so that a nice warmth would spread across his body and, hopefully, warm the creature. "Hello," he rumbled. "I am Azrael. I will protect you."

Azrael paused as he lifted the hatchling. It was reaching for something - oh, the shard that it had made glow. He snorted and straigthened up, stepping back to sit against the wall, nearly tripping over Forgraves as he did. He grunted and looked back, carefully stepping over the fox before sliding down. "Forgraves. This is your brother. I gave him life. You will be good to your brother, yes?" He looked down at the hatchling, perhaps not with the most obvious fondness, but with something other then his usual apathy.

He tilted his head as it reached forward, tapping his fur. He began to glow, just a little bit, under the younglings spell and Azrael almost laughed at the expression of disappointment on its face. It would be like him, then - never settling for less then the best possible. Expecting only what was intended and nothing else. He figured this once, just this once, it would be alright to lie to the child. It would be okay to give it a false result, to feign that its spell had gone better then it initially thought - because why not inspire the child now, to know what it can do, so that it can continue to reach forward in the future?

He began to glow stronger, bolstered by his own spell - not blindingly bright, but stronger then the bauble from the child had been. He snorted. "You have good magic. Like mine, but of light, not Darkness. Do you have name? I name you if you do not."

The child seemed to have a fairly good grasp of intelligence and the mimicry was interesting. Perhaps it was something picked up from its crow parent, as he didn't think that he had the ability to do that. Now that it was fully awake, though, he figured that it could probably stand on its own legs and wanted it to get properly introduced to Forgraves. So he gently adjusted his grip and use his many arms to carefully get the child so that he was holding them from under its arms, gently setting it on the ground on its feet, not yet pulling his arms away in case it couldn't walk. If it could, however, he'd bring his arms back into his lap. "Yes, Forgraves." He gestured to the young fox. "This is your brother. We are family now."

The name...he was never very good at names. He had spent a very long time trying to figure out his own. Actually, he had gone almost his entire childhood without giving himself a name at all. But he'd had time by himself to work out what he would name this child and so, when it told him that it did not have anything to name itself, he responded. "Then you are Banshy. And you are one of us."