ORIGIN

His eyes narrowed and he uncurled himself fully, wings setting against his back as he raised himself back to a sitting position, looking around with confusion. "Where is Mother?" he growled. "She was here. Her and the hive!" They had been here! It was so real, more real then anything else. But now...they were all just gone. Mother couldn't get up and walk away. How was that possible?! Was this all some kind of illusion she'd conjured for him to keep him subjugated while she used his body? Was this a trick?!

He expanded his senses, trying to find the others that had been here. All the hive members. But he only felt two heartbeats besides his and Forgraves. One just outside of Polaris and one disappearing out of his range. He was missing almost all of the ones he had seen before.

His mouth was gaped open, shocked and confused. "But...she was HERE! She was RIGHT THERE!!" he pointed to the spot on the ground where he'd seen her.

His head suddenly snapped to look over at Forgraves. With a sudden movement, he grabbed the fox and picked him up, bringing him up to his face and quickly breathing in his scent. He...smelled like Forgraves. Nothing like fungus and nothing like Mother. Confused, he set his son back down. "But you...she had you! You were covered in Her! I SAW IT!"

Azrael stared at Forgraves as he comprehended what he was saying. It wasn't real. It had felt real and looked real and just seemed so real...but it was Mother that had been an illusion. He had been terrified over absolutely nothing. His mouth felt dry and he felt heat pressing against his cheeks. Was that...embaressement?

It was suddenly completely unbearable. He'd made a complete fool out of himself. Thrown himself around, acted like a weakling and a child when there'd been nothing to be afraid of. Forgraves must have been terrified...no, he must see him as such a weakling. The thought gave physical pain to his chest and Azrael took it and coped with it in the only way he knew how - he got angry.

He was on his feet in a second, eyes blazing dangerously. "THAT. LITTLE. SHIT." He roared with rage and opened his jaws to blaze fire into the sky, but all that came from his mouth was a little spark that just made it even worse. "HOW FUCKING DARE HE!! HOW DARE HE USE MOTHER AGAINST ME LIKE THAT! I'LL TEAR HIM TO PIECES I'LL RIP HIS HIDE TO SHREDS!! I'LL GOUGE OUT HIS GUTS AND STUFF THEM DOWN HIS THROAT BEFORE I BURN HIS ENTIRE BODY TO CINDERS!! HE'S GOING TO PAY FOR MAKING A FOOL OUT OF ME!!" He roared again, earsplitting and earthshaking, stomping on the ground and pacing around as he raged and ranted. He could feel somthing wet on his cheeks and suddenly it was like all the fire in him suddenly died. He fell back onto the ground, pressing his head in his knees and wrapping his arms around his head, hiding his face.

Why couldn't she just leave him alone?

Azrael didn't react when Forgraves reached up to hug him. He felt the warmth of the fox against him, felt the tremble of the fox next to his body, but he didn't know how he was supposed to react to it. Because he'd never had a breakdown like this before. He'd always been a master at controlling the memories, stuffing down the fear of Her and how much he'd hated nearly half of his life, but the visions had been so real, he thought that it was all coming back for him.

He let out a long sigh, swallowing his pride (which had already crumbled a while ago) and forced out a small, gruff "Sorry." There was a long pause before he rumbled out, "I did not mean to scare you. It was...very very real."

He only raised his head a bit to look at Forgraves (but...he wasn't quite looking in his eyes. More at his shoulder then anything) when there was no longer any wetness on his cheeks, but his usually lustrous eyes seemed duller then normal. "If you ever see white fungus," he growled. "Do not touch it. Tell me so I can burn it."

Azrael hesitated for a second before he fully uncurled himself, sitting cross legged and reaching over, lifting Forgraves and setting him in his lap. He felt much more at ease, now, with the warmth of the fox on his legs and against his abdomen. He stared off into space for a moment. "Things happen..." he murmured before Forgraves' question pulled him out of his musing.

He frowned, thinking about where to start. He didn't have any problems talking about Mother, he just wished that she would stop intruding on his life so much. "Mother was...is a fungus. Or a bunch of fungus. She could think. And she had some kind of magic of something. If you breathed the spores in, she had control of you. But you didn't know because she made you feel good. Loved. She got in your head and twisted you all up, made you think you were a part of a family. But it wasn't a family - she was just controlling us, making us take care of her and grow her and feed her."

He growled deep in his chest. "She got me when I was young. I couldn't form full sentences yet. I was eating everything. I found her and I ate her and she had me. She was in a hole in Pisces...there were a bunch of others. Astraea - the deer Master - he came and tried to get us out, but most of us ran with Mother. We went to Cetus with bits and pieces of her and we grew her again. She wanted us to get more, infect as many as possible. Lessers and greaters. Bring them into the family. We all felt loved and wanted, we could hear each others thoughts. We had no sense of self - we were just workers for Mother, tending to her every need." He clenched a fist and narrowed his eyes. "She was in my head for seven cycles. By the time I was free, I'd been under twice as long as not. I didn't know how to function, or how to live by myself. I had spent all my life guarding her and protecting her. Hollow. Empty. I was not me. I was just a puppet." He raised his head, lip curling and eyes flashing as he remembered that day when it had all come crashing down. "All the gembounds! From the Rot children and the Bonebound and the Seven and even those Sentinels. They came and fought us! Purged the fungus from our bodies and freed us from her control!" A cruel smile twisted his lips. "I burned Mother to the ground. She paid severely for holding my mind for so long. The hive that had control of us - and all the ones we grew as her children - are gone now. We destroyed them."

Finally, he looked down at Forgraves. "But she's not gone. She's still around. I see her sometimes, little clumps of fungus trying to grow in the shadows. I always burn them."

Azrael had to think for a second. Had it been on the same day? There were two drastically different versions of himself in his mind. Azrael under Mother and Azrael after meeting Forgraves. Before he'd been a savage beast content to sell away his will for happiness. Now he was a force of power and a father to two, with responsibilities of his own and a stable, relatively peaceful life. The day he'd gone burning the rest of Mother's nodes and the day he'd met Forgraves stood out as two distinctly different times of his life, on opposite ends of the gap. But...they'd been the same day, hadn't they?

Yeah, he could remember now. Finding the young fox in a state of rage and hot flame and the distant smell of smoke. The anger of being released from Mother still blazing in his chest and fresh in his mind. He nodded and let out a grunt. "The day you hatched was the day Mother was burned. I went straight to Eridanus - there was a node of her fungus there - intending on destroying it. But someone had gotten there first. I burned what was left." An ugly expression crept onto his face. Azrael didn't often slip into a truly bloodthirsty state, his violence ever for a reason. But now the dark scowl that crossed over his feature was one that promised violence only for the sake of seeing someone burn, killing for the sake of killing. Because to see Mother's fungus ablaze and crumbling to nothing brought him unimaginable joy and pleasure.