SweetRose
Dream of Roses and Doors
Azriael
Azriael slumbered, half aware of her surroundings. She wandered through a library filled with shelves, each bearing countless volumes. She ran her hand over the spines, feeling ancient memories flicker through her mind. Glancing around, there were countless millions of shelves, each holding hundreds of books. Each book was a day in her life, a minute fraction of her existence, created as a way of staying sane. She had built the idea of this place many thousands of years ago as part of a ritual she had created to keep her sense of self intact. It was a Greater sorcerous working, made before she had achieved her mastery of the art. Even now full comprehension of her self remained impossible. The Working was too potent, and the magic raised by it too wild. She made do, even though given time and effort she could likely correct the issue. These days it was another amusement. She wandered between countless shelves, filled with countless lifetimes, browsing aimlessly.
Here was a favorite memory. Her hand paused on the book that held the day she Raised her Tower, pulling it from the shelves. As it fell open into her hands the library faded away into memory made manifest. There had been preparation beforehand, and work to polish it after, but this had been the moment of triumph. She breathed in deep, centering her self in the circle and closing the chalked circle.. The air around her boiled to life, filling with vicious energy. The sky above her had been clear moments before, but dark grey smoke, that seemed caught somewhere between shadows and mist, billowed up into the air. She glanced around, taking in the mountain peak she stood on, chosen for this ritual. It was a cold and barren place. If weather had been an issue for her, she would have frozen to death in minutes, but that required more mortality than she had possessed for some time.
She reached into the air and pulled from it her ritual dagger, crafted from obsidian and raven feathers. She opened a small careful cut on the back of her arm, squeezing out a drop of black viscous blood before it closed up again. The drop fell onto the circle below, and for a moment held together, forming a nearly perfect half sphere on the ground. Then the surface tension broke and it soaked into the circle. The eldritch patterns etched into the stone lit with a strange purple-black light. To most people it would be impossible to look into, its sheer other-worldliness being sickening. Azriael stared into it, reveling in it's unknowable patterns. Even her mind could not see the depth of the patterns, only their ever unsettled outer nature.
Tearing her gaze away from the light of the circle with a physical and mental effort, lest she should be absorbed, she looked into the boiling clouds overhead. She raised her arms above her heads, extending her reach into the clouds above with her magic. Everything save for the clouds and the light seemed to go still for a time as Azriaels eyes closed. When they opened again her hands formed fists and pulled down. Energy, seeming like slow moving lightning, fell from the sky, pouring down and seeming to pull the clouds down with it. The energy seemed to pour into a mold, in the brief moment it was visible. Then the falling energy seemed to remember it was a close relative to lightning and everything went white as light poured forth, and an immense crack of thunder tolled. When the air cleared an immense tower floated before her, more than a hundred feet tall, and nearly forty feet in diameter. Yet potential energy still roiled. This had taken power, effort and arcane materials, but the blood and the eldritch power were needed for what came next. She reached her right hand out towards the tower and magic seemed to pour from her as the circle upon which she stood went dark. The tower melted away, and from the space where it stood came a small black raven gliding down to a perch on Azriael's shoulder. It preened as Azriael smiled and smoothed its back-feathers.
Azriael stepped back from the memory, putting the book back on it's shelves as the whole construct faded away. Everything faded back into shadows as she awoke, still warm and stretched out over the back of the dragon-blessed witch's neck. That particular casting was a favorite memory. It had been one of her first and most powerful major workings, creating both the tower, and the living creature that both was, and was not the tower. It had taken years of work to prepare the ritual and find the materials beforehand, but even now Kevirre, the raven, was somewhere out there. When she took on human form again she would call to them and see how they had spent the intervening years. She could call to them now, but she had not yet truly tired of this form, and seeking someone foolish enough to release her still held amusement. She rolled off Svetlana's neck, landing primly on her feet before stretching in a distinctly cat-like manner and glancing around the room. Svetlana was helping Yaroslav dress in what looked to be fresh finery, which offered little of interest. She slunk quietly away, not bothering to note it verbally.
Azriael moved padded through the building following various scent trails. Eventually she found her way back to the bulk of the group, getting dressed in yet another room. She ambled in, taking in the room with a quick glance. Most of the rest of the group seemed to be here. She stretched again, in that uniquely feline manner complete with the stretched out back, raised hind legs, and flat to the ground torso. When she straightened up she shook herself and her fur rippled oddly. The ripple seemed to spread, and for a brief moment reality itself seemed to ripple around her, resolving into a brief flash of movement that resolved into a large glossy black raven perching smoothly upon the males changing room screen, although facing outwards. She reached for the subconscious memory of what she had heard while asleep, and connected voices and names they had called each other with her constant magical sense of her surroundings. The male who had just emerged from behind the screen fully dressed was Hjallmar, and as she glanced around the room she attached names to faces, as well as getting a more concrete senses of the magics connected to each person. She preened a little, drawing her beak through feathers that she had not worn for several years. This form as always a little uncomfortable, perhaps for what it represented inasmuch as what she was a very very long time ago. It remained an integral enough part of her too effect her magic, and to allow her to take on this form even when transformed and bound, although the binding stayed. Around her neck there was still a little centimeter wide black collar. When she spoke her voice was only a few steps away from a rasping caw, "Preparing for a ball are we? Interesting. Allow me to introduce myself, I am Azriael, and I will be joining you on this journey for a time."
