Flashes of colour, echoing through through the fog of Dream; chaotic, incoherent imagery and sensation cutting into his mind.
Corpses, charred and broken.
Forests, mangled and torn.
Flames.
Then, flight - lifting up, up, up into the sky and beyond the sky, placed in the care of the stars who look on with gazes benevolent and protective.
A light builds, the colour indescribable, suffusing all in brilliance...still the light builds, bleeding into every facet of existence, saturating, changing, evolving
Still the light builds, blinding, until pain shoots through nerves long silent, rousing them to an unholy cacophony, and with pain comes consciousness.
Awakening.
* * *
Azryel's eye's cracked open infinitesimally, searching for the source of the agony that roused him from dreaming. Upon finding the source and concluding that only further torture awaited them, his eyes snapped shut of their own accord. Shutting out, for the moment, the insistent blaze of the sun.
Awake. He was awake. Somehow that struck the young man as important. He squinted up from his bed to the window again, casting as much baleful glare as he could muster back at the offending orb. Azryel tried to sort through his muddied thoughts, seeking some sense of place and time, if not person. He had no idea where he was or when, at least not specifically...but the who question was easily answered. Azryel, Sanguine Stage Zero, student of the White District, housed in the city of Empyrian.
The White District. Empyrian. Well that answered where. And by the position of the sun, the when lay somewhere after ten, but before noon- far too later to attempt making an appearance in class...better to take it the next time 'round. Questions answered.
Wait, class? Azryel's thought churned for a moment. Class? Magical Theory, some hidden part of his psyche provided. He nodded to himself, things seemed to be coming to him easily if he let them - he just needed to not think to hard on them. And it was probably best to let lie for a moment the...dream he'd experienced in sleep. In the interest of that, the boy turned his attention to the closet on the other side of the small dorm he occupied.
Perhaps dressing would help the thought process some. Of course, part of him thought, that would require getting out of bed - a distinctly unpleasant prospect. However, the effort would be preferable to the blinding gaze of the sun, so Azryel rallied his will and heaved him self upright, finding himself in nothing but his skin.
A birth this is indeed. piped a darkly laughing portion of his mind. Now, where had that come from? Shaking his head, Azryel crossed the room to the wardrobe that stood opposite the four-post bed.
Upon opening it, the boy stared, noticing inside the door a full length mirror, in which he now found himself reflected. He gazed at himself in shock for a moment. His skin was dusky, seemingly similar in look to glass so dark crimson, it appeared nigh black. His hair was almost auburn, the colour almost that of old, dark blood. His eyes...were those his eyes? Like embers, gazing out from beneath an unruly fall of hair.
As quickly as it came, the boy's shock passed; after all, he could not remember a time that he was not thus in appearance. Frankly he could not remember much at all, beyond a vague familiarity with almost everything.
Pulling clothes from the wardrobe, Azryel donned a kilt, and a flowing tunic with tails that complemented the kilt nicely. This he belted and, after studying a moment the symbol embossed in one corner of the kilt - Sanguine the mysterious knowledge murmured to him - Azryel made for the door, and with a deep breath, opened the portal and issued from his sanctum, his womb, into the world. His world.
