The Unraveling - It Rises

Everything happened so quickly she hardly had time to make sense of it. First, a pale stranger was torn limb from limb, and she felt her mouth go dry. "Jay - " she asserted, with every ounce of authority she possessed as a mother and former alpha, "Turn away! Don't you dare look." It was all she could do to protect her. Theory was old now, and she'd never been a fighter unless there was something to fight for. She had her children to think of now - they needed her alive more than they needed her cooling corpse left by the shoreline. All she could do was command her and hope she would listen.

Corvus' daughter, blood of her blood, and one of the few tenuous threads she still had to Abaven through her father. As Theory's gaze burned into Jay's, waiting to see her avert her eyes as rocks and debris rained down from the cliffs behind them, it struck her just how much she looked like her father.

Distant shouts and screams sounded, wrenching her eyes away from Jay and back towards the chaos. Please don't look. Please don't look, sweet girl. She had never before felt so weak and small. Every white hair on her muzzle, every ache in her bones was highlighted in technicolor. Powerless. She was powerless before this creature. Theory closed her eyes and prayed.

Abraxas, please. Watch over me, my children and my love. Please carry us through this. Please protect us. Please guide us.

Then the many legged abomination slammed into the earth, crushing Corvus beneath it, with all the same effort she'd use to idly brush aside a fly. Still, she hoped beyond reason that perhaps he'd dealt a killing blow and might emerge from beneath it victorious. When the creature (the being? The demon? It defied all logic and reason) rose, it tore into its prey with the same gnashing grace of a scavenger. Bloody rips and tears. The surrounding attackers seemed to fade away as she was unable to tear her gaze away from her brave cousin made carrion. All she could hear was the disgusting noise of it all, even this far down the shore.

Her children were home safe. Thalia was waiting for her. Even as bile rose in her throat and tears pricked at her eyes until they burned like coals, she held that knowledge close to her heart. "We need to get out of here, we need to - please, Jay - GO! We need to GO!" She hissed, dragging her away by force if necessary as she left the shore line and her cousin's bones behind. Eastern Boreas would forever hold her most painful memories, the grand museum of her life's failures. This was just another exhibit added to its halls.