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Of all the rules and regulations of the universe, the truest was always thus: Nothing [i]ever[/i] comes for free.

Creation, as the ineffable 'they' would say, is the work of lifetimes; destruction, of mere moments. Both of these statements were equally true, and centuries of supplicants had finally offered enough of themselves to coax the forces of creation into being. Perhaps it was the chaotic streaks of magic that illuminated what could only charitably be called a sky, perhaps it was the radiation seeping into every living thing and reducing it to imperfections upon imperfections. Sometimes the answer to a question was not in a solution, but in dissolution--sometimes, destruction was a necessary catalyst for creation. Whatever the reasons the universe might have had for the current spate of dogged persistence were not strictly relevant, as the defining feature of the raw chaos in that moment was beautiful, ecstatic creation: the birth of something [i]divine[/i].

Ahtziri emerged from the husk of her cocoon like a bat out of hell, screaming and tearing at nothing in particular as sable wings carried her high above the barren wasteland from which she had emerged. It took a full thirty seconds for her to come to some semblance of calm and stop her newly created vocal chords from producing a sound so heinous that it threatened to pierce the fabric of reality itself, and as she hovered in the air with ragged breaths leaving her lungs the echoes of that sound could be felt still. Seconds passed, her feathered wings gently beating against the backdrop of utter cosmic annhiliation in the distance (or perhaps not--did utter nothingness even have dimensions?), and then she was moving again with conviction and purpose. Her clawed feet touched the ground with a resounding thud, and a feminine hand gently caressed the blood and ichor-soaked splinters of wood that had cleaved themselves from the whole once she'd emerged. She bent down to pick one of them up, feeling its weight and its texture in her hands, but stopped suddenly as her flesh pressed itself against the ground. 

She could still feel the echo of her scream within the pocked, craggly ground--and then she could feel vibrations that seemed to only grow in intensity, building on their ruinous resonance, and only her godly reflexes allowed her to jump off of the ground in time to escape it cracking and crumbling beneath her. She studied it intensely as she hovered above it, watching how it pulverised itself into fragments, and then pebbles, and then dust--and in but a precious few seconds it was all gone, unmoored from the world, drifting away towards the absence of existence in the distance. The gentle, rhythmic beating of wings was the only sound that remained--and the Mother of Monsters looked into the distance with a sense of loss she could not explain. It tore through her body and flooded her very being, a melancholy twisting and writhing inside her, until she could take it no more and soared inland to distract herself from whatever it was that had affected her so.

[hr]

She flew for hours, scouring the remnants of what once was, and her melancholy turned towards a strangely familiar yearning. Every now and then she would touch down and walk amidst the ruins of civilisations she simultaneously recognised and did not, her serpentine tail hissing and flitting its tongue about the stale air as it searched for something it did not know how to find. Ahtziri's fingers pressed over sheets of torn metal, faded canvases that had once contained colour and beauty and life, and though they filled her with a ruinous nostalgia for something she had never known and could never know they were not the object of her search--she wept a single, silent tear and she took to the skies again to look for whatever it was that she had set out to find.

Hours passed her by once more, punctuated only by the grumbling and screeching of unstable earth that she was already familiar with. Here, at the edge of the world, there was nothing but death and ruin. She turned herself inland and flew in, stopping to look back at the nothingness before her a final time, and let the onslaught of air dry her tears as she flew. She could not rightly say how much time passed before a rabid hissing and snapping shook her from her mourning, her tail wrapping itself around her arm to push itself towards her face. It bit into her cheek, harmlessly sliding off, and pointed downwards towards the ground towards the east--she batted it away with the back of her hand, her lip quivering in momentary rage, before she realised what exactly it was trying to convey and she swooped down towards the ground to check what it had found. Its tongue tasted the air rapidly, pulling itself in a flurry of directions, before the distant sounds of a skirmish began to grow in intensity. Spurred on by her curiosity, Ahtziri flew towards it with all the haste she could muster and soon arrived at the scene of a fight. 

A band of three humans (she didn't know [i]how[/i] she knew what they were, but she did), armed with crude spears and swords made from pilfered metal and long-dead wood were backing a tangled mess of matter fur, bloodied teeth, and four rabid unblinking eyes into a corner. Its teeth gnashed and it let out a horrific, mewling howl, but despite the display of aggression it was still being slowly moved backwards into the stone ruins of what might have once been some kind of domicile. Though the roof and two of its walls were gone, or had fallen to the floor in clumps of debris, two walls of stone still stood perpendicular to one another--and the creature was running out of space to back into. As soon as Ahtziri's eyes rested upon it, her heart swelled in her chest--she felt [i]love[/i] for this broken and horrible thing, a mother's love, and the sheer force of it froze her breath in her chest and welled her eyes up with tears. Just as quickly as it had come, however, it passed--and the love turned to fury, curdling and souring, as the humans advanced upon it once more. She could see the bodies strewn about the place, humans having killed six or seven of these canid predators and the pack having killed double that number of humans--there was no time for thought, no time to process the emotions. She was upon the three in an instant, grabbing the first by its neck and forcing her fingers through it into the soft, warm flesh beneath--with a single twist of her muscles she ripped its head clean from its shoulders in a gruesome display of savagery, taking advantage of the shock to rush a few feet to the side and grab another human by the skull. She lifted him off the ground effortlessly, her yellow-red eyes boring into his with such intensity that only the adrenaline in his system kept him from passing out, and began to squeeze down on his fragile bones with all the force she could bring to bear. It took less time than a human was capable of perceiving for his head to explode in a gory shrapnel of blood and bone, his brains scattered across the bare stone walls like paint.

The last human turned in incredulous shock, dropping his weapons, and screaming at the top of his lungs at the sight. He pulled in shallow, frantic breaths as his hands quivered and trembled, his entire frame vibrating with the exertion of the act and the lack of oxygen he was receiving. Sputtering words tried to make their way past his lips, but his tongue seemed to have swollen to an incredible size and it simply flopped around in his mouth like a stinking, rotting slug--the colour left his skin, and after another second he collapsed to the floor in quiet terror, dazed and reeling.

[color=#644194]"My child... My beautiful child..."[/color]

Ahtziri turned to the suddenly emboldened creature that was once cornered, crouching and resting on her haunches so as to be face-to-face with the thing. Four eyes looked into hers, and the awful [i]thing[/i] licked her face as if it were nothing but a harmless puppy seeking approval from its mother. Ahtziri let out a peal of laughter, bringing it deep into an embrace with her, while her tail snapped and hissed at the quivering wreck of a man that was still blubbering on the ground.

[color=#644194]"You do not know what it is to be a mother. You do not know what it is like to see your child [i]hunted[/i] because it is different, because it is reviled... but you will."[/color]

Ahtziri picked the man up with her tail, its teeth grabbing into his shoulder while it wrapped around his form, and she placed a hand upon his belly with a gentleness that one would not expect from a creature capable of the carnage she had just wrought. A pale, sickly glow began to emanate from her palm, creeping up her fingers like a baleful flame, before settling into him with an ominous purple light. She withdrew her hand and she brought him closer to her, the carrion stench of her almost-foaming breath wafting directly into his face, and pressed her face directly against his.

[color=#644194]"You have been blessed by Ahtziri, and no monster will harm you. They will recognise the scent of a mother..."[/color]

The man did not think, did not respond, did not blink. Ahtziri tossed him to the side with her tail, letting him go, and the distinct sound of feet running away as quickly as they physically could was heard in the background. The Mother of Monsters turned her attention back to the monstrous thing on the ground, looking up at her with an expression she could only describe as reverence, and she rested her hand upon it. Its flesh began to ripple and undulate beneath the grey-black fur matted with blood and bile, and a howl punctured the air as sinewy wings erupted from the thing's back and its wounded flesh knitted itself back together. Its jaw dislocated and popped, additional rows of razor-sharp teeth erupted from its blackened gums; additional claws sprouted from its paws, followed by additional limbs stretching out from its body until it had eight in total. Ahtziri looked down upon it, and cradled its maw in her hands as she placed the tenderest of kisses atop its filthy, mangy snout.

[color=#644194]"Come, Pazuzu. Show me your brothers and sisters."[/color]

[hider=Summary]Ahtziri is born, and watches as the place she was born from disappears into the void owing to the unstable nature of the world at present. She feels a sense of longing for something while looking into the void and ventures inland to find it--and comes across a group of humans about the slaughter the last of a pack of monsters they had fought with. She kills two, and impregnates the final (male) with a newborn monster identical to the one they were about to kill, and sends him on his merry way to enjoy what little time he has left. She changes the creature into an even more fearsome predator, gives it a name, and goes off to find its kin.[/hider]