azrael
The stars were close enough to touch, here on the mountain where the sky met the earth. It was here that Azrael first came to the Night Court, traveling with the other shed-stars in a caravan from Caligo’s highest peaks. He’d come at night – a night much like this one, with stardust dotting the sky and dappled clouds pushing lazily across a sickle moon. His turquoise eyes had sought the stars, as they do now, counting them as old friends and reciting the constellations in his mind, as he had a hundred times before. Aquarius. Andromeda. Lacerta. As their names sting his lips, he smiles and remembers that night, the night when the autumn moon had shown him the way.
Tonight – it shows him another path.
He is adept in the darkness, a soft green glow emitting from his body, echoed in the talisman at his breast. There is an ethereal look to him, something otherworldly, something wild and untouched. As he moved upward toward the heavens, his step is light and careful, feet falling in a way that suggests he knows the way (though he had never been this far before) – and Azrael presses onward, driven toward the strange temple in the mount without any true awareness of the why or what.
He nears Kratos and the dragon, not immediately hearing or seeing them, not knowing that they sought the same prize along their journey. Perhaps the only thing which would signal him to the presence of another is the quiet beating of Pryna’s wings, but that too he does not hear. Instead, he simply presses forward with the stars lighting his path, drawn forth like a puppet on a string that led him straight to Kratos – straight to the mountaintop and to the temple it hid behind a veil of trees.
Only when he is nearly upon the dark stallion does he finally take notice, seafoam eyes falling on the stranger as he stands like an aurora in the stillness of night. For a moment, Azrael is silent, taking in the sight of Kratos’ curved horns and winged companion – but he does not blink in a way that suggests he is phased by the strange pairing. Instead, the shed-star simply offers a nod, and a quiet voice that sounds with old world elegance. Do you also seek what lies beyond the shadow of stars?
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