Crowned: an ACOTAR collection
Amren Part One
Word Count: 693
Summary: A collection of stories on how the Inner Circle and the world around them came into their respective powers. Please review.
Author's Note: Thanks to PretendThisIsWitty for the idea that Amren was once the Angel of Death in their story Velaris: Fury and Ruin. READ IT THEIR FICS ARE AWESOME. I did modify it slightly, though.
When she was Made but not quite Born, power already streamed through her veins.
Her brothers feared her. Her sisters feared her. Azrael himself feared her.
Was Azrael the Angel of Death, did Azrael have what was once hers, after she had gone?
She watched the humans her Father had made. They were made in the image of her and her siblings, and her Father himself. He had Made them, and they had grown.
She was there when the woman took the fruit, watching through the eyes of the doomed serpent. She was there when He decided to flood the world, destroying his creation so he could try to make the world perfect once again.
She watched the humans build, and knew how it was made, but was confused when they invented things, new ways to farm and give light and new ways to explore. She was confused as she realized that although she could physically build all these things, she lacked the imagination for them, lacked the need that would have driven her to build.
She was confused when humans fell in love, when they began to be drawn to each other, and instead of using each other for children, like she, her siblings, and her Father did, they genuinely enjoyed each other's company. What was the feeling they had? She knew happiness, but not like they did. What would it be like to love?
She did not understand hate, and why humans seemed to simply dislike each other. No, not dislike. Something further than dislike, something burning and terrible that her Father only described as 'hatred.' What had they done that was so horrible? She knew her Father had hated the first woman and man, but that was because they disobeyed the only instruction they were given, a simple task a child could have followed. What drove the humans to hate each other so badly?
Curiosity killed the cat, the humans said, but they did not know that curiosity also killed the Angel of Death. Amren was curious, so curious, when a rip opened in the world, and she walked through.
It hurt.
She screamed, the first true pain she had ever experienced, and was dropped into a new, colorful world.
And suddenly, everything was different.
And Amren realized what it was like to be truly lonely.
She had always felt her sisters beside her, felt their presence, their laughter, their sadness when she did her job and took a soul away.
She suddenly understood why those humans had been so devastated when left alone in the forest, or in a city, or in somewhere they did not know.
She looked up at the cave, turned around so she could come back through the doorway because surely He could fix her-
And it wasn't there.
She touched the walls of the cave she had come through, hoping for a secret door like the humans had built into their large stone pyramids and their temples, but there was nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing but a small tree, some plants, stones that shone in the light of her fiery wings.
Alone. Alone.
And Amren wanted vengeance.
She did not think for a second that her Father had opened up the rip in the world. He could not have. Her Father most definitely had the power, but he would not do that to her, would not shut out his Angel of Death.
Would he?
No. No. No.
The people of this land. They must be responsible for this. They must have ripped her away from her sisters, and ripped her away from her home.
Amren had lacked the ability to hate. But when she felt the burning sensation in her chest, of terrible, horrible anger at these people, she thought perhaps she had had it all along.
Amren flexed her fingers, sheared off her long hair. It would grow back, and for now she needed it away so she could teach these people a lesson.
So she could teach them what it felt like to be torn away.
So she could teach them what it felt like to be targeted by the Angel of Death.