XXXVI
Drowning in the Sea of Id
Abject Terror.
She was drowning while a thousand thrashing bodies prevented her from reaching the surface. No one wanted to save the other, only themselves, and only one could emerge. She fought against an army of insane limbs, tiny glimpses of the light above suddenly revealed before the next appendage took it all away.
Deeper. She was forced deeper. Darker.
They all seemed to die at once. Bodies cascading past her, their eyes wide in misunderstanding and wonder, falling deeper into the depths. She let them fall, staring only above. To the Light.
Light mattered now.
Her soul could fly. Had she forgotten? But this was not the bird she was becoming… This was new… long and lean… powerful. She was a dragon. A dragon whose coils cut through the tides, past bodies alone in the sea. A dragon of shadows, the shadows of her soul. She did not fear the dragon, she was the dragon.
Breaking from the ocean's dark surface she flew into a sky of crimson on ashen wings. She was strong… she was free.
Her own feelings overwhelmed her. She… who had shared the joy of a mother she had never known, the ecstasy of young lovers in a flowered field twenty leagues away… finally unlocked her own joys and sorrows and reveled in them, like a laughing child.
Let the fear drown in the ocean below. Her love propelled her through the skies, her joys spiraled her around wisp-clouds of warm scented promise. All was within her grasp.
And on the barren shore, a small figment of the past. A woman, old… alone. She could fly beyond, escape. She could devour the crone, to silence the growing hunger inside her.
But she landed in a great coil before this old woman. Raising her serpentine head, she stared into the old woman's eyes… a familiar shine.
"This is your true form, Raven," spoke Azar, mother of Azar. "You are your father's daughter, there is no doubt. But unlike him, you are whole... second daughter of Azarath.
We were fools to cast off the things that were our birthright, our dark passions. Our history is a story half told, while the deeds of Trigon completes us. We are two sides of the same destiny. You are our fate, Raven."
"My fate is my own," spoke the dragon.
"Now you are free. This is true. If you choose to fly through the edge of sky, Azarath is lost. The daughter of Trigon awakens and the dragon rules by the side of her father."
"Never," hissed the dragon.
"Through the path of sky, you become one and one only. One will not defeat Trigon. As Raven, you are legion. You are Azarath and all that Azarath is, was and will be. You may complete us."
The dragon became a woman once more, no longer afraid, hair of ebony and eyes born of the nighttime azure sea. She spoke to Azar, mother of Azar, first of Azarath.
"One must defeat him, Azar," Raven spoke as she gazed across the deep, cold waters of oblivion.
"No," the old woman replied. "We must embrace him. We must accept him. We must become as we truly are."