woods

• never show mouth
• cloak/mask thing turns into wings
• incredibly soot-stained
• magma cracks in skin when angry
• has had several past iterations

she once was a healer. kind hands and blooming flowers. life and love, the recovery from loss, a god of benevolence worshiped with pure and grieving hearts. she was loved, once.

but good things never last forever, and the glory her people held in their hearts for her changed into something darker. hate and mistrust sewn throughout the land, churches torn down, her name slandered and spoken with vitriol and venom. blades pointed to the sky, a threat shouted to the heavens. her divinity was no longer a cherished thing, and in that darkness, her essence twisted into something else.

hatred. violence was bled into them, like a forest set ablaze and now all they knew was the fire. if their people wanted war, it was war they would get, and their hand struck down the lives of all who dared take up arms against the gods that created them. death was a powerful thing, and each soul taken spurred them further into corruption, until all that was left was a blind lust for power. all rational thought consumed by the inferno, like a beast, like a machine. until there was no more blood left to spill at all.

xeir world was destroyed. ruins left smoldering, crumbling buildings and battlefields still strewn with corpses. mortal blood soaked into the grass. ash stood, weapon still in hand, wings xey never had folded at xeir back. xey look at the wreckage xey had wrought with xeir own hands, and everything snaps back into painfully sharp clarity. like coming down from a high, a mania.

and then he breaks.

and the ground falls away from his feet, because what use is a world left burning and dead, scarred and haunted by the life that had once lived there? everything goes dark, and ash curls in on himself until he is no more. he exists in vague flashes and empty space, a single star stripped bare. and there is nothing left for him at all.

and yet, something cries, isn't there more?

something hopeful and sobbing beside them prays into the empty space. woods doesn't care to listen. they are content to live in non-existence for the rest of eternity, because the fire is done raging, and all it left in its wake was exhaustion. but the shape next to them flickers, and despite themself, they flicker back. and like waiting for a cue, woods is tugged into life again.

not the same. never the same, never again. but it was life nonetheless. woods squints against the sunlight, breathes crisp air into lungs xey shouldn't have, and xey hurt.