R-126: The Eternal Abyss

The Eternal Abyss started this life as a normal, if plain stryx. She was born to two parents, but never knew them. She instead was raised by herself and passing stryx on the cold, unforgiving mountain slopes, acting as a guide for travelers. She had no name, but was given one by the travelers she helped, they named her for the way her feathers seemed to eat the light, Night. She maintained this existence, hunting and foraging for herself, alone but not lonely, guiding those in need and helping those in trouble. She guided all, stryx, humanoid, dragon, for only the cost of their stories. While she guided them, she asked them to tell her about the world abroad. And so she learned about things like the ocean, like cities, like deserts, like war.

One day, she was waiting at her usual spot, the place where those in need of a guide and knew of her went. Many people had come to her here through the years, she had guided them all safely across the mountains. But these ones, though she did not realize it at the time, were different. They were not here for a guide, they were here for her. They had heard stories of a creature who seemed to be made of darkness, whose feathers ate the light. And they had found her. They asked her to guide them, aiming to get her isolated, alone, and one night, while she ate her dinner, they tried to kill her. Their first stab missed her heart and woke her up, enraged and confused. She tried to flee, but a net had tangled her wings and all she did was fall of the edge of the gorge that they had camped by, and her fragile body broke on the rocks below.

However, it was a full moon that night. Nokt saw all of this, and was enraged.

Nokt had watched this stryx who had nothing grow up, and give kindness and a path to those in need, yet here she was, killed for what she looked like. So Nokt reached down, and blessed her.

And so Night rose. But she was different. Glowing dots decorated her body, swirling in patterns that seemed to shift and move and resemble constellations. They glowed on her feathers and webbed wings, lighting up her claws and eyes as she emerged from the gorge into which she had fallen. Never a big stryx, she was now a size to be reckoned with. After she laid waste to the hunters, she disappeared into the mountains, nameless and confused. For everything has a price, and the price of life for her was her name, sense of self, and the feathers for which she had been named. But these are not things that are forever lost, for she created herself anew among the cold windy peaks and galaxy spattered skies, with the full moon forever watching over her.

She became the Eternal Abyss. She did not guide everyone however, no, she watched from afar and only helped those who were in need, for her new sea-green feathers did not provide as much as a camouflage against the sky as her old ones had. And she burned, burned with an internal energy that snapped and crackled across her markings, and when angry caused destruction. She had already lived her mortal life on the sloped years ago, killed by hunters, but she was given a second life by a god. Who knows how long that second life might last?

-------

Cranky and tired, she does not work well with others, instead preferring to be alone. Often has her own ideas, and will go off to do something that appears nonsensical for no apparent reason. Prefers glaring over talking.