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Flame was a leader at heart.
She loved her siblings, Blizzard and his unbelievable mind, Tsunami and her fixation on being able to heal everything, Quake and his grounding energy, Ember and the way her horns glowed like hot embers in a fireplace, and Phoenix with her fire-red wings.
She loved her siblings. She would give up the world for them.
Flame's heart was wrenched out of her chest when she was nineteen. Her siblings, her dear, little shiftlings had died.
It was her fault. It really wasn't.
Flame was lost. If she didn't have a pack to lead, if she didn't have her siblings, then what was even the point.
Flame had heard of necromancers; she saw all of them. Begging for them to bring back her siblings. They tried. They failed. They made cheap copies of her own sisters and brothers.
By the end of her quest for necromancers, her claws were stained with all of their blood as they failed to bring her siblings back.
She was still alone.
Flame turned her gaze to the gods; she went to every single place that even remotely looked like they were worshiping something. She begged and threatened and cried and bargained and did everything she could.
The gods could not help her.
~~~*~~~
"Water."
"Fire."
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Fire, you know that that sorceress is not going to stop until she has her pack back. And, she's already burned half of my temples along with a good amount of the other's temples. You are the only one she hasn't torn down."
"But surely, you can't be thinking-"
"Fire, she killed half of my supporters and is going to do more, don't pretend you didn't see her tear that poor healer apart on your shrine."
"Water, this is insanity you can't set the- that thing free to stop one person. There has to be another way."
"Fire I'm doing this so that the world isn't burnt to ashes."
"..."
"You're scared of her aren't you. You pretend you aren’t; you pretend you can control her, but deep down, you are petrified at the prospect of her getting here and killing us."
"... Yeah."
"I'm setting Void free; they will get her under control one way or another."
~~~*~~~
Flame found a new deity to beg to. The Primordial Void. The Great Nothing. The Death of Light and Life.
She did the whole song and dance again. The Void leaned forward. Their featureless face came closer to Flame. Their glowing white eyes thinned into slits as they gave her a proposal.
Flame accepted in a heartbeat; she signed the contract with a shaking hand.
She made the worst mistake of her life.
~~~*~~~
Flame woke up in a different place. She remembered her agreement and smiled. She would be able to see her siblings again. Even if they were human now.
~~~*~~~
Humans are mortal.
Flame is not.
They die.
She doesn't.
She always gets hurt.
She will go to sleep when her soulmate dies.
She will stay that way for a long time.
Long enough for kingdoms to rise and fall.
Long enough for entire ages to go by.
Long enough for times to change and for morals to shift.
Long enough that she will not recognize the world she will wake up in.
She will wake up when her next soulmate is born.
And every time, there will be something to remind her of her previous soulmate.
And the cycle will begin anew.
The price of her actions will be paid.