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You don’t know your name anymore. She calls you Aetheon, but it doesn’t matter what she calls you. You wish she didn’t call you anything at all.
She is cruel. She tortures you, takes your blood, blasphemes your Creator. You’ve heard her, muttering to herself, questioning His divinity. “Was He even a god at all?” she asks herself. “If mortals were able to destroy Him, was He even a god at all? Were any of them?”
He was. You remember His power. You remember His benevolence, His love for you and your brethren. He was powerful, and He was good, and the mortals murdered him.
After He was killed, you and your brethren ravaged the mortal world. You needed to punish the mortals for murdering your Creator, and you did. Oh, how you did. You enjoyed it, razing their villages to the ground, tearing them to shreds just as they did to Him. How you miss it.
Now, all of that is just a distant memory. Now, you are captive, bled nearly dry, and kept always on the edge of death. You used to feel invincible, certain you would never die. Certain it was impossible. Now, you welcome it. You crave it. Anything to free you from this hellish life you now lead.
She looks up at you, a small, satisfied smile on her face. “Hello, Aetheon,” she says. You growl, low and wet, mouth full of your own blood. “You’re doing well, as usual.”
You open your mouth, letting rivulets of your Light splatter on the ground. Her face hardens at the waste, her smile disappearing. Good. If you can’t escape this hell, you can make her life a little harder.
She steals your blood, your Light, and uses it for her own selfish gains. She chains you up, and fills you with tubes, and drains you and drains you until your flesh is thin and papery against your bones. She leaves just enough to keep you alive, but no more. You are paper-thin, you are razor-sharp, and you are hungry. You are so very hungry.
One of her assistants made the mistake of coming too close to you once. The boy was curious, and he approached you, hand outstretched. You held very still, lying in wait. His hand got very close, nearly close enough to touch your face, and you lashed out, snapping at him. Your teeth aren’t sharp, but it didn’t matter. You are desperate, and in pain, and starving.
You snapped at him, catching his wrist in your jaws and ripping, tearing, feeling skin and bone and blood between your teeth. The boy screamed, running from you, nearly tripping over himself to get away. You would have laughed, if you could remember how.
The taste of him brought you back, back to when you were free, back to when you could do as you pleased. You savored it, grinning madly at her with bloodstained teeth when she came down to punish you.
She threatened you, and the thought amused you. What more could she do? She already tore you to pieces, stripped your wings, drained you of your Light, kept you captive wherever you are. She can do no more. You are already pushed to your limit. Killing you would be both a respite for you and a waste for her, and she knows that. She won’t kill you, as much as you wish she would, and so she can do nothing. She has no more power over you.
If you could break free of your chains and rip her apart, you would. That thought is the only thing keeping you slightly tethered to reality. You’re mad, of course, you’ve been mad for ages. You’ve been mad even since before she got to you, since your Creator was killed. Once He died, there was nothing keeping you or your brethren tethered to this plane, or to the celestial plane, so you went mad. Feral. Some of your brethren are still out there, you’re sure, hiding in the frozen wastes on the very edges of the world. Watching, waiting, for some poor fool to venture too close and become their next meal.
Your raw, naked wings throb, phantom pain shooting through the appendages. You shriek, thrashing against your restraints, white-hot lightning coursing through your veins. Your Light splatters from your open maw, from the sores and wounds within.
You slump, head lolling against your chest. You hiss out something unintelligible, even to you. It might be a prayer, if you had anything left to pray to.
All you can do, all you have ever done, is wait. Wait and fantasize about an escape that will likely never happen, but you have to get your catharsis somewhere, don’t you? You have so little, but at least you have that.
You strain against your chains, the metal biting and scorching your skin. You thrash, and writhe, and bare your teeth. Your teeth aren’t even useful anymore. She filed them down, too afraid that you would escape and attack her. She was right to be afraid. You are going to escape these chains, and you are going to rend her limb from limb. You are going to tear her apart, just as she did to you.
You lick your lips, and begin to drool.