Azure fled blindly into the forest, branches tearing at his clothes and skin as he passed. Behind him thick black smoke still billowed into the sky, a beacon of his failure. Guilt and self-loathing gnawed at his insides like vermin. Galen could be dead because of him - the only person who had shown him kindness since this curse awoke.
He ran until his lungs burned and his legs shook, finally collapsing to his knees amid a tangle of tree roots. Sobs wracked his slender frame as he grieved all he had lost. His home, his mentor, even his humanity - for what was he but a monster now? A danger to anyone around him.
Time lost all meaning as Azure knelt there, falling in and out of an exhausted doze. When at last he raised his tear-stained face from his hands, dusk was falling and the forest had taken on a haunting, alien cast in the half-light. Shivers that had nothing to do with the dropping temperature wracked his body. He was alone in the wilderness, lost and powerless.
With staggering effort, he pushed himself back to unsteady feet and began walking once more, hoping instinct or luck would guide him to some sort of shelter before full dark fell. Each sense was on hyper-alert, jumping at every imagined sound. Was that a snap of broken branches, or the footsteps of pursuers from the village?
His tortured mind supplied all manner of terrors hiding the lengthening shadows - beasts with slavering jaws, or vengeful villagers armed with torches and pitchforks, come to finish what the fire had started. More than once he startled himself with phantom noises, heart rampaging against his ribs like a caged bird trying to escape.
By the time true night descended in earnest, Azure was spiraling into full panic. He stumbled over gnarled roots in the darkness, tripping and falling hard to the damp loam more than once with no way to see where salvation lay. Finally, exhausted and wracked with feverish chills, he collapsed in a patch of soft moss beneath a huge old Oak and knew no more.
Moonlight filtering down through skeletal branches woke him sometime later, disoriented. Azure lay still for a long moment, assessing battered body and spirit. Much was sore and aching, but no bones seemed broken - small mercy. As awareness returned fully, two realizations dawned:
One, he was still miraculously alive despite the dangers of the night. Two, and perhaps more saliently - a warm, flickering glow emanated from somewhere deeper within the eaves of the ancient Oak above. Some sort of shelter, or better yet, a fire. Renewed hope and curiosity drove Azure slowly, painfully to his feet once more.
Clutching at bark and snagging vines, he began to climb, using what remained of his depleted strength reserves to haul himself up through twisting branches toward the beckoning light. It was slow, agonizing work, arms and legs screaming as abrasions opened and bled anew with every hard-won foot gained.
But after what seemed forever scrabbling in the dark, Azure's grasping fingers found purchase not on rough wood, but on something alien - smooth stone, craggy with age but deliberately worked. Puzzled, he pulled himself the last few feet until his head and shoulders breached the foliage, and he beheld a wonder.
Nestled high in the crooked branches was a tower - no bigger around than two large men standing shoulder to shoulder, but stretching up and up until it was lost to sight far above. lichen-crusted blocks formed a tapering spire lattice with openings only barely big enough for a person to squeeze through.
And from one such hole near the very top, warm glow spilled forth to light Azure's awestruck face. Someone, or something, lived here in this seemingly impossible aerie. With renewed vigor, he heaved his battered body up and through the tiny opening, tumbling gracelessly onto smooth flagstones within.
The tower's interior was a single circular chamber,taking up the entire space beneath sharply slanted roof. Windows no more than arrowslits dotted the curving walls, casting geometric patterns of moonlight across the floor and occupied the scant furnishings. But it was the fire crackling merrily in a stone hearth along one side that drew Azure like a moth.
He dragged himself those last few feet and collapsed with a groan, soaking in blessed heat. Only then did he notice he was not alone. Across the fire, nestled in a nest of furs and blankets, a pair of dark, almond-shaped eyes regarded him curiously from a pale, pointed face. Azure stifled a yelp, scrambling back on elbows and heels - and coming up short against the curving wall.
He was trapped within this tiny abode with...whatever this creature was. It tilted its head, bird-like, considering him. After a long moment of tense silence, it spoke. "You have found refuge where none but I reside, child. Who are you, and what brings you lost and broken to my tower?"
Azure licked dry, cracked lips and found his voice roughness from disuse and tears. "My...my name is Azure. I am cursed." And so, needing to unburden his soul if nothing else, he told the being called Faen his tale from the beginning. How his magic had awakened in the most terrible of ways, destroying all he held dear and forcing him into exile.
By the time his story was done, the predawn light was greying the sky once more. Faen had listened without interruption, dark eyes intent. When Azure finished, voice raw, the creature rose in a sinuous motion and crossed to him, laying a slender-fingered hand upon his shoulder. "You are accursed indeed, young witchling, but not beyond redemption or compassion. Rest now - I will stand guard over your slumber. When you wake, we shall speak further of fate...and fire."
Gentle pressure urged Azure down to the rug before the hearth. Exhaustion pulled at his bones like the tide, too strong to resist any longer. As eyes fluttered shut and mind began to wander the borders of dreaming once more, his last conscious thought was of gratitude - he was no longer alone. Faen's tower would shelter him from outer and inner demons, at least for now.