It was cold. Beneath the first droplets of rain and the howling winds that sang their songs through the bared branches of skeletal trees, that was her only conscious thought. It wasn't the same chill from before, she knew, even if she could barely remember when before had even been. Yet, somehow, each time a gust of wind battered her smoldering feathers she felt the reminder of her betrayal in her bones like the first freeze of Winter, curling around her limbs and smothering the life she had clung too so desperately. If it remained or if she was imagining it, she could not have said. That which giveth could taketh away -

"But not today," she whispered to no one, defiant.

Her great head rose at last from the earth as her thoughts became clearer so that she might survey where precisely she had fallen; at first, she thought, she lay simply at the base of the mountain. A surge of panic curled through her stomach and made her jerk upright with a wince but as her dizziness subsided, she realized the slope that rose above her did not extend so far as the tip of the Haven. So then, where was she?

With some great effort she managed to push herself up - she had no intention of laying broken and exposed beneath the open sky lest He fail at keeping Her at bay. Every bone in her body cried out in protest as she forced her weight upon her wobbling feet but those deep blue eyes were already drinking in the sight that surrounded her. No, this was not the base of the mountain, but a crater that was cradling her aching body at its heart. Her fall had been broken by the earth itself.

Somehow, through the surging pain and the weakness that threatened to claim her back into unconsciousness, she smiled. There was not a roiling darkness still chasing her down, threatening to draw her back into the nothing for the rest of eternity or reduce her to the pile of ashes from whence she had first crawled. There was not a gate behind which the greatest souls of the ages would remain trapped. There was not an almighty force chained in the Haven and reduced to little more than a glorified guard dog.

After hundreds upon thousands of years they had cracked open their confinements, they had shown Her weakness, and those that had found themselves upon the wrong side of Her intentions would at last be able to blossom into what they truly were meant to be. Her heart sang louder than the pain in her body or the ache in her flesh; her smile spread wide across her jowls and thunder crashed angry overhead to echo the pride in her heart. She turned her face up to it and let the first drops of rain fall down upon her battered body so that they might begin washing away the memories that were taking hold of her thoughts and beginning to whisper her betrayals.

There was only victory left in the wake of their actions, sweet and satisfying, and she meant to revel in it.