Aurum liked to think that he and Moth had been doing pretty well individually as parents. The proxy had always known his sister to be a caring soul, and even with the sicknesses that seemed to ail her beloved little children, he was sure that she could weather the storm. Her and Selby, together. However, he had still made it a habit of his to visit her on occasion, checking in and seeing how she was doing with all the added stress being heaped upon her shoulders. He had been heading for her home on one of these trips when he noticed something strange. Despite it being fairly late, the scent of Moth was leading away from her home, rather than inwards. Frowning with worry, the lion changed course, moving away from the porch of the Moth and Selby family home and towards the swamp. She could've been out just to be on her own and think, of course, but he had grown more paranoid about her after the kidnapping incident. He couldn't have anybody coming back to try and take her again, snatched from her family and friends. Just the thought of it was enough to make him clench his jaw, his paw steps speeding up and the sound of his body rumbling through the trees producing loud thuds against wet ground.

Sure enough, when the angel ended up arriving to where Moth was, he was taken aback by the scent of blood. It was strong and all consuming, and it had him rushing over to her side, her smaller body collapsed against the wet ground. She had wounds on her shoulder and ear, and she was so thoroughly unconscious that it didn't even look as though she was breathing. So much so that Aurum didn't think she was. His heart clenched as he pressed his head into her fur, mumbling desperately to her unmoving body, "No... No, Moth, please... please, you've gotta be okay... you've gotta stick with me, okay? I'm gonna get you to Selby... please, wake up..." His voice cracked and shook with every word, and when there was no response from the body below him, he felt a sob rack his form. The all consuming feeling of dread that had formed in his chest was only growing larger, and more dangerous. Aurum began to lean down to grab his sister, tears streaming down his cheeks, only for a loud crack to interrupt his thoughts. His head snapped upwards, and he was face to face with the creature who had done this to his sister, the crocodile's maw still stained with her blood.

In that moment, there was clarity. The grief and anger that Aurum felt inside grew to a head as he saw the creature, a bubble bursting from deep inside of him. His form began to change, stretching and shifting into a creature of massive size and danger. He was a wyrm, nine feet in length, with charcoal black and fiery orange scales. Gone was the mane of fiery auburn, instead replaced with a mane of spines running around his neck, puffed and dangerous, sharp to the touch. Eyes ran up and down his sides, pupils dangerous slits in a sea of orange and red. Perhaps the most unnerving part of this new form was the mouth of the horrific creature. It was similar to that of a lamprey, circular in shape and full to the brim with horrible, razor sharp fangs. The creature – MAMA, it's mind provided – slithered forward across the earth, so large that it pressed against the trees nearby, making them creak and groan with protest. MAMA launched itself forward at the crocodile offender, its mouth grabbing onto the reptile and pulling it inwards. The crocodile snapped its jaws in a desperate attempt to break free, but it was too late for it now. MAMA let its mouth crush inwards, rows upon rows of teeth coming together to crush the crocodile down to nothing more than a faint memory before it was swallowed.

Once the attacker was gone, MAMA turned back to see Moth, still collapsed on the ground, now far below. Grief overtook the creature again, the wyrm tilting it's head back towards the sky and wailing. It wailed as loudly as it could, its call echoing outwards as tears began to run freely out of its many eyes.

( moth isn't dead, just unconscious and looks that way! + MAMA will not harm any Tanglewood members, but is unlikely to respond to anything in words as it is essentially feral + helpful MAMA ref by Blazic if you're having trouble imagining it )

[div style="text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; text-shadow: 0px 0px 2px #1B1B2F; font-size: 24px;"][color=#44437F]— AURUM

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[div style="width: 300px; max-height: 100px; height: overflow; overflow: scroll; padding-bottom: 5px; margin-top: -5px; font-family: georgia; font-size: 8pt; color: #152232; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: justify;"]He kept fancying that Ivan was absorbed in something — something inward and important — that he was striving toward some goal, perhaps very hard to attain.

Try as he might, Ivan could not summon up the memory of his birth. The effort was akin to one trying to reach through and claw away a thick swatch of cobwebs. For all his dramatics and glumness, typical of the second-born son of Selby and Moth, Ivan thought his inability to recall the experience was that it was so traumatizing that his brain had elected to ignore it and push it far back into the cotton of his mind. He wondered if it really could be that living as a rational being was one of the greatest feats on this earth, just because it was so hard.

He loved the feeling of grass under his paws, and the scent of his father, he loved all these little things in life, but he was often tempted by the idea that before birth he was probably the happiest and safest he had ever been.

Ivan tried not to think about it, because he was aware that he was standing on the precipice of a very dark place. Too much thinking could plunge him right over the edge and he wouldn't be able to drag himself up out of it. Ivan tried to be happy and grateful, but everywhere he turned he saw contradictions and hypocrisies. Some nights he could barely sleep because the memory of Alice's wheezing and coughing rattled in his skull like a woodpecker. Bad things shouldn't happen to good people.

He just never expected it to happen to his own mother.

Ivan was startled by the outrageous cacophony going on in the territory. Satellite-shaped ears swirled frantically as he attempted to pinpoint the source of chaos. He thought he was prepared to expect the worse, though he had never in his short life seen a dead or badly wounded body of a Tangler. He was not prepared for that body to be his mother's. Ivan had gotten a splinter or two in his pad, or accidentally ripped out a claw. There was that time he sliced his ear on a sharp portion of Caustic's fence. That was nothing.

The young black cat broke into a full gallop, feeling his heart sink lower into the pit of his stomach the closer he got. Blood roared in his ears, so loudly that even he could not hear himself think. Ivan slid to a stop next to his brother and Alaric, saw clearly his mother's unconscious form, and raised his gaze to see a complete abomination of a creature. He didn't know what he was looking at and it made all the blood in his body freeze. I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE SUPER NATURAL. I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE SUPERNATURAL. He didn't realize he was holding in his breath, an awfully bad habit he had nurtured since sneaking into Caustic's yard when he just could not handle a situation. He didn't even have time to register his own grief for his mother's pain.

"Mother of —" And like a snap, Ivan's body dropped to the floor like a deadweight, falling unconscious in a faint.