Young Flame

It’s cold.

I don’t have enough energy for my fire to do much more than smoulder.

My body is freezing.

The Void Fog engulfs me completely. There is no ice field, no external chill that should make me this cold.

I want to be warm again.

The agony of my body stops me from looking down, I don’t want to see the horrific sight I know is there.

Take me somewhere fervid.

Heat engulfs me. I can’t help but cry at the intense warmth soothing my pain. I cannot breathe, but I find it doesn’t matter. My flames reach out, grasping at as much heat as they can take, restoring much of what was lost.

The weightlessness holds me for a long time. I don’t care about anything but the comfort surrounding me; the heat permeating me, healing my body.

I open my eyes and see nothing but a bright orange filling my vision. An attempt at moving my body is met with difficulty, the liquid all around me moves with a lot of resistance. While it feels like I’m being crushed by a thousand tonnes, it also engulfs me with so much heat I can’t help but soak in the feeling.

The Void Fog must have transferred me to the lava lake. Nothing else could be this empowering. I spread my flames through the molten rock and find that it is much easier to do so within this liquid than in air. My flames pass through the lava, mixing with the heat and travelling farther than ever.

I can see almost everything in this magma lake as if it were right in front of me. That also includes what is left of my body. I’m missing an arm, a leg and a large portion of my lower torso. There is no way I would have survived if it weren’t for this molten bath I’ve found myself in.

With my body in the state it’s in, how will I survive once I leave this lake? I won’t be out in the desert where there are an infinite number of sand-worms to eat. Could I try to stay within the Void Fog? Something about that idea just doesn’t sit well with me. I feel comfortable here for now, but how long will the darkness remain on my side?

In the fight against the General, I was able to revert my form away from the normal physical flames of an áed’s body. It is the only reasons I wasn’t butchered by the man’s blade. But the ability reminds me a lot of what elder Enya was capable of. It might be instinctual, but I can feel a much greater intimacy with my flames. I feel like I can twist them in more ways than before, my body included.

Can I transform into a bird like Elder Enya? If I can grow myself some wings, maybe I won’t need to worry about my lost limbs.

Normally, I control my body’s flames to be more solid than normal, which has the effect of hiding the glow of my fire. Now, I want to do the opposite, push my flames to be as malleable and nonphysical as possible.

I find my body obeys far easier than I expected.

My arm slowly disperses into wisps of flame, flickering about before my body. It is strange. My arm has completely lost its form, but I can still feel it as if nothing changed. It’s not like what my inner flame feels like when I move it around. It feels so much closer. That’s not to say my inner flame isn’t an intricate part of me, just that my body, even in this form, is on a different level.

My arm is slow to change, but soon I have a wing forming in the shape I remember elder Enya always took. A sudden thought stops me half way through forming the wing. If I can change my body this easily, can’t I just regrow my limbs this way?

So I try. Immediately, I realise it won’t be easy to do this normally, but I’m fortunate enough to have this massive lake of heat ready to supply the energy I need to reform my body.

Creating new flames for my inner fire is easy. Creating them for my form, not so much. It takes all my concentration and the energy drains rapidly from my reserve as I recreate my torso and limbs.

I stretch my arms and legs within the restrictive molten rock and am satisfied to feel no difference between sides. It’s like they were never gone.

I move my arms through the lava, trying to make my way to the edge of the lake. As comforting as it is to relax within the warmth, I can’t sit still now. I need to know what happened to the General.

My new arm works just fine to pull me out. The relatively cold air hitting me as I breach the surface nearly sends me diving right back in, but I push forward. I rise to my feet and a wave of exhaustion rolls over me. I was able to put it off because I could run on the heat provided by the magma, but now that I’m out, the full brunt of the past few days slams into me.

I need to get this over with and get out of the Void Fog before finding a place to rest.

I send my will to have the General brought before me. What happened to the man after he almost killed me with that throw is something I need to know.

The General’s prone body appears before me. Red burns line the entirety of his body and his eyes are gone. It’s not a pleasant sight, so I send my flames forward to consume his corpse, as my uncle instructed I do with all my kills.

My flames pass over the man’s body and I flinch back when he jerks at their touch. He’s still alive? Quickly, I open the distance between us, preparing for another surprise strike.

A few seconds pass where he does little more than twitch and gasp in choked breaths. There are still many of the sand-worms chomping at his legs. He must not have bothered to swipe them off.

At a distance, I concentrate my blaze towards the eye sockets and try to end him as quick as I can. Despite being able to do so before, I find it extremely hard to burn through the flesh. It takes a few minutes of watching the man’s pained grunts and twitching before I finally burn into his head and he finally dies.

It is a relief to know the man is finally dead, but it doesn’t bring back my family. I am both satisfied and not. He won’t be able to cause the same grief he inflicted upon me to someone else, but I feel like his death was too quick. I only hope it was as painful as it looked.

The Void Fog brings the other cause of strife before me. The man is long dead, someone having cut right through one side of his body before the Void Fog engulfed him.

I send my flames over both, ready to consume them for their strength. Heisenberg burns quickly, but the General’s skin is resistant even in death and I remain seated by their corpses for a long while before they are consumed.

In the time it takes to eat them, I mess around with the new control I have over my form. It seems I’m unable to take on a nonphysical form while I’m still hiding my flames. The type of modification to my flames is in the complete opposite direction from each other, which prevents me from doing both at once. Which is strange, because I’m sure I remember elder Enya being able to change into a bird while retaining some physicality.

As my fire burns its way through the General, I realise that his body is probably the most nutritious meal I’ve ever had. Back in the tribe, beside parts we can use to make tools or clothing, we would always consume every scrap of the creatures we killed. Uncle said after we took the nutrition to support our bodies, the rest goes to increasing the strength of our bodies.

It wasn’t something I really understood because it was never an observable improvement. But now, I can feel it. There is so much energy stored in the muscle, fat and bones of the General that I can feel my… everything improving with each bit my flames take in.

I guess it is understandable to take in more strength from those that are far stronger. The closest I’ve felt to this was when I was given a bit of a Colossal-worm one time. But even then it was hard to tell as we shared it amongst everyone in the tribe.

Once I finish absorbing the bodies, I know it is time to go.

I build a shell of flame around me, intending to try again now that the Void Fog had its way with me. Same as the first time, my fire pushes away from my body and immediately disappears, replaced by the outside world once more.

Again, I find myself in a long scar through the landscape. The scar is much thinner this time, but it appears to travel in a long, straight line as far as my eyes can see. If this is the path the Void Fog travelled, consuming everything in its path, it must have moved much further than back in Zadok.

I notice a commotion at the edge of the scar above me, where the disappeared land tapers back to untouched. There is little chance anyone in the area will be a friend, more likely to be soldiers assuming the Void Fog didn’t take me far from where I began. Knowing that, I move away from them, backtracking down the curved crevice until I find somewhere that lacks people.

Nobody has come for me yet, but I don’t want to leave anything to chance. As soon as I climb over the ledge, I run away as fast as I can without collapsing. I push my body through the exhaustion so I can find somewhere safe to rest.

All around me is farmland. I run through some type of grass crop growing in the organised fields. Far too soon I find myself unable to run anymore, I trip over my own feet and land amongst the grass. Unable to get up, I drop my head and give in to sleep.

It is dark when I awake. An eerie silence encompasses the land. No birds, no bugs, not even the breeze makes a sound.

I rise above the grass and look around. There is nobody. No one has come looking for me. Is it finally over? With the General dead, I don’t have to keep looking over my shoulder, right? The water mages aren’t going to look for me, they think I died in that weapon. And without the General, they have no reason to continue searching for other áed.

It is over.

I’ve lost so much, and gained nothing, but it’s over.

The grass passes around me as I walk. I feel a sense of catharsis now that I’m free. The men I hate are dead and the áed will not be hunted, but… I am in the same place I started. Not physically, of course, but I don’t know what to do from here on.

I’m lost and alone once more.

No. What am I thinking? I have a way out of that. Ash, Leslie and the others; I can join them. I know where they have gone, not exactly, but I’m sure I can find them if I travel north. And Leal too, maybe I can find her somehow. I have options now. There’s no reason for me to be alone. I’ll head to the northern states and find where the others went.

But first, I have a promise to fulfil.

I glance over the extensive field of grass. Highly flammable grass. I promised Teine to give her and her family a send-off, and if I’m going to offer them their parting without knowing their names, I should at least make their pyre bigger than any other.

I run through the grass until I find the perfect spot for it; an old, worn barn built for ursu proportions sits amongst the grass at the top of a hill. The large doors creak open with a push and I make sure there are no people around to either be hurt or stop the pyre. Originally, I planned to take some of the stuff I found inside to create it, but I soon realise why not just use the barn itself.

So for the next hour, I cut some of the grass and lay it around the wooden walls of the barn, ready for the Ember Moon to come. Sometimes I wonder if the eastern races make these things intending to let them burn. I mean, why else would they make these buildings from wood?

When the light of the moon finally disappears and only the stars remain, I run around the outside of the barn, igniting every pile of grass I’ve left around. Once done, I run through the fields of long grass, hoping to start a widespread fire.

The barn burns quickly. A tower of flames rises high into the sky even without me needing to interfere. I couldn’t have hoped for a better pyre. Eldest Ember must be delighted with my effort.

Soon, the sky tints with her colour, and I walk through the burning doors of the barn surrounded by leagues of burning grass. I push my inner flame into the fire, amplifying the already strong blaze. The fire spins into a vortex under my control, but it isn’t enough for me. I flip the control of my form, forcing it into as ethereal a state as I can manage.

In the time I have, I can’t spread far, but those few flames I mix with feel ever so much closer than I could have imagined before. With my inner flame spreading through the fire far and wide and my body merging with the super-heated central inferno, I create the best path for my kin to the Eternal Inferno. It is sad I do not know their names to help them through, but the intensity and size of this flame should allow any to see, no matter the distance.

I wish a goodbye to Teine, who could not push on through the death of her family. I didn’t know her long, but I want her to reunite with her family, something I hope I can do myself one day.

It is a sad moment as I think about all the áed who have died, but it is also happy in a way. At least I have survived to give them their path forward. I want there to be finality with this pyre. This is my third one and I want it to be my last. There will be no more loss in my future if there is anything I can do to stop it.

Using the new strength Teine’s sacrifice and the consumption of the General’s body has given me, I push as much power into the flames as I can, spinning the inferno with intensity and heat. I enhanced the fire with every part of my being until the orange colour twists into a yellow and burns in a vortex reaching heights far greater than before.

Life will get better from here.