#14. TRAND & DEBROSH III
Each step a sizzle, the crackling of stone and mortar the only accompanying sound to the steady wind. Ash settled over the land, the devastation from the north finding peace on the unburnt ground. The fiery being walked among this slowly growing desolation, unfeeling, unthinking. Since the destruction of the Gulag, it had felt an undisturbed sense of peace. But it was false in many ways, for it was not the even peace of a calm sea. It was the peace of an egg which safely contained the chaotic forming of a being within.
Each step drew it forward. It’s purpose thrummed with a subtlety that denied any other consideration, yet did not disturb its false peace. It know only two things, the two things it should enact on the world. Cleanse the Wicked. Free the Damned.
The small sprite of flame trailed behind the being, unknowing of the world or where it was going. It had been summoned forth out of the dying flames of the Gulag, formed by the mind of the being it now followed. Its only truth was that it was the companion to the fiery creature who made it.
It was endless, their journey. Time had no meaning to these two, for they existed in a state of being of infinite formation. Their exteriors were shells that protected the process. Within them, though, was the hardening and shaping of metamorphosis, of something new coming to be. It was the unfolding of an explosion in reverse, a flame receding to a flash point. The logic of their transformation was antithetical to all other forms, and soon the chaos of it would unravel their shell.
It was in this endless time that they came upon a great, sprawling camp. Soldiers were gathered, and from what they could see, no one else.
Cleanse the Wicked.
Again, the flames became unbound and flew outward in great, torrential pillars. They had more focus now, reaching out and streaming down onto the greatest concentrations of bodies that could be seen.
To someone passing by, able to witness the horror, they would have seen a dozen flaming pillars reaching down like great tendrils onto Hursaw War Camp. They would have seen the pillars arcing across the sky to a single point down the road. If they looked hard enough, they might have seen a small glimmer of red in the inferno.
The tendrils of fire swept across the camp. In some places it was held back by the forces of the magi within, each one working to shield themselves from the destruction. Each time they faltered and were reduced to ash in seconds. The terrible anger of Trand flowed in these fires, his grief for existence a unending fuel to continue his cleansing.
And, soon enough, everyone at the camp was dead.
As the flames receded and the fiery creature again reformed, something was different about it now. The killing had awakened another part of it, for it could now kill with purpose and direction. No longer a storm of flames, but a hand of the gods coming to destroy the wicked.
But this new, apparent awareness brought with it… thoughts. Questions, ideas,images, fantasies… memories. A part of what had been Trand awoke inside the fiery creature and it brought with it all the pain of existence that came from the mortal coil. This was a new sensation to the entity, for it had not felt this ever before. New ideas spawned, of revenge, of guilt, of hatred. New questions arose, of purpose, of envy, of existence.
The small flame sprite, so different from the creature, but intrincally linked to it, was frozen on the ground in fear. The upheaval within its master filled it with dread and darkness, for that is what its master was feeling.
Now the being’s voice was different. It contained a material weight to it, as if by naming the rain it could call it down. But instead, it said, “Why does the suffering never end?”
And so the suffering would never end.
From camp to camp destruction followed. Somehow this being found itself drawn to these encampments, to the people it hated most of all. Each time it destroyed them, a different piece of it awoke. It was the great unfolding of the metamorphosis. It was the vibrations of a quake which would crack the shell. Each piece of vengeance for the being which had been Trand would form some new mechanism within this new creature and the terrible weight of it would impress itself upon the entirety of creation.
Soon, enough had come to pass. The fire could no longer be contained.
As if the fire itself had come to life and found its oppressor in the being of flame, they turned instead away from the magi and soldiers and towards their master. The flames unified with the being, coursing through it in great spears of light. For a brief moment those who survived, who could live to see this unfolding, would think that perhaps a deity or god had come to their aid.
How hopeful. How foolish. In a world ruled by Red Mysterium, the only gods are those who dominate the others.
The flames settled over the being, coiling in great lengths of hot fire that condensed, impacted within each other to form a much different creature than before. No soft edges, no ill-defined shape.
This being was anger made manifest.
It looked upon itself with wonder, new capacities within its mind, new understandings and visions of the future. This creature, this… Inferno… could want. And it wanted more than the simple demands of its former self. Cleansing the Wicked, yes, that would be done regardless of its wants. Freeing the Damned… yes, that too would follow. But now, unbound by the hatred and anger of mortality and memories of a vanquished self, the Inferno had much loftier goals.
With flames renewed, and disgust at these weak creatures fueling its killing, the Inferno knew that what would come would be sweet and succulent as charred flesh.
The sprite was now gone. The Inferno walked alone.
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A DARKER ENERGY 