Bloodfire

Chapter 2

Cinder-bright, thorn-wreathed words raw, from the lungs of Aa'lauul, rushed: smoke swirling from his lips in long, languid specters; wisps snow-bleak fierce in fire's heat steeped. Even now, between the autumn-wind wraiths of his exhalations, the apprentice slipped his hands among the ashes, scooped up sulking coals, swept these into his mouth, and with a protracted shudder, bore them down to the chasm below.

Their heat washed through him, bled all its light into his body, blessed his mind with the tongues of creatures long since slain - and all at once, even at the summit of its soaring, evaporated.

Strength blazed through him, convulsed like a thing caged and aching to be free, raking and rending at its restraints - only to perish mere breaths thereafter.

Stark polarity; such would forevermore, the nature of a Weaver be: a walker who strides upon cinder, speaks with the voice of things primeval beyond all Men's reckoning. Then to feel those Icharus wings slip from their shoulders, fraying even as they bore their beguiled bearer toward his certain end.

Songs such as these sapped the life of those whose throats they scarred; drinking of him an inscrutable thing which left hollow, places never prior realized to any other way, be. Slack did each breath leave him; slumped so lead-listless, so harrowed and heavy upon the gossamer of a weary soul's strings.

At his side lay light; a pool of the moon's own blood mired with his own, moulded into arrowheads' cruel, primal forms.

Though he had begun this day already deep, of its labors weary, far more heavily did its toll now, upon his bowed shoulders rest.

Far from complete was his duty, yet he found his waning strength flickering: a candle guttering amid stormwind's roar.

Graceful still, did his voice, through all its speaker's trials remain.

Across the way, his mentor toiled: a shade stooped low above the thrashing blood-fire of coals; his silver hammer tracing out its pewter arc down from its precarious perch on high; wringing shrill and stark, the eldritch scream of rending matter; burying its blunt snout in the scabrous palm of gouting flames' clutching, pleading, faltering hand.

Where the way of Aa'lauul was one of supplication and grace, his master commanded these raw coals with will and maul and tenacity alone; his whispers guttural; his words a rain of splitting stone crumbling from his lips in a great, faltering scree.

In such clamor's stark contrast, specter-soft, the spring-song of his whisper was. Even faint, faded, torn and tattered as it had become, still clung there a gentleness, graceful upon each gust.

But comes still an end, even to the finest of songs. At length, his own followed this ancient accord, its quaking falling quiet; its rhythm ebbing back to the void from whose depths it had welled.

The other faltered, pausing in his work as the spring-song of his fellow stilled; pausing for he knew: it was moments such as these, when the young lad's mind ever did, to places most dark stray.

Young was his apprentice now, younger still was he when all his world was torn asunder; when his parents were stripped away, his family shattered, his dreams flensed until his bare soul itself lay quaking, open to even a blind man's stare. Lost was he, and it was not for many years when he again knew companionship.

Wasted was he, the moment when he was found: a skeletal wraith huddled upon the cobbles, curled tight about himself in a feeble attempt at comfort, at peace, and solace or sanctuary or fleeting, fragile, flicker-flash of warmth. Of the days prior, little could query or quest avail; only the simple truth of Aa'lauul; only the horrible fate he had shouldered.

Only the way his sight splintered and his very soul drained away in moments of all-eclipsing introspection, when this broken boy glimpsed again, whatever wretched scene it was which had scarred him.

This, the Forge-master could simply not permit.

"You have fared well, Aa'lauul. Better than I could ever ask." He turned, swallowed embers reborn with each thrumming exhale; tracing his words with their feeble fingers of smoke. "As is your wont, no?"

Small and dim, a smile shiver-some, to the youth's lips came; a fleeting reward spectral and ethereal, but a reward which the Forge-father treasured all the same.

"I could do better."

"You could also do worse." The other shrugged, cinders weeping from his splayed hands. "High are the demands of our Briarlords. Ruthless as storms are they, and just so bereft of gratitude. Such has long been their way - and shall never be mine."

Aa'lauul nodded. "For as much, I count myself fortunate."

"As well you should - but, my apprentice, the lords for all their folly and fell nature aside, we cannot toil here forever." He gestured vaguely, indicating the sibling fires, their guttering stumps sagging dim among their cloaks of coal. "Already low, do my stores of marrow run. Perhaps you could visit the market for me? Spare an old man's brittle bones?"

The apprentice snorted, then quickly bowed his head: brow borne low beneath the brutal crown of shame - albeit wearing a shallow smile still. One which prospered when, moments thereafter, the chuckling of his master followed.

"Relax, lad; how many years have you known me?"

"It matters not. An apprentice should not laugh at his master. To do so is ... improper."

The forge-master grunted. "Well, proper or not, it is more entertaining than the alternative: me, a hermit sitting here in the dark laughing at himself."

"Not a pleasant image to be sure: many believe the Marrowbound well beyond the shores of sanity as it is." Aa'lauul exhaled softly: a solemn sound steeped thick in the rich squalor of regret. "Our place in this world is not one of welcome."

"Perhaps." The forge-master shrugged his slender shoulders, sinew standing out in iron bands sleek beneath his sallow flesh. "But the minds of others are subject neither to our rule nor responsive to our recoil."

He leaned forward, hands clasped as if in prayer. After a fashion, perhaps the words which came thereafter were not so far from an apostle's oath removed.

Just so silently were they said; just desperately meant.

"The only mind you command is your own. So long as the path you choose is one which brings a smile to your face, ignites your heart each morn, and gives pleasant satisfaction when the final dregs of light drain from the heavens, then all is right. Care not for the wills of others, Aa'lauul. You are valuable beyond all mortal ken of measuring - and the day you realize it, is when you will be truly, wholly, immutably free."

His apprentice shuffled slightly, the scabrous stones of silence wedged hard within his throat. It was then and then alone when at last the forge-master recognized the abyss of his own introspection, and weary from its depths emerged.

"I can tend the fires, my apprentice, but my daily marrow allotment has already been exhausted. Yours, on the other hand, remains quite unclaimed."

Perhaps striding beneath the light of day will scour some of your darkness away - or at least prevent its clot from all the further deepening.

"Go on, take to the road on those spry young feet of yours; retrieve what this old man cannot."

Aa'lauul found he could not slay the grin which those words conjured. Nor could Fate, who gazed gleefully down from on high; merry, for he knew what lay behind the horizon's black iron blade.

He knew where the apprentice's steps would take him before even one pace planted its scar upon the earth - and for it, he laughed, watching as the young man took those first strides toward the great maw of oblivion.

 Innocent still; aware of naught beyond his own heart's dawn-bright flaring, the youth bowed slightly, and of a smile's shining light spun the three words which would forever damn him:

"As you wish."

Then he was gone, striding out into the blazing light of day, never realizing: this brief spark of happiness, this small fire of joy's gentle ghosts; it would be his last.