Bloodfire

Chapter 3

Into the harsh fires of day, Aa'lauul emerged. Iron was the air, by the great forge of dawn, made: a barricade to rival any mortal palisade, and one against whose armored pane, the apprentice's sallow flesh quite nearly caved.

It was as if the world itself crashed down upon him; as if every ray of the sapphire sun slashed him with steel's own weight; beating him with its thousand blades even as he thrust a hand skyward, bare palm blocking its glare, yet balking at its fury.

Streams of perspiration instantly glittered amid the furrowed vales of his weathered hand; tracing every scar in vines of glass, slipping down his canted wrist in long fingers smooth and spectral as woven glass.

He grimaced, his lean features hardening, their stark lines standing out like cords of metal lain beneath his flesh; sinew drawn forth by the cruel sculptor of searing heat.

But not long did its cruelty crush him - for his was a soul snow-pure, a thorn bright with innocence, taunting Fate with its purity. As his cupped hand swept down, pewter eyes glittering like the quicksilver tears of weeping stars, as they caught the burning day's ferocity upon their twin mirrors, shattering those stone-hard spears into a haze of softer shards which glittered hail-bright as those two eyes took in the tired world beyond; glimpsed the beauty to which so many were blind.

Alone, their dwelling was not: one of twelve hunched leviathans slumbering beneath the upended bowl of its tawny shell, the piled muck of his workplace bled heavy wisps of smoke languid into the serene sky: its brush a cruel and jagged thing leaving ugly ashen splatters across the heaven's holy canvas.

At this sulking behemoth's side, another tenebrous titan slept: a similarly fashioned half-globe of earth dredged from the deep, molded with the wish of many shelter-less mortals; weathered by a thousand storms; loved by a dozen lives, broken by the unstoppable blade of the brutal tyrant Time; cracked by the gods, but by a hundred humble, human hands, made once again whole.

From these two's apex, a narrow bulb of other structures stretched: an arrowhead broad of base and dull of tip, its oval scar pounded among the dunes; its mark laying out a single, accusing finger stabbed toward the sun; holding captive upon its shape every dreg of mankind's scorn; and in a single, eternal, gesture forever upon the land branding it.

It was, all told, a small and stunted thing: a dozen buildings long ago of their sheltered souls' sparks lain bare. Crypt was it now, yet such was not the first of its forms. Once it had been a simple place; a village huddled like a hearth's final embers; their thistle-threads burning defiant against the dour night.

Gone were those days. Gone were those who sowed the sickle-sleek seeds of Sasulla'sattirr, whose broad vines had once with their immense, floral tendrils, so proudly through these scattered steads swept; their chain a thing of iron which saw disparate shards of civilization twinned, bonded, lashed and linked.

Feral now, had those man-sized fronds become; their questing tendrils thrusting through the earth, tunneling low, spearing high, standing as a stark monument to the sundered; to the ineluctable passage of prosperity.

To the immortal eventuality of nihility. It was the fate of all things to fall. Sullen sentiments such as these, poisoned often the lonely tides of his turgid mind; accentuating the desolation around him just so readily as clotting clouds conspire to deepen even the blackest of nights.

Once, this barren place had, the very core of civilization, been. Simple was its arrangement; for neither wall nor gate did any of its residents have any dreg of desire; any wisp of need. But even the brightest shades fade; even the most potent paints peel and slough. So too was the fate of prosperity. Pleasant times had seen this settlement raised, yet now, now naught but the scorned were welcome.