The Arcane

1: The Start

Warning: Descriptive writing of pain, murder and loss of will to live. 

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The walls were on fire. He didn't know the flames could travel that way.

Smoke was billowing like fog after a rainy night and every breath he took felt like needles. 

Suffocating, loosing consciousness. His vision was blackening. Did the sky always look that dark? 

The heat was all around him and was approaching him fast. His crawling, stumbling legs took him nowhere. Everywhere he turned it was the same image over and over again; dead bodies, burning corpses and the savory stench of burning Prilina wood. On occasion he could see clump of feathers in a pile and he forced himself to look away. He wouldn't allow it. He knew what it used to be.

His head was pounding. Where was he, again? Another sharp desperate intake of breath felt like his last. Any ounce of clean air was gone. Everything was burning. He could feel his robes, the new ones mother just requested tailoring for him, crackle off of his burning body. His skin was starting to charr. 

For what seemed like the longest time, he had been crawling, groveling for life. His hands were blistered because of the heat and his skin had begun to sag and bubble. His knees, in which he was putting his most of his weight on, was bleeding horribly, leaving a long trace of blood behind his slow trail. Where was he going? Where is the exit to this hell?

I must continue. I have to escape. I have to find help. 

Nothing but these words have been repeating in his head for what seemed like an eternity. How long exactly, he couldn't know. All he knew was that it was enough for bodies to have blackening bones exposed.

Everyone else... were they dead? Father? Was he dead, too? And what about mother?

No. He shook his head as much as his smoking muscles would allow him to. Mother is not dead. She is fine. She's fine. I'll live. 

But he was fooling himself. For even though he couldn't see it, nor feel it, he was already burning apart. His skin was melting off of him without any sense of pain. His feelingness, his nerves and most importantly his hope, was evaporated in the fire. 

It was a pain like no other. He had been stabbed and shot at and sliced during swords practice but nothing in the books, in the lessons or in the libraries could prepare him for this pain. Pain wasn't even the right word. It was anguish. It was agony. It was torture. There was nothing like it. Nothing could come close to describing it.

He could feel his hair shrivel off his scalp, leaving more skin to be exposed. His lips were white with heat and he started to smell the burning of his own skin and the pain finally hit him like a tidal wave. He could feel his skin drip off as his blackened neck stretched to scream of this pain. But nothing came out except for silent cries for death in this very moment. 

'Please,' he thought, trying desperately to keep his smoking mind away from the agony. 'By the mercy of a greater deity, end me now. Kill me. Please. Everything hurts. Kill me.' His desperation could be felt by anyone. More than what he had ever wished for before, he wished for death. He was clawing at the sweet release of a still heart and blood that pumped no longer. More than anything, he wanted this pain to stop.

Perhaps in that moment, a deity did recognize the begging voice of a hurting man because his vision started to shade and tunnel. His breaths ran slower and felt muffled by the heat. The agonizing scenery which was already clouded grey with smoke turned darker still. Mercy. He understood the pleasure of death.