Wrong Place, Right Time

A New Path

The morning was coming slowly, almost hesitantly.  Despite the rising sun, the frigid cold would refuse to be pierced. If one were foolish enough to venture outside, the bitterest of winters would be their only greeting. It would sap the heat from its victims any way it could: be it a loose shirt button, misplaced sock, or especially a poorly insulated cap.  In other words, a hell frozen over.

For Elric, however, the cold welcomed him, embracing his body with its chilling arms. No matter how much of his fair skin and very dirty blonde hair was exposed, the cold air felt akin to a cool breeze on a summer day. Maybe, he thought, if he froze to death, the pain would end, for not even this frozen wind could calm his bleeding heart.

It would be all for naught, no matter how much he wished otherwise. The intimate bond he held with his inner cold was keeping the bite of the frost to a mere brisk chill, providing a magical shell of insulation, so to speak.

It was ironic, really. His desire for a death in the winter was being prevented by his inner frost. If he were a comedian, Elric mused, he supposed it could work as a punchline in his opening salvo of humor. Alas, Elric was no such man, but a cursed Mage, so his mind wandered back to where he messed up, to where it all went wrong.

His first, and last, failure in protecting his family.

It was the end of the annual fall festival, and the quaint town of Glendel was settling down, preparing for the oncoming winter. Visitors were very abundant, almost in an unusually large excess, meaning that the supply of food and cloth being reserved were the lowest in decades.

On the other hand, their cache of gold was nearly triple the usual haul, so nobody, Elric included, wasn't afraid of running out of supplies.  He wouldn't need to worry about feeding his two younger twin sisters, Emma and Julia, since his quality cloths were in even higher demand than usual.

'I should have seen it coming,' Elric berated, 'It's all my fault!'

On his way to the supply merchant, the distracted Mage almost missed the heavy footsteps stomping all throughout the town.  While it wouldn't be unusual to see a few late night love nests being broken in, there would never be so many at once. Glendel only held sound five hundred citizens, so any more than a dozen would be strange.

Sharpening his senses, Elric took note of the fires in the town plaza. The flames should have been dying out, controlled by the volunteers who were supposed to be standing guard over the flames. Upon closer examination, however, the men who were tasked with overseeing the fires were dead, either impaled through the back or their throats slit. As each moment passed, the flames grew bolder, hotter, larger, beginning to lick its hungry tongue at the nearest buildings. But that wasn't even the worst of it.

By far, the most horrendous part was that bodies were being used as fuel. The horrified Mage, unable to withstand the putrid stench of burning flesh, splattered the ground in front of him with the remnants of his dinner. After a minute, he was able to get his bearings, but continued to gaze at the abhorring scene in front of him, stuck in mounting, disgusted anger.

Hearing a loud crash close by, Elric turned around, and the sight before him would forever remember the sight before his eyes, for it was the first of a long list of failures.

Celeste, the pregnant woman who had delicately nursed the twins whenever they were sick, was awkwardly hobbling towards him, sobbing nearly uncontrollably.  Just as she reached him, her forest-green eyes widened, rolling into the back her head.  Her legs stopped propelling her body forward, and she fell face-first into the ground, her brunette hair cascading down a moment after.