Another salve gone and the pain has yet to subside. Between oceanic waves of unbearable torment that sear their way up crisscross patterns of angry, raw red flesh, Enambris works, trembling fingers diligently crushing herbs, mixing and grinding and eventually applying. But each one does naught to quell the pain, and after another failed attempt, she braces herself for the coming fire.
Right on time it begins. The stick she had broken off of a now-defunct wand is all she has to grit her teeth and bear what comes next. It starts at the tips of her fingers, rapidly snaking its way up her arms to her shoulders, jumping over the parts of her skin that had been fortunate enough to have cover from the whatever-it-was, down to the tiger stripe lines on her stomach. Her eyes clench shut as it blazes its path across her skin, tears coming unbidden and streaking along trails down her cheeks. Enambris screams through the stick clenched desperately between her teeth, the howling winds that blow over the height of Zenith the only sound by which her pain is muffled. Healing magic is no good here.
One, two. One, two. She counts her breaths again to focus her mind on anything else. One, two. The last rays of sunlight dip below the distant horizon of soft white and painted clouds. Her heart skips a beat, she can hear it pounding in her head, the blood rushing in her ears. One, two. Another scream rips from her chest, long and feral and pleading. She would pray, but the gods were not wont to answer the calls of the desperate. Only the diligent.
One, two.
Trembling comes next, the pain-wracked tremors like an earthquake shake her bodily. She draws her knees to her chest, presses her forehead against them and screams again. How long has it been since she slept? One day, perhaps two now, though she does remember managing a short respite sometime early in the morning. She needs rest, needs to find someone to treat this madness.
One, two. The burning fades, the trembling slows. She rubs her face dry with the remnants of a dress she’ll never wear again. It’s gone, subsiding for now. It will be back.
“I want you to sing to me.” The words are simple enough, a statement, not a request. They hang on the air behind a bloody hand and icy eyes. She opens her mouth, but no sound comes forth; there’s ice in her throat. Silver eyes are wide, they see the ice, the mist, the wind. They take in the details of his face, the resonance of his voice, the sudden change behind blue that drew ice from fire. Silver eyes are full of fire, blue eyes full of ice.
“For me.” She tries again, coughing. The ice is choking her, it fills her chest and heart, it tries to fill her mind. Silver eyes see something black on periphery, never quite able to glimpse it fully it but certain that it’s there. The black, the void, the yawning maw of oblivion. It waits around the edges, ever-moving, ever-watching.
“Only me.” There’s a finality in that statement, and she tries to sing, frantic, her lungs devoid of air again, ice clinging where oxygen ought be. The grip on her throat tightens, the ice spreads hoarfrost across cheeks smeared with blood, eyes full of fire. It threatens her, the blackness, tries to swallow her.
“Hello darkness, my old friend…” the words finally come, soft as a prayer and they reverberate through the ice, through the air. There’s a shiver there, it hangs on the wind, paints it red like her hair. “I’ve come to talk with you again.” Tears roll down porcelain cheeks, dragging trails through the hoarfrost blooming there. A plume of steam escapes icy blue lips. “Because a vision softly creeping, Left it’s seeds while I was sleeping…”
Another gasp, another cough, more steam issues from her mouth. Ice gives way to a gentle flame, she feels it in her core as it tears through the frost that coats her slow-beating heart.
“And the vision that was planted in my brain… Still remains within the sound of silence.”
The world swims back into focus, and she finds herself clawing at grass and dirt and stone. The pain surges again, fingertips onward, another trail blazing up painful, now-bruising bands of deep red and purple. She grits her teeth, fire blooming where silver used to be. She won’t cry this time. She pushes herself to her feet, fists clenched tighter than her jaw, and she screams, a raw pulse of aether exploding from her body, radiating outward. The stones tremble, and the storm begins anew.
Kindling
Roses and Ashes 