Thick, black plumes roiling in a violent fervor veil the heavens. Heat and smoke rake my throat, my mouth fills with ash and embers of the burning Stillwood. Rumbling groans and sharp cracks consume the forest as the colossal black and golden trees of my evergreen home succumb to the raging flames slicing through their trunks like a Heritage Blade and collapse to the ground. Sparks spray in brilliant white and gold waves in the wake of their impact on the earth. It is so beautiful and horrific, I cannot tear my eyes from it. Clamorous screeches from birds of war ripping through cancerous veins of smoke play in concert with the thunder of fire and death rattles of stillwood trees. Everything is aflame—death sours the air, screams scorch and become cinders within my lungs before they reach my tongue, my eyes are devoid of peace and shrouded in chaos. I am dying. I am drowning in smoke and ash and blazing golden leaves. I am burning alive—burning with the trees that surround me. My home is my pyre. There will be no one to witness my death after the stillwoods are gone. The tongue of the molten god laps at my heels, kissing my naked feet as they run on kindled earth. My feet carry me to the eastern hills and the red road that leads to the Crownland.
Fire floats in the shape of crosses to the west of me within the castle walls of Westermin. There is a figure of another beside them not yet aflame, and I know it is awaiting me. Water hisses as my tears meet the ground below me. The earth wants not of my sorrow. It begs for blood.
The eastern gates are wide open and the courtyard barren, its sole occupants the glowing cruciforms. I see now that they are towering stillwoods—four in all—blazing with a ferocious heat, but not yet consumed. At the center of each of their cosmic trunks pierces an arrow that birthed the flames that smother them. The flames crackle in frenzied laughter, mock my wet and stinging eyes. A sapling stands alone, isolated and wanting of light—nearly lost in the dense miasma seeping in from the gasping forest beyond the southern walls. I don’t feel the scorch of the earth on my knees as they slam before my ancestral roots. My burning flesh smells sickly sweet in my nose, and I’m gagging on it—on the hunger it stirs. I am hot, yet I am cold. My body is spasming in tremendous torrents. I am staring at the trees impaled by flaming arrows, and its meaning is not lost to me, but still I plea to the smoke that has sequestered the air that I am wrong. The sapling is alone in its vigil beside them. The only one to behold our demise.
A soft, rattling whimper sounds over the chaos of the raging empyreal realm, and my eyes fall on a dove lying prone before me and the shadowed sapling. Ivory has been smothered in soot, making it look as a fragile raven. It whines and whimpers as scattered embers beneath its mantle gnaw through its snowy plume to meet delicate skin. Its death will be slow. Torturous. I pick the dove up, and its whines turn to shrieks, it thrashes in panic, but it cannot fly. Its wings are burned away, its heart cursed to meet them. The dove calms in my hands as I cradle it to my chest. I weep. I weep for the bird, my throat and brows aching in the effort. My tears spill over the ivory and soot-stained feathers of its breast. It is suffering, this innocent life. I cannot take it. Oh gods, I cannot take it.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Where the sapling stood, a gleaming sword now stands skyward, tip buried in the dirt. Its light is corrupt—fractures of white and black splintering off into the red haze of the courtyard. A large blood ruby glows dimly in the pommel, black leather encases the hilt, and alien runes run in a straight line up the center of the blade. I know not its name, though I know its purpose. And I know somehow that it is mine.
A strange lament reaches my ears, and I realize the sound came from my own throat. I am moaning with the dying dove and rocking on my ruined legs. I cannot feel them any longer, I do not know if they exist. If they do, they are the ashes I lie in. I know what I must do, but I have not the strength to do it. My heart is burdened with the scourge of my homeland, with the knowledge that I am all that’s left. But this dove still draws breath.
She cannot be spared, a whisper came with a hot breath of wind to my ear. I refuse its entrance to my heart, I must search for the vitasan. You prolong her suffering, little harpy.
A guttural sob tears from my chest where I cradle the dove. I cannot walk to the sword, so I crawl. My body and hand stoke the flames anew. The simmering of my flesh is infernal and wicked, but I drag myself over the coals. I feel every ember, every stone, every thorn of the earth stab and rake across my flesh as I pull my failing body with my free hand toward the corrupted sword. Spit is spilling through barred teeth as I wail through the agony of my labor. The sword grows no closer as I drag and drag and drag. The dove and I are screaming. We are being reborn in fire, and it is unending. I am pleading for death now, and I know the dove is, too.
My knife is in my hand, the blade that a gentle boy made for me. I hold aloft the dove in my right palm and send the blade through its breast with my left. The screaming stops. Crimson ichor bathes my hand. It's warm, it feels like love. It feels like innocence. It feels like doom.
