Role Playing Fan Fiction ❯ Purifying Hand of Flame ❯ Chapter 5
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Magical Savior 
Miscellaneous: Role Playing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Fantasy / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 01.14.2007 | Updated On: 01.18.2007 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.4K | Visits: 184 | Status: Work In Progress
Miscellaneous: Role Playing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Fantasy / Drama / Adventure / Action | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 01.14.2007 | Updated On: 01.18.2007 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.4K | Visits: 184 | Status: Work In Progress
Disclaimer. This story was created in the setting of White-Wolf's Exalted. Characters created by White-Wolf and not myself will be credited in notes. Reference to White-Wolf canonical storyline and published work will probably not be bothered with; it's part of the setting, which I admit to stealing whole cloth. I, Magical Savior, do not own this series and am not affiliated with White-Wolf in any way. Moving on.
*** Chapter 5
There was silence. Total, absolute silence and oblivion. I was in nothing and nothing was around me.
Sight changed from black to red, and I returned to consciousness.
I opened my eyes slowly. I was still surrounded by a corona of the power I had used - and still very strong. Everything was visible only hazily through it.
Still, I stood up. It was the aftermath of a war zone. Motionless bodies lay everywhere, the broken battlefield of havoc wreaked. I didn’t know where the blast ended and my own, personal swath of catastrophe began.
It was devastation, from what I could tell. My body ached. Light and dark warred in front of my eyes, and I nearly blacked out again. I clawed my way to consciousness.
Daylight was over an hour away, but I didn't know how long I had been out. Seconds, minutes perhaps. Impossible to tell.
Many of the cuts and scrapes from earlier today had faded to nothingness, but my vision swam in dark swirls despite staring into the light of my own power. I healed rapidly since I had been given the god-gift.
Bruises faded in minutes and bleeding wounds closing in hours... But that last explosion of power, I knew not how badly injured I truly was. With my head struck, my eyes blurred and unfocused on my surroundings. I’d not tried to recover from such a thing before.
The night was still perfectly black and seamless. While my aura was like a blazing torch, I stood in its center... The waves of near-solid light that shot through it were hard to see through.
I was one small step from becoming a tower of light ten times a man's height, visible for leagues. Most assuredly, though, anyone for miles would have seen strange and wondrous things.
Still, I was stripped of force, this god-power I had been given. Save that which allowed my heart to beat and mind to think. ... Before this night, I would not have considered these two things as being part of the god-power. But for two reasons, I felt I was wrong, now. I had nearly used the spark of life to power a god-gift, and I had seen a power other than life-force cause bodies to move.
When I had felt the inner-power, I had gone a bit crazed with it. It had happened before, but the power was too seductive to resist. How often could one get used to such sensation, after all? In the last strike I had attempted, I had sucked all the power of my aura into myself - and it had been torn from me when I lost consciousness.
It was good that this power had not been used and channeled. If I had survived the strike, I could never have survived the hunt I would have summoned.
I had been lucky. Ha.
Standing now on my feet, I stumbled towards the devastation. I tripped and fell, then stood again. This... had not been a good day, but I could still walk. Stepping over a tree that had been knocked down by the blast, I reached back for my sword... Gone.
I revised that opinion rapidly. Some of the forms on the ground were still crawling grotesquely. Other undead creatures clawed through bushes and trees, trying to get to the living, pulsating source of food that was yours truly. Corpses were twisting and squirming feebly to move nonexistent limbs. Zombies were laid out, immobile, and hatred burned in their dead eyes for living blood.
Some of the dead simply convulsed in a sick parody of illness, jaws clacking in a now-familiar cadence. I will never forget that sickening sound.
However, I had worked some form of purification in my wrath. Some corpses bore only the mark of a hand or a sunburst swirl of ash upon them, and their flesh was gray. No longer were they rotten and putrid. Instead, they were bleached, like bones in the sun. Though these corpses were horrible to look upon, they were better by far than mockeries of life.
Their twisted features had no malice at all - they were as statues. The driving force in them was gone. Some, I could see clearly where I had laid hands upon them and removed their "animating force."
Most of the rancid smell of death had been driven back by the clean smell of a recently doused fire. The ground underfoot, too, had been scorched to dryness. Faintly, I could see edges of embers still glowing.
In trees and brush, ashes were still hot. Branches were dull and red with cooling flame. All had been hit with a fireblast too intense to leave foliage, but too brief to make green wood ignite. It seemed somehow a familiar sight, a circle of flattened ruin.
Couldn't make the connection - my head was numb and my thoughts slow. There was a center to this circle of destruction, and my eyes were drawn almost automatically to it. I could see a faintly human outline against the trees. Couldn't make it out. Too far away.
Walking toward it, I noted the distance of the undead around me. I had been unconscious only moments, I supposed. Else, those corpses would have devoured me in my sleep.
Most of the undead around me could no longer be called the "dead who walk." However bad I felt, I could not feel as bad as these twisted mockeries of life.
Not that I had true pity.
As I shuffled past, I kicked one in the head. Edging too close to my foot.
I tried to make sense of the situation. Leaves had been blown to cinders. The ground was rippled, and a dense mass of branches and debris clogged between gargantuan, twisted trees as I walked closer to the point of the blast. Ground zero was a cleared area perhaps some ten yards across.
Barely, details of what happened occured came to me, and I remembered everything that happened before the explosion. The battle-lust had taken thought from me.
But I had regained control. My head ached with every breath I took. I continued walking, lolling drunkenly as i tried to regain control of my limbs.
Finally, I could see some details of the figure that stood in the center of the circle. It was a hunched-over, heavily muscled form. The thing turned towards me. It had only one arm.
The other arm had been seperated, at the shoulder. It leaned over and grabbed this arm from the ground, holding it up to the useless shoulder. The arm twitched and flexed, but it failed to take hold in a meaningful way. The thing threw his arm to the ground. Useless.
Some chunk of meat and char also fell from his shoulder and hit the ground with a hollow thump. My eyes followed it... The creature stood over a body in the center of this circle of destruction. I could see it reach down towards the body.
I yelled at it and the creature snapped up, turning towards me in naked hatred. It drew up its' one arm, and I could see meat recede from the inhuman hand. The arm became a sharpened, lethal claw.
Rage ignited in me and pain was forgotten. I had no more power to work the god-gifts I had been given, but I drew back my hand, as though I would unleash the fires and light from my palm.
I had no idea how in hell I had done that, as I had mastered but few of the gifts I had discovered. But if the need came to me, I would wield this power again. Warily, I circled the figure and edged closer to the body on the ground.
Trying to gauge the situation, I yelled, "Fight me, demon!" I didn't know how long it had been standing there, or if the woman was still alive, or what it had been doing. But I would be damned if I would let that thing kill this woman.
The corpse's flesh was ripped and burned, muscle exposed between its ribs. It looked directly at me. Focused. I could not see its eyes clearly, as they were deep-set. However, it did something next that I would have never expected.
It spoke. Or, it tried to. There was a rush of air, but no sound. Gore and spittle came from the thing's mouth in a slow seep of vile liquid. The same substance flowed from a hole in the thing's chest.
The creature held a hand up to its chest. There was a large, ragged hole where it had been shot through with some shrapnel or rock. A sucking chest wound.
It stuck its hand over this hole, and spoke.
"What...have you done... to my puppets...?" Its voice was deep and rumbled from some unnatural in the creature’s throat. I almost swore out loud. Far more dangerous, far more dangerous indeed, than these blasted corpses. It spoke in ragged gasps, air and black fluid leaking out from around its' hand.
One of the most disgusting sights I had ever seen.
It showed planning. Intelligence. It spoke and solved problems in an intelligent way. I thought I had caught a glimpse of this creature before, but I couldn't be sure. Such a thing as this, it was a much more vile creation than mere walking corpses.
I decided that, since it hadn't yet attacked me, it might be good to attempt to reason with the mockery.
"They attacked me while I was moving this injured woman. I destroyed them." I tried to sound confident... A wave of nausea struck me. I could barely stand.
This thing seemed hardly inconvenienced by its severed arm and condition. Fighting it, right now, not good.
"Oh...? You mean...her." The undead thing seemed almost thoughtful. "She is... better off... not going... where you will take her."
The undead were coming nearer. All around the edge of the circle, I could see their dark shapes moving. Time was not on my side.
The creature took up a menacing stance, seemingly ready to use its' own arm as a club at a moment's notice. Still, the single arm it possessed was pressed to the wound of the creature's torso.
"She is here... to die. I am... that death," the creature rumbled. It inhaled with effort, and said, "You will give her... to me."
I stepped closer. "So you can defile her? So you can take her soul?" Every muscle, already tense, prepared to act.
The monster did not back down. "Her soul is gone..." The thing sucked air, and gasped out, "I claim... what remains." The red eyes in it's skull glared ominously, daring me to act.
I feinted a strike with a yell, as though I would use the fiery hand. The undead thing jumped, and nearly tripped on its own severed arm. I took a few steps forward, a smug sneer on my face.
"I think that I'm taking her, anyway. Step back."
As I walked forward, the undead thing did, indeed, step back. I moved closer to the body of the woman and knelt beside her, trying to watch the zombie master from the corner of my eye. Kneeling, I tried to examine her, but resolved that I had no time to deal with this.
She was in horrible condition. Most of the bandages had burned off. She had been bitten in several places, but I noted, barely, the rise and fall of her chest. The travois was nowhere to be seen. My backpack, too, was gone.
The stomach wound made a shoulder-carry impossible. Broken ribs likely excluded the chest drag. The broken leg couldn't be mishandled. It had to be the worst carry - the cradle. Damn.
Placing my arms under her shoulders and thighs, I lifted the woman up. Turning towards the zombie lord, I began walking backwards, keeping my eyes on it.
It leaned down, and picked up the severed arm. The thing held the severed arm to its' mouth and spat on it. Some kind of grotesque worm slid from the creature's mouth and sunk into the limb like a maggot borrowing through meat.
The thing held the severed arm against its lifeless shoulder socket, and the fingers of it twitched as it suddenly came "alive." Surely, surely, very little could be more disgusting and inhuman than this... monster.
The arm that had been severed was still uselsee. It merely twitched, following no command.
The thing put one arm across it's chest, then let the arm hang. Perhaps it had tried to cross it's arms - a human gesture out of place. Finally, it placed one hand against the hole in his lung.
"I'll kill you yet... for this," it rumbled, "I simply do not... choose to kill you... at this time."
"You and me both," I said.
I turned away from it and walked towards a faint light in the distance.
*** Chapter 5
There was silence. Total, absolute silence and oblivion. I was in nothing and nothing was around me.
Sight changed from black to red, and I returned to consciousness.
I opened my eyes slowly. I was still surrounded by a corona of the power I had used - and still very strong. Everything was visible only hazily through it.
Still, I stood up. It was the aftermath of a war zone. Motionless bodies lay everywhere, the broken battlefield of havoc wreaked. I didn’t know where the blast ended and my own, personal swath of catastrophe began.
It was devastation, from what I could tell. My body ached. Light and dark warred in front of my eyes, and I nearly blacked out again. I clawed my way to consciousness.
Daylight was over an hour away, but I didn't know how long I had been out. Seconds, minutes perhaps. Impossible to tell.
Many of the cuts and scrapes from earlier today had faded to nothingness, but my vision swam in dark swirls despite staring into the light of my own power. I healed rapidly since I had been given the god-gift.
Bruises faded in minutes and bleeding wounds closing in hours... But that last explosion of power, I knew not how badly injured I truly was. With my head struck, my eyes blurred and unfocused on my surroundings. I’d not tried to recover from such a thing before.
The night was still perfectly black and seamless. While my aura was like a blazing torch, I stood in its center... The waves of near-solid light that shot through it were hard to see through.
I was one small step from becoming a tower of light ten times a man's height, visible for leagues. Most assuredly, though, anyone for miles would have seen strange and wondrous things.
Still, I was stripped of force, this god-power I had been given. Save that which allowed my heart to beat and mind to think. ... Before this night, I would not have considered these two things as being part of the god-power. But for two reasons, I felt I was wrong, now. I had nearly used the spark of life to power a god-gift, and I had seen a power other than life-force cause bodies to move.
When I had felt the inner-power, I had gone a bit crazed with it. It had happened before, but the power was too seductive to resist. How often could one get used to such sensation, after all? In the last strike I had attempted, I had sucked all the power of my aura into myself - and it had been torn from me when I lost consciousness.
It was good that this power had not been used and channeled. If I had survived the strike, I could never have survived the hunt I would have summoned.
I had been lucky. Ha.
Standing now on my feet, I stumbled towards the devastation. I tripped and fell, then stood again. This... had not been a good day, but I could still walk. Stepping over a tree that had been knocked down by the blast, I reached back for my sword... Gone.
I revised that opinion rapidly. Some of the forms on the ground were still crawling grotesquely. Other undead creatures clawed through bushes and trees, trying to get to the living, pulsating source of food that was yours truly. Corpses were twisting and squirming feebly to move nonexistent limbs. Zombies were laid out, immobile, and hatred burned in their dead eyes for living blood.
Some of the dead simply convulsed in a sick parody of illness, jaws clacking in a now-familiar cadence. I will never forget that sickening sound.
However, I had worked some form of purification in my wrath. Some corpses bore only the mark of a hand or a sunburst swirl of ash upon them, and their flesh was gray. No longer were they rotten and putrid. Instead, they were bleached, like bones in the sun. Though these corpses were horrible to look upon, they were better by far than mockeries of life.
Their twisted features had no malice at all - they were as statues. The driving force in them was gone. Some, I could see clearly where I had laid hands upon them and removed their "animating force."
Most of the rancid smell of death had been driven back by the clean smell of a recently doused fire. The ground underfoot, too, had been scorched to dryness. Faintly, I could see edges of embers still glowing.
In trees and brush, ashes were still hot. Branches were dull and red with cooling flame. All had been hit with a fireblast too intense to leave foliage, but too brief to make green wood ignite. It seemed somehow a familiar sight, a circle of flattened ruin.
Couldn't make the connection - my head was numb and my thoughts slow. There was a center to this circle of destruction, and my eyes were drawn almost automatically to it. I could see a faintly human outline against the trees. Couldn't make it out. Too far away.
Walking toward it, I noted the distance of the undead around me. I had been unconscious only moments, I supposed. Else, those corpses would have devoured me in my sleep.
Most of the undead around me could no longer be called the "dead who walk." However bad I felt, I could not feel as bad as these twisted mockeries of life.
Not that I had true pity.
As I shuffled past, I kicked one in the head. Edging too close to my foot.
I tried to make sense of the situation. Leaves had been blown to cinders. The ground was rippled, and a dense mass of branches and debris clogged between gargantuan, twisted trees as I walked closer to the point of the blast. Ground zero was a cleared area perhaps some ten yards across.
Barely, details of what happened occured came to me, and I remembered everything that happened before the explosion. The battle-lust had taken thought from me.
But I had regained control. My head ached with every breath I took. I continued walking, lolling drunkenly as i tried to regain control of my limbs.
Finally, I could see some details of the figure that stood in the center of the circle. It was a hunched-over, heavily muscled form. The thing turned towards me. It had only one arm.
The other arm had been seperated, at the shoulder. It leaned over and grabbed this arm from the ground, holding it up to the useless shoulder. The arm twitched and flexed, but it failed to take hold in a meaningful way. The thing threw his arm to the ground. Useless.
Some chunk of meat and char also fell from his shoulder and hit the ground with a hollow thump. My eyes followed it... The creature stood over a body in the center of this circle of destruction. I could see it reach down towards the body.
I yelled at it and the creature snapped up, turning towards me in naked hatred. It drew up its' one arm, and I could see meat recede from the inhuman hand. The arm became a sharpened, lethal claw.
Rage ignited in me and pain was forgotten. I had no more power to work the god-gifts I had been given, but I drew back my hand, as though I would unleash the fires and light from my palm.
I had no idea how in hell I had done that, as I had mastered but few of the gifts I had discovered. But if the need came to me, I would wield this power again. Warily, I circled the figure and edged closer to the body on the ground.
Trying to gauge the situation, I yelled, "Fight me, demon!" I didn't know how long it had been standing there, or if the woman was still alive, or what it had been doing. But I would be damned if I would let that thing kill this woman.
The corpse's flesh was ripped and burned, muscle exposed between its ribs. It looked directly at me. Focused. I could not see its eyes clearly, as they were deep-set. However, it did something next that I would have never expected.
It spoke. Or, it tried to. There was a rush of air, but no sound. Gore and spittle came from the thing's mouth in a slow seep of vile liquid. The same substance flowed from a hole in the thing's chest.
The creature held a hand up to its chest. There was a large, ragged hole where it had been shot through with some shrapnel or rock. A sucking chest wound.
It stuck its hand over this hole, and spoke.
"What...have you done... to my puppets...?" Its voice was deep and rumbled from some unnatural in the creature’s throat. I almost swore out loud. Far more dangerous, far more dangerous indeed, than these blasted corpses. It spoke in ragged gasps, air and black fluid leaking out from around its' hand.
One of the most disgusting sights I had ever seen.
It showed planning. Intelligence. It spoke and solved problems in an intelligent way. I thought I had caught a glimpse of this creature before, but I couldn't be sure. Such a thing as this, it was a much more vile creation than mere walking corpses.
I decided that, since it hadn't yet attacked me, it might be good to attempt to reason with the mockery.
"They attacked me while I was moving this injured woman. I destroyed them." I tried to sound confident... A wave of nausea struck me. I could barely stand.
This thing seemed hardly inconvenienced by its severed arm and condition. Fighting it, right now, not good.
"Oh...? You mean...her." The undead thing seemed almost thoughtful. "She is... better off... not going... where you will take her."
The undead were coming nearer. All around the edge of the circle, I could see their dark shapes moving. Time was not on my side.
The creature took up a menacing stance, seemingly ready to use its' own arm as a club at a moment's notice. Still, the single arm it possessed was pressed to the wound of the creature's torso.
"She is here... to die. I am... that death," the creature rumbled. It inhaled with effort, and said, "You will give her... to me."
I stepped closer. "So you can defile her? So you can take her soul?" Every muscle, already tense, prepared to act.
The monster did not back down. "Her soul is gone..." The thing sucked air, and gasped out, "I claim... what remains." The red eyes in it's skull glared ominously, daring me to act.
I feinted a strike with a yell, as though I would use the fiery hand. The undead thing jumped, and nearly tripped on its own severed arm. I took a few steps forward, a smug sneer on my face.
"I think that I'm taking her, anyway. Step back."
As I walked forward, the undead thing did, indeed, step back. I moved closer to the body of the woman and knelt beside her, trying to watch the zombie master from the corner of my eye. Kneeling, I tried to examine her, but resolved that I had no time to deal with this.
She was in horrible condition. Most of the bandages had burned off. She had been bitten in several places, but I noted, barely, the rise and fall of her chest. The travois was nowhere to be seen. My backpack, too, was gone.
The stomach wound made a shoulder-carry impossible. Broken ribs likely excluded the chest drag. The broken leg couldn't be mishandled. It had to be the worst carry - the cradle. Damn.
Placing my arms under her shoulders and thighs, I lifted the woman up. Turning towards the zombie lord, I began walking backwards, keeping my eyes on it.
It leaned down, and picked up the severed arm. The thing held the severed arm to its' mouth and spat on it. Some kind of grotesque worm slid from the creature's mouth and sunk into the limb like a maggot borrowing through meat.
The thing held the severed arm against its lifeless shoulder socket, and the fingers of it twitched as it suddenly came "alive." Surely, surely, very little could be more disgusting and inhuman than this... monster.
The arm that had been severed was still uselsee. It merely twitched, following no command.
The thing put one arm across it's chest, then let the arm hang. Perhaps it had tried to cross it's arms - a human gesture out of place. Finally, it placed one hand against the hole in his lung.
"I'll kill you yet... for this," it rumbled, "I simply do not... choose to kill you... at this time."
"You and me both," I said.
I turned away from it and walked towards a faint light in the distance.