Role Playing Fan Fiction ❯ Purifying Hand of Flame ❯ Chapter 6
[ 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: 2.6K | Visits: 185 | 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: 2.6K | Visits: 185 | 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 6
All I had to do was make it to the light in the distance. All around me, I could hear those... demons... following. Hounding my every step. My pace was slow. Though I knew not where these creatures truly were, I eventually they would cut me off, and stand once again in my path.
Everything depended on me putting one foot in front of the other. I was carrying a heavy burden - I had been carrying this burden, one way or another, for a very long time. The sun would not be long in rising. Would I see another sunrise?
The night is always darkest before dawn.
It didn't matter to me. Wherever I went, I had light. I had faith and confidence in myself. More to the point, I literally had light. I, myself, blazed a fiery golden radiance as the sun would. It made finding my way not exactly easy, but better.
Still, walking in this swampy wood was hard going. Roots and dips of muck did their best to snag my feet, and I couldn't see them as I walked over them. There was a reason for that.
The reason in question was heavily injured, and I could feel blood on my hands and arms as I walked, coating them and sloughing off. She was young woman who I had found lying beside the road, seemingly left for death.
I was carrying her with my own two arms under her shoulders and legs in the "cradle carry." It is done over short distances. It is done so for a very good reason - there is no more painful, draining way to carry a person without trying to be difficult.
Again, I tried to think of different ways to carry this person. Pack-strap carry was out; it was a good way to carry someone a long distance as you put their arms over your shoulders and carried them like a backpack, but it would jostle the broken leg. The shoulder carry, the most common one person carry, was out because her stomach was wounded and I would be putting my shoulder into it. Most other carries were either two-person, conscious person, or drag carries.
Briefly I considered a drag carry, but such was easier with a strap or rope. Most drag carries were done when a person had to stay low and avoid notice... I wanted to be noticed. At least, I did as soon as I could be noticed by the "living." A figure-eight belt carry would be so much easier...
It was harrowing. I had been chased by armies, hunted by wild beasts as food. Avoiding mobs and riots was easy. I have faced the elements and survived hardship. I was not going to be eaten by zombies.
It was that simple; I was certain it would sound good at the end of my list of accomplishments.
I stumbled and nearly fell, as I gasped for breath and adjusted my grip. Daydreaming, head-injured and faltering. One more moment without thinking, concentrating on my task, and I would be unconscious.
Most people probably wouldn't consider it like this. I imagined offering for an apprenticeship. What did I have to offer a master craftsman to show I was worthy of learning his trade? Avoidance of death by zombie horde. I like that, he'd say. Not dying from an attack of the dead-who-walk shows dedication. Keep up like that, you'll make journeyman in no time.
Slowly, I was outpacing the zombies that were following me. Though they were tireless and I was tiring, I guess I had laid enough limb-rending destruction that most of them weren't in any particular condition to keep up with me. I could hear them still, clawing and crawling through the brush.
Maybe I could have snuck away from them, if I wasn't shining like the sun-god himself. Herself? I'd had a conversation with the sun only once, and remembered very little of it.
Moments when I felt light and floating, as though carrying only the weight of my dreams, were nightmarish when I snapped back to reality. Very soon, I thought, I will finally be unable to continue.
I kept walking only because I had seen the land of death, and did not want to see it again so soon.
They did not breathe. They did not blink. They didn't plan or think. All the undead could do, it seemed, was devour living flesh. And for what purpose? I had only seen one undead creature that had a "mind," and it had accused me of destroying the "puppets" it controlled.
My arms burned with strain. I locked my hands together as though clasped in prayer, flexed every muscle to hold the body of this woman in front of me as I walked. Did I want to be a hero? She didn't know me.
I hit a root and fell, nearly wrenching an ankle. Heavily, I hit my knees. But I didn't drop my burden. Straining, I got to my feet and moved on.
The light I cast let me see her clearly. Her face was white, and though she'd undoubtedly lost a lot of blood, her skin might be that color. It was normal, in some places. There were simply people with white skin and red eyes.
As I watched and tried to gauge her condition, I could see her pale, white skin slowly turn red. It seemed like sunburn. I didn't know if it had happened during that explosion of fire or something else.
It could be, that I had, in truth, become as the sun. That I would finally be truly alone because none could bear the brightness of my being. A black spot of my vision reached out to engulf me... I shuddered and returned to wakefulness once again. Close, that time.
Then, I remembered during the battle, the white shape I had seen. I thought it had been her, fighting, but I couldn't tell. She might have been throwing off light. She might be like me. This person might have the "divine soul."
It may be that the divine power which was in her had begun to show through her skin. I remembered not what had happened to me, exactly, when I was given my power. However, when I emerged from the desert those long weeks ago, I was darkly tanned. It was inexplicable, as I had traveled at night and avoided the sun all days save that last, frantic day.
I had been dying of thirst, cut through by a sword wielded by a spirit. Almost at the point of my death, I had been raised above myself and returned to being.
It is a bad day, a bad day indeed, when spirits carry swords. But I had been given a gift of "second breath" - a fragment of soul which was not mine entered into me, and I was restored.
A voice had spoken to me. It spoke of destiny, purpose. A face that had turned from man once, and now fixed the gaze of attention on me. It had seemed terribly important. But in my weakness, before the full power of this soul came to me, I could remember not one word.
At the time, it came to me as a revelation. The gist of the knowledge I had then was, this was either the soul of a hero or a fragment that contained heroic essence. It was drawn to me because of the choices I had made and the person I was - that I had qualities which, through my honing and developing of being and virtue, used me as a sort of conduit to allow me to achieve more.
It seemed much better what the dragon-bloods claimed, through the non-accident of birth. Their empty lies proclaimed their power was part of the cycle of the soul. That they were reincarnations purified through countless deaths and rebirths, and thus superior to their fellow man and capable of calling upon great powers.
The "great powers" part wasn't a lie - I had faced those powers many times. But if the dragon-blood's claim that they were souls purified by many lives which gave them power, clearly they were wrong. Such an experience happened to those who made themselves worthy of it, like me.
Maybe it was because the Immaculate Order knew they lived a lie that they tried to destroy those like me. Their false religion justified the Dragon-bloods "enlightened" status among men, and outlawed the reverence of spirits, the worship of ancestors, and the religion of the "old gods."
Their damnable religion said that I was "Anathema." The god-powers I possessed were placed in me to corrupt and destroy me. They said they were simply trying to save me from its "possession."
Immaculates had those among them who could tell when a person had this "piece of soul" and gained powers like mine. Those people were killed as soon as they arose, before they learned to use their powers.
Except, that hadn't happened to me.
Because I gained my powers while lost in the middle of a vast and tractless desert, it was a little hard for them to find me at the time.
The Realm worked tirelessly to fix that, however. At times, it seems as though they are using my power is as a key note that they can "hear" to find me. At other times, it is as though they follow my path like those seeking a prophecy. Somehow, my power, my gift, is involved.
Sometimes, when I brought forth my powers to their fullest extent, the Dragon-bloods are there to hunt for me soon after. Occasionally, I see the Imperials before I have to use my power. And then, I find myself using the god-power to resolve my path. Sometimes, the Dragon-bloods appear, and I must use my power to face them and escape.
Of course, the Immaculate Order, the religion of the Blessed Isle and the Realm, has certain difficulties in enforcement of their laws outside of the reach of their armies. They wouldn't outlaw things people didn't do, after all.
I had left the Threshold of the Realm and headed east after attempting to stop a spreading plague in my own land of the Lap, moving with time past Chiaroscuro and Lookshy.
Leaving behind the past I had created and tracing down the source of this illness seemed like enough purpose for the moment. Too, I also sought lands where the "Hundred Gods" heresy was considered orthodox religion, and the religion of the "Old Gods" never became old. It may be I was the chosen of these "Old Gods."
I had heard of a god spoken of in whispers, and I sought those whispers out.
It was a god of the sun. Some of my powers, the mark that sometimes appeared on my forehead, the way I acquired this "divine soul"... All seemed to involve the sun and the myth of this god. Though his worship was rumored to be more visible in the southlands and deserts, my path forced me east by steps, that direction in which the sun rose.
Who knew? Perhaps I was on a path to find this god's followers. This woman may even be like me. She had seemed mortal, there was no flash of divine power on her that I could see. But she may well become favored, like me.
It may be so. I remembered the flash of light and power that had thrown me. It came to me, how I had seen it before, at the place I had found this woman. It was an aftermath. But if that was the case, why was she not restored? If the divine soul had came to her and she called upon its' power, she should glow with light if she yet lived. But she did not.
This very power had saved her life perhaps twice. It may be another power she called upon; perhaps the powers given to me were far from the only ones to be gifted to mortals.
I had been walking and thinking many minutes. My arms, my legs and back, all were ready to break with strain and surrender to exhaustion. But still, I continued on. I had tripped and stumbled many times, but the undead after me were not an immediate threat. The trees and brush began to thin.
Logging, cutting for firewood. I was tripping over stumps now, unable to tell them from the ground by their dark color and strange shadows. The light of whatever town I was near, I was almost there.
I had thought many times that it was a hallucination, a spot burned into my eyes after staring into the storm of light that surrounded me. But it was slowly moving closer. It stayed steady when all else moved and swam, when all else faded and was unreal.
The person I was trying to save was getting worse. Her skin was very red. I could see blisters forming on her face and the inside of her arms whenever I could spare a look. I could determine no cause.
But... My power, the divine force I carried, destroyed the undead with a touch. This was the power that was leaking through me now, through my aura - the purity I had inside, I believed. It destroyed the impure "walking dead" on contact. Could it be, that she was becoming as them, by being in this cursed place?
I had seen bodies without souls, now. What if her soul had been taken in that place, and it waited upon her death for the mortal coil to become cold? I could be trying to save a truly lost cause.
It wouldn't be the first time.
Maybe those explosions of power were the soul leaving the body. But if that were the case, such would happen before every death. Perhaps her soul had been forcibly taken by that creature. It had been standing over her, it called the other undead "puppets."
It had wanted me to leave her with it, for who knows what unholy purpose.
Still, a person's soul can't be stolen twice, I would think. She had been conscious after the first explosion. A soul must, in some form, embody mind. But if my power was now harming her, she might have suffered some impurity of soul from those things. How could I know? No one could SEE the soul.
Can such things happen?
Perhaps this was not a good line of thought to go down.
*** Chapter 6
All I had to do was make it to the light in the distance. All around me, I could hear those... demons... following. Hounding my every step. My pace was slow. Though I knew not where these creatures truly were, I eventually they would cut me off, and stand once again in my path.
Everything depended on me putting one foot in front of the other. I was carrying a heavy burden - I had been carrying this burden, one way or another, for a very long time. The sun would not be long in rising. Would I see another sunrise?
The night is always darkest before dawn.
It didn't matter to me. Wherever I went, I had light. I had faith and confidence in myself. More to the point, I literally had light. I, myself, blazed a fiery golden radiance as the sun would. It made finding my way not exactly easy, but better.
Still, walking in this swampy wood was hard going. Roots and dips of muck did their best to snag my feet, and I couldn't see them as I walked over them. There was a reason for that.
The reason in question was heavily injured, and I could feel blood on my hands and arms as I walked, coating them and sloughing off. She was young woman who I had found lying beside the road, seemingly left for death.
I was carrying her with my own two arms under her shoulders and legs in the "cradle carry." It is done over short distances. It is done so for a very good reason - there is no more painful, draining way to carry a person without trying to be difficult.
Again, I tried to think of different ways to carry this person. Pack-strap carry was out; it was a good way to carry someone a long distance as you put their arms over your shoulders and carried them like a backpack, but it would jostle the broken leg. The shoulder carry, the most common one person carry, was out because her stomach was wounded and I would be putting my shoulder into it. Most other carries were either two-person, conscious person, or drag carries.
Briefly I considered a drag carry, but such was easier with a strap or rope. Most drag carries were done when a person had to stay low and avoid notice... I wanted to be noticed. At least, I did as soon as I could be noticed by the "living." A figure-eight belt carry would be so much easier...
It was harrowing. I had been chased by armies, hunted by wild beasts as food. Avoiding mobs and riots was easy. I have faced the elements and survived hardship. I was not going to be eaten by zombies.
It was that simple; I was certain it would sound good at the end of my list of accomplishments.
I stumbled and nearly fell, as I gasped for breath and adjusted my grip. Daydreaming, head-injured and faltering. One more moment without thinking, concentrating on my task, and I would be unconscious.
Most people probably wouldn't consider it like this. I imagined offering for an apprenticeship. What did I have to offer a master craftsman to show I was worthy of learning his trade? Avoidance of death by zombie horde. I like that, he'd say. Not dying from an attack of the dead-who-walk shows dedication. Keep up like that, you'll make journeyman in no time.
Slowly, I was outpacing the zombies that were following me. Though they were tireless and I was tiring, I guess I had laid enough limb-rending destruction that most of them weren't in any particular condition to keep up with me. I could hear them still, clawing and crawling through the brush.
Maybe I could have snuck away from them, if I wasn't shining like the sun-god himself. Herself? I'd had a conversation with the sun only once, and remembered very little of it.
Moments when I felt light and floating, as though carrying only the weight of my dreams, were nightmarish when I snapped back to reality. Very soon, I thought, I will finally be unable to continue.
I kept walking only because I had seen the land of death, and did not want to see it again so soon.
They did not breathe. They did not blink. They didn't plan or think. All the undead could do, it seemed, was devour living flesh. And for what purpose? I had only seen one undead creature that had a "mind," and it had accused me of destroying the "puppets" it controlled.
My arms burned with strain. I locked my hands together as though clasped in prayer, flexed every muscle to hold the body of this woman in front of me as I walked. Did I want to be a hero? She didn't know me.
I hit a root and fell, nearly wrenching an ankle. Heavily, I hit my knees. But I didn't drop my burden. Straining, I got to my feet and moved on.
The light I cast let me see her clearly. Her face was white, and though she'd undoubtedly lost a lot of blood, her skin might be that color. It was normal, in some places. There were simply people with white skin and red eyes.
As I watched and tried to gauge her condition, I could see her pale, white skin slowly turn red. It seemed like sunburn. I didn't know if it had happened during that explosion of fire or something else.
It could be, that I had, in truth, become as the sun. That I would finally be truly alone because none could bear the brightness of my being. A black spot of my vision reached out to engulf me... I shuddered and returned to wakefulness once again. Close, that time.
Then, I remembered during the battle, the white shape I had seen. I thought it had been her, fighting, but I couldn't tell. She might have been throwing off light. She might be like me. This person might have the "divine soul."
It may be that the divine power which was in her had begun to show through her skin. I remembered not what had happened to me, exactly, when I was given my power. However, when I emerged from the desert those long weeks ago, I was darkly tanned. It was inexplicable, as I had traveled at night and avoided the sun all days save that last, frantic day.
I had been dying of thirst, cut through by a sword wielded by a spirit. Almost at the point of my death, I had been raised above myself and returned to being.
It is a bad day, a bad day indeed, when spirits carry swords. But I had been given a gift of "second breath" - a fragment of soul which was not mine entered into me, and I was restored.
A voice had spoken to me. It spoke of destiny, purpose. A face that had turned from man once, and now fixed the gaze of attention on me. It had seemed terribly important. But in my weakness, before the full power of this soul came to me, I could remember not one word.
At the time, it came to me as a revelation. The gist of the knowledge I had then was, this was either the soul of a hero or a fragment that contained heroic essence. It was drawn to me because of the choices I had made and the person I was - that I had qualities which, through my honing and developing of being and virtue, used me as a sort of conduit to allow me to achieve more.
It seemed much better what the dragon-bloods claimed, through the non-accident of birth. Their empty lies proclaimed their power was part of the cycle of the soul. That they were reincarnations purified through countless deaths and rebirths, and thus superior to their fellow man and capable of calling upon great powers.
The "great powers" part wasn't a lie - I had faced those powers many times. But if the dragon-blood's claim that they were souls purified by many lives which gave them power, clearly they were wrong. Such an experience happened to those who made themselves worthy of it, like me.
Maybe it was because the Immaculate Order knew they lived a lie that they tried to destroy those like me. Their false religion justified the Dragon-bloods "enlightened" status among men, and outlawed the reverence of spirits, the worship of ancestors, and the religion of the "old gods."
Their damnable religion said that I was "Anathema." The god-powers I possessed were placed in me to corrupt and destroy me. They said they were simply trying to save me from its "possession."
Immaculates had those among them who could tell when a person had this "piece of soul" and gained powers like mine. Those people were killed as soon as they arose, before they learned to use their powers.
Except, that hadn't happened to me.
Because I gained my powers while lost in the middle of a vast and tractless desert, it was a little hard for them to find me at the time.
The Realm worked tirelessly to fix that, however. At times, it seems as though they are using my power is as a key note that they can "hear" to find me. At other times, it is as though they follow my path like those seeking a prophecy. Somehow, my power, my gift, is involved.
Sometimes, when I brought forth my powers to their fullest extent, the Dragon-bloods are there to hunt for me soon after. Occasionally, I see the Imperials before I have to use my power. And then, I find myself using the god-power to resolve my path. Sometimes, the Dragon-bloods appear, and I must use my power to face them and escape.
Of course, the Immaculate Order, the religion of the Blessed Isle and the Realm, has certain difficulties in enforcement of their laws outside of the reach of their armies. They wouldn't outlaw things people didn't do, after all.
I had left the Threshold of the Realm and headed east after attempting to stop a spreading plague in my own land of the Lap, moving with time past Chiaroscuro and Lookshy.
Leaving behind the past I had created and tracing down the source of this illness seemed like enough purpose for the moment. Too, I also sought lands where the "Hundred Gods" heresy was considered orthodox religion, and the religion of the "Old Gods" never became old. It may be I was the chosen of these "Old Gods."
I had heard of a god spoken of in whispers, and I sought those whispers out.
It was a god of the sun. Some of my powers, the mark that sometimes appeared on my forehead, the way I acquired this "divine soul"... All seemed to involve the sun and the myth of this god. Though his worship was rumored to be more visible in the southlands and deserts, my path forced me east by steps, that direction in which the sun rose.
Who knew? Perhaps I was on a path to find this god's followers. This woman may even be like me. She had seemed mortal, there was no flash of divine power on her that I could see. But she may well become favored, like me.
It may be so. I remembered the flash of light and power that had thrown me. It came to me, how I had seen it before, at the place I had found this woman. It was an aftermath. But if that was the case, why was she not restored? If the divine soul had came to her and she called upon its' power, she should glow with light if she yet lived. But she did not.
This very power had saved her life perhaps twice. It may be another power she called upon; perhaps the powers given to me were far from the only ones to be gifted to mortals.
I had been walking and thinking many minutes. My arms, my legs and back, all were ready to break with strain and surrender to exhaustion. But still, I continued on. I had tripped and stumbled many times, but the undead after me were not an immediate threat. The trees and brush began to thin.
Logging, cutting for firewood. I was tripping over stumps now, unable to tell them from the ground by their dark color and strange shadows. The light of whatever town I was near, I was almost there.
I had thought many times that it was a hallucination, a spot burned into my eyes after staring into the storm of light that surrounded me. But it was slowly moving closer. It stayed steady when all else moved and swam, when all else faded and was unreal.
The person I was trying to save was getting worse. Her skin was very red. I could see blisters forming on her face and the inside of her arms whenever I could spare a look. I could determine no cause.
But... My power, the divine force I carried, destroyed the undead with a touch. This was the power that was leaking through me now, through my aura - the purity I had inside, I believed. It destroyed the impure "walking dead" on contact. Could it be, that she was becoming as them, by being in this cursed place?
I had seen bodies without souls, now. What if her soul had been taken in that place, and it waited upon her death for the mortal coil to become cold? I could be trying to save a truly lost cause.
It wouldn't be the first time.
Maybe those explosions of power were the soul leaving the body. But if that were the case, such would happen before every death. Perhaps her soul had been forcibly taken by that creature. It had been standing over her, it called the other undead "puppets."
It had wanted me to leave her with it, for who knows what unholy purpose.
Still, a person's soul can't be stolen twice, I would think. She had been conscious after the first explosion. A soul must, in some form, embody mind. But if my power was now harming her, she might have suffered some impurity of soul from those things. How could I know? No one could SEE the soul.
Can such things happen?
Perhaps this was not a good line of thought to go down.