Beneath the Eye of Fire

[Hotsuma]

A tongue of flame danced through the air before his eyes. It flared brightly and died, falling back in to the river of lava from which it had come.

Griever reached out a hand, his fingers curled gently. His tears evaporated even as they were born.

He pulled his hand back. Fire in all its forms had always mesmerized him. Crafted forms in the flame that only he could see would sweep him into endless thoughts, bottomless pits of despair, bouts of crazed laughter; all of them reasons why he usually avoided it when he could. There was no sense in laying his madness out for the world to see. Not when he could save it for private moments, and enjoy the hopeless fear find its home in another soul, a sight that truly never lost its flavor.

He stood and turned to began the short trek back to the weathered temple that sat at the foot of the volatile mountain. He walked beneath ruined archways, saw eggshell domes cracked and crumbling. A vibrant vine lined with flowers of red and gold had overcome the temple, filling the air with the scent of sunrise. On the north, closest to the mountain and nestled in the midst of a particular thick batch of plant life was a massive stone throne. Griever wondered at the sight of such grandeur in a place of religion.

Walking toward his weapons that were leaning up against the far wall, he passed through the center of the temple floor, where he found himself drawn to a stop. Below his feet, fissured with cracks and coated with mold, was an exquisite mural of a battle that raged from one end of the temple to the other. Griever could see creatures he had never heard of, people that bordered the line between human and beast, angels and devils with countless bodies beneath their feet; each sight pushing the battle further into the realm of impossibility for Griever, and yet…he could not help but feel something familiar with it all.

He shook his head and walked on, briefly glancing up at the swirling staircase the rose above him into a thick layer of shadow. He hurried then, wanting to have the feel of his weapons in hand, regretting even taking them off for the sentimental excursion he chose to have for memory’s sake. Blades in hand, he made to sit, but changed his mind and turned to the goliath stone crouched in the north.

The throne felt cold to the touch, and yet it felt alive beneath Griever’s fingertips. It felt like the world clicked into place when he sat. A smile played at his lips.

He looked up, and saw the last the thing he would have expected in such a remote area. Griever chose to watch. His hunger awakened, but he held it back for the moment.

Waiting. Timeless was his patience.

[Ruby]

In solitude Ruby found heaven.

In memory Ruby found comfort.

In religion Ruby found discomfort.

As she walked through the pillar festooned ante chamber to the central courtyard of the ziggurat, she could only echo that feeling as the silence crawled under her skin and chilled her to the bone and back again.

It was only through the virtue of the sun’s resplendence which touched her brow sporadically as it poked over the jagged and crumbling walls that she remained hopeful.

“A church within a church,” she mused, reflecting on the irony of finding a vast temple at mountain’s foot within a vast temple to war like the Citadel. Though the sandy, blood stained dooms of piss, terror and testosterone were a far cry from the serenity of this eggshell palisade, she drew similarities between the two to keep her mind sharp as she made her way upwards.

The air was humid, her breath hotter still. Her corset tightened as she bent her knees and pushed herself up the well-worn steps, smooth as jasmine oiled skin and set with half formed runes and names of abbots, priests and sacrifices. Her mind wandered from the architecture, though beautiful, when she came to crest the steps and walked out onto a flat promenade. It was a square expanse three hundred feet by three hundred feet, a menagerie of broken tiles, jutting pitfalls and once artistic picture stones. With a face here and a wing there, Ruby pieced together the lives of the people who had once dwelt at the foot of the fire peak.

“What killed them…?” she asked herself with a rising curiosity.

She scanned her surroundings in search of an answer, a flurry of red hair and dangling feathers. Nothing stood out from the desolation until she looked north to the treeline. The ziggurat was looked down upon by two stone kings; one of nature, brimming with flame from the ash sodden clouds, the other a mortal watcher. The throne was bohemia and tyranny combined, cut into rock and given life by stone carver’s hands and chiselled labour.

The impressive sight of the throne was not as impressive as the fact that it was occupied. Ruby keened her gaze, and cupped her hands over her eyes to shield the strange twilight from her vision.

“How arrogant,” she chuckled, letting her arms fall to her side and her hips sway with a swagger of readiness.

She remained at the centre of the large square courtyard, amidst the broken story boards and the dying of the light. Though splinters of the sun’s rays broke through the jagged outcrops of shattered rock, and the golden waves of fleeting illumination cast an otherworldly feel over the Citadel’s arena, she set her gaze on the man in the throne and waited.

As she drew Lucrezia from its hilt, it sang a gentle melody.

Ruby whistled along with it, never a woman to wait for long.

“Come to me, King Nothing,” she whispered.

[Hotsuma]

The failing sun lanced through the crumbling parapet ruins that topped the wall behind him. Its light cut the temple in half, leaving Griever in a world of darkness. Near the center of the floor, just unsheathing her blade, the new arrival caught the day’s final rays full upon her figure. It created a spectacle that was at once beautiful as it was terrifying. She was a tower of grace and flame with a challenge all but shouted in the heat of her gaze.

Waiting did not promise the battle Griever desired. He chuckled his assent.

“As you wish.”

Griever stood and dragged his two swords free. They were gray and insubstantial in the depths of the gloam. His eyes ran over the blades. They were his brothers. Endlessly, they drank in the lifeblood of another, feeding his ceaseless hunger. Time and again, they reveled in pain, exulted in agony. His salvation and redemption.

He despised them.

The hunger stirred within, screaming its need. He fought it briefly, but fell after only a moment, like an unruly slave clamped in chains and dragged to do his master’s bidding.

An echo then, of laughter poisoned with madness.

Griever strode forward, an errant gust tore at the frayed and tattered edges of his cloak. He stopped just inside speaking range. The line dividing light and darkness was a jagged track directly between them. She was the day and he was the night. The line crept further as the sun fell below the horizon.

“Lok’ial Draceloheim.” Following those uttered words, Griever felt the runes scarring his back flare into power. A wave of dread blasted outward, its volatile nature shaking his bones as it thrummed into full potential. Terror and chaos were born within that black circle.

He looked to the woman.

“Griever,” he said gesturing toward himself, “You… you are my sacrifice.”

[Ruby]

The red strands of hair shook as their owner did. The burst of conflagration and energy from the swordsman’s form caused Ruby’s confidence to wane in the fluctuating folds of light and dark that flowed over the cold stone.

His entrance onto the battlefield was as dramatic and splendid as any Ruby had witnessed in her long bondage to the theatre. With a rush of adrenaline and a gasp for breath that came with the sensation of wonderment she felt admiration and respect for her opponent. Long had she forgotten what an impact those first words and actions could make on a man, long had she needed reminding that she was still a feeble excuse for a ward trying to ply her blade to a man’s world.

“I am no-one’s sacrifice,” she said sternly, not beholden to dwell on her weaknesses for long.

She rebuked him but paid careful attention to his statement. Was the man deluded, or lost in his own metaphysical existence?

“My name is Ruby. I am pleased you have the curtsy to introduce yourself at least. Though killing is what we are here for, there is call for certain decorum amongst brave souls set to dance with fate on the carnal wastes of time.” Her best and most grandiose speech slipped from her tongue as if she were a born orator.

As an ash tainted wind crested the mountain’s peak and rolled down through the ruins around the long folds of her crimson dress, Ruby realised that her words were falling on death ears. His deranged expression, powerful and smouldering torso and blades clearly marked him as a man of action, not debate. She shook her head wearily and spread her legs apart to put a firm resistance into her stance.

“Without further ado, let us begin Act One; opening scene, ruins unknown.” She cut Lucrezia’s slender blade in a cross before her, and the sword’s voice echoed Ruby’s like a steel parrot. “Dramatis Personae Ruby Winchester as herself, and the man named Griever, the protagonist.”

Drawing on the ancestral memories of her former selves, Ruby skipped forwards with faint and nimble footwork.Her right and left wove a double helix over the sundered stonework, elegantly avoiding pitfalls and stumbling cracks to advance towards her opponent. As she approached, she wavered Lucrezia in a delicate pattern like a needle stitching together scraps of fabric.

With her left hand on her hip, she kept her regal stance complete until the very last second. With a thrust, she lunged and drove the tip of her sword towards Griever’s torso; it was a feint attack, purely hoping to test the man’s reflexes and guard, never expecting to succeed in its attempts. Ruby’s eyes flashed with inner fire and her hair flew up into a mockery of a hearth as the wake of her advance brought her form to life.

The Phoenix burst into flame beneath the eye of fire, and screamed its joy of being free and strong.

[Hotsuma]

The wave had surged out in rippling shockwaves, its force rocking Ruby back on her heels. Following such a move, while the opponent was off-balance and unprepared, with a relentless onslaught was a standard tactical maneuver. In that vein, under his breath, Griever immediately whispered the prayer that would grant him swiftness of mind and hand.

“Rha’an us rokai.”

Though, when she stood her ground and neglected to fall apart, screaming in terror, he tilted his head to one side in confusion. She was stronger than most. Following his assault, she briefly gathered herself and played a pattern in the air with her blade before dashing forward, her feet weaving a dance of elegance across the ruined earth. Perfect control, perfect poise, she was the personification of harnessed potential.

A flash of movement.

Her form melted away, evolved, and became something that did not--would not--register in Griever’s mind.

He saw only flame.

A titan’s grip of nostalgic terror locked Griever into place as surely as a spear through the chest. The creature of fire inexorably came, like a falling comet, a blazing wake flaring behind her. Almost of their own accord, his swords rose up and attempted to deflect the inevitable. It was a moment too late, with too little strength to repel the brunt of the lunge. With a desperate twist and not a little luck, Griever was able to use the momentum of the blow to fling himself back and away.

He made to stand, stumbled, and fell to his knees.

Pain. The pain of flame.

It wracked his body along the left of his ribcage where a long slash lined with fingers of fire pumped waves of agony through his mind.

Sanity died. Soul fissured and shattered.

A bottomless fall into the ashes of a ruinous past. A tortured mind dragged through the glass shards of memory.

He screamed, animalistic; a sound like the ripping of flesh.

“No!…no…leave her! Take me, please just take me!” He cried out. Eyes that saw another world, another time, wept tracks of tears through an ash coated face. “Stop hurting her. Stop hurting…” Head bowed to the ground, hands clutching at the rubble. His voice fell to a whisper, to a murmur.

Silence.

The new moon watched the world spin by, an ethereal mercy, granting the world of darkness some small hope until the break of day. Its light bathed the temple in a gentle luminescence. A ripple of shadow.

Griever’s head lifted slowly. In his eyes an apocalypse was born.

“I can see her blood, boiling beneath her skin, warm upon my face,” he whispered. “They burned her from the inside. They gave me a blade and a choice…” His gaze was death. “She screamed and screamed and would not die. I ended it.” He looked down at his hands. “Was that love?”

A new burst of dread rolled out from his flaring runes in crushing waves, manifesting a wind that spun a tight circle in the temple floor. Runes along his face lit into being as well. He grinned.

“Was that love?” he asked, and like a shot of lightning, he tore his way to the burning Phoenix, blades rending the air in his beserking madness.

[Ruby]

Ruby heard only the remnants of his soliloquy, but it did its work to dismember her calm and collected personality from its shaking, sweating body. Unconfident with her ability to wield Lucrezia, and less confident about her ability to kill with her blade the spell singer had not expected to be so effective in commencing the fight. The man seemed knocked back, shaken from his stride and distraught by her sudden, striking confidence.

Clearly, he was not used to a woman who liked to say no to men at every opportunity.

She cocked her head assuredly, but that expression too was wrenched from her when the man’s runic brow burst into lesser flame but fire that burnt just as brightly. Her dress rustled as she stepped back and twirled her sword in on itself in a dramatic display. She countered her own movements with a splendid execution of the Salvarian courtly step, which rolled left and right into a pirouette. Gathering momentum behind her movements, she readied herself for whatever onslaught the swordsman was clearly going to unleash on her enfeebled form.

All her life Ruby Winchester had struggled to find the words to empower herself to defend her rights. All her life, Ruby had clamoured to find the meaning in the futile conflicts she was eternally embroiled in. All her life, Ruby had shook beneath the furrowed brow of stern, conspicuous men.

Today, even as another man tore across broken stone to strike her down, to put her in her place, Ruby Winchester would find her voice once and for all.

His whirling dervish advance drew several quick cross cuts into her guard, which was swiftly erected without skill to knock aside the untimed interjections into her mithril covered torso. She gritted her teeth, and pictured each clash of steel in a visual scene. The first was her husband, constantly expressing the desire for her to attend this meeting or that. The second was Duffy’s chirpy face and her backhand drawing angrily across it. The third riposte brought with it an image of Blank, though she dared not think out what she witnessed in the depths of her mind.

As the spiralling blades span around and around and continued to rain down on Ruby she felt her knees begin to shake. Her lip trembled as Lucrezia rose to deflect the fifth strike, and her arm gave way.

The swordsman’s blade crashed down heavily into the groove between her shoulder plate and her neck ringlet. She slammed to her knees with a thud, the skin instantly tearing and bruising as her bone connected with the worn and rugged stonework of the fire temple’s ceremony plinth.

With a slow turn of her head she inspected the wound, and the angle at which the blade had come to rest. She knew a little of Akashiman weaponry to know that her investment in a sturdy breastplate and its hidden properties was well worth the loss of gold and the restricted movement.

She expected pain as she screamed up at the rune man, but pain was a master she had no trouble shouting no at either. Today, she was a woman unbound, and she would die free of all the oppression the world had chained her with.

Slipping backwards, drawing the sword through the cut so that it gave way suddenly and dropped, Ruby rose and retreated. Her sword arm cut her blade across her midriff, and her injured arm hung limply by her side. A trail of crimson blood spiralled around her naked arm and dripped wearily from her shaking fingertips.

“I don’t think you know what love is,” her lips, dry and cracked let out a coarse whisper.

“Love is the beauty of gaining a friend, of hating nothing and feeling a trend,” she gave no time for a follow up strike to end her whilst she was weak. The words bounced from her with adrenaline giving them rhythm and form beyond mortal comprehension and indeed, beyond any normal woman’s reach. The feathers in her hair instantly began to dance as if they had a life of their own.

“Love is forgetting you ever lived, love is foreseeing the end of an age, love is the moment when despite it all, you find peace in the moment from the words of hope’s page.”

Her words wavered in conviction as the blood loss began to take its toll. Feeling her spell take form, she cut her verse short and stooped. Bedraggled, laden with sweat and fearing the darkness in the fringes of her sight, she watched her voice craft her retaliatory strike with a weak, sickly grimace.

With a rush of energy, a translucent ball of energy formed in front of the crimson mistress. It hovered briefly, before it bounced forwards. Its first connection with the floor shattered the stone, and it skipped forwards again and again towards the swordsman.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That was the mantra Ruby Winchester lived by now.

[Hotsuma]

Tantamount to all else in that single suspended moment, he craved this woman’s life, taken by the edge of his sword.

Like a torch dropped in a well, her words were shining an aching light on all that Griever was, all that he had chosen to become. He stood before this judge, stripped bare and broken, his sentence all that remained to be decided.

The bitter and charred taste of ash infected the air, a flavor he could equate with what resided within his soul. The woman continued, stringing word after eloquent word like a master tailor eyeing the thread of her needle through Griever’s heart. His mind flickered through each life he’d taken, each scream he’d torn free. They cascaded by, a waterfall of splinters burrowing beneath his skin.

Before her love-borne tirade found its end, Griever spoke his reply, whispered, for he knew that nothing would change the views of a fool fixed in their ways.

“You are nothing but shadow speaking to the night of darkness. A candle crying out toward the sun to teach it of fire. Yes, I know love, I have seen it. On the broken fields of battle, dying men and beasts rotting in the sun, I have seen the love of mankind. Each time I felt the whip burn a line of flame upon my skin; from the widowed and the robbed, from the orphaned and the hungry, man’s love shines through. In all the tears that have soaked this blasted earth I have seen the boundless, relentless love that you hold so high.” His breath was pulled in gasps. A feral snarl rose in his voice. “Rest your hollow words, child, I‘ve grown weary of this all.”

A song on her lips, Griever watched as the flame-haired woman, struggling even to keep her feet, managed a final burst of power. Her efforts brought life to a molten ball of energy which rebounded into the ruined floor and careened his way.

Griever stood facing that searing herald of death with a grin and roared, “Gravec bledac!” The same flames running up and down his back and face erupted into being on the lids of his eyes.

His vision shattered, fragmented perception ripped from its foundations. Before his gaze the fabric of time was torn and restored in the flash of an instant.

A violent trembling overtook him as the powers surging through his body threatened to rend it apart. He would not need long. Awareness settled as the final prayer locked into place.

The burning bolt darted forward and he shifted slightly, watching the countless branches of fate twine and twist, revealing each future possibility a second in advance. The spell would track him down like a hound with a hare in sight. Griever slid his swords home and flew directly at it.

Just before the two collided, he stepped right, planted, and lunged to crumbling wall of the temple running along his left. A sharp heat against his outer thigh, quickly gone, told him how close the encounter had been. Knowing his freedom was short lived, Griever sprang to his feet from a tumbling roll and cut away, pounding his feet against the ground with his inhuman speed. Each time the branch of time before his eyes foretold the danger, he would duck, leap, dive or slide to avoid the approaching orb.

All the while he was slowly aligning himself with his adversary, preparing the very weapon she’d used to end his life for his own uses.

Another perilous dodge and he watched the flame disappear briefly into a shadowed crevice. His swords pulled free in an instant and turning, he set his gaze on the woman whose life would find its end. A flicker before his eyes signaled him when to begin. Bending slightly, he propelled himself at the utmost speed he could manage. The moment arrived, bringing the burning spell along with it. He sprang into the air and was slammed in the back, the orb’s force lending its speed to his own. The swords gripped in each hand were angled ahead.

He plummeted toward his weakened opponent, a laugh spilling from his lips as flesh was charred and burned. A vision of the imminent concussive blast flashed by in a branch of fate.

Death’s open arms beckoned two lives toward it’s cold embrace that night.

[Ruby]

The two blades came down into Ruby’s guard, and she gritted her teeth as his strength tore into her feeble defences with a zealot rage that unnerved the spell singer utterly. His metaphor and parables had broken her mind and his physical exertion threatened to break her body.

Ruby Winchester would not bow to madness so easily.

“Get back you bastard!” She roared, allowing his blades to push into her guard just enough for Lucrezia to bow in a feint. Satisfied that she had enough counter leverage, she pulled up and the wakizashi and katana shot up out of harm’s way.

With as much speed as she possessed, Ruby retreated swiftly over the broken slabs. Her heavy boots, well-worn and well used to deliver her points home to many a man’s genitals clipped and scraped as she tried not to stumble and end her chances.

“I am done playing games with you,” she drew her wrist over her mouth to wipe away the congealing spit. The arid environment was causing her to sweat and swoon in the heat.

With the dying of the fiery light over the mountain top, a cool air swept over the courtyard that offered no relief to either combatant. Though it afforded them better light and less of a glare cresting the horizon, for which Ruby was thankful. All the man’s metaphors of light and dark came undone.

“Let us see what you make of true fire, the very essence of a burning sun!” She stomped her heel into the slab beneath her and held out both arms with a snap. Lucrezia’s blade pointed skyward, her eyes glared forwards, and her free hand splayed its fingers wide.

“Flame burns and kindles honour, flame scours and defeats my sin, flame conjures light and colour, flame burns air and scorches skin,” a shimmer of heat began to surround her battered body. “Love ignites and passion blanches the flames of man forms ash from branches, the light of living destroys the dark, and with the flame we pierce the dark.”

From her heart, Ruby drew on imagery of a tempest of fire. From the depths of her soul she drew on her dual nature as a woman and a phoenix. The song of her need for survival flared up from the depths of her lungs and danced about the battlefield with clarity and beauty. She repeated the whole verse in short time, and then dropped her arms to her side. Lucrezia sang a reprise of the last line in a sweet Alerar accent, mocking Ruby even as she saved both their souls.

The Orison of the Hearth Stone formed from the shimmering heat. Rushes of fire burst into existence and swirled around Ruby’s body in a tight sphere of interwoven flames. Little firebirds formed in the maelstrom, growing smaller and brighter until the web of flame solidified with a burst of heat that sent sparks and embers into the darkening skies. Defiant in her fortress, Ruby smiled.

She clicked her fingers and sheathed her sword.

“If you grow weary of the shadows mocking you so, tempt their power and try and sunder this sphere of love.” She threw one lost metaphor to her opponent before spreading her legs to balance her stance and returning head first into the thrill of performance.

“Fire is anger and its grace, fire is creator and warmer of place,” her song grew heavier and more meaningful as she continued to pour her love into each and every note. As long as she believed in herself and continued to sing she was immortal. As long as she believed in the power of love her opponent scorned so much, she was untouchable.

She was the very epitome of a pure heart.