Legend of Ransera

Ash second


The driftwood Pyre, a monument to death and failure, and the wish for something better.

Myles had spent the entirety of the previous night dragging a shipwreck from the shore and finding what dry wood he could from the shoreline and gathering it under a rocky outcrop several miles down the beaches from Drathera’s docks. It recessed deeply into the cliff and had the remains of many previous campsites.

It would not been enough to merely build a fire, there was a purpose behind Myles every movement that he himself wasn’t fully certain of, only that the hands of fate were urging him towards a strange necessity that pulled at his very being, a need to scourge the guilt that weighed him down. The visage of the shipwreck had haunted him since he’d seen it. A symbol of broken military might and wasted life. A symbol all to familiar to him, every time the shipwreck appeared in his minds eye, the broken form of Zaichaer would overlay it.

Preparing for this endeavor Myles had packed kindling, oil and two lesser Pyroleth shards and one sharp minor Pyroleth shard with a crude leather handle meant for inscription, and with them, all the pieces to the maddening puzzle in his mind were present.
The girl, the child, the cursed little thing, another source of guilt, slept peacefully nearby in a comfy tent he’d erected beneath the cliff, she’d fallen asleep beneath his cloak watching him pull wreckage from the shore. Scorchmarks seared Myles’ palms and inner arms where he’d again used his scrivening to try and draw the excess magic tormenting the girl into himself once more, an act that seemed to have diminishing returns. It was still worth the semi limited success, it had still given her relief.

Madness tugged at the edges of his mind, like the violet streaks of static that occasionally arced across his flesh. The voidrillium poisoning he’d been acquiring had ramped up significantly since he’d started willingly drawing the excess magic from the girl, and without the skills to properly disperse it Myles had begun to break down, pushing his body towards limits he didn’t know the capacity of. The agony he felt had become far more mental than physical, his mind had become trapped in a self-perpetuating loop of self-loathing and guilt. The film of time and memory playing a steady feedback of his darkest memories and shames.

Shaking himself from his thoughts Myles continued his labor. Digging a hole four feet across and two feet deep at its center in the sand Myles made short work of the task, appreciating the simplicity of dumb labor and the purpose it gave his hands. Lastly Myles dug a small channel away from the fire and layered itt was stones giving the fire, a snorkel from which to pull air to coals and increase the potential heat of the fire built within.
When the hole was dug Myles placed down several flat medium pieces of wood, and on top of them a single minor Pyroleth shard, and atop that, kindling, finally stacking more medium pieces of wood atop that, none of the driftwood however had been thrown on the pile. Still, he was ready to at least start the fire, he would have to get it significantly hotter to achieve what he wanted. Pouring a small draft of oil over the wood. Then Producing a small flint box Myles struck sparks across the soon to be fire, spiting the other Pyroleth shards and starting the fire by hand, a small act in defiance of magics power, the Zaicheri ember that still burned in Myles. In a few moments the sparks took and Myles dropped to his stomach blowing across the infant flames, gently encouraging warmth and life to them but cautions not to snuff them out. Still he needn’t fear, he’d taken the right steps to start the fire, and the moment the heat of the fire reached the small Pyrleth shard in the center it began to glow with enough heat to ignite the oil, and with a woosh, a real fire roared to life. Myles allowed himself a childlike grin as the flames briefly burned away his sorrow and reminded him of campfires with his comrades.

Still, he could not rest, a shudder ran through his system caused him spasm briefly as the void static danced across and through his skin reminding him of the dire timer he was on.
Taking the first of many pieces of driftwood and his Pyroleth makeshift inscribing tool Myles set to work. On the first and largest piece of the shipwreck Myles began to inscribe the name Horst Bron Vaumison, his fist commander, and the man who’d taught him most of what he knew about war and battle. The man had died with his sword in the belly of a wizard even as his flesh was burned to cinders. The Pyrloeth stylus he’d fashioned smoked and spit sparks as it was drawn across the wood leaving a charred trail in its wake.
Then the next piece of wood, Wagner Fainvel, He’d died in the same attack as Horst, however he’d been a recruit, it had been his first real mission outside of zaichaer, and it had been his last. Every memory of the lad had been of him smiling, until the last, finals terrified expression he’d worn as death took him. At the edges of his vision myles was convinced he’d begun to see other soldiers sitting around the fire he’d started.

He was feverish now, his body wracked with occasional spasms but his hands stayed true to their task not erring in the lettering of the names of his fallen friends. At some point he felt that he’d blacked out, yet when his eyes opened, new wood was in the fire, another plank of driftwood on his lap, the girl still slept soundly in the tent? Had it been the apparitions lurking at the corners of his eyes, silent sentinels watching his task? Something else entirely? He didn’t know, he only knew that he had to continue.

After what felt like hours Myles was ready, all but one piece of shipwreck had been inscribed with the names of the dead. Taking the last warped plank of salty Wood, Myles inscribed one last name into the wood that would become the Pyre.

Myles James Arnnett, Born Glade, Solace 1, 95th year of the age of steel – MIA Searing 45, 122

With the shipwreck inscribed Myles began to add the wood the fire, the final pieces to a terrible puzzle. The salt logged wood sputtered and spit as the names on them glowed with embers, the fire flickering with green flames now as the shipwreck burned.

Laboring to add what fuel he had left to the fire Myles watched as the flames began to lick the edge of the cliff face it was recessed into. The fire making the very stone hiss and steam as the torrential rains intrusion began to be fought back by the inferno he’d built. Myles noticed that the girl was awake now, watching the fire from the safety of the tent, her small form wrapped in Myles cloak and the fire reflecting off the voidrillium shard in her brow giving her an infernal air in spite of her gentle nature.

Looking towards the beach towards the sky Myles could only see darkness, the fire he builts light lost once it hit the black night waters of the beached of drathera. The inky darkness lapping at the sands under the storming sky.

There was something darker still out there, not dark like the eclipse, not dark like a starless night, but a darkness that covers the soul, a darkness that swaddles you in warmth, a darkness that is eternal… the darkness of death.

Not seen yet, but felt in its weight, like a pressure upon ones very existence, flapping its midnight wings above the typhoon, the coming black dragons, the flight of death, Wreaden’s flowing cape had come to Drathera….

One pair of batlike wings broke away from the mass migration, floating down towards the ground with ease. She was a large adult dragon, a spear's throw from tail to nose tip. Pitch black, her belly a slightly softer shade, she alighted upon the sand of the beach, staring at the pyre created for one not yet dead. She had smelled the confusion in the threads of death, for such an act was not a meaningless gesture, even if many perhaps thought that the case.

Someone here was lost.
She switched to her mortal seeming, one where scales flowed into an ornate, black dress. She preferred this seeming when helping mortals, it let them know just what she was. Who she was. She approached under the cover of the rain until she stepped into the glow of the aberrant pyre, a soft smile on her face as she looked past the man toward the child hiding in the tent. Her dark eyes sidled back to the man, "If Myles James Arnnett is dead, who might you be then?"

She walked closer to the fire, reaching a hand out into the flames, scooping a fireball out of it, holding it up in the air between them. "Mortals didn't begin to use pyres for the dead until the dead refused to lay dormant in their graves. Before then, especially in this part of the world, bodies were given to the soil, the sea, to give back the life that was given to them. So that new life might be given." She dispersed the fireball into the sky above, "The pyre allows us to give them to the sky now as well. A kind inclusion, and one that is pragmatic should more Deathraisers return."

She studied the bedraggled man, "Perhaps Myles James Arnnett is dead. After all, his friends are all dead. His family is dead. His home is dead. His city, as he knew and loved it, is dead. So I wonder to whom I might be speaking?"

She smiled over once more at the little girl, "A loving father? A caring protector? Not the corpse of a man but perhaps a man reborn?"

"I am Cimmeria, and I recognize the death of a man, and I am here to acknowledge the life of another in his stead. What might you call yourself now?"

Madness....

It must be madness...

It was as if a piece of the night sky had broken off and was drifting down towards him and alighting on the beach, not a despairing darkness like the monsters of shade and shadow, but a warmer, different black that felt so familiar, yet so distant.

Paralyzed by the magnificent presence of the monster Myles could only stand still in awe, watching its scales melt and dance and wrap about as it took another form. Walking towards him with all the confidence of the most noble of royals, her countenance radiated something that made goose-pimples rise on his flesh and his heart beat quickly, something the mortal beast within him knew, death was before him and he wanted to flee or at least fight, but the soul, embraced this concept, whether out of weariness or familiarity he was unsure.

Her question stopped his internal mire, focusing him on the question of, who was he?

“I don’t know” the answer came too easily, but he knew in his core it wasn’t the truth.

Still she spoke on, about pyre’s and death and new life, Myles was unsure of if he even believed anything but oblivion would take him when he breathed his last. As a Zaichaeri, he’d even been comfortable with the thought, but now faced with an envoy of destined death, he was flayed of his excuses and forced to contend with his own truths. The fireball she held between them invoking memories that made his burn scars tingle with dread.
Then she asked him again, to whom she was speaking.

“I.. you are speaking to… a deserter, a soldier who failed to die defending his city, Father” he almost spits the word knowing he was falling short of even his own father who’d menaced him most of his upbringing. He felt broken, the parts of him that were capable of love, of smiling, had been whittled away, he’d been left with duties but no heart, acting only on instinct and cold intelligence he’d become a cold and unhappy man. He feared the growing resentments within him.

"A loving father? A caring protector? Not the corpse of a man but perhaps a man reborn?"

“If it could be so…” He wished within his heart he could be those things, the darkness inside him laughed that it would, however, never be so.


"I am Cimmeria, and I recognize the death of a man, and I am here to acknowledge the life of another in his stead. What might you call yourself now?"

A name, a title, a pseudonym… it meant surprisingly little to him, only that he could fulfill it. He did not feel worth y of his given name, Myles should have died in Zaichaer, or stayed and saved as many as he could, the man that had left the blast, hadn’t taken a name, but he didn’t want to put a name to these last years, a name to what he’d become.

I just wish to be known, as what answers the cry for help, and to be able to fulfill those fearful wishes.. Father, hero, friend… being a town guard, being someone who let people rest easy… feel safe. He missed it so dearly. His inner thoughts raced forming a mélange of self loathing, cynicism and regret, all tinged with the slightest bit of hope and a strong sense of duty.

“I feel… unworthy of choosing a title for myself, a name feels like a wish and I am afraid to take that leap”

The child behind him had never once said his name, and that was in no small part because of he lack of voice, but it did make him wonder what she called him in her mind. Looking over his shoulder Myles felt horrible for so many things that he'd allowed to befall the child, and the fact that he'd never been able to fulfill his promise of curing her. How could he deserve any name kinder than what she knew him as.

Cimmeria smiled softly and she listened and listened closely. And as he spoke his last statement, her gaze was averted to the little girl. "You might be afraid of such things, but she is not. She's practically screaming it within herself." Cimmeria knelt down, extending an arm, palm open and fingers idling gently. The girl had seen so much more death in her time in Zaichaer, particularly at the end, there was a connection to another such as the dragoness. And in this connection was one of comfort and safety.

The girl walked over to Cimmeria, placing her hand atop the offered. Cimmeria looked into the lass' eyes, and gently reached out with her fingertips to touch the dragonshard growing from the girl's face. "Then perhaps it is time you made yourself worthy. To stare into the unknown, to find who you are and shout it from the mountain top in the face of fear." A soft glow rippled through the dragonshard under her touch and a similar glow rippled across Myles' skin.

"However, to do that, you must rest." Cimmeria touched a single fingertip to the girl's lips and then nodded at her. The girl turned and rushed towards Myles, embracing him tight. She looked up at him from her hold with watery eyes and sputtered out a single word, the very word she'd been screaming within her head as she listened to him speak. "PAPA!"

With that, Cimmeria rose, walking toward the pair of them. Her dress shimmered into wings and unfurled from her naked body. As she spoke now, all who could hear her would hear her, regardless of language or disability. "Come to him." Her wings stretched out wide around her and the veil of this world and the next began to thin. Myles would be able to hear the voices of loved ones lost speaking to him, giving words of encouragement, urging him to keep going, to be the father this girl yearned for him to be.

Cimmeria stood before Myles and his daughter, her eyes black as night, the ocean and the cloudy night behind her, body resplendent in the firelight. "Death will take us all, but death need not take absolutely." She looked down at the little girl and there was silence across their bond. The little girl let go of Myles and stepped back, wiping her tears and snot on her sleeve. Cimmeria cast her gaze back on Myles, "Look at me and know that you will die now and know that another man will be reborn in your stead."

And once his eyes found hers, his vision would swim into darkness and nothingness and he would collapse into the sand.

Cimmeria looked over at the girl, "Let's get this stubborn man to a healer."

The little girl nodded and Cimmeria shifted into her dragon from. She lay down a wing so that the little girl may climb up it, finding a spot comfortable among the spines on Cimmeria's neck. The dragon then gently picked Myles up in her maw and gave three flaps of her wings, and took off into the night, heading for Drathera.