At Least He's Not On Fire: A Tour of the Things That Escape My Head (19 page)

“Umaryn,” he said apprehensively, voice full of worry.

“Yeah?” She replied, not looking to where her brother looked, or hearing the emotion underlying his message.

“Look over here. There’s smoke in the sky.”

Malwynn looked over his shoulder at her and watched as she put two and two together. “You think that’s coming from home?

“It’s an awful lot of smoke sis.”

Umaryn put her nose to the air and lowered her mental focus on the real world. As a fledgling Artificer she should have little ability to sense what was burning, especially so far away, but it was worth a try. She inhaled deeply, forcing the air fully through her nostrils and far into her belly, giving her senses a chance to filter out what the source of the smoke might be.

Immediately images of hewn wood, plaster, brick and nails flashed into her conscious. She saw wallpaper peeling, toys burning, and furniture ablaze. She caught millisecond views of thick curls of black smoke wafting menacingly out from walls and floors as bright orange tongues of flame belched free, reaching out hungry for more oxygen. The place was familiar to her. It was intimate and permanent in her mind. Umaryn was momentarily paralyzed by the inaudible screams of the spirits of the items in her vision burning, and felt their remote destruction more fully in an instant than she’d felt any physical pain in her whole life. By the time the visions passed only a second had elapsed, and her eyes were already full to the brim with thick tears, and every nerve ending in her tense body was electrified with stimulation. Malwynn watched as she reeled. Once she gained her balance Umaryn coughed, retched a dry heave, and looked to him desperately.

“Our house is burning.”

The two scrambled to their feet. They had to get home immediately.

Flames ate at every wooden surface in New Picknell with ferocity. It burned with a ferocity born of The Way, not of merely just nature. No fire could burn as hot, or spread as fast without pure magic fueling its movement and power. By the time Tinder and Bramwell carried the brother and sister back to where they’d grown up, the only thing remaining in the village was blackened frames of homes, and brick chimneys. Bodies torched in the intense heat were drawn tight by burnt skin and flesh, or split open by blades and charred. In the fields the two saw cows, goats and sheep slain by the dozen, their bodies left wastefully in pools of their own blood. Whoever had come to New Picknell came to raze and destroy it, not pillage it for loot.

Both brother and sister were overcome with emotion as they rode around the edge of the town. Unlike many other Elmoryn towns, New Picknell had no city wall. Walls in a world where the dead came back to unlife were practical for many reasons. New Picknell relied on farm fences, and around these the twins rode. The heat of the coals was still too much to persuade the two mounts to go closer, so they rode in circles over and over, watching as the final flames died out, and as the final homes crumbled, leaving nothing but memories and burnt cinders in their wake. One hand of each was wrapped tightly around the reins of their mount while the other hand continuously wiped away tears from eyes burning from smoke in the air. The stench of death was more powerful than either of them could’ve ever imagined. Malwynn felt that even the ancestors could smell the ruined town and its dead inhabitants from across the veil.
 

“Everyone is dead. They are all dead,” Umaryn said, her throat hoarse from the yelling and screaming she’d just given up on.

Malwynn rested his hands, still clutching Bramwell’s reins in his lap. He knew she spoke the truth, “There’s a chance someone is alive. Someone had to have escaped this, and whoever did it. Maybe my Marissa survived?”
 

“No. No one escaped. Marissa is gone Malwynn, I’m sorry. You know as well as I do. We’d have seen them by now,” Umaryn said, deflated.
 

Malwynn had no response. He simply wiped away the tear streaming to his jaw. His life had been shattered.

 
“Who did this? Who would come to New Picknell and murder it? Who would murder a whole village, and leave?” Umaryn asked. Her mind was dangerously close to unfurling, and spilling apart like a melon dropped from too high.

“Someone trying to prove a point. Someone who didn’t like New Picknell interfering in their business.”

The dark haired woman sat up straight in Tinder’s saddle, her emotions suddenly kindled in a new direction; towards hatred. “You think the Empire is responsible for this? You think those purple fucks rode here and smote our home because of the fight the other day?”

Malwynn was taken aback by his sister’s language, “We’ll have to see if there are many bodies left. If it was the Empire, I’d imagine they’d take many of the bodies home for their foul mages to resurrect as undead. I know we’ve seen some dead, but their bodies were ruined by the fire. If many of our townsfolk are missing, I say it points a finger directly at Graben. Straight north to the hands of the Purple Queen.”

“I’ll find whoever did this. I swear to all the spirits denied today in these deaths.
 
I swear to all the ancestors that have come before us, all the spirits that will come after us, and I swear to every spirit of all things made. I will find who did this, and they will rue the day they came to my home, and did this.” Umaryn said, her voice full of hardened steel, and freshly tempered hatred.

Malwynn felt the hair on the back of his neck stand as he listened to the strength of her statement, “I will be there every step of the way with you. You will not shed a drop of blood without my presence to catch it. The death of our family, and my love will not go unanswered.”

Oaths given, the two sat silently, watching their village collapse into ash forever.

Malwynn used an arm long length of hewn timber to lift and move debris off a dead body, grimacing as he saw and recognized the face. He called out to his sister, “It’s old man Reegan. He’s been split up the middle with a blade. Something big. Dead long before the fire ever touched his flesh.” Malwynn moved his piece of wood, flipping the debris up and off of the old man’s corpse. He tossed his stick aside towards Bramwell and took one of old man Reegan’s legs to drag him to a central spot where the twins had been collecting the bodies. There were very few bodies. Only thirty and they’d searched most of the town already.

Umaryn’s face was covered in streaks of black. She’d been elbow deep in soot covered drudgery since they had been able to come inside the town. It was only a few hours from sunset, and they’d yet to find a living survivor. Soon the evening chill would come, along with the winds across the plains. “I think that’s it. We can check the foundation basements, but if I had to wager on what we’d find…”

“We’ll be finding no one. You were right Umaryn. Everyone is dead.”

The two said nothing for several minutes as they looked at the pile of bodies they’d collected. It was far too large, and far too real.
 

“I think there is enough wood for a proper pyre. Mother had a cord of wood the other day behind the barn. The barn is gone, but the wood… The wood might still be there.”

Malwynn nodded slowly. “We will need to collect supplies. We’ve no money. No food. All our clothes are gone in the fire.”

It was Umaryn’s turn to nod, “Help me with the wood. These bodies are sure to sit back up soon and seek fresh blood unless we burn them. I’m surprised they haven’t sat up and bitten one of us yet. Mother would scold us.”

The last sentence hit both brother and sister hard. Mother wouldn’t be scolding them for anything anymore.

It turned both of their stomachs to be sitting near a funeral pyre, and to be thankful for its warmth. The sun had indeed set, as it had done every day since time immemorial, and the chill had come as expected. They huddled tight to one another with the single blanket they’d found draped over their shoulders. It was a meager shelter, but they were warmed by the pyre’s flames without, and the inner burning desire for vengeance within.
 

They looked up at the stars and gave each one a name. A name for a resident of New Picknell they knew.
 
A name for a friend they knew. A name for a dead person.

They would not shiver that night.

Umaryn headed to the forge at dawn’s first light, her skin still caked with the blackness from the night before. She watched as Hestia, the tiny red moon dipped over the horizon and hid for the remainder of the day. At the ruins of the forge she found no bodies. Luther may have died at the forge, but his body did not stay there. Perhaps, if he was fortunate his flesh and bones were consumed in the flames of the forge, where workers of metal might find peace in the afterlife. She hoped as much as she could he had met that fate, though she suspected something far darker came of his end.

Lying in the dirt of the forge she found all that remained; the heads of hammers, and the warped, twisted wreckage of tools that couldn’t withstand the overpowering flames that destroyed the workplace. There was precious little she could salvage, but she took what was still conceivably useful. She took these things less out of hope that they’d be usable, and more for their emotional value. Every piece she walked away with was one more memory salvaged in her mind.

Far away, across the expanse of the flattened village and all alone Malwynn sat cross legged in the middle of the street.
 
He was in front of the void that had been Marissa’s home. His eyes had no focus. The bright blue seemed muted now, filled with a grey that came from his tortured soul within. Malwynn’s thoughts lacked focus. His emotions roiled to and fro from happiness to sadness. From joy brought on by happy recollections to the unending grief brought on by his reality. He was so unhappy, and had no way to express it.

The only thing left of Marissa’s home was the large flat stone that had rested as their doorstep. Nothing else remained. Malwynn looked at and traced his eyes along the cracks caused by the heat of the flames. It had been rough before, but that texture made it safe, like the sure footing you got from sand tossed on ice. Now the stone was melted to a smoother consistency, and crisscrossed with fissures that looked like black veins. He remembered the evening last fall that he and Marissa had shared their first kiss on that stone. He’d brought her home after taking her for their third “date.” It was simply a walk around town, taking a few minutes to stop in at the forge to meet Umaryn, and watch her make a horseshoe. Umaryn had approved of Marissa that night, and he’d felt so happy he’d given the pretty girl a nervous kiss on the cheek when he brought her home. Marissa had returned his awkward advance with a retaliatory kiss on the lips before stealing away inside.