Cursed

Prologue

The rain was relentless, pounding against the roof of the barn like an army of sledgehammers. Lighting danced in the sky above, flash after flash illuminating the empty field and a barn. A single tree sat near the barn, twisting its way upwards with its budding leaves open to the sky. There was a bright flash and suddenly the tree exploded as electricity arced through its trunk. The remnants of the young tree sat burning on the ground, leaves and small branches turned to ashes. A giant shard of the trunk burned on, the flames growing higher and higher. Then out of the flames, a shape appeared.

She was roughly the color of coal, humanoid, and shrouded in fire. She looked around, up at the rain and thunder and lightning that had created her. Then she stepped from the burning tree, a new entity from the fire she had once been a part of. The fire demon stumbled as she left the tree she had been tethered to and the heavy rain instantly beat her down until the flames she wore almost flickered out of existence. The air was filled with steam and rain, the cracking of the fires and the sizzling of each rain drop as they slowly put out the fires. The tiny fires were barely clinging to life, getting smaller and smaller by the second; the demon had nowhere to go. The rain pounded her into the ground and she fell to her knees.

But the fire demon wouldn't be beaten. She pulled herself up to her full height and walked on towards the barn, cringing as sheets of rain tried to force her out of existence. Finally, the demon reached the barn. She huddled under the overhang where she was safe from the rain. The demon looked through the window on the side of the barn and saw her goal, the single reason for her existence. The demon smiled and placed her hand on the hay at the base of the barn. The flames instantly ate up the hay, then began to work on the dry old wood that made up the wall of the barn. The fire demon walked around the barn, trailing her hand along the side, leaving burning wood in her wake. Soon, steam and smoke were coiling around each other, water and fire in an epic battle to claim the barn. The wood groaned and creaked as timbers turned to embers and as embers turned to ashes.

The demon grew brighter and brighter as the flames ate away at the barn. The flames were so hot that not even the heavy rain could touch it. Thick, black smoke curled out between the boards, through cracks in the windows, under the doors. The fire demon urged the flames to grow hotter, to dry the wood so it would burn faster. The flames listened.

The barn was a flaming beacon in an otherwise empty field, the roaring of the flames and groaning timber fighting the thunder and the rain. People would see the flames and come running eventually, but the demon wasn't worried. By the time they showed up, this barn would be a pile of smoldering ashes, and the people inside would be nothing but burned meat and splintered bones.

The demon smiled as the flames grew higher and higher, the heat of the blaze evaporating the rain before it could reach the barn. Smoke billowed from the remains of the windows and climbed into the sky in a thick black pillar. Beneath the roaring of the inferno, a scream rose in volume then was abruptly cut off by a fit of coughing.

A loud crack split the air and the barn shifted. The crack transformed into a groan and the barn began to tilt like a house of cards. There was motion near the door of the barn but the demon couldn't care less. She had felt the fire take the life from two, no three of the people inside, the last one wouldn't be too far behind.

The ringing of fire bells in the distance smashed through her happy reverie. Lately, the towns and villages had put measures in place, just in case the tales of the evil fire demon were true. She was glad the tales of her warpath were so widespread. But some of the humans had become quite skilled at finding ways to hurt her. The demon shook her head and ran, not wanting to risk her destruction.

The barn creaked louder and louder as the walls began to twist and tilt into each other. With the shrieking of burning timber and the roar of the fire, the barn collapsed in on itself until it was nothing more than a pile of blackened wood and ash. The fire burned on even after the humans arrived and tried to tame it, even after the rain poured down so hard that it was hard to see five feet, it burned even after there was almost nothing left to burn.

But beneath the ashes, in a cellar beneath the barn, one heartbeat still beat; for the fire had not claimed its as it had intended. The fire demon slipped up by not finishing the job. And only time would tell if her mistake would prove to be a good, or a very, very terrible thing.