Playing with Fire [COMPLETED]

40 ~ this is the Lifeforge

Wither, Ruin, and I appear in a dark and cold place. The air is so cold, it almost burns my lungs. I shiver, knowing that if I was still mortal, I'd likely have frostbite already. Wither rubs her arms, looking around us. She conjures a ball of blue flame, and it hovers over her hand as she points this way and that, looking around us.

"Where are we?" Ruin asks, and I snort.

"It's always reassuring when you don't know where the hells we are," I tease, and he chuckles.

"Well, I'm not able to see much from here, but .... I think this place is a Court," says Wither. She walks over crunchy ice, and steps up to what looks like a decaying tree. She presses her free hand to the bark of it, and the tree crumbles into ash.

"That can't be good," I say, and this time, it's Ruin's turn to snort.

Wither turns back to us.  "Is this .... what my Court would be?"

"No," Ruin answers.  "Your Court would respond differently to you. It's .... hard to explain, but it would likely react in some way to you that'd be different from what just happened."

"Uh, okay," Wither says, and she starts to carefully walk over the crunching snow and ice below us. I hold Ruin's hand as we walk, mostly for comfort. But also for stability. My leg is on fire as we walk.

As we walk, there's moaning sounds coming from all around. Wither casts her blue flames out, making a sort of wil-o-wisp effect. And in that blue light, I see hundreds of bodies, fused into the snow and ice. Faces stick out from the ground, mouths open in silent screams. Arms jut out, reaching for salvation that will never come. Eyes stare at us, blinking but not seeing us, as we walk over the ice.

"What the actual fuck?" I whisper, horror flooding my senses.

"This place .... is it Pain's domain?" Wither wonders.

"No," Ruin replies, his voice grave.  "It's not."

"Then what is it?" I ask, turning my head away from a particularly gruesome sight to face Ruin.

A muscle ticks in his jaw, and he sighs, his breath pluming out in front of his face. "This is All-Maker's Court. This is where they create life, and bastardizations of life. This is where hope goes to die."

"Wait, All-Maker has a Court?" I ask.

He nods solemnly.  "Yes, they do." He turns to Wither. "We need to keep moving. There's bound to be sentries here that won't be too pleased with us being here."

She nods, and we press on. But then, as we are walking over the fields of icy bodies, I remember something.

"Wait, Wither was bringing us to where Death and Rogue are, so does that mean both of them, or one of them, is here?"

"They could be," says Ruin.  "But if they are, it isn't good."

"They're hurt," Wither adds, before I can ask why it wouldn't be good that they're here.

As the three of us reach a hill that goes up, I turn my gaze to the light that I can see distantly above us. Wither looks back at us.  "This isn't good, I can tell."

We ascend the hill, and when we reach the top, light shines down all around us. And it reveals the entirety of All-Maker's twisted Court.

Corpses line the streets in various states of decay, some of them are still alive, though. Some scream, gasp, gag, moan, or sob as we walk by. Flesh and bone is fused with frost and snow and ground, and as we walk down the incline, I stare at the gray-tinged snow. There are thousands of people trapped here. So many lost souls begging for freedom.

Begging for death. A death that will never come.

We walk along in silence, none of us able to talk as we pass people from all Courts and no Court at all buried and fused into the ground, the trees, the foliage. There are even people whose bones are crafted into weapons. Some of these bone weapons are still very much alive.

"This is what hell would look like," mutters Wither.

"This place is so twisted," I mutter, nearly vomiting when I see another nasty image I won't explain.

"Yeah," Ruin says.  "This is where me and my siblings are born."

"Is this that All-Forge? Or whatever it was called?" I ask.

He nods.  "Lifeforge."

We stop walking when Wither does, and only then do I hear a loud baying noise. The sound is warped, like a demonic dog or wolf is baying in the distance. Ruin swears, drawing his two long, black daggers from his sheaths.

"The farther they sound, the closer they are," he says.

"Oh, that's straight up twisted," I grumble, readying my rose gold flames.

"Yeah, but do your best to not die," Ruin says, winking at me.

I am smiling at him when a massive beast drops down out of the sky, latching its jaws around his shoulders, it tosses Ruin high into the air. He tries to spread his wings, but isn't fast enough. The monster swallows Ruin whole, then turns to us.

"Fuck!"  Wither shouts.

"You could say that again," I say as a dozen of these massive wolf things surround us.

Tears freezing as I cry, I lash out, burning at least half of these monsters. My power coils itself around my body, my soul becomes the fire itself, and then, it bursts free of me. A shower of flaming sparks bursts forth, and it turns all the wolf things around us to nothing but charred ice on the ground.

"Holy shit," Wither says.  "Remind me not to piss you off, Elorha."

I look around, panting heavily.  My power burned through me, so hot and fast that I did not see the wolf thing that swallowed Ruin, or where it went. I turn to Wither.

"I think it went this way," she says, and gestures for me to follow her.

So, I do.