The Tragedy of The Fates

EVIL BECKONING

Igneus watched the land approach, he stood on the boat, and the moment the boat touched the dock, he jumped down and tied it to the dock. He then began to walk through the ruined town.

It was a small settlement of about 40 people where Kain and Igneus lived for a few years before a dragon ravished the land, and Kain was barely able to slay the dragon with Vulneri.

Igneus walked to his house, the roof had been caved in, and he walked through the door.

It was on a small plot of land where Kain had gotten it as a reward for a contract and earned a small fortune. He built a house, and they lived there.

A house where love and hate blurred the edges of reality and hell. Of course the longer after they left the house the calmer and more patient Kain became. But his anger still lingered under the surfaces. A small part of Igneus reasoned with his father.

It was Igneus' birth that had killed his mother, a woman his dad loved strongly. Without Igneus Kain would have his precious Christy.

Igneus looked at the inside of his house, tracing his fingers on the rough wooden walls. He reminisced about the time that he and Kain had painted the walls, from the beautiful flowers painted on by his mother to the harsh black that Kain bought for a few silver coins.

Igneus stepped into the room, it was frozen in time. The small bed on the floor with the post broken and on the side. A rough cabinet hung crooked, supported by the twisted wall.

Igneus righted the cabinet, tracing the petal paintings that mimicked the ones that his mother had made. He had done so as his only reminder of her. He breathed in, and fought his tears.

This was too much, the memories, the knowledge of what the memories held, and the fact he was about to desecrate her memory.

He opened the cabinet and grabbed the shovel in there, and stepped out of his house, setting it ablaze as he left.

He approached the church's ruined gate, and opened it. He walked to the cross in the ground, made from flowers woven together. A living cross, a living testament to the woman buried here. Igneus took a breath, put the tip of the shovel into the ground, and applied his weight.

He moved the earth, and began to sob. He kept digging while whispering, "I'm sorry mom. I'm so sorry." Over and over again, until the shovel hit rotting wood. Igneus dug around the coffin until he had freed it completely. He gripped it tightly, smelling the corpse through the holes, and he pulled it.

The sides broke, and the lid was removed, the smell harshly swung over him. Her corpse was covered in a thick slime, as her body decayed into a puddle, slowly but surely. Igneus reached in slowly, gripping a small bundle of cloth in her arm and pulled it out, snapping the fragile bones where her hand once was.

He put his hand out, caressing her rotten cheek, the slime covering his hand as he said, "Thanks for keeping this safe for me, mom. I love you." He leaned forwards, and kissed her forehead, tears running down his face as he sobbed.

Eventually he stood up, and he wiped his lips, and looked at her corpse. He said, "You're quite useless, you know. You did nothing to stop him. You never comforted me when Dad was mad. You just stayed in your coffin, you retched slime."

Igneus squatted down at her, and mimicking Shuriken, he shoved his fingers through her eyes and lifting her skull from her corpse and put it in the crook of his arm like her head was a baby.

He pointed the thick mahogany wand towards her, and a giant plume of fire shot out of it, lighting her corpse on fire. He began to walk, and as he did so, talked to her head.

"You could've done something. You could have. That's why I learned necromancy. I wanted to know how to bring you back, but now that I can, I don't think I will.

You've been nothing but useless piles of bones in a wooden box. What good are you? You're not even close to being useful. If I were to revive you, you wouldn't have any purpose. So, instead..."

He slid her head into a interior pocket of his robe and said, "I'll bring you so that I'll never forget why you're a useless corpse." He finished the walk to the boat in silence and boarded before he said to his family, "Time to deal with Father. Kain wanted me dead, and now he'll die. Give and take. Funny how that works."

Shuriken and Arthur quickly began to get to work on moving the ship, Arthur was healed, taking energy from the sun's light while Igneus dealt with getting his wand.

Igneus pulled her head out of his pocket, and held the base of her skull in his palm, her rotten and stringy hair barely hanging to the nearly rotten skin, he leaned towards her ear and whispered, "It's okay, mom. Soon, you and dad will be reunited, and I'll be the king of the Fates. The only one standing, and you'll be nothing more than a disgrace."

Arthur and Shuriken both looked to see Igneus whispering into the corpse's ear, and they looked back to each other. Despite their previous battle, they knew that Igneus had gone too far into the deep end. He had to die. He couldn't be allowed to bring Oberon's glory to the pits of hell.

Igneus continued to whisper into her rotten ear, oblivious to the smell of horrid slime trailing onto his hand and kept talking to the head even when the sun was setting.