Hewun | #Wattys2016

Chapter One

Fire. Not the fire kept safely surrounded by a stone wall of a fireplace or in that of a kerosine lamp swaying safely in the morning breeze. The fire that roams freely like a mustang across the great grassy plains,  snatching away into its burning hands anything that could burn or anything that it could eat. The greasy flames with smiling teeth.

It was this fire that destroyed the small town. Trees nothing more than skeletal remains, along with the burnt houses with caved in roofs and chipped blackened wood. The obnoxious oranges and radiant reds that took the lives of many, had died itself many hours earlier by a skilled mage, but that mage had disappeared from the scene, to ashamed that they couldn't rescue anyone.

The Mage didn't know though that these flames were that of a creature from death, and how close the Mage had been from being killed and his soul threaded into the fringes of death. The Mage wasn't skilled and wasn't trained in other arts either to sense things that walked near.

Just a day earlier the village was alive. People fished in the streams and traded and spoke to each other with high hopes for life. Few travelers passed through the area save for five each year. They lived in their own small oasis even though they didn't have much but the joys of their own homes. It was a farm village and a large cobblestone windmill sat atop a hill.

That was what had attracted the creature. It walked bent over and it left burnt footsteps as it left the area it had come from. In life it look like a cluster of roots and trees with bent legs like a deer. It had two horns that protruded like a mustache from its forehead, and it's body was set alight. It's insides a twirling mass of flames and roots.

First it took the trees like appetizers then the town. It didn't let a soul escape. It enjoyed the screams of anguish from the villagers and then slowly disappeared.

At the heart of the burnt town kneeled a man. He hummed an ancient toon. A toon his father sang when they groomed horses in the stables or when they rode along the lush landscaping looking at the luminous sky. It sounded beautiful like a lullaby. It could lull anyone to sleep if sung right but he had long forgotten it's old rusty keys. In a change of few notes the lullaby could awaken the person listening or do things with unspeakable damage.

The man was wearing a dark raspberry tunic that was split at the bottom on the sides. A softer color formed small patterns of of wavy Celtic designs. Under it was dark knickerbockers, and over on the chest large and intricate scalemail adorned the chest plate along with nice shoulder pads. A metal cuff stuck out where the neck would go protecting it like a bracelet would do a wrist. He had liquorice black hair, pale skin like cream, and dark grey green eyes. He was about 23 years of age. He was not the Mage who had stopped the fire earlier. His name was soft like the wind and hard like the creases of paper: Pangur Bán.

Pangur Bán had his index and middle fingertips stuck in the coffee ground dirt. He could feel the death that surrounded the place. Most of the dead souls had already taken their places in the wonderful place of eternal rest but some were restless. Some stayed in the grey fringes of life and death not ready to die completely yet.

Pangur Bán was tempted to enter death, as this place would act like a small crack between life and death due to the amount of fresh souls entering, but something else was near. He knew by now entering death freely was not the greatest of ideas.

So many necromancer's had died from stepping into death and getting surprised by something that lurked there.

The necromancer sensed it. It couldn't possibly be a Tulpa, a conjured construct from something across the borders or death. Unlikely in this area for it was too down south from the Great Mischief.

Pangur Bán already knew what it was though. It was a fire demon. He had seen many fire demons before, but never had he truly bound such brute force. He could sense though this one was weak and wasn't at its most strength as it could be. It waited in the shadows watching him closely.