Bereft: Demise

37 | Of Swords and Songs

I opened my eyes to a world on fire. 

Thick, viscous smoke stung my eyes and filled my mouth with its disgusting, greasy texture. I felt it slide over my skin, slipping through my very being as I choked and cowered against the raucous thunder of sound.

Something whistled by my head and I collapsed into a heap before remembering I was inside Peroth's memory and I couldn't be harmed here. 

A short scream of pain and rage joined the ubiquitous roar I couldn't identify the source of. It seemed to emanate from everywhere, from the black earth and the blinding smoke and the lash of heat against my face. The scream came from my right.

Through streaming eyes, I saw the Sins gathered near where I was huddled, their lean bodies little more than darker silhouettes against a sky of crimson and black.

One of the Sins was on his knees, clutching the shaft of an arrow burrowed into the side of his shoulder. I recognized his pale hair and handsome features from the first memory, but I didn't know his name.

"Fucking Wildinians," raged Tehgrair as he swung his sword, breaking the arrow off before dragging the unnamed Sin to his feet. "Don't they understand we're trying to help?!"

All the Sins were covered in soot and dirt and blood. Their clothes had been reduced to tattered, scorched rags, their hair filled with white ash and charred debris. They held weapons in their hands, all blackened by the fire and painted crimson with gore. 

It was difficult to see the creatures against the scarlet sky because of how horrifically red they were. 

"We haven't the time—!" Peroth, shirtless and covered in healing scars, insisted—but his shout was lost to another boom of sound. The earth shook with tremendous vigor, throwing the Sins to their knees. The air, too, was sundered by the vibrations and the smoke was forced to disperse.

I could see the Dreaming now, the ones Tehgrair had labeled Wildinians. They were darker of hair than the other Dreaming I had seen in the past, their armor comprised of burnished, colorless metals with rigid runes carved into the breastplates. They'd been thrown off their feet as well, their bows dropped to the ground. 

A bare stretch of burnt earth separated the Sins and the elves. The air occupying that space began to ripple and stir. Like bubbling, molten plastic, the air appeared to harden and crack—and just as abruptly as the ripple had begun, it shattered. Where there'd once been naught but floating soot and dirt was a large, seemingly impossible portal.

It was a veritable rip in the universe.

Black ichor poured from the realm's injury. Things followed the ichor, crawling from the wound that refused to heal. I cringed as I looked upon creatures similar to Peroth's monster, all of them gangly and twisted in some manner, thin-limbed and hideous, some with fangs like lampreys, others horned and unsightly. Some were winged. They took to the sky as soon as they were free of the tear. Shadows clung to their shriveled bodies in trailing pinions.

Darius's voice reached to me through the abyss of memory, whispering in my ear as if my Sin were truly here in this hell with me. He had told me what these things were. It had been so very long ago, back in Verweald, when the Sin and me hadn't know each other well. "What you think demons to be...are fractus. They are the failed bits of Absolians the Baal couldn't properly raise."

Fractus. These were fractus.

I looked skyward, following the progression of those malformed, flying demons. To my horror, the entire sky was roiling and covered in a myriad of wide cracks. The same tar-like ichor spilled from the sky in grisly waterfalls.