Cursed Flames

Words Can Be Deceiving

It was just about midnight when Shula woke up and snuck over to Flaro's hut and nudged him awake. "Flaro, wake up." Flaro whispered in a tired tone, "What is it? Is it morning?" Shula sat down by her son and replied, "No. It's about what I said earlier. The private conversation." Flaro sat up and tried his best to listen while still half asleep. Shula explained that she was trying to keep this a secret between only them, for it might be a bit much for his siblings. She stated, "Flaro listen. I noticed that your father, king Adrere, had been staying up to 'attend the royal gardens' as he proclaimed, but I soon grew sceptical of his actions ,for it took longer and longer for him to come back each night. I had tried to spy on his nightly activities to see if what he was saying was true." Flaro was now intrigued, "Well was he telling the truth?" Shula sighed, "I thought so at first, but as I was leaving the gardens to go back to bed, I heard what sounded like stone grinding against itself." Flaro looked slightly guilty since he knew exactly what Shula was talking about. Shula continued, "When I looked to see what caused the noise, I saw a secret door opened up leading to a candle lit room, though the room wasn't visible from the angle of the pathway." Flaro's ears perked down, and Shula continued to explain the chain of events to her son. "The moment I entered that room... I knew that things had gone too far, and the kingdom, and possibly the future of all other kingdoms were in danger." Flaro tried his best to look surprised rather than what he was really feeling on the inside. Shula spoke in a shrill voice with her next words. "I saw your father performing rituals on you. You looked like you were asleep but in a deathly sort of way. I was terrified at the thought that you were dead that I had run off before I made my location known. I couldn't sleep for almost two months straight withought having that same nightmarish pictures haunt my dreams." Flaro spoke in a gentle manner trying to calm and sooth his mother. "Mom, I'm fine. Nothing happened that I don't already know about. Dad was trying to cleans me from my sicknesses with magic is all." Shula calmed down, but knew that what he was told was a lie. "You're right. You're alive and well. You even have training to defend yourself. The thing is, your father didn't tell you his true intentions." Flaro was confused, "What do you mean?" Shula put on an angry scowl as she stared into the fire. "Adrere wanted to use you as a weapon. Like his queen in a chess game." Flaro kept his temper relatively low, "What do you mean use me? He trained me to defend the kingdom. Not fight for it." Shula spoke against his words, "Then explain we he put you in the royal guard and made you the general of the Molten army?" Flaro was trying to find a way to counter what his mother said, but was in a moment of realization and disbelief. Shula saw that the other children were starting to toss and turn in their sleep and spoke quietly, "We should go back to bed before we wake the others." Flaro nodded slowly and played back down on his makeshift bed. Shula walked herself to her hut and dozed off quickly, but Flaro was still realizing the reasoning behind his father's actions and how drastic they really were. Flaro's body temperature rose as fast as his mental temper was rising. It eventually became too much for him, and he decided to run back to the kingdom to bring justice to his father once and for all not knowing that the kingdom had already been in ruins. Halfway to the remaining pieces of the Magma kingdom, Flaro had a sudden pain in his chest. He thought his armor might've been the cause of the pain and took it off and continued to run for the kingdom. He had stopped for a second time, and when he checked his chest again, there was a black ooze on his skin directly where his heart was. Flaro panicked and sprinted even faster toward the kingdom, determined to find and get a hold of his father before things got any worse. Once Flaro arrived at the once thriving Magma kingdom, he saw a large rock blocking the door. Without hurting himself any further, he carefully threw a fireball at the boulder, reducing it to only pebbles. Flaro ran through the dust that remained in the air to find the kingdom shattered and cracked. "What kind of assassin could've managed to do this?" He was still rushing but was in more of a jog than a sprint or run. He looked back and forth as he studied the broken caslte and homes, the cracked interior of the cave, and the blood and corpses littered almost everywhere. The more he saw, the worse his chest would hurt. Flaro saw the castle entrance up ahead and tried his best to avoid seeing anything else on his way indoors. Flaro was gripping at his chest now occasionally giving a painful grunt to release the cries buried deep in his lungs. He stumbled around looking for his father, though he could barely see with the tears in his eyes that came with the growing pain in his chest. He was constantly rubbing his eyes trying to regain his vision when he stumbled upon the secret door. The pain was becoming too much for him, and his only idea was to blow the door up, so he proceeded to do so. Once the door was gone, he saw his father's dead body laying on the floor in a strange pose. It was also very strange that there was no blood to be found anywhere in the room. Not even on the body. Flaro seemed frustrated. "I needed him alive! God....Aahhg!" Flaro fell down on one knee and winced as the pain became almost unbearable. He looked up and stared at his father's corpse again but this time noticed that he was reaching for something. Flaro saw a bottle sitting on the altar and he grabbed it. "There's a chance that this could kill me... but so could this pain." Flaro drank from the bottle and then fell to the floor due to the pain. His body looked just as lifeless as his father's but appeard to be reaching for life much more than his father's was reaching for the bottle.