I AM THE GOD OF HELL FIRE....

[npc_mod]

Characters: OPEN TO ALL - PLEASE TAG IN WHEN YOU POST BY USING THE "EDIT TAGS" OPTION
Date/Time: 1:07PM to approximately 3:07pm October 24th
Location: The ENTIRE WORLD of Edensphere
Rating: Varied I expect, but let's say R to be safe.
Summary: Edensphere burns. Everyone dies. ...Well, not quite everyone. Warning for large-scale character death and

Comments

For Paladin and River

[feathered_earth]

Cara heard the fire start as she was on her way to get something to eat.

The Marketplace suddenly filled with the sounds of screaming people, and a very strange thup sound as some in the crowd suddenly seemed to be wearing very strange--armor. Many did not. Cara was among the latter--but this wasn't a time for her to panic.

She ran for the bridge to the elevator, her immediate thoughts being to get to the Hatchery, find Stoneface, find Bastet--but through the swirling crowd, she saw a pillar of flame where the Access Point had once been. Not that way--what was going on?! How could this--she flipped open the journal and saw pages curling into ashes.

No panicking, no panicking. Even with the agonized screams and the horrible smell of burning everything, Cara had to keep a cool head. She ran towards the other bridge, trying to slip behind stalls and through places where the flames hadn't caught completely, or where there were less people. Small as she was, trying to shout for calm wouldn't be effective. Panic seemed to be set in completely anyway--she had to get to the other bridge and see if she could be of any help there. And hopefully I won't get burned along the way--

[lordofwater]

When the fires began, it was the tree that had gone up in bright burning flames first--River was watching when it happened. What he'd been used to seeing as the majestic trunk--also the elevator shaft--was a pillar of fire, and tongues of it rained from above, lighting on the stalls, the stores, even people...and incinerating them all. Screams, shouts of warning, the roaring of the fire buffeted his ears.

The bridge he had been standing beside went up almost immediately. River stared at it as it burned, feeling something like an intense prickling underneath his skin, a feeling that he could do something--that if only he could just reach out and shift something, some power in the air or perhaps within him, he could combat this fire, he could defeat it. But it wasn't coming. The feeling remained there, just beneath the surface.

He became aware of someone nearby and turned to see Cara rushing toward him. Others around them wore strange golden suits, but she, like him, was dressed only in ordinary clothes.

[mythgravenblade]

Lunch break.

Paladin had overslept that morning, and had to run out the door in order to make it to Medical in time--leaving him time neither for breakfast nor for bringing something with him for lunch. So when his lunch break came, he had jogged down to the marketplace, musing on the irony of his situation leaving him with less time than normal to eat while being hungrier than usual.

He didn't have the time to wonder about the sudden upswing in heat before everything burst into flames.

Everything except him, that is--he found himself staggering inside--inside what must have been some sort of suit of armor. It took him a while to orient himself--between the oppressive heat and chaotic view of what little he could see outside the armor, his world simply refused to make any sort of sense.

But he caught glimpses--there was the fruit stand, roasting and hissing, people flying by, faces distorted in the glass and in their fear, and there--

Two people he knew, two children. Granted, Cara was a guard, and he was sure that, when he was River's age, he would have been quite put out to hear anyone call him a child--but they were children still. And they had no armor.

Perhaps that was a blessing--the heat inside his own was rising; perhaps it would inevitably roast him as well. But they were utterly, utterly unprotected, and his armor blocked the flames...Paladin, looking back on it, would wonder how he didn't panic then, but with clarity of purpose stumbled over to the two of them, intent on protecting them in the one way he had.

[feathered_earth]

"River!" Cara shouted, catching sight of the boy, and then began coughing. It was a sudden flash of clarity--even if she was able to avoid the flames, there was no escaping the smoke, and without the armor suit, she would die. She yanked a handkerchief out of her pocket anyway to hold over her mouth and nose, making her way over to him. There had to be a way to get him out, somewhere that was safe.

Looking around wildly, she saw someone in the armor approaching them. "Hey you!" she said. "Can you see the bridge? Is it clear?" The heat pressed in all around her. It was hard to think, hard to breathe--she tried to focus. Get help, get River out. The thought that it was impossible to do so wouldn't get through to her.

[lordofwater]

"The bridge is burning," River said, his voice quiet but as tense as he felt, watching things and living creatures burning around them. The fire was intense in its eat, the very air becoming like an oven that might roast them all; the smoke burned his throat.

He couldn't immediately recognized the man in the golden suit, but then he caught the eyes behind the clear space in the helmet and realized that it was Paladin. He didn't know what the armor was for; he knew only that the three of them were in terrible danger. He pressed close to them, taking Cara's arm to draw her in while he looked around for some escape from the fire raining down on them.

A crackle above drew his attention. Something was falling, burning brightly--falling toward the three of them--

It was that moment that the power he had felt dammed within him broke free, like a sudden, wild rush of water. The feeling raced through his body from head to toes; it pooled in his middle and then burst out and he felt it surpass his skin, erasing the vessel that had been his body as what was true came forth--of course, he thought with sudden peace, and then he ceased to think and just became.

It was only a breath, yet felt almost like eternity, and when it was over all that he was was power and gravity was no object at all. He sprang into the air and arrowed up, a white ribbon in the sky that rippled like water, toward the burning wood that fell toward his friends from the tree above, toward those he would protect. He whipped his body around in midair to knock against it, and knock it out of its trajectory, so that it fell harmlessly to the side of the island.

[mythgravenblade]

Why was she asking that? The bridge burned; everything burned--he shook his head, hoping that the motion came through despite the armor. Cara had a handkerchief over her mouth now, good--his armored body could protect her from flame, maybe, but not from the smoke...oh, God, how were any of them going to survive this?

He didn't hear the cracking and snapping of the bough, but he did see River start towards it--and then he saw River become a river and what the boy said about just knowing what was good all made sense. Even in this wretched hell, he could feel the power flowing from him, feel a surge of hope--a dragon could take care of itself, this left him with only Cara to shield. Maybe...maybe...

[feathered_earth]

Cara's eyes went wide as River... transformed. It was as though his boyish frame had only been a mask, ripped off to show his true self. The dragon... Tatsu, she thought for one wrenching instant. Wherever he was she was suddenly glad it was not here. But that thought lasted less than a second. River knocked aside the plummeting branch, but Cara could see it wouldn't quite be enough, other things were falling too. The branch fell to the side, but the remains of a burning house now toppled from it. "Look out!" Cara shouted.

With power that she would have normally used vertically in the Jump of a dragoon, Cara launched herself at the man in armor, sending them skidding across the ground as the burning house crashed down where they had been standing. She pushed herself up, coughing. They had survived that instant, now they needed to survive another--

--and then there was pain. Terrible, piercing pain from her back in through her chest. Cara's eyes went wide in shock. She had one more moment; her hand moved to touch the steel that protruded through her. Someone's sword, unsheathed, fallen. The tip rested harmlessly against the flexible armor suit.

I'm dead, she thought, and then went limp.

[lordofwater]

Fear was gone. The desire to protect seemed to still flow through his very veins, but he wasn't afraid anymore. He felt strong, exhilirated, flying circles over the island, knocking away debris that fell toward it to protect the people beneath. He was burned and singed in places, but it didn't matter; they were small pains, meaning nothing in the greater scheme of things. They did not touch him, or change him.

But when he saw Cara die...

That was no small pain. The despair of it seemed to seize his entire body. He could have protected her, could have saved her...but he hadn't. Death had slipped in so easily, and taken her.

A sound rent from his throat, something between a hiss and a howl--

--And was stopped by a sudden impact against his body.

He slammed to the ground, not far from where Cara lay next to Paladin. There was pain all through his body; he tried to push himself up and shrieked from the agony. Blood well in his mouth, thick and metallic. He arched his throat and vomited blood, then turned his head back in a haze of pain to look.

Branches from the tree. A clump of them, pinning him to the earth, sharp points impaled through the long, serpentine shape of his body.

Hissing, he turned his head back and laid it on the earth, his eyes on Cara and Paladin as he died.

[mythgravenblade]

And just as suddenly, that maybe, maybe, became a resounding no, no, more like a death knell than anything he could have imagined.

He was on his back, winded--the moments before he'd only piece together later, for now, all he had known was something above him, burning; something racing for him, small; then he was down, and he recognized the person above him and blood, blood everywhere--

Inside, though he hated himself for it, anger bubbled up inside him--she was a fool, an utter fool, she had no armor--it should have been him, he could have survived, he was the one in armor, she was only a child--only the tiniest child, he could barely feel the weight of her body on his, what was she doing here--in the fire, in the marketplace, in this abyssal tree in the first place, it should have been him dead.

His throat was closed, but the sound he wanted to make rang in the air nonetheless, rage and despair and fear and emotion so raw and animal that a human throat could never give issue to it.

Then something hit the ground close to them, the vibrations almost shaking Cara off of him (he reached up and held her steady, the instinctual she'll get hurt surfacing before a manic voice reminded him she's dead), and reflexively he turned to see what it was: a snarl of branches immense in scope, twisted every way, and thank God it missed them, no one could have survived--

Oh, God.

River was almost unrecognizable, dwarfed by the mass of boughs, and his white coat red with his own blood--Paladin watched as River realized his own mortality and turned to him; he was dead before Paladin could reach him.

[mythgravenblade]

Nevertheless, Paladin's hands were on the cuts, the blood staining the golden armor, trying to staunch a wound that couldn't bleed any more. Under his hands he could feel that, feel the dreadful stillness of a body whose heart beat no more, but the manic voice told him it was only the gloves blocking the sensation of a pulse. So, though he knew it was wrong, he pressed down, pressure would stop the bleeding, pressed down on his wounds, pressure would knit flesh together, pressed his eyelids together, pressure would stop the tears. His world contracted until the pain from heat vanished, until the world outside vanished, leaving only a searing pain in his center that nothing could salve, that twisted and writhed like a dying snake until it blossomed.

His eyes flew open and there was something now, a light that wasn't red and pained but pale, faint then expanding, pale green and white curling up from River's body, and before his eyes, he watched burned tissue melt away and a slash seal itself up, bells ringing in his head--but their chime turned to tinny clangor and the dragon's flesh sagged open again. Paladin's voice twisted, turned from wonder to wrath to a ruined sort of laugh; what sort of God was this, to give him strength when there was only the end to see through?

There was nothing he could do, and when it sank in, he pulled his hands away, shoulders shuddering, numbly hating the armor, hating it for keeping him alive, hated it for not being on Cara or River, hated it for keeping him from wiping away his tears. He looked over to where River's head lay on the scorched grass--then stood, walked on shaky feet, then knelt beside the boy-dragon's face and carefully closed his eyes--though grimly aware that not even this small grace could restore dignity to one who'd died in such a way. Paladin stroked over the dragon's brow, wondering if his fur was as soft as it seemed, the gloves preventing him from ever knowing--he pulled away when he saw that his touch only stained River with more blood.

It was only about ten feet from where River lay to where Cara lay, but it felt both infinitely longer and far too short--was she always so tiny? It felt like he should have walked farther, that this could only be some trick of perspective. Though she could no longer feel pain, he was careful and delicate in removing the sword from where it pierced her chest. Gently he laid her on her back, gently he lifted her arm so that one hand covered the hole in her chest, gently he gave what he could so the honored dead could cease to be ghastly.

Something glinted on her wrist--the etched sunrise caught the light of the fire and almost burned itself. Her grandfather's bangle, he recalled, remembering what she had written when she found it. Paladin pulled it from her hand; she had loved ones of her own, he knew, and he would not allow something so precious to her to be destroyed in the fire. Carrying it (he had to carry it, that wristlet that hung so loosely from her arm wouldn't even have gone over his hand without the armored glove, maybe not even over four fingers she was so tiny dear God why), he rose to his feet again.

Around him the fire was still raging. Around him there was still only death and fear and pain, so much pain...

Slowly, he moved on.