Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply
Who: Ioann, Open too
What: One of those nightmares that’s worse when you wake up and realize what you saw and did in your dreams. Ioann’s desire to destroy everything.
Where: a dreamscape of his home land
When: Monday night
Warnings: TL;DR. Fire. Murder. Angst. And if anyone joins, he will try to kill you, no matter who you are.
The winter came early, the year Ioann left home. Before that day, he had always imagined his home, when he tried to fit the broad valley into his mind, as a sunny place. Warm and comforting, with gray-green tuffs of grass and a quilt of farmland stretching out to link one high rocky rise with its mirror cousin. A place where the sun shines and the wind blows, and the grain sways with the breeze like golden fabric. Ever after, however, his could only picture his home like it was the last time he looked.
Those were the worst dreams, the ones of a life and a happiness that got taken away from him. The kinds of nightmares that make him weep in the dark of the night; tears shed because it was nothing more than a dream. So beautiful.
Blue sky, clear and cloudless and washed out with the morning light that broke over the mountains, with the bite of chill that heralded the turn in the seasons as the empty fields below the roadway shimmered with a dusting of frost. It was as if magic had settled over the land during the night, and was waiting to be swept up in preparation for a new day. A fine layer of ice hung to the short, stunted trees of Breliven, as they in turn clung to their rocky surfaces. Each leaf sparkled in the sunlight, looking, for a brief flash, like spun sugar or delicate glass.
The boy once, long ago, looked out over the cradle of his youth, and made a memory, deep in his mind and heart. A treasure, hidden away where he would go years later, turning it over and over and over till he knows every edge and surface. A stash, a private thing, that no one else need ever see, or find, caught in the space behind his eyes and between his ears. More importantly, a keep-sake, a parting gift, a comforting reminder of the place he loved so much, and everything inside it, to keep his soul warm till he comes home again. To make it burn with longing for what will never be his again.
The boy turns away. The road before him looked so desolate in comparison. Even the untrained eye can mark the border between Loradon and Breliven, with no need for something as petty as a wall or a line, or even guards for that matter. On one side the road snaked up the mountain side, grass pressing through the gravel and pouring in over the sides. Not so much a road as a narrow pass, two men could walk side by side, or a man and horse, but anything as great as a wagon would be hard pressed to keep all four wheels on solid ground.
The grass was greener, on the Breliven side. The dirt was softer, darker, with more vegetable matter than the dust of rocks. The air was fresher, tasting of fallen leaves and churned soil, with that sigh of air that comes from the breeze blowing over the valley. The sunlight danced over the rock outcroppings and the mountain ridges to paint the gravel momentarily golden. And the frost clung to the underside of every work, sparkling and bright, even in the shadows.
Perhaps, maybe, just maybe, there was no real difference on the other side of the road, as the path linked the two domains without any pretension of grandeur. But no one who walked along this road, as few travelers as there ever were, could remain oblivious to the moment that they first breathed in Breliven air or set foot on Breliven soil. This little slice of the world was different, in every way that really mattered, and every person, and animal, and plant, could feel that difference down to the very core of their inner most being.
Before being sent to University-Court, Ioann had never gone farther than this edge, in all eleven years of his life. Never crossed over before, for more than a few minutes, and never wanted to. This was the only road, only official road, to come in or out of the secluded valley, not that every visitor needed a road. Every child of Breliven, eventually, makes his or her way to the road and the border. Maybe, the braver and more venturesome might sneak out to visit this strange place as an act of daring or curiosity. The more timid are brought by their parents or their friends, so they might, for a few moments, envision a larger world, and everything that entails.
Every winter, Ioann would come with his parents and grandparents and great grand parents, all his uncles and cousins and aunts. A great swarm of family, up to the road, in a rite and reminder of the cost and privilege of being on that side of the line. There is a slight down beat, to the rhythm of life, on the side of the line he now lives. Looking back out over the valley and not daring to cross, it hits the stomach like a dead weight, sinking down half an inch, as if the entire world has gotten just that much harder to bear.
This is home, his only home, the only one he has ever known. And they sent him away. And he went, how could he have gone? How much easier would it have been to stay, to run away from his cousin and his aunt, to hide among the grass and the rocks and…. And what? Wait for winter? There was no place to go, no place to hide. And even if he could have fled into the distance, how could he have hid from the guilt within of intentionally removing himself from his community? Family is everything to him. Was everything to him.
Just as they did that day he left, his aunt and cousin are waiting, just down the road. Waiting to take him far away, to a different life and different tasks. To abuse and misery and suffering.
He’s not going to go. Not this time. Let them drag him, kicking and screaming and sobbing away; he’ll kill them all first. Ioann steps towards the invisible line, but can’t cross it. A wall, a force field, a barrier that defies his every attempt stands between him and the winter paradise ahead of him. Hands hanging limply at his sides, Ioann’s shoulder’s sloop. All he can do is look.
A hand, heavy and firm, sets on his shoulder, and Ioann goes dangerously still. He knows that ring, that feel, even if the contact doesn’t cause the familiar Breliven upclick. Aleksandr. “Time to leave, Ioann. We haven’t time to waste in reaching the portal. No point dwelling here; you’ll be home again soon enough.”
The words cause the rage, dark and warm, to spark, deep within. “Don’t lie.”
“You wound me, cousin.” It’s not fair. How can Aleksandr be so calm, so confident and secure, as he rips away Ioann’s birthright. If not for the older mage, they would never have cut him out of the family. Stole his dream, his life, his hopes and trust in the people he loved to take care of him. And did it so easily. “I have no reason to lie to you.”
The hatred welled up from some inner pit of despair, expressing itself in a fury of anger and violence. Ioann spins and slams a punch across small space between them, hitting th eoslar plexes with the intent to bring the Aleksandr down to his level. The bigger man falls to the ground and Ioann scurries to sit up across him. One fist after the other pounds against flesh, as years of anger take vengeance against a primary source of abuse and hurt. Down the road, his aunt sits wooden and unresponsive on her horse, as oblivious to her son’s plight as she was to her nephew’s misery.
“I trusted you! I needed you to protect me! Why Aleksandr, why did you do this to me?!” It is a mad thing, a sad thing, that a boy, a child really, of a mere ten or eleven years can be made into a threat to a man full grown and in his prime. Pure and simple insanity, and yet the basic truth. He was naïve and innocent, and Aleksandr helped to push him into the dark abyss in which he wants nothing more than to set the world on fire.
Hands bruised and covered with blood, Ioann finally stands, looking down on the broken corpse at his feet, and giving it another good kick, or three. The Darkfire flares around his hands, fueled by murder and rage. The boy lifts his left hand and looks at it, no scratch or injury this time. The blood combusts into purple flame, but he is not burned. Slowly, starting with a gasp not far from a sob, Ioann starts laughing. There is nothing funny here, but he laughs, long and dark and his face splits into a grin that’s more like a snarl.
Raising the hand in front of him and pointing towards his aunt, Ioann sends a blast of Darkfire to destroy her. Let her try to ignore him now. The woman hardly has a chance to scream. As the darkfire steals her life and magic, he can feel it flowing through the connection back into himself; a heady and exhilarating feeling of power and satisfaction. Riding that high, Ioann turns to face the invisible barrier, and sends blast after blast at the air, smashing into sparks.
Slowly, he makes his way down the path into Breliven. Around him the grass curls and withers, turning brown and black. The ice melts and sizzles. The rocks look scorched as he passes. The old, twisted trees warp even more, dying even as he goes by, and every piece of life channels back into him, whispering of the deepest, darkest urges that fuel a broken heart. They sent him away, cut him off, but he’s coming back now, and they will all pay. Everyone is guilty. All must suffer.
The sky’s darken over head, the earth shudders, as death enters the land of life and healing. They will come running; he knows, to defend this land, this home. Just as they cut him off for being a drain on the family as the Darkfire slowly devoured him alive, they would come to cull his physical presence. Let them try.
Power is the only thing that matters, and every death, no matter how small, sends a little more power into his fragile frame. It hums beneath his skin, it burn within his heart, the flame is too much to keep contained and escapes about him in sparks and plumes of flame and smoke. His eyes go black, pupils dilated, and he can’t seem to stop laughing. Holding his hands out and away from his as he walks, Ioann rains fire and brimstone down on the world around him, and the smoke twists in spirals and tendrils about his feel, trailing behind him like some crooked mockery of a mage-cloak.
This is what it means to be powerful. This is what they wanted, isn’t it? Those war-mages who mocked him for being a healer. This is why his parents married, isn’t it? To bring the Loradon fire magic into the family. Let it burn, let them all burn. Let them remember how Loradon once ruled Glence with the most powerful wizard the world has ever known. And this is what the Darkfire Wizard does, wants, is. And so that is what Ioann will become, the very thing he has dedicated his life to destroy.
Burn. Burn them all. And leave nothing but ash and blood. In the end there will be nothing left, not even him. This world doesn’t deserve to exist. He will end it.
What: One of those nightmares that’s worse when you wake up and realize what you saw and did in your dreams. Ioann’s desire to destroy everything.
Where: a dreamscape of his home land
When: Monday night
Warnings: TL;DR. Fire. Murder. Angst. And if anyone joins, he will try to kill you, no matter who you are.
The winter came early, the year Ioann left home. Before that day, he had always imagined his home, when he tried to fit the broad valley into his mind, as a sunny place. Warm and comforting, with gray-green tuffs of grass and a quilt of farmland stretching out to link one high rocky rise with its mirror cousin. A place where the sun shines and the wind blows, and the grain sways with the breeze like golden fabric. Ever after, however, his could only picture his home like it was the last time he looked.
Those were the worst dreams, the ones of a life and a happiness that got taken away from him. The kinds of nightmares that make him weep in the dark of the night; tears shed because it was nothing more than a dream. So beautiful.
Blue sky, clear and cloudless and washed out with the morning light that broke over the mountains, with the bite of chill that heralded the turn in the seasons as the empty fields below the roadway shimmered with a dusting of frost. It was as if magic had settled over the land during the night, and was waiting to be swept up in preparation for a new day. A fine layer of ice hung to the short, stunted trees of Breliven, as they in turn clung to their rocky surfaces. Each leaf sparkled in the sunlight, looking, for a brief flash, like spun sugar or delicate glass.
The boy once, long ago, looked out over the cradle of his youth, and made a memory, deep in his mind and heart. A treasure, hidden away where he would go years later, turning it over and over and over till he knows every edge and surface. A stash, a private thing, that no one else need ever see, or find, caught in the space behind his eyes and between his ears. More importantly, a keep-sake, a parting gift, a comforting reminder of the place he loved so much, and everything inside it, to keep his soul warm till he comes home again. To make it burn with longing for what will never be his again.
The boy turns away. The road before him looked so desolate in comparison. Even the untrained eye can mark the border between Loradon and Breliven, with no need for something as petty as a wall or a line, or even guards for that matter. On one side the road snaked up the mountain side, grass pressing through the gravel and pouring in over the sides. Not so much a road as a narrow pass, two men could walk side by side, or a man and horse, but anything as great as a wagon would be hard pressed to keep all four wheels on solid ground.
The grass was greener, on the Breliven side. The dirt was softer, darker, with more vegetable matter than the dust of rocks. The air was fresher, tasting of fallen leaves and churned soil, with that sigh of air that comes from the breeze blowing over the valley. The sunlight danced over the rock outcroppings and the mountain ridges to paint the gravel momentarily golden. And the frost clung to the underside of every work, sparkling and bright, even in the shadows.
Perhaps, maybe, just maybe, there was no real difference on the other side of the road, as the path linked the two domains without any pretension of grandeur. But no one who walked along this road, as few travelers as there ever were, could remain oblivious to the moment that they first breathed in Breliven air or set foot on Breliven soil. This little slice of the world was different, in every way that really mattered, and every person, and animal, and plant, could feel that difference down to the very core of their inner most being.
Before being sent to University-Court, Ioann had never gone farther than this edge, in all eleven years of his life. Never crossed over before, for more than a few minutes, and never wanted to. This was the only road, only official road, to come in or out of the secluded valley, not that every visitor needed a road. Every child of Breliven, eventually, makes his or her way to the road and the border. Maybe, the braver and more venturesome might sneak out to visit this strange place as an act of daring or curiosity. The more timid are brought by their parents or their friends, so they might, for a few moments, envision a larger world, and everything that entails.
Every winter, Ioann would come with his parents and grandparents and great grand parents, all his uncles and cousins and aunts. A great swarm of family, up to the road, in a rite and reminder of the cost and privilege of being on that side of the line. There is a slight down beat, to the rhythm of life, on the side of the line he now lives. Looking back out over the valley and not daring to cross, it hits the stomach like a dead weight, sinking down half an inch, as if the entire world has gotten just that much harder to bear.
This is home, his only home, the only one he has ever known. And they sent him away. And he went, how could he have gone? How much easier would it have been to stay, to run away from his cousin and his aunt, to hide among the grass and the rocks and…. And what? Wait for winter? There was no place to go, no place to hide. And even if he could have fled into the distance, how could he have hid from the guilt within of intentionally removing himself from his community? Family is everything to him. Was everything to him.
Just as they did that day he left, his aunt and cousin are waiting, just down the road. Waiting to take him far away, to a different life and different tasks. To abuse and misery and suffering.
He’s not going to go. Not this time. Let them drag him, kicking and screaming and sobbing away; he’ll kill them all first. Ioann steps towards the invisible line, but can’t cross it. A wall, a force field, a barrier that defies his every attempt stands between him and the winter paradise ahead of him. Hands hanging limply at his sides, Ioann’s shoulder’s sloop. All he can do is look.
A hand, heavy and firm, sets on his shoulder, and Ioann goes dangerously still. He knows that ring, that feel, even if the contact doesn’t cause the familiar Breliven upclick. Aleksandr. “Time to leave, Ioann. We haven’t time to waste in reaching the portal. No point dwelling here; you’ll be home again soon enough.”
The words cause the rage, dark and warm, to spark, deep within. “Don’t lie.”
“You wound me, cousin.” It’s not fair. How can Aleksandr be so calm, so confident and secure, as he rips away Ioann’s birthright. If not for the older mage, they would never have cut him out of the family. Stole his dream, his life, his hopes and trust in the people he loved to take care of him. And did it so easily. “I have no reason to lie to you.”
The hatred welled up from some inner pit of despair, expressing itself in a fury of anger and violence. Ioann spins and slams a punch across small space between them, hitting th eoslar plexes with the intent to bring the Aleksandr down to his level. The bigger man falls to the ground and Ioann scurries to sit up across him. One fist after the other pounds against flesh, as years of anger take vengeance against a primary source of abuse and hurt. Down the road, his aunt sits wooden and unresponsive on her horse, as oblivious to her son’s plight as she was to her nephew’s misery.
“I trusted you! I needed you to protect me! Why Aleksandr, why did you do this to me?!” It is a mad thing, a sad thing, that a boy, a child really, of a mere ten or eleven years can be made into a threat to a man full grown and in his prime. Pure and simple insanity, and yet the basic truth. He was naïve and innocent, and Aleksandr helped to push him into the dark abyss in which he wants nothing more than to set the world on fire.
Hands bruised and covered with blood, Ioann finally stands, looking down on the broken corpse at his feet, and giving it another good kick, or three. The Darkfire flares around his hands, fueled by murder and rage. The boy lifts his left hand and looks at it, no scratch or injury this time. The blood combusts into purple flame, but he is not burned. Slowly, starting with a gasp not far from a sob, Ioann starts laughing. There is nothing funny here, but he laughs, long and dark and his face splits into a grin that’s more like a snarl.
Raising the hand in front of him and pointing towards his aunt, Ioann sends a blast of Darkfire to destroy her. Let her try to ignore him now. The woman hardly has a chance to scream. As the darkfire steals her life and magic, he can feel it flowing through the connection back into himself; a heady and exhilarating feeling of power and satisfaction. Riding that high, Ioann turns to face the invisible barrier, and sends blast after blast at the air, smashing into sparks.
Slowly, he makes his way down the path into Breliven. Around him the grass curls and withers, turning brown and black. The ice melts and sizzles. The rocks look scorched as he passes. The old, twisted trees warp even more, dying even as he goes by, and every piece of life channels back into him, whispering of the deepest, darkest urges that fuel a broken heart. They sent him away, cut him off, but he’s coming back now, and they will all pay. Everyone is guilty. All must suffer.
The sky’s darken over head, the earth shudders, as death enters the land of life and healing. They will come running; he knows, to defend this land, this home. Just as they cut him off for being a drain on the family as the Darkfire slowly devoured him alive, they would come to cull his physical presence. Let them try.
Power is the only thing that matters, and every death, no matter how small, sends a little more power into his fragile frame. It hums beneath his skin, it burn within his heart, the flame is too much to keep contained and escapes about him in sparks and plumes of flame and smoke. His eyes go black, pupils dilated, and he can’t seem to stop laughing. Holding his hands out and away from his as he walks, Ioann rains fire and brimstone down on the world around him, and the smoke twists in spirals and tendrils about his feel, trailing behind him like some crooked mockery of a mage-cloak.
This is what it means to be powerful. This is what they wanted, isn’t it? Those war-mages who mocked him for being a healer. This is why his parents married, isn’t it? To bring the Loradon fire magic into the family. Let it burn, let them all burn. Let them remember how Loradon once ruled Glence with the most powerful wizard the world has ever known. And this is what the Darkfire Wizard does, wants, is. And so that is what Ioann will become, the very thing he has dedicated his life to destroy.
Burn. Burn them all. And leave nothing but ash and blood. In the end there will be nothing left, not even him. This world doesn’t deserve to exist. He will end it.