Where a Flame Goes

--== On the Way to the Festered Lands, Sunset ==--
Another day through the lands of Arhor'ha comes to a close. The steps lead the party closer to a marsh of acid and decay. Even the land itself responds with a shiver on the winds and a bite on the tongue. Grass that once had such vibrant greens, blues, and purples finds its luster tarnished. Trees lack the same sway when a wind hits it. They crackle as if made dry.
It wont be long now until they are in the domain of Byle, the Black Decay.
While out gathering firewood for the campsite, Syn notices a tree in front of her begin to crack and splinter. A branch separates and plummets to the ground. It crashes in front of her. The dust settles and the broken wood neatly looks like an arrow pointing deeper into the forest. Coincidence? Perhaps. The dead squirrel at the end of the arrow also pointing in that direction? Less of a coincidence. The carving in a large tree that says 'Red and Blue, I summon you' with ANOTHER arrow pointing in that direction?
Still possibly a coincidence. This is Arhor'ha.
Night has placed its shadowy blanket down across the forest and only in the distance glistens a warm glow from the party’s campfire. Syn scans the forest floor looking for branches, leaning down to grab one and realizing in that moment that hauling wraeth along was going to make this more challenging than it needs to be. She lets out a huff of frustration. The truth is, this forest, this world of Arhor’ha, is deadly. To sacrifice protection for convenience is a poor choice.
Crack.
Her head jolts up to see the tree in front of her splinter and tilt, and then tumble down to hit the ground with a rise of earthen dust. She drops what few twigs and branches she had in one of her arms to the ground, stepping back and holding the handle of wraeth tightly. The dust settles and she stares down at the arrow and the dead squirrel pointing deeper into the forest. Her gaze shifts to the tree, the carvings, the words. She knows.
“Seriously?” She rolls her eyes. Turning her head to look back at the distant campfire. A momentary pause before lifting wraeth up over her shoulder and taking a casual stride deeper into the forest. June 18, 2020
Seriousness drains step after step through the heavily wooded area. There are no natural trails where the arrow points. Heavy thicket need be whacked away. It is not an obvious place. It takes direction into the unknown. It takes effort to carve your own path. The reward?
An open glade comes into view as a natural wall of branch and leaf breaks away. The ground is covered in grass painted crimson. Literally painted crimson. The verdant blades still drip wetly to a brighter hue and stick to the boots tread upon them. Trees create a natural series of walls around the area and Syn's entrance the only door. At the center is a dining room table. Familiar. Very familiar.
At one end of the table a silver haired Devil sits. Obsidian fork and knife cut into an obscenely large steak, rare, that doesn't fit on his plate. The seat at the far end of the table is vacant. The chairs on either side of the long table are not.
One dinner guest is a headless elf. It continues to cut an invisible steak in front of it. Cutting and cutting. Endlessly. Nothing is there.
Another guest is completely whole, but clad in black armor from head to toe. He is massive. The chair looks like a child's furniture in comparison.
The remaining two guests are a couple of stuffed animals: a bunny and a fox. Buttons are sewed on as eyes and they look patchwork.
"And that is when the sword went right into the dragon's head," Gig says, chewing loudly while talking to the stuffed animals, "and it made such a delightfully fun cracking sound. Wet like a chitinous bag of juicy. Red. Steak." Eyes level on Syn, a bit dribbling down his chin as he grins to the final guest.
The deeper through the forest Syn walks, the more she is greeted with tangled foliage that leaves her no other option but to send wreath slamming down and ripping through it. Swinging in this area is an annoyance of itself but it only solidifies her frustration as she breaks through the last remaining wall of branches and vines to step out to an open clearing of red.
She frustratingly pulls a twig from her hair, taking a step forward and stopping to look down. The grass is wet with red…paint? Her head jolts up quickly catching the tail end of his story, and her red eyes settle on the Devil before her that sits carving into a steak at the end of a long dinner table. “Gig.” She says in acknowledgement. This is all too familiar. In that moment, memories of Avernus flash into her mind.
“So, this is what you do in your free time?” She scoffs, looking at the other ‘things’ sitting at the table with him. She watches for a moment as the headless elf cuts across a plate like there is something there. The knife and fork screech across it between the momentary silence.
Screech, Screeeech.
“What do you want?” She says abruptly between plate screeches.
The Devil shakes his head to the left and then the right. Eyes closes as if to accent a point, "All time is free," and then they open like a sunrise on a skies of Avernus itself, "if you free it." A bit of blood begins to trickle down his fork and onto his hands. A smirk that is drawn with just as fine a red line from all the carnage on the table. Plates. Tea cups. Moldy bread. Velvet cake, red of course. "Mister Butternutter!" he points angrily at the fox with his steak-clad fork, "you have not touched your tea. Do not like it? It's Syn's favorite. Don't be rude. I. Hate. Rude. Dinner. Guests." He munches on his steak, "You must stab thy food. Or thy guests. Its only right."
The burning red eyes set in inky blackness slide back to Syn. There were real questions there. Real questions in a surreal glade. "What I want? What I really want?" He begins to scrape against the plate, "I'll tell you what I want. What I really really want." The hands with such long talons at the end, "I want you to come to a fancy dinner. Have you had a fancy dinner, Syn? Dresses and dainty fingers being raised before they are bitten off by wolves and twice before desert is served." While he is thinking about that the silver haired Devil snaps his fingers.
It could be an illusion, but Syn is immediately confined to a -dress-. Not just a dress, but one with hundreds of ridiculous frills. It looks like the sort of thing you bury a person in. It even smells of the grave if not for the iron scent. Like a wedding dress drenched in hot murderous blood so that you can go to the theater in style. Someone's style at least.
"Better," the Devil says, "now we can talk. Over dinner. We have so much time and so little to discuss."
She throws wraeth up over her shoulder, huffing under her breath at the mention of her favorite tea. “It is not.” Trying to have any valuable conversation with the Devil before her is a challenge. You ask a question, its acknowledged and tossed aside for other off the wall comments. Sometimes those questions come back around, sometimes they cryptically dance around other words, and sometimes they are just never answered at all.
“I do not want to be part of a fancy dinn—” A finger snap interrupts her sentence of rejection and in a blink, her wardrobe has changed to a frilly red dress. Its obnoxious, wreaking of death, and uncomfortably out of place for the tiefling barbarian wielding a great club.
Her free hand lowers to tug at one of the many frilled layers of the red dress. “You are overstepping big time.” Her red eyes shift across to meet his with a fiery gaze of disgust. “If I could kill you, I would.” She sneers, grabbing a lower layer of the dress to pull upwards so she can walk. It’s a mess watching an angry tiefling trying to manage walking with frilly fabric in one hand and carry wraeth at the same time. It is a little embarrassing.
Syn slams wraeth down on the table, smashing random plates of deserts and knocking over chalices of red beverages as she does so. She forcefully pulls back the chair and takes a seat. The frills bunch up across her lap and in a rage, she swats around her general area to push them down, shoving them below the lip of the table.
“I can think of a million other ways you could have relayed information to me, and while I’d like to assume whatever the fuck this might be is important, I know I’ll still walk away knowing nothing. So hurry up with your dumb dinner game so I can get back to my group.” She’s handling things well, all things considered.
"How can you call it your group when you've left Ford in such a miserable state," Gig says. Simple. Pointed. That verbal wound lingers as his eyes settle on Syn. It is as if the silence itself twists the words around like metal made of acid. A slow blink from he Devil as he raises his chalice and drinks deeply. "Asking for a friend," he continues, "the kind that is there for you. Like your 'group'? They were there for you then, mm?" The chalice is set down on the table amongst the chaos of broken plates, deserts, and rare steaks.
A long silence rest between the two. Her eyes narrow and watch him as he drinks from his chalice. A clenched fist slams down on the table. “Fuck off with that Gig.” She hisses. “Ford made the decision to help on his own. He didn’t have to do the things he did. I told him I’d handle it, but he insisted. Don’t blame that on me, I haven’t forgotten about Ford.”
She leans forward, resting an elbow on the table and pressing her left cheek into her palm. “Is this part where you coax me into another deal so I can find a way to bring him back? I think it is Gig, in fact, Paulo even mentioned it.”
Her tone of voice drips with anger, frustration, annoyance. Some directed towards him, some not. Maybe it’s the dress? Probably the dress.
Gig smiles. Yes, it is the sort of abrasive requirement of communicating that fits. Not everyone enjoys dancing in an inferno, but some do. They do. The smile? An inferno to the eyes. His face? Plastered with a stray muffin-sized cake that pops up from Syn's slamming. It slides slowly down and plops onto the table. The Devil scrapes red frosting from his cheek and licks it off.
"Did Paulo mention that out of guilt or because he has your best interests in mind?" Gig asks. "Did you wonder for whom that request best serves? Him or you?"
“Hahahaha!” She bursts out into a laugh. None of the other dinner guests at the table seemed amused. The headless half elf still mindlessly (No pun intended) carving into their invisible meal.
“For starters, I used the word mention instead of warn. I could not tell you what his intentions were with telling me that because the man speaks like he’s dead inside. Though, I don’t blame him. If I had to babysit you all the time, I’d lose my fucking mind too.” A sadistic grin begins to form at the corner of her mouth. This is normal, this is how it always goes between the two, and it’s a twisted game they love playing.
“Obviously, it’s in his best interest. Why would Paulo aid me? The same for you. You don’t do the things you do because you caaaaaare.” She chuckles once more. “You do it for yourself and whatever grand plan you have conjured up.”
Syn keeps her head propped up against her hand, elbow leaning on the table. She picks up a chalice and swirls the red liquid held inside it before taking a sniff and coiling back her nose. Tipping it over and letting the contents spill out next to the chair.
“Which in turn, makes you just. Like. Him. Or am I wrong?”
"You wound me, Syn," Gig replies as he scrapes off more frosting from his face. The taloned finger flicks upon the stuffed fox until a seething wound of red sugar is dashed upon its body. "Please, continue to do so," the silver haired Devil draws a smile that burns away the frosting so that only the lines of his smirk and those insane eyes peak through one side of his face.
"Mmm, so proud I am of you," he continues on as he watches that content spill like blood across the laquered wood of the table. "You are starting to figure it all out. Such a long, long way you have come from the girl who was thrown into Avernus without any answers." Gig leans back his head and laughs so deeply that the birds scare from a nearby tree. Ravens to blot the night. Only an owl remains as company in the canopy. A white owl.
The laughter subsides, "Almost all the strings are cut now. So far, yet," Gig stabs his steak violently enough to shatter the plate, "you are asking the wrong questions. Something I share with Paulo. It would make sense, yes it would, if making sense is a thread you dance to." He releases his hand from the knife, "Ask me the right question, Syn. Mister Nutterbutter is dying from suspense over here." The stuffed fox's head flops forward.
“If only those wounds or your praises were real.” She hisses behind fine lined lips.
She shifts her gaze momentarily to look at the stuffed fox and the red streak of sugar across its fluffy chest. She ponders for a moment if there is a soul in there. An unfortunate fate of someone who had kneeled before Gig in the past and failed to deliver their side of a bargain perhaps?
“Solus breathes but Ford is gone, Jacob breathes, and grows stronger each day. I find normalcy with this group, But I find truths of my past, and shackles to my future.” She taps the bracer around her wrist that she is leaning into with her palm. “I was kindle then calling out for flint and spark. Now this fire burns and I don’t know what to do with it. I am damned if I do, I am damned if I don’t.”
Her hand rolls down off her face, laying her forearm across the dark wooden table. Her red eyes, as deep a red as the river styx itself meet the amber eyes of the Devil before her. “So, where should I place this flame?”
"Where does any flame go," Gig says as he starts into his usual level of 'helping, not helping' commentary. The 'here we go' sensation already begins to well as he opens those arms wide out. The Devil is not an imposing figure. He is, in fact, rather short. Thin. Gaudy. It is those eyes that burn like two small suns set in the vastness of space that compensate any physical appearance he may take.
The hands clap together and he does something truly unexpected. He explains something. "When a flame is a spark, where does it go? It fights and claws to become a flame." The table itself loses sense of gravity as the plates, fragments, food, and even the liquid begin to drift upwards in a feather-slow ascent. In the center of this chaos is a spark. It sparks like stardust seeking to be more. Then. Suddenly. Almost like a miracle made real. It ascends to flame.
"Where does a flame go? It goes where it damn well pleases," Gig continues as the flame spreads out. A steak is consumed as it sizzles in its juices. "And in time it has only two destinations. Eternal blaze," and in a moment the entire forest is on fire around them. The sky becomes an ash black. In a blink it returns back to normal. "Or snuffed out." The fire suffocates and turns to smoke and mist.
On the table itself a new fire begins at the center. "Yet the 'free will' of this flame, this all consuming badass made incarnate, is not free. We spoke of it before, you remember, yes? The world has rules, a flame goes to the direction of its ire, to consume that which is accessible, hated." The fire itself creeps towards a leaf on the table, consuming it. "And in doing so you have stumbled onto a core truth." Everything falls.
"None of you are free."
Gig extends one hand out and turns it upwards, "Paulo believes that the correct way is to guide the flame by stopping its path to the most destructive." The fire itself is surrounded by plates of glass that redirect the fire away towards a large pile of dry leaves. It forces the fire to find a new path to lesser debris. "You've experienced this, yes?"
The Devil extends out his other hand, "And I believe that there are paths yet to take if you are made aware of them." The flame stops crawling along the table and goes upwards, drawing an arcane line of fire in the extra dimension it travels. "These ideas. Conflict at times." The glass panes react to keep the flame from reaching the large pile in three dimensions now. The flame continues to find new means to live.
"Where should you place the flame, Syn? Knowing that the walls of angels shield you from catastrophes of the many. That the gouges of anarchy are seduced to you by Devils." The entire table erupts into fire, but nothing burns. Not the plates. Not the dinner guests. Gig goes as far as to grab a steak with his bare hand and rip into it with sharp teeth. "Get angry as the hells and the answer will always show itself in so much purity it makes me want to fucking puke with joy."
Syn’s ears perk up when he begins talking. She becomes shocked at the beginning of the reply. He’s explaining something, without added bullshit? A clap of his hands, and she watches with curious eyes till she takes notice of the changes in the room. The plates, cups, food, and even the liquid starts drifting upwards.
Her eyes widen, pulling back her hands from the table and standing up to grab wraeth. Between the orange and yellow flames, she looks across the table. The devil stands behind the fires speaking of the burning items between them, his figure shifts and sways amid warm air that rises off the flames and in a blink of an eye, the entire forest becomes engulfed in fire. It catches her by surprise, and she steps back, turning her head to gaze at the beauty of it all, then as quickly as it appeared its gone and nothing remains but smoke. Her red eyes settle back to the table, the small fire at its center.
“Yes. I remember.” She replies watching it engulf a leaf.
She looks up, watching the fire be suppressed by his show of dimensions. It gets angry and frustrated with a will to burn but can’t. Watching it struggle reminds Syn of herself. It draws back memories of hopelessness and that will to keep going, to keep getting stronger, to save Solus and to kill Jacob. The table ignites and she lowers her head. The heat of the fire hits across her face, swirling her hair around and shadows cast down across her forehead behind the bangs of her jet-black hair.
Her hand grips the handle of wreath, she draws it up into the air among the rising hot flames and lets out a heavy breath before sending the great club down towards the table. It hits with such impact it sends a splintering crack through the wood from her end of the table to the other side where he sits. The impact pushes the halves to either side and falls into itself leaving a gap between the fires.
“I am already angry as the hells.” She says looking across the broken table towards the Devil. “Because as you said, I am not free. I have a celestial and a devil watching, judging, plotting, planning. Playing us mortals as puppets for their grand schemes.” She takes a step between the broken table. Plates crack and shift beneath her feet as flames lick up to either side of her as she walks. “And that makes me want to fucking puke with disgust.” Another step towards the devil, dragging wraeth behind her. “We all know I can’t kill you, I can’t kill Paulo, nor can I kill Jacob in this state of things. So what the fuck do I do when I cant cut that one thread that binds me?”
By now she’s reached the other side, the heat from the flames hit her skin and while it burns, she still maintains a resistance towards it. She leans forward into his face, the very corners of her mouth twist upwards with a chaotic smirk and she raises her head. “I use you the same way you use me.” Red eyes glisten from the orange glow of the flames. “You called me here for a reason, there is something more to this dinner party since you haven’t shown your face in months. I’d like to know what it really is, and I will decide then, where to place this flame. Be it against the walls of celestials or your fucking anarchy. Which side will take me to my goal first?” June 19, 2020
"Haha," the Devil begins as he lowers his head. The silver hair shakes in manic excitement, "Hahaha. HAHAHAHA!" Gig's head is drawn back and the cackle fills the air at the destruction of the table. It is little more than a fancy campfire now. Two, technically, at either side of the infernals.
The laughter doesn't stop when Syn walks down the blood red carpet to the Devil's throne. Delightful. His eyes synch with the flames around them. They burn and dance to his will. His very existance feels as if the Breaker is making her way through a volcanic corridor. Face to Face. Smirking
"So fucking ironic. You don't get it, Syn," Gig says unblinking, "Your body does. Your SOUL does. But your mind struggles. What do you think it is I cut free from the path it was imprisoned to?"
With a gesture of his hand, the silver haired king of lies shapes the flames into fine wires so pure they look like beams of red light. "Oh these strings," Gig says, standing up and towards Syn. He slides around her like smoke, charring the ground at his feet as he plucks one of his new fire made notes. "What did you say they were, again? Ah yes." A note is struck, "The celestials are watching me. They are judging and plotting against me. Using me." A hand grips the string and rips it in half.
"The celestials don't care about you, Syn. They care about Arhor'ha and virtue. They are allowed to deny you a path, but not decide your path."
A hand is pressed to Gig's well sculpted chest that has likely been stabbed more times than he can remember. "Then there are the Devils," he continues on, referring to at least himself as he grabs another string, ripping it out. "But as you have just learned, I am allowed to show you paths, but not decide your path."
"You are convinced other people manipulate and direct your life," Gig says as he does the antagonist monologue walk down the corridor of wires. He snips one, "Your mother," snip, "Freeport," snip, "Me." Snip. He stops "You create antagonists because the true antagonist is a masterful villain that doesn't want you to know where to direct all that ire."
Turning around, he wears Syn's face. Mimics her voice, "Because that villain holds all the strings you. Can't. Cut." The remaining strings dance from Gig-Syn's hands and connect to her body like a marionette. "You need to create a villain to focus on that isnt the real one and so you will play out these misplaced thoughts forever."
"I have always been genuine with you. You just can't help yourself. You need a distraction." He does not address where Syn should go next or do next.
She stares with narrow red eyes into the face of the Devil till he cackles out into a laugh. She draws her head back, taking a step backwards that lingers on the tip of her boot. “I don’t get it?” She says, tilting her head to the side.
The fires shift and morph into thin lines of orange and yellow light and the Devil moves behind her to pluck the strings of fire. Her head follows, shifting her gaze and turning to watch him walk down the corridor. When he finally turns back around, Syn is greeted with her own face. Her eyes widen, and the point he’s been trying to make all this time settles in her chest and in her mind. Strings of fire flow from his hands and connect to her body. Her head lowers, staring down at each of the threads. A puppet to herself.
“Heh, Ford tried to tell me the same thing.” Her hand tightens around the great club, lunging forward swinging wraeth across the strings and towards Gig. It slices through a few of them, leaving one single thread connected between the two “The truth?!” Wraeth slams down into the dirt beside him. “That the enemy is me. I keep myself from becoming the person that I know sits waiting to be released.” She looks down at the small crater left by wraeth in the ground then up to the single thread of fire. “I keep drowning in my own misery thinking its from all the things I’ve been told, all the things I’ve experienced. Really, I just hate myself, but I am too absorbed in it to change.” Her other hand reaches up and wraps around the thread. “But I want to cut it.” She tugs at the thread, it sizzles across the palm of her hand. “Because the real me, likes the infernal chaos.” And with a powerful motion of her arm, she rips the thread away.
“I want to kill Jacob Whyte not just for vengeance, but because I like the idea of fucking with his plans.” Her mouth shifts back into a sadistic grin. “I want to kill Shirley because I didn’t get the chance back at the Yggdrasil site.” And the grin grows and grows. “And really, I want to break against the celestials, infernals and everything in between because I just want to see how far I can go with it. I want to be more than a pawn on a chess board, I want to be the earthquake that shakes the board and sends them all scattered and confused.”
Clap Clap Clap. Gig claps. Clap Clap Clap. The headless elf claps. Floof Floof Floof. The stuffed animals try to clap but its not making any sounds. The man in black armor does not clap. There is always one downer in the group.
"Spoken like a true Breaker," the silver haired devil says, "now that you see the board, the board can be broken." Gig snaps his fingers and puts away his silly table as it turns to ash. The man in armor collects the stuffed animals and the elf. "There will be plenty of opportunity for it in the days to come. When an angel betrays and a devil aids," he flips a wave up into the air as he begins to walk towards the tree line, "you don't need to be a fortune teller to know that shits getting real fucked up real quick-like."
She looks around at the ‘dinner party’ clapping. The dining table crumbles into blackened ash and drifts softly to the ground. “Well then, I look forward to seeing you on the chess board.” She scoffs, taking wraeth up by the handle and tossing it over her shoulder. “It will be fun to see what happens. Whatever it is.” She watches him toss a wave and walk towards the tree line. “And take your ugly dress back.” She shouts at him.