novelraw Chapter 495: Flame.
Chapter 495: Flame.
Nero let out a yawn as he stirred.
He had fallen asleep on where he was perched.
He glanced around briefly, then he looked down.
The others had pulled back from the ridge edge — some sleeping against the base, some gathered in small clusters with what remained of their supplies while others simply sat around.
It seemed like after some time had passed, many had accepted the momentary safety. Even the creaking forms of the Withered had been swallowed by the fog.
’Out of sight, huh...’
Nero walked along the base of the ridge until he found a narrow recess where the bone curved inward just enough to create a shallow alcove. He sat in it and extended his left hand palm up. Then he just looked at it for a moment.
A moment later, a small tuft of grey flame appeared above his palm, dancing in the wind like the slithering tongue of a mad priest.
The pale luminescence was very odd. It did give off light, but a chilly one. One that did not convey any sense of heat or life.
And yet, one could indeed feel the heat. It was very odd indeed.
Nero curiously moved a hand over the open flame with a dormant expression on his face as he watched it wave from side to side.
The bonedust was everywhere out here. Nero adjusted the rag over his face with his other hand.
That was simply the nature of the surface — a fine pale powder that settled in every depression, accumulated along every ledge, drifted in the thin currents of air that moved through the ridge formations.
After breathing it for so many days, he had already accepted his fate, much like the others. Although it would not kill him, he was already in a world of pain as sharp bone fragments had already begun to stab into his lungs and throat.
It got rather itchy sometimes, but Nero figured he could still endure it a bit.
He sighed and turned his attention back to the flame.
His expression changed.
It was subtle... a faint increase in the intensity of the grey flame, a slight upward pull in the direction of the dust-laden air, like a flower tilting toward the sun.
He turned his hand slowly, watching it track.
Wherever the bonedust concentration was heaviest; along the base of the ridge wall to his left, in the shallow bowl of ground just outside the alcove where it had accumulated in a pale crescent, the flame tilted.
He sat with it for a while.
Then he called up the Oracle’s runes in his mind. Looking through the description of Grimfyre, he stared at it soundlessly for a while before reaching out to the Eye of the Divine itself.
*What is this? Why does Grimfyre react to bonedust?*
{The bonedust of Golgotha is saturated with what is known as Rót. This is the name given to Ein Sof as it accumulates in places that have been steeped in death; graveyards, tombs, places where living things have ended in great numbers over long periods of time. It does not dissipate quickly in such places. It lingers instead, absorbed into the material of the earth itself, into stone and soil and, in the case of Golgotha, into bone}.
Nero raised a brow, ’How... Interesting.’
However, the Oracle was not done.
{Rót is also released at the moment of death, or more precisely, in the briefest instant before death, as the body’s Ein Sof begins its final dissolution. It releases in concentrated form at that moment, then disperses rapidly. In Golgotha, it does not fully disperse. The ground absorbs it. This has been happening here for a very long time}.
’And Grimfyre feeds on it?’
{Grimfyre is a flame that eats death itself}.
Nero felt his breath catch in his throat.
’That sounds rather ominous.
He looked at the flame again. Tiny light grey sparks were ignited across the edges of the flame as some of the bonedust burned against the flame. For the briefest of seconds, Nero could swear he saw the flame swell a tiny bit.
’A flame that eats death itself...’
He did not entirely understand what that meant in practical terms, whether it meant the Rót specifically, or something broader, or something that would only become clear when it had grown large enough to demonstrate. The Oracle was not going to elaborate, which meant either it had decided he was not ready to know, of that it wasn’t going to tell him.
What he did understand was this: the flame was small. It had been small since it appeared. Thumbnail-sized, barely warmer than the air around it, producing light in the way a glow-worm produces light — present, but not useful for anything. If it was going to become something, it needed to grow, and growth required feeding, and the feeding material was available here in quantities that were, generously speaking, not limited.
He thought about that.
Golgotha was full of Rót. The Withered were full of Rót.
Undead things in a death-saturated field, which meant every one of them was a concentration of exactly what the flame wanted. If he could take advantage of that, he could have another weapon ready at his disposal.
He could also try burning the dead where they lay. The candidates who had fallen in the field, whose bodies were still out there somewhere under the fog. He was less certain about that. It felt like a different mechanism, burning something already dead versus burning something that had just died, but he was not certain enough to rule it out.
He folded the flame back in and sat in the quiet of the alcove for a moment longer.
There was plenty of time to find out. The ridge fields stretched further than he could see, and the dark depression in the distance was not getting any closer on its own.
He got up and began his descent down to the rest of the gathered Templar Candidates.
The swelling flame had given him something to think about, at least.