Pyris

The gasp escaped his lips as soon as his eyes laid sight on the smoldering destruction of his home. Pyris, his grimoire, floated beside him at the ready, but he could do nothing, frozen as his heart thundered against his ribcage and his breakfast threatened to come back up.

Standing in the middle of the rubble of what was once his home, there was a well dressed dark elf. His dark purple robes fluttered behind him as his silvery white, coiffed hair caught the early morning rays of the sun. Beside him, a dark purple grimoire floated, awaiting orders.

At his feet, there was a young girl, her body covered in blood and her long black hair a wild mess.

She lifted her head toward the elf as he raised a hand above her face, and it was here that the boy finally snapped, spurring into action.

“Run!” he yelled desperately at his younger sister, willing her to leave, to go find their family to-

Her head snapped towards him, and he saw black, bloodied tears streaming down her face. Her mouth was covered in blood, and gashes and bruises marred her body.

Her lips parted, as if to say something, just as the elf’s palm flashed a dark purple, and the boy’s sister twisted and contorted around the point of her heart. It shrunk with a sickening crunch until a spurt of blood splattered to the ground, and her body was gone.

The village, with only smoldering flames and crumbled foundations, was utterly still, the only two living and breathing people left were this stranger and the boy. And the boy watched this stranger kill his sister before his very eyes.

“I’m going to kill you!” The words were ripped from the boy’s mouth, as he whipped his hand forward and sent forth a ball of fire, Pyris flaring at his side. The elf simply tilted his head, and looked at him, expression unchanging, as the fire went sailing past his head.

“You’re no beast,” the elf spoke.

“Why have you done this?” the boy snarled.

“My job,” the elf said, looking about. “They were Afflicted, and they needed to be taken care of.”

“Liar!” he screamed, and he flung another ball of fire towards the elf.

This time, it connected, singing the left shoulder of the elf’s robes. The elf continued to stare at the boy, completely unaffected.

“Consider yourself lucky. You missed the Affliction that has run through this town, but be careful it doesn’t take you as well,” he said and swept his robes around himself. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

“Wait-!” the boy yelled, reaching out to stop him, but before he could say anything, the elf snapped his fingers and disappeared in a puff of silver dust.

The boy stopped and looked between his fingers where he had just seen the elf’s form. Then they began to shake as his hand lowered, and he looked at his home and at the spot of blood that marked where his sister had been.

Shakily, he crept forward, terrified of what he would see. But when he stood where the elf had, he saw nothing. No bodies, nor a trace of where they may have gone, save for several pools of blood.

He collapsed to his knees, and the soot began to stain the fabric of his pants. His grimoire flitted about him as he stared at what once was his home. To the right, he could just imagine where his family would be bustling about the shop, getting it read for the day.

Gone. In the ten minutes it took him to fetch some water from the river. And he wasn’t anywhere near powerful enough to have been able to save his sister from that elf.

He sat there amidst the rubble, numb and overtaken by a rage that clawed at him from the inside, wishing there was something, anything he could do to kill the man responsible for all of this.

A single wisp of flame whipped before him, and his eyes tiredly tracked the movement as it landed in the blood splatter from his sister

The puddle erupted into flame, before it spiraled upwards into a tornado of fire. It lifted up until it dissipated, and standing in its place was his sister.

The boy scrambled up, his sister’s name on his lips until his eyes refocused and saw that the figure before him was an image of his sister, created by flame.

Behind her, where he had seen his other family members working in the bakery, fire erupted there too and in its places were flame facsimiles of his family.

“Help us…” his mother whispered, words faint.

“How do I-”

“He killed us, help us,” his younger brothers cried.

They stepped closer, and the boy found himself taking a step back.

“Avenge us, son, kill him, make him pay,” his father growled, a heat in his words that the boy had never heard before.

“Please -,” his sister began, though a crackle of flame covered what she had said. She continued, unbothered, “Please. You have to kill him. Make him pay.”

They began to surround him, the fire licking at him from all directions.

“Make him pay,” his mother whispered.

He couldn’t. He wasn’t strong enough.

“Make him pay,” his little brothers cried.

He was due to be at the Archivist’s Society soon, but that would be too slow. But, maybe-

“Make him pay,” his father growled.

Maybe he could make a stronger bargain with Pyris and get the power he needed. He could -

“Make him pay,” his sister finished.

Pyris flared up before him and the outline of a hand began carving itself on the page in a bright red.

“You can do it,” Pyris whispered to him, its whispers barely heard over the crackle of flame and the fluttering of pages. “And I will help you, all you must do is accept.”

Without a second thought, the boy slapped his hand down into the outline as his family dissipated on the wind.

XXX

The boy doesn’t test his new power until the next week when he has cornered a young human Archivist from the next town over. He wasn’t a full Archivist, so she insisted she couldn’t say anything.

Pyris whispered to him to let her burn, and without a second thought, he had singed the side of her face with ease. She screamed, fat tears rolling down her raw flesh, as she cried she only knew his name.

With at least a name, the boy left her to sob as he fled, the name ‘Etheles Skyes’ burned into his head.

XXX

There’s a man on a dock who will not tell the boy anything. His companion, on the other hand, starts singing information when the man is sinking into the water, flesh cooked and perfect food for the fish below.

XXX

Pyris tells him he’s doing well, he’s growing stronger. Ignore the aches and pains from their magic, it’ll only build the callouses and make him more immune to the pains of their bond.

The boy, of course, listens, for Pyris is his only companion left in this world.

XXX

In the turned over cart, there are sacks upon sacks of letters. And, in a special black box marked with a silver insignia, there are letters addressed to and from Archivists.

Here, the boy - now a man, though barely human at that with his blackened fingertips and blackened heart - learned that Etheles would be visiting a noble across the country in a month.

The man looked around himself, before he started to trudge along the road that would lead him to his quarry, past the sobbing half-elf whose body was half scorched to a blistering pulp.

XXX

“He-he’s going to be in the town over! He told me he wouldn’t be here till the end of the week. Something about a report and rest, I swear!” the noble cried as he raised his jeweled hands to plead with the man.

Around them, the once regal manor burned. They were in a grand hall, large portraits of the noble, a wife and a daughter fading to black as the flames licked up.

“Consider yourself lucky,” the man rasped, and he turned on his heels and stalked off.

Behind him, the noble sobbed inconsequential names as the manor came down around him.

XXX

The man swallowed, and looked up.

He was at a bar in an inn. He hadn’t realized he had arrived, and the bartender, a squat dwarven woman, was staring at him impatiently.

“So? Anythin’ for ya?” she asked as she cleaned a glass with a rag. “Room? Drink?”

“Both,” the man rasped.

The dwarven woman raised an eyebrow, and eyed him warily.

“Any drink in particular? Or do you want the dish water from the kitchen?” she asked sarcastically. 

Pyris flared at his side twice, a warning, and the man felt his fingers twitch and light up with the memory of fire burning at his fingertips.

“Ale,” he said, calming himself and his grimoire. Not now, not when they were so close. She has done nothing but been a mild annoyance. The real prize was tomorrow, and there was no need to ruin the surprise.

“80 silver pieces.”

The man dug around in his pockets, withdrew a gold piece, and flipped it to the bartender. She caught it easily, turning it over in her hands. The piece was filthy - a mixture of blood, ash, and a healthy amount of grime - but real.

The bartender eyed him again, before she cleaned the gold piece off with the rag and pocketed it. She turned around and filled the glass full of a murky liquid from the keg. Then, she slid the glass to him. 

She jerked a finger towards the stairs before she grumbled, “Second door on the right. Don’t cause any trouble.”

The man nodded, picked up the wine and took a swig. It was overly sweet, but it went down easily enough. The bartender eyed him one last time before she sidestepped to go speak with a different patron at the end of the bar.

The man watched her go as his thoughts began to drift.

XXX

It was early morning when he departed the inn. Very few people were out on the streets, and even those who were barely paid him a passing glance.

Soon enough, the man stood before the Archivist’s outpost, staring up at the simple wooden building. Perhaps because of how far out they were from the capital, the building was rather plain compared to the normal Archivist’s Outpost in many other parts of the continent.

His grimoire flashed hot at his side, and he felt its excitement intermingling with his.

The man stepped forward and pushed the door open.

“-and I saw his damned book, dirty thing it was,” a familiar voice said, hushed.

Across the way, at the counter, the dwarven bartender from last night was speaking quickly to a thin, human woman with a shock of pulled back gray hair. As the dwarven woman spoke, she was writing and nodding her head.

The secretary looked up as she began to speak, but her words died on her tongue when she saw the man standing in the doorway.

The dwarven lady glanced back in annoyance, but paled when she saw him.

“That’s him that’s-” she started, but she was stopped by the man’s hands on her and the secretary’s faces. Beside him, Pyris hummed in delight.

Eyes staring at the only other door behind them, he spat out an incantation and his hands flared up. Beneath his palms, the women’s screams turned to gargles before they tapered off to the sizzle of singed hair and clothes.

They crumpled into a blackened heap, smoke eddying off of their charred remains. The man shook his hands out before letting them fall to his side.

One last, unintended stepping stone.

XXX

The building burned, a raging inferno dancing around them and licking at their heels as they stood off across from each other.

Pyris danced about the man wildly, runes upon its pages flashing bright red as sparks flew off of the pages. His hand was outstretched, pointing towards the elf and he could feel power building as Pyris siphoned his aether.

Etheles, on the other hand, stood calmly before him, the edges of his fancy robes singed. Soot marred him, and there were burns and cuts on his face, blood dripping down and staining the once pristine white of his collar. His own grimoire floated in front of him steadily, pages open to some unknown page.

“I’ve been chasing you for twenty years,” the man growled.

“Quite some time to find a lowly Archivist like me,” Etheles remarked, “And to kill many innocents to get here, I must be popular.”

“Innocents?” the man spat and he released the spell that had been building. Etheles’ hands shot forward and formed a wide circle that encompassed his front. The surging flame splashed across an invisible wall, spraying behind Etheles but leaving him unharmed.

The man staggered forward as his heart felt like it was being squeezed between two hands. “What about my family? Weren’t they innocent? We’ve never done anything wrong!”

“They were Afflicted. Surely, you’ve stolen my letters, read some things. You know there was no coming back for them,” Etheles responded calmly. “You saw her, you saw what she had become.”

“She was my sister!” the man screamed, and he warped his body around, reaching his hand out to force the flames around them to bend to his will. It swirled around with his outstretched hands, building into a vortex of flame around him as the skin on his arms instantly blistered. He whipped around and he flung it towards the elf.

It spilled across the charred floor until it slammed into Etheles and splashed out, licking up the remnants of a wall. Pitch black smoke swept up around the spot where Etheles stood, and without realizing it, the man was on his knees, gasping for breath.

His breathing quickened, until he lurched forward and vomited, eyes squeezed tight.

It was over, and this was fine, he was exhausted, he had used up a lot of his aether to cast those spells, this was-

“You’ve become Afflicted now, haven’t you?” a voice murmured in front of him, and the man wretched his eyes open, staring wildly at Etheles who knelt before him, as unscathed as he had been before he was consumed by flame.

“Wh-what-” the man whispered, and he keeled over, continuing to vomit. He gasped for breath and looked down before him to see a familiar black ichor splattered on the ground. It shone red in the early morning sun, but it oozed and bubbled slowly before him. When he touched his mouth and pulled his hand back, he saw the same substance on his fingertips.

He looked up at Etheles, who tsk’d at him.

“Afflicted. When one’s own aether corrupts, until they transform and become an unrecognizable beast that will kill any and all around them,” Etheles continued. “Typically caused by magus who allow their grimoire to consume them, it can still infect others when those afflicted attack them or their blood comes into contact with people. I was hunting a rogue Afflicted near your village.”

“I-I,” the man could only splutter, as his body shook. Pyris floated lazily above him, illuminating him in a hazy reddish black glow, colder than the man had ever remembered it being.

“I do remember you, if it’s of any consequence,” Etheles spoke lowly. “You are from Oakenwood, a small little village nestled in the valleys of the Reverie. Your younger siblings were named Ayara, Adonis, and Damon, and your parents worked hard to put you into Archivist training. You would’ve learned about the Affliction in your first week.”

Here he paused, and looked up at Pyris as it floated above them.

“Your grimoire, Pyris, was supposed to be a low level grimoire. Easy to use, and friendly, not one to take advantage of their magus. But it seems that you had allowed your emotions to cloud you, and it’s consumed you all this time. You’ve probably forgotten your name by now,” Etheles sighed as he stood.

The man gasped for breath, and could only stare like a dying fish at Etheles. 

“A pity, truly. You could’ve gone so far. Your family saw that in you, as did the Archivists. Such a shame,” Etheles sighed once more. He raised his hand, fingers splayed out above the man, and his palm began to glow.

“This is mercy. May the gods welcome you back into their arms and forgive you for the sins you have drenched yourself in, Atlas,” Etheles mumbled, and his palm flashed.

The man, Atlas, gasped loudly, chest rising, before he dropped completely back down into the dirt and ash.

His head lulled to the side, and he blinked heavily as blackness started to eat at his vision. Above, he saw Etheles looking down at him, and the elf’s head suddenly dipped sharply.

The man blinked, and Etheles’ attention was on Pyris, his eyes a bright red instead of the deep blue it was before.

“Well done, Pyris. You’ve bided your time, and you were rewarded. The Awakening will be soon, so calm now, we will get you a new host,” Etheles said, voice pitched lower.

The man blinked again.

Etheles looked down at him, eyes burning with hatred and mouth twisted into a scowl.

The man blinked again.

“We will take back our world from these parasites,” Etheles said, though the words were garbled, spoken as if underwater.

The man blinked again.

Etheles’ head dipped again, and when he raised it once more, he was looking down at the man with deep blue eyes, pitying him.

The man blinked again. 

“Rest now, Atlas.”

The man closed his eyes, for the final time.