12-01-2018, 02:20 PM
Sharp, searing pain stabbed through his eye to the back of his head, and Ironfire let out a roaring scream as white flame wrapped around him, a pyre burning hot and high, reaching into the night sky like a beacon shouting his agony to the heavens. He couldn’t see, though whether it was the pain in his head or the fire he couldn’t tell - all he could see was the white hot blinding flash as it seated through him in knife-sharp bursts. The light swallowed him down, dragging him under into gleaming oblivion.
And when he woke, it was to a dull, echoing silence in his head, cavernous halls of white sounding with nothing but a single name: Ironfire. All he knew was it was his, though where it had come from was anyone’s guess. A mother? Perhaps, though the word brought no face to mind, no scent to curl up or tuck himself into, no name to tell strangers who he belonged to. Whose blood ran in his veins.
Perhaps his blood didn't matter, though the thought itself felt like heresy in some horrified little corner of his mind. Some visceral piece of him that knew more than just the white light fading from his vision, bleeding out from the inside until he could see again. And what he could see was utterly unfamiliar, striking in the way no part of him recognized it.
A strange wasteland carved from red and yellow sandstone, sparse vegetation sporadically dotting the land with bits of color, a river winding through the center of the canyon, cutting slowly but irrevocably deeper into the earth as it flowed. “Where the fuck am I?” he asked no one in particular, dragging his...apparently purple ass off the ground and getting to his feet to look around. He started to wander, following the river upstream more out of the general stubborn feeling that going against the current was more fitting somehow than out of any inherent sense of direction.
Maybe it was the lingering effects of that vicious headache that put a little extra stomp to his walk and a scowl on his face. Or maybe it was just his shining, effervescent personality. He couldn’t quite tell yet. One way to find out. He’d just have a little stroll ‘til he found someone and then ask where the everliving hell he’d wound up. Handy if they happened to recognize him and know more, but he wasn’t naive enough to bother hoping.
And when he woke, it was to a dull, echoing silence in his head, cavernous halls of white sounding with nothing but a single name: Ironfire. All he knew was it was his, though where it had come from was anyone’s guess. A mother? Perhaps, though the word brought no face to mind, no scent to curl up or tuck himself into, no name to tell strangers who he belonged to. Whose blood ran in his veins.
Perhaps his blood didn't matter, though the thought itself felt like heresy in some horrified little corner of his mind. Some visceral piece of him that knew more than just the white light fading from his vision, bleeding out from the inside until he could see again. And what he could see was utterly unfamiliar, striking in the way no part of him recognized it.
A strange wasteland carved from red and yellow sandstone, sparse vegetation sporadically dotting the land with bits of color, a river winding through the center of the canyon, cutting slowly but irrevocably deeper into the earth as it flowed. “Where the fuck am I?” he asked no one in particular, dragging his...apparently purple ass off the ground and getting to his feet to look around. He started to wander, following the river upstream more out of the general stubborn feeling that going against the current was more fitting somehow than out of any inherent sense of direction.
Maybe it was the lingering effects of that vicious headache that put a little extra stomp to his walk and a scowl on his face. Or maybe it was just his shining, effervescent personality. He couldn’t quite tell yet. One way to find out. He’d just have a little stroll ‘til he found someone and then ask where the everliving hell he’d wound up. Handy if they happened to recognize him and know more, but he wasn’t naive enough to bother hoping.