The Enduring Flame

[Hodgeling 403]

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

‘If my vessel were to break, what sound would it make?’

 

The question had led her on this journey, but her stubbornness to find its answer had paved a much more difficult path. Though the years spent alone after so much grief had done her well to heal. To forget. To bury. When she returned, Irulan was determined to have put it all behind her and be done with it.

 

A moment of reward was given as the young Herald rested upon the seat of the world. One more mountain bested. The Herald considered the grazed flesh on her hands and felt the sweat and ash that clung to her forehead. But it was the cool wind that she basked in, golden eyes turning outward to the world below. From here, above the clouds, she felt like she could see it all. 

 

Storms that flashed in the distance, but would never greet her with their thunder or rain. Rivers that charged paths through valleys and meadows, vanishing into old woods. Perhaps they, too, could not see her. Irulan was alone on the mountain, but did not feel lonely. She had come seeking answers. In a world that saw so much suffering, how could it ever be at peace as it was here? 

 

Hearing no answer, she rose to depart, but an idea dawned in the back of her mind which gave her pause. Her eyes swelled like embers renewed, and the skin of each finger blackened as though charring. Splitting through her pallid flesh, gold and ashen heraldry of Alemdrom came alight with a tumultuous fire. A single word fled her throat a moment before she heard an unfamiliar voice echo over the mountainscape.

 

 

And as smoke of Az’Uznath snarled around her and obscured her vision, her mind opened. Irulan stood upon the peak of an altogether different mountain. One that steeped inward, with her teetering at its edge.

 

ɴᴏʟ ꜱʜᴀ ᴠᴜʟʙᴇʏᴛ ᴢᴜᴅ ᴀʟᴏᴋ ᴢᴜᴅᴋᴏꜱ ɢᴏʀ ɴᴀᴜᴡᴀ ʜɪʜ

 

. . . How long has it been?    Irulan didn’t know where she was, or how she got here. She stumbled through a shrouded place of smoke. Only the occasional flickering of embers gave light enough to see by. The very air here enclosed around her, threatening to smother her alive. Her head whipped left and right. In the darkness, always where she had come from, or where she could have been.   If she turned to them, she began to hear the stirrings of a sound in the dark. There. Just beyond her sight, a deep and angry burning. A long suppressed noise that she knew well - all did - but often chose to ignore. She longed to escape this path.   Pressing her palms firmly against her ears, Irulan pressed forward, stumbling across incoherent and barren terrain. She could hear it in the crackling fire that raged toward her, concealed by darkness. She could feel it in the thrumming of her heart; in the rushing of blood in her veins. She could see it with her own stinging eyes, all around her. Taste it through choking breaths as hot smoke filled her lungs. It was everywhere, this screaming. The flames would be upon her, and then she would be screaming too.    Agony, it screamed. Agony. Agony!   It was everywhere, all at once. A burning, raging scream. Irulan could no longer tell its origin. It burned away her insides, burrowing through her. Desperate to make its path, and be free.    And still, she felt her feet drag. One after the other. Still she held her charred and blackened hands against her ears, desperate to hide away from the sound of all she had known melting away. All she had been sloughing off her blackened bones.    Here there was no reprieve. She could only endure it as it sought to sear its way inside her. A hateful touch which stripped her away and revealed the truth. There was no choice but to endure all the suffering she had stifled away. The screams of fallen friends, fallen foe. The wailing of the family she had failed to protect. Irulan felt the rage she had let boil and then simmer. She mourned, for times that she had not.   Irulan pushed forward, dragging herself along the blackened, rocky terrain. She no longer bothered with covering her ears. An incoherent noise which slipped between the bones of her charred hands. Curiosity  still remained as she paused in her struggle to consider the stone in her grasp. Even stone burned, it seemed. But here I am.. Irulan thought. I still remain.

 

 

ᴀᴅᴀᴀʀ ʜɪʜᴀɴ ʀᴜᴢ ꜱᴋʀɪᴛ. ᴅʀᴀᴀʟ ɴɪꜱ ᴀᴀʟ ᴍᴀʜ ɴᴀᴜᴡᴀ ᴅᴏᴍ.

 

Her heart still did beat. Beneath the pain, and above the screams, she drew breath.   In the smoke formed the ashen face of a Prophet glaring down on her. His familiar voice shook her into action.   Rage, it bellowed. Rage!   As Irulan rose to her feet, choking against the oppressive darkness, she felt a surge of validation. Rage from within, pressing out against this assault against her in a roar of her own. A sound that came not from her lungs, but her soul - splitting apart, fusing, splitting apart. In the silence between, there was some melody.   Then, as if it had been waiting, the ground beneath her feet gave way and she fell into an abyss.   She fell and fell and fell. All that could be seen were flashes of hot red and gold in the pitch black. The walls of a chasm advanced upon her at both sides at an unnerving speed. Irulan twisted in the air before she crashed against the rock wall. The impact sent her careening backwards, bouncing off the opposing crag before smashing into the ground. She felt the cracks in her mortal vessel splinter. Slag shed from a hot iron. Ceramic shards slipping out of place, the mosaic lost.   Words burned inside her. A voiceless roar that swelled in her heart and spilled into her throat. A fire that hungered. That would not be snuffed out. It was.. Rage. Rage to live. To fight for that life.   She lay there, tumbling stones and a sky of falling fire crashed upon her, and she let it. Her eyes opened and gazed upward within a blazing vortex. Her heart thundered.   “I must...” she raged, “I must endure.”   Rage and agony gave way to a blissful epiphany. Above formed a mote of light that tore through the darkness, gazing downward. It split and fractured across the sky as an enormous fissure, unveiling all she had known. All that she was. All that she had been. All that she must become.   Cracking, fusing, unfusing.   Irulan felt herself let go. Allowed herself to hear. For the screams to feast upon her mind and soul. An outstretched hand that lofted skyward melted into a golden jet of flame. A light piercing sickening darkness. And as the roaring fires that speared outward from within the shell that she was, Irulan finally heard it. Once a grating thing that pressed upon her sanity. It was a wondrous roar. A truth that scolded her. That eroded her to bone and ash and left only her soul within bare. Moments of agony and rage and joyous laughter intertwined together in song, and thousands more to join her own across the ages.   "I am the enduring flame, my vessel destroyed and remade a thousand times each moment.”

 

ɴᴜꜱᴛ ᴡᴏ ᴍɪɴᴅᴏʟ ɴᴀᴜ ᴠᴏꜱ ɴᴜꜱᴛ ꜱᴀᴋʜᴏ ꜰᴇɴᴛ ɴᴇʜ ʀᴏɴᴏᴋ ꜱʜᴀ ᴍɪɪʀ ꜱᴇ ᴠᴏꜱ ɴᴜꜱᴛ ꜰᴇɴ ʙᴇʏᴛᴇᴋ

 

 

Z U D   S E Y   S H A   G A A N E K | Y O L O S   Z U D K O S   O R U N   A L V O T

Voth zudkos uundur zud haalvut aan velek, Aan orun lingrah vaazkur.   Pogaas zud untkur wa reth sha zeins, Nuz nust uuv ni beyt wahlkur wa iidir.   Dol avaal sha vaaz duul. Avaal sha zii alok med sahus raan aan direk-yolar.   Kren, tol zud aal mindok hihan usu, Ahrk avar hihan ereduur.   Us sha vu se zudkos beytek, Zud fent lahney ahrk dir aan azhsatar tiids zos.   Ko sha yeliirs kolos zud ronok, Ar fent zud zen.

A H R K   B I R W A H L   A H Z A S A T A R   T I I D S   E N O O K   S U L . . . .

 

 

 

 

CREDITS

 

Spoiler

I’ve always looked at posts of this nature written by other players and been inspired. At the same time, I've often felt that I wouldn’t be able to produce something that I was happy with that would be good enough to put on public display. After a few months of on-and-off work, I’m hoping that this is it. This post is the accumulation of the story-so-far of Irulan becoming a Herald and challenging the way that she views the world, deals with grief, and looks to her future. I tried to draw reference to actual RP moments between various characters and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out.

 

I drew a lot of inspo a form of japanese ceramic art called kintsugi, as well as from my favourite novels while writing this and a huge boost to my motivation to get this done was largely thanks to the kind encouragement from friends, and the work that Moumins and Sony have put into producing a fleshed out low draconic resource. I was super lucky to have that right in time to get this thing ready to post. Huge credit to everyone who read over this and critiqued, especially:

 

@Keening, @Deer, & @Moumins

 

Spoiler