Apotheosis : Ashes of the Arcana

The fire had exhausted itself.

There was still smoke that curled along the corridor, sour and heavy, scalding Rion's eyes as he stumbled on. The screaming was stilled, swallowed or stifled, but silence was worse. It beat into his eardrums like a weight, broken only by the hiss of smoldering coal and the gurgle, insane splash of something he could not quite bring himself to recognize.

His fingers were blackened, redder than burns from what he'd done.

He'd burned them.

The animals, too. The corridor. The walls. The doorframe Sister Olma's fingers had brushed against in desperation as they pulled her away.

He didn't remember aiming the sight. Didn't remember thinking. As though something inside him had broken and taken flight like fire, as though his bones themselves had caught fire and flared.

The orphanage was a shell around him, its framework visible in splintered beams, its breath the wheeze of coals that would soon die.

He descended, dragging the warped candlestick as a crutch. His legs were unstable, the hall spinning half-around, sounds ringing and stretched long like worn tape. The world had toppled, askew.

But he had to do it right.

He was meant to do it right.

The tourist's voice, unyielding and harsh, "Cleanse them or lose everything."

And Rion had hesitated.

The children were removed. The adults were killed. The black blots seeped like roots through the orphanage, pulsating in the walls, spreading beneath the floorboards.

He was the one who knew. The one who could.

He needed to be.

There is a smell of burning meat and I knew there was something more, something went wrong, something rotten. It lingered in the back of his mouth metallic and sweet as honey and rancid iron. He gaged, he spat, and the taste persisted.

It's in me too.

The thought crept up on him, hard and cold. Was it burned? Or had he just fed it?

He found the twins in the pantry, curled up on the floor, under a bale of barley. There was the sickening smell of grain and curdled milk, but behind something else. The sweetness. The infection.

One twin was still, her eyes abnormally large, her pupils pinpricked. The other whimpered weakly, her fists curled in her sister's nightdress.

They survived.

Rion crouched to knees, gasping as smudged palms scraped over splintered wood. He ripped them off with trembling hands, fists, "It's all right. I'm here. I'll save you."

The quiet one didn't move. The other pulled on him, nails biting into his wrist.

They followed behind.

But walls were suffocating.

The black stains in the floor become darker, thicker, twisting, crawling, creepy, vines pulsating through wooden peers. There was also the stuffiness of the air itself, filled with smoke, and that sweetness, too, such as one finds in rotten fruit, in rotten meat left out under the sun.

The twins' bare feet tracing the ash.

Something shifted in the stairs.

A shadow, and a lunge, quicker than usual, limbs twisting askew.

Rion thrashed wildly, the candlestick crunching horribly. The monster that had been the bookkeeper's apprentice slapped back, its ribs adhering to the wood railing, its backbone twisted like a wrung rag.

Its mouth yawned to one side.

Not a scream. A laugh.

Rion screamed, and fire blazed from his hand, out of control.

The beast fried, evaporated, so did the wall. Up the side of the building the fire sprang, hungry, devouring.

And the agony.

It ran hot through him like a lightning bolt, burning into his arm, into his chest. His skin tore apart, creaking through scarred over wounds. The blister on his palm erupted, but no blood seeped from it, only running gold light within. Clean and agony.

It seared him where it hit, reducing the charred skin to ashes, leaving raw pink skin in its place.

Purification.

The name came to him readily, the voice of the visitor echoing in his head.

He heaved with himself, blood and acid, and scrabbled back up onto his knees.

There were others to save.

He discovered two others alive. In the laundry wing, a little girl, and a mute boy, who was holding a rusty spoon as a knife. They cowered under a staircase, breathing hard, peeping in all directions.

Rion brought them to the twins.

The quiet twin did not blink. The other clutched her hand, knuckles white.

Rion smiled weakly, face pale, lips cracked.

"I will make sure you guys safe," he murmured.

"Its not too late yet. I will save them all, like all the heroes and the knights of those tales."

But Salvation was never easy.

A boom in the hallway.

Pell's voice, distorted, warped, many mouths all speaking simultaneously.

"Rionnnnn."

The boy emitted a raw, harsh scream and took off.

Rion sprinted after him, slid through blood, his burned palms waving for something to grab onto. Too late when he got to the next hallway.

The boy was severed in half.

His fire came too late.

His ribs creaked apart, something writhing inside. A hand emerged from the wound, Pell's hand, smeared with blood. Half a second later, the rest of him writhed out, his body slicing the boy's dead skin like two furs.

Not the boy anymore.

Not Pell anymore.

Something worse.

"NO!" Rion shrieked.

His fire came too late.

The woman who had sought shelter with the boy now wept black tears.

It spread. Too quickly.

The uninfected were now corrupted. Or dead.

He watched one of them stretch and elongate, her body growing longer like melted wax, flowing into the bedframe she straddled. A mouth coalescing from the center of her belly, teeth biting, her voice frothing his name.

The infection did not kill.

It devoured.

Even death was no escape.

Bodies, broken bodies, came back. Arms wrapped around themselves around cupboards. Legs wrapped around themselves around beams. Heads exploded out through pipes. As long as there was anything to keep it away, the stain persisted.

Rion sat on the chapel floor.

The walls panted with breath. The windows broke, the cracks like spider web spreading into all direction.

And down at the bottom of the broken beams, down at the bottom of the bleeding floorboards, a black mist began to seep in.

It drifted like smoke but spread like vines, covering his ankles, curling up his legs. It enveloped the orphanage, hiding the moonlight, consuming sound.

The fog pulsed.

The stain had discovered a soul.

He couldn't get his breath.

He couldn't think.

He'd failed.

He wasn't a hero. He was a kid with flames in his hand and far too much guilt in his chest. He'd lost what he loved. Saved no one.

His hand continued burning, the flames unwinding, and he knew what would ensue.

The fire inside him grew, no longer requiring permission.

The light enlarged in walls. The mist contorted.

And Rion, weeping, shrieking, alone, let it occur.

The explosion rocked the evening.

Windows shattered. Beams ripped upward like ribs from a chest. A geyser of fire consumed the orphanage, lapping the clouds.

The black fog howled as it combusted.

And then—

Silence.

Nothing but ash.

Nothing but fire.

Nothing but a trail of a boy's cry, seared into the ruins.