Hell

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The dull ache of countless wounds through flesh that scored against ancient bone bore down upon him with the incessant gnawing of rats' teeth as a figure bowed by time and fury stood amidst a copse of birch trees. Their white bark grew coarse and had began to pry itself loose from the pulp beneath like restless men who unwrapped themselves in dark tombs. A wandering gaze swept over armguards that had buckled, bent, and had even broken beneath the swordwomen's assault. Their throbbing wrath yet clung to his bloodless flesh, a pain to drive living men mad and dead men into memories of horrid battles that had nearly wrung him limb from limb.

All battles were seen in light of their price and the victory, he reminded himself, while one hand hefted the silver urn before him. Its gentle curve caught the starlight and betrayed a careless dent and the smudge of ashen fingertips that belonged to a small, curious hand. The thief's hands would pollute nothing ever again, Teron thought with the ghost of grim satisfaction, as he angled his prize to further inspect it.

Where promises had been etched into the side, another distinctive smudge drew his attention and weighted dead lips, hidden beneath a loose grey scarf, into a livid scar. The chaotic struggle had seen his wife's remnants kicked and struggled over like urchins wrestling for food in street mud. Further inspection hardened his gaze and stoked the flames therein that flickered and pulsed in sockets whose mortal gaze had long since burned into smoke. Fury teased where Rosamaria had struck him, seeking to blind his baleful gaze with tempered steel. Now, as he beheld how the crown rested crooked upon the urn, it began to destroy the outskirts of his vision.

Robbed of periphial sight that greedily peeled away, nature glad to have been lost momentarily to the Ashfiend, mailed fingertips scraped with addictive desperation over a crown he had lifted a thousand times, suddenly clumbsy with wanton need for security. The urn scraped and squealed in his rapacious grasp until, finally, tearing the crown away, he beheld the contents in strangled silence.

Where once had lain fine, powdery ash now lay the congealed mess of a hearth or stove. Arrogant charcoal clods squatted amidst the coarse powder of salt-and-pepper ash that had begun to grind away the urn's innards and left no pearl of his wife's remains in their wake.

The urn trembled in his grasp as he upended the entirety of its contents that spilled desperately between an armored hand, pouring between splayed fingers like poisonous water with a grating hiss that taunted him like Vraal's silver serpents. Scattered ashen motes clung to his hand and glittered like childish stars that reflected crimson eyes as his digits slowly curled into a quaking fist.

Someone had switched Elysia's ashes.

Her remains had been stolen.

The hand that bore the remnants of treachery hovered before eyes that burned away the shadows nestled beneath his golden-hemmed hood. Armor groaned and buckled beneath a hand that worked to grind ash into dust, to purify waste into treasure, and undo the past with brutality. As a terrible quivering coursed through the length of his dead frame, he threw back his head and raised an unearthly shriek that bore the smoke from his furious gaze into the heavens as a hateful curse.

Her remains had been stolen.

The loss hammered against the ruined heart curled in his airless chest, clutching and grasping with merciless talons wrought into the likeness of Ariane, Cinnabar, Glenn, and Burel. Metal-clad fingers tore through his hood and pierced through pallid flesh, gouging taut skin from the bones beneath in agonizing furrows. Each flaying rake meant to scourge the furious fear that burned in dust-choked veins and tortured with the memory of human loss that seared through the grim, grey haze of undeath.

She had been stolen.

Words failed and collapsed in upon themselves, strangling him and falling in uon each other to muzzle his hate until, shattering, they were hurled heavenward in an echoing cry that scoured the evening Myrken landscape as chorusing banshees. As he stalked away, leaving his naked visage to the world and the torn hood to sway listlessly between shoulder blades, each step thundered the name of an enemy into his heart.

Behind him, the suddenly dead trees keeled over in private doom.