Immolation
Trigger Warning: Death, Gore
I wrote this story a while ago, originally called Supernova, exploring the brutal nature of death. It was set in the middle of a fantasy battle because I’m a nerd and probably wanted to separate myself from what I was writing at least a little bit. It wasn’t the battle itself I was interested in exploring, I just needed a setting that felt appropriate for the description I was writing. Might be something worth noting that I tried to make it as brutal as possible, although I think now if I gave it another go it would be both less directly gory and much more unsettling. In a lot of ways this is a good representation of myself as a youth. I was suffering in a way I really didn’t understand (and honestly still don’t I just have those sweet Coping Mechanisms) and that suffering became a defining characteristic of my early writing. I needed an outlet for all the darkness in my brain, and all the thoughts I knew would only make the people around me worry. Now I just listen to serial killer podcasts.
Immolation
There had been intense heat, scalding the air and causing the plants surrounding it to catch fire. There had been such ferocity, anger, pain, a singularity of passion. There had been light, blinding white and sharp. There had been life, a soul and a body. There had been Kell.
Wren, Bella, and Robin were so still they took the appearance of statues. What had once been their friend, sister, lover was now nothing more than a few embers suspended in mid-air. Black char covered the ground, and the blood of a thousand beasts was misted in the air, cloying it with its odor and weight. Flames were spreading around them, their heat and intensity ferocious and frightening.
Robin was kneeling behind the space her sister used to occupy. The shock was slowly fading, and the reality of what she had just witnessed began to creep through her mind, invading every thought with black tendrils of horror, suffocating her mind. Blood was pouring out of a gouge in her arm. The wound was deep, muscle and bone, red as the cape she wore across her back, shredded and gored. Red like the flames that had once been her sister.
Bella was the first to move. She stumbled forwards, her left foot-dragging, broken at the ankle. She collapsed down next to Robin, kneeling in a puddle of Robin’s blood thick and black with ash. Her knees hitting the ground brought a sickening crunch and an anguished cry from her lips, shards of her kneecap protruding through the skin. She clutched helplessly at the ground, wailing in the tongue of the dead. Calling Kell back to her. Her cries rang through the sky, towards the cold black of the sky, answered only by echoes of her misery, and tears of bloody mist raining down.
Wren could do nothing. She had exhausted all she had in the fight and now could do nothing but watch as those she loved mourn. She could still control of herself, barely. She had to control herself, else they would all die. She stumbles forward, her left arm dangling at her side from an internal amputation. Using her sword as a cane she made her way towards the remainder of her team. Bella’s anguish was alerting the remaining beasts, and they began to howl. A cold, dead, emotionless caterwauling, but to Wren, it sounded like a bell. The death knell that rung the first time a family member had fallen to the Fang, and now the bell tolls for her and her team as well. When the bell stops ringing, she will be dead.
Wren knelt next to Robin and began to tie her sash around the gash on her arm, the red immediately staining the white cloth a deep red but preventing the ash from continuing to infest the wound. After tying the makeshift bandage, she turned to Bella, but there was nothing she could do to ease her pain. Bella had loved Kell the most, as more than a friend, more than a sister, as a piece of her being. As cold as it was, she could not allow time for mourning, she needed to act fast or all three of them would share Kell’s fate. She would allow herself time to cry, to curse the world, but now was not the time. She grabbed Robin’s shoulder and helped her to her feet. Robin rose quietly, having exhausted her tears while Wren was tying the bandage. She was now sobbing dryly, her eyes red and shot, she rose seeing nothing. Feeling nothing but the gentle tug of her friend. She stumbled forwards into the space Kell used to be, looking at the embers suspended in the air.
“This is where her heart would have been” She whispered, knowing without seeing. She did not check to see if Wren or Bella heard what she said. She had to speak her thoughts out loud; there was no room for anything but Kell in her mind. She reached out a hand to touch them, the skin on her hand blackening as it approached. She cried in pain as her tear tracks evaporated from her face and her skin boiled, but she could not stop moving forward. These embers where all that was left of her family, and she would hold them one last time. Her fingernails curled back and the bone of her index finger had begun to show by the time Wren managed to pull her away. Robin balled up her burned had and hit Wren across the face, leaving a skid of molten skin on her cheek, burning Wren from her jaw to the side of her mouth, The skin on Wren’ face began to bubble, but she kept hold of Robin.
“Wren” Robin struggled to get free “Wren, let me go” she held up her fist again, her burnt hand had solidified, locking her hand into a fist. Wren tightened her grip but didn’t speak a word. She didn’t trust herself to be able to speak. “Wren, let me go now, I’ll just drag you with me” Tears began to fall from her eyes again, but Wren could not allow herself to lose another team member. She shook her head.
Robin attempted to drag Wren with her but was barely strong enough to stand. After a few moments of weak struggling, she fell back into Wren and rest her head on Wren’ chest. Wren held Robin in her arm, Robin’s tears streaking the soot and blood that stained Wren’ clothing, and together they stood listening to the howling of Bella and the beast, harmonizing in some dark melody of suffering.
“There isn’t a body Wren.” Robin began to murmur up to Wren “If there isn’t body how are we supposed to bury her? What do we do Wren? What do we do when there isn’t a body?”
Wren pressed Robin’s head into her chest before pulling Robin out and looking her in the eyes “We have to go Robin. We have to leave and we have to leave now”
Robin was still crying “But how can we leave when there’s no body? We can’t go back without a body. They won’t bury her if there isn’t a body” Robin began to struggle in Wren’ grip “We need to find the body!” She was screaming now. Frantic. “We have to find the body before we go, so they can bury her. Wren! Hurry! I’m the captain, and the captain says we need to find Kell’s body! We need to find...” She stopped her yelling and began to sniffle “Find my sister's body.” She stood silently for a few moments.
“Wren, there won’t be a body will there?” Wren could do nothing but shake her head. If she opened her mouth she knew she would scream, and if she screamed then her sadness would take her and she would die.
“We have to leave now right? Or else we all die.” Robin shivered “Wren. I don’t want to die” She looked into Wren’ eyes, her own glistening with fresh wetness.
“What do we do then Wren?” Wren looked up from Robin and at her surroundings. The scorched earth; the bloody rain, still falling; the black perimeter of beasts; then finally at Bella, with her shattered kneecaps and broken ankle, still pounding the ground and rasping out guttural cries. Wren didn’t know what to do, they were out of options, but there had to be a solution. A chance for survival, someway or somehow they would live. Wren would make sure of it, she would save them. She would not allow another person to die, not if she could save them.
Suddenly Bella stopped yelling and lifted her head. She looked over at Wren and Robin, her eyes red and bloodshot, grime and flesh streaking her face. Then Robin paused and stood still, before looking at Wren, fear frozen on her face. Now Wren realized their fear, all of a sudden she could hear it, the silence, the horrible, sickening silence. The beasts had ceased their yowling and had turned their focus back to the three girls amid the flames. Wren heard it, the final toll of the bell, it’s clear, cold sound ringing in her ears. Then silence. Death.