Rudolf Sagramore
At some point, he had walked into the flame.
That much he remembered. He’d been a patron in a blacksmith’s hut, closing out a purchase of paired swords. He had talked a while with the gruff Viera, her hair colored once blonde by birth, twice silver by years, and thrice black by the soot of the trade. She was an unfrilled sort, as they all tended to be. Their conversation was brief.
“You look as though you’ve seen a ghost, child,” the older woman noted, eye for detail scanning Rudolf’s face. She saw little that she found promising.
Producing the last clump of gil he had on his person, the Edreni watched the smith’s scowl deepen twice over as he explained that he more or less had.
“…Be that as it may. I still have to put food on my table.” A fair point. “And even for me, this isn’t enough gil to cover a rush order. Not unless you have the materials ready to go— and even then, the hour is late if you’re leaving Costa at dawn. You’re best served looking through my current stock. And I’ve no means of breaking the curse you carry on your back either— don’t waste your breath asking.”
Rudolf dared not waste anything, for he was down to skin and bone to spare.
The native weaponry of Drana was shaped to the needs of the land more than any other he’d met, perusing the wares— predominantly things like dussacks, falchions, machetes. Single, heavy edges, not terribly long or thin, but rather brutally robust fangs. The type made to bite through flesh, bone, and brush the same way with any given swing. In more ways than one, compliant with what he had made of the last five years. After a few testing hews through the straw dummy out back and a few minutes of back-and-forth haggling, he had settled upon his armaments, pockets now light and belt now heavy.
—He heard it, far away. The call of the sea. It came in waves, lapping against a shore. It came in wind, ebbing, flowing, threatening to take the light he bore in its chill. It came in memory— that which ruled this place, beckoning in voice unheard.—
They were called “Crane’s Wings”. He recalled that name being passed onto him after he mentioned he’d arrived recently from Osprey. Supposedly he would infer that the two heavy sabers (close to some breed of dao as anything else) would not only suit his pointedly athletic, fell-handed chopping swordplay well— but also that they themselves were best used with respect to the bond implied by their namesake, auspiciously guiding him to a long life and good fortune, should they never be parted.
“So the story went”, at any rate. Something of a shared legend or motif between the desert and jungle nations, passed into one of the latter's armaments. True to her nature, she simply noted the knife on his hip as a reason it might be more true for him and his ilk than another— and that Sagramori put more stock in such things to begin with. To any random warrior, they would simply be reliable steel.
Well. He would need all the help he could get.
It wouldn’t nearly be the first time he had sought it outside himself.
But he had walked through a flame to get where he was now. That was what it must have been, because there was a torch in his hand. A feeble, scarlet ember, faintly glowing against the yawning void around him, painting the rolling black with its dim ruddy hues— the color of old, dry blood. He had passed through because light was at his back, and he had taken it with him in this torch. Maybe the smith’s forge had been it. Maybe a bonfire
Regardless, there was only one direction to go. He could not chance his luck with the flame again, not if he wasn’t sure what he had done to survive it the first time. Even if he knew, he sure didn’t want to. He hated backing up. That was always true. And more than that, he had somebody to meet.
He trudged forward, spurred by the heat at his back and near his head.
One foot in front of the other, as the path way revealed itself from the gloom only five feet ahead, five feet ahead, five feet ahead, and his pocket of definement flickered. Salt on the breeze felt like spears through him. It tried to impale his flame, too, to steal it away and leave him awash in the mire, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, knowing nothing.
He held the torch close, draping his cloak over it when he felt the chill— and each time he did so, a thousand dispersions, like locusts within the dark cloud, tried to nibble and gnaw away at hi person until he thrust the light back into the void, and could walk again accosted.
The dark would rip him apart, like a body sinking through the sea. This place was where only the light gave him form, allowed him to even recognize what was him and what was not. Without it, he would be another dreg, sliding down, sliding down, falling apart, sliding down.
His path was descending. He looked over his shoulder. He could not see the light he had left.
This meager flame would need careful shepherding, to take where he needed. A gift from Himstus, keeping him alive even in the depths— how many sparks like this had been swallowed already? How was this place to be fathomed, with only a kernel of passion and drive to keep him warmed within it?
He could not turn away. The waves were closer now. A roar upon his ears, Danube and Ilias in chorus. Only…
No. He did not feel them here. Whatever he approached was beyond them, it had turned them away. He could feel nothing upon the wind that was like a nudge towards a journey— and this sea would not be clear as a mirror, or blue like the open sky. It would be black pitch. Like the one Galahad had confronted him over.
No prayers to either god would avail him any guidance, salvation, or protection. He gripped the old wood of the fragile torch tightly, and chose Imir.
His voice cast itself into the shadow, and was lost. Not even the faint echo of it bouncing off a seaside cliff or the trunks of dead trees he imagined at points—
It simply was swallowed, and torn apart.
He continued on. Now, there really was only one way to go.
With time, the beaten soil beneath his boots gave way to smooth stone.
…“With time,” he said, but what was time here? It was as if he were in Siren’s clutches anew, only he could draw breath without filling his lungs to collapse. He had no idea what time was. By the time he had thought to count his steps, the thought had been torn and shredded away from him, as the shadows danced with the flickering of the ember.
They were deep, long, twisted things. Pillars of ink and charcoal that swirled and boiled with each minute shift of his eyes. At times he believed he saw clouds within the cavorting black. At others, he thought he saw faces, eyes, staring at the lone spot of light he held before melting away with a silent laugh. He saw the Kirins among those. His family. His friends, new and old.
A billion faces wrapped into one. A blossom of many-knuckled fingers fifty hands wide, then flaying themselves down to black bone.
He too saw beasts. Demons. Monsters, wide mouthed and empty-eyed things that looked primed to pounce with each time the flames swayed. Saberteeth, dragons, chimeric things that flowed and melded into one another, and then lost form. His other hand crept to the first wing on his hip. Ferry him to good fortune. To auspicious days. He had fire, he had steel. They cut through beasts and darkness, they pulled man out of the turbulent chaos that surrounded him now— the breath of life, of intent, of civilization itself.
All were borne from Himstus’s gift of the flame to the weary soul. It was fire that warmed the heart, pulled steel from raw stone, brought the first light against the long, cold nights. He would cherish the fire he brought with him. With it, he would keep himself.
There was sand beneath his boots now. A sense of growing vertigo aligned with a vague, hollow feeling at his soles. His footing was dropping away. The sea was out of his vision, but he could hear it. As loud as it was on the boat. He was before a chasm. The abyss was held within
And he wasn’t alone.
He turned, thrusting his torch ahead as he walked along the edge of the crater. He dared not peer in. There was another here, and if he were to sacrifice his balance to stare into deep choking black…
I would not kick you in. Not when you are finally here with me. There is a journey I would see you through. It is my purpose to meet you at its end.
He stopped. At his boot, driftwood. Driftwood?
It was a log, one he could seat himself upon. He reached forward with the flame—
And tinder caught, as scarlet and black mixed before him in a sudden bonfire. His face was awash with heat and cold at once. His eyes narrowed. Across the flame…
You are at a passage. This torchlight will open the gate.
A silhouette much like his own, rising back to its full height, eye level with him. In its hand was a torch much like his own— only it blazed with the same umbral flame that he had coated his knife with, in ridding one of Siren’s many heads.
We will delve.
Who are you?
You know. And I will tell you, should you make it that far.
Delve where? There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to be in this place. This was a shroud cast over nothing.
He could not see its face. Not clearly. He could see a structure in the black-painted haze of its figure. The impressions of a nose line, a jaw, a brow. It wore a tall, conical hat, and a heavy cloak. One his mind tried to paint red.
His mind tried to paint much on its form. It shifted in impression with each impulse, each waver in his flame, each moment. It was Otto. Then it was him. Then it was Izayoi. Galahad. Citadel. Neve. Imre. Esben. Then it was everyone. Then it was none, as though he had to accept it dispersed.
It smiled, and pointed its light-drinking torch forward, across them. Between the two blazes, the same shadows that once danced around them seemed a frenzy, stretched by the pull of the blackflame like writhing, clawing tentacles of the demonic krakens that were said to tear ships and sailors asunder.
Rudolf turned.
Over his shoulder, over the edge, there was the sound of the swell breaking. Something immense rising from the waves beneath.
He could not yet see it.
He would not.
He stepped forward, towards the edge, fire and steel in hand.
He felt ice in his stomach, a ball of heavy lead. Pulling him down. There was nowhere left to go. He could not go back now.
Would this figure not lead him to ruin? His torch could barely handle the dark up here. In the abyss below even that, where no god’s favor could reach, where his torch would be snuffed as it had the last time the waves took him, would he not be torn apart until nothing remained?
You might. This is not for the faint of heart. But you are here regardless.
One foot dangled over void.
He had wings. He had steel. He had flame.
He could not know what was here, at the bottom of this untamed, godless, lightless sea. He only knew it was passage. Two whispers on the air… One urging him to stay. One urging him to go. He was…
Out of time. Choose.
He had one place left to go.
He leaned—
“...ake, child.”
“Huh?”
“You were dreaming. It didn’t look a good one. Have you nowhere to stay?”
He blinked, finding his new swords beside him as he was seated at a bench, facing the fires of the smith’s forge. He had meant to spend a moment there to take stock of what was left after the purchase. Rest a while too, after lugging around Eliane’s gun and babysitting the chocobos, but ended up transfixed by the flame within—
“Did you hear me?”
“No,” he breathed, gathering his things as he shook wakefulness back into his head. “No, I do have shelter. I’m sorry, how long have I…”
“Good then,” she huffed, ears twitching as she plucked a hanging sign from a nearby archway— and as his eyes followed, taking in the purple skies of sundown as she did so. “The hour is late. I would suggest catching up on your sleep there, rather than my closing place of business.”
“Right.” he rose inclining his head on the way out the door. “I’ll be off, then. Thank you for the new recruits.”
He knew he would return. Maybe not to here, but to where he had been. The thought was a cold comfort, as all unfinished business was wont to be.
