07-27-2015, 02:33 AM
If this is to end in fire then we should all burn together
The dark swallowed up Noellen’s blank face, swallowed up the sadistic glee on the face of the iron mountain, swallowed up the knives and the blood and the agony of a dying limb, and the last thing Drow heard as consciousness faded was “Let’s leave this little nothing to his misery.” Nothing. It had been so long since he had called himself Nothing. Since he had believed it, all the way down to the marrow of his bones. So long since he’d thought…since he’d thought his mother believed it. Not the Sun, fierce and ferocious and radiating her love to everyone she deemed worthy, and all of her children were inherently worthy. No, the Moon was the one who had left, and it had taken him years and the crossing of worlds to realize he wasn’t the one she’d been running from. He wasn’t the one she’d hated. He wasn’t the one she thought was Nothing. The iron mountain’s words would have hurt that long ago man-child. Now?
Lights sparkled behind Drow’s eyelids, dancing fireflies he almost remembered, long-forgotten dreams resurfacing as they recurred. “Drodro, you have to listen. You have to remember. It’s important. I know you hate the dream time, I know it hurts, but it’s important! Please, Drodro, remember the times you tried to push me out of your head, remember the other world and the way it was built. Remember the dreams you didn’t want to have. And remember we love you. Always and forever.” Strange. Dancing fireflies and Strangelet’s voice, and dreams, always the dreams. The fog that had closed over the missing years, however long he’d been away, it started to clear. And he remembered, because he was dreaming again.
Wasn’t he?
Strange had always said there was very little difference between dreaming and walking between worlds. She’d said a lot of things, most of which hadn’t made a damn bit of sense to Drow, love her though he did. But one thing stuck out, as he walked along the blank canvas of an empty world. “It’s all the same, Drodro. Momma Sol’s shape-changing, Fireball’s healing, my getting in people’s heads. It’s all the same thing, just running through the body in different channels. And sometimes new channels get unlocked, and the magic flows differently, and you can suddenly hear thoughts you couldn’t before, or make the light dance, or take a different shape. Thing is, all those channels exist in all of us, if we can find a way to unlock them. And outside the body, if you can see it right, you can do anything.”
He’d never believed it, not for himself. For Momma Sol, for Strange? Maybe. They had eyes that saw…saw something beyond the world he knew. But Drow was no healer, no ghost whisperer, no shaper of worlds or even of his own body. He was ordinary, aside from his inexplicable ability to survive what should by all rights have killed him. And most of that was Mom and Gendry anyhow. Drow was his body, and at one time he’d been the twisted little voice in his head calling him precious and eviscerating him with his words. Nothing more.
He had been, anyhow. Until he woke from fog and mist and iron knives dripping blood, and he suddenly understood everything his sapphire-eyed baby sister had said. The world around him was a dream, and he was the dreamer. A tug on the tip of a hill, and the land around him became mountains, jagged and unyielding and covered in snow. A knock of his hoof on hard stone, and a spring appeared, flowing so cool and clear and sweet he had never tasted its equal. He followed the flowing water as it became a stream, as it joined up with another newly forming stream and widened and became a river, as it cascaded down a sheer rock face and became a waterfall. He bathed in the falling water as it pooled at the cliff’s base before flowing ever farther down the mountainside.
If it was a dream, he could change his shape into whatever he wanted—so he did. He became a fish in the pool, immersed in water he had summoned forth, and swam down the stream until he tasted salt in the water, until it opened up into the ocean. And then he swam to shore and became a wolf, and he howled at the full moon that hung low in the sky. He sang his mother’s jungle songs, the lullabies and the dirges alike, in an eerily beautiful wolf’s voice instead of his own rough, gravelly bass. The song echoed through the hills – and was answered.
He was not alone.
He knew somehow, knew in his bones that the lonely wolfsong that matched his own was not his blood. The singer was not mother or brother or sister. They were not here. No one he knew was dreaming this dream with him. But the song twined around his own, vibrating in the air together with unexpected intensity, beckoning him forward. Who was he, to resist such sweet invitation?
He ran, his body changing back to its old shape as he did, leaping trickling streams and fallen trees until he crashed into someone racing toward him. Fire, heat pouring across every inch of his skin where their bodies had touched. Flashes, impressions, knowledge out of nowhere – he wasn’t alone. He would never be alone again. Not while they walked this dream world together, he and his Jay. Gentle touches of lips to his neck, warm breath on his skin, the press of two bodies together. Running his teeth down the creamy skin of Jay’s spine, love under the stars washing away all the dark places inside him.
With Jay at his side, the whole world flourished. They played together, growing forests as they frolicked across the plains, leaving life in their wake. Trees sprang up to shade them, flowers burst from the ground and stretched their vibrant, colorful faces toward the two of them as they got tangled up in one another, sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four. The heated touch of skin on skin, the sounds Jay made, the way he sighed and pressed himself against Drow’s side after, just settled into him as if there were nowhere else in the whole of their shiny new world he’d rather be…it didn’t take long before Drow was lost. And for once, he didn’t fight it. He dove head first into love the way he only could in dreams, where it couldn’t break hearts and ruin lives, and leave people he cared about shattered on the ground.
All it could do was light him up from the inside out. Just like it had done for his moms, during those brief times when they were actually together. He finally understood what kept them coming back to each other, even through all the pain. Even through the horrors life threw at them, through the desolation of loss, through the hurt that should have drowned them. Because those moments where skin touched skin, where eyes met and lightning danced in their veins, where just a soft content sigh was enough to set the whole world right? Those moments were everything, and they were worth every bit of the pain that had come before.
For the first time in his life, he knew peace.
They built paradise together, he and his Jay, pieced it together from memories and dreams the way his moms had made their heaven. And they filled it with life, all manner of plants and animals. Some they had seen, and others they only imagined. Trees with a thousand trunks, a forest contained in one organism. A rainbow of birds to fill the trees, and to fill the air with his mother’s familiar songs. And they filled it with people, drawing them up out of the dust. Drow ached for his family, his mom and his brothers and sisters, and for someone he could almost remember, a little girl with golden eyes full of mischief and love. Blood. Sister? Niece? But she slipped through his grasp if he thought about her too hard, the one thing that eluded him in this world that bowed to his will. Whoever she was, she was out of reach, just like the rest of his family.
“Remember.”
The familiar voice set his skin to shivering, made the hair along his spine stand on end, and he brushed it away like a pesky firefly, barely feeling the twinge of hurt as the speaker withdrew. Instead, he threw himself into Jay, into their new-made friends, something he’d never really had before outside of his family. And if there was something off in the way they nodded and smiled and agreed with him, in the way they shaped themselves to his will, in the way their eyes sometimes made him shudder, well he shrugged it off to a quirk of the dreamscape and built more.
But he had never been one to be so social. Everyone he made wanted to bask in his presence, wanted to love him and be near him and never let him go. The way he’d felt about the Moon, each living thing felt about him. They were too much, too many, and he couldn’t breathe with them all so close, so persistent, smothering him. Was this how she’d—no. No, it wasn’t how the Moon had felt about him. You sure, precious? It wasn’t. But they pressed against him, pushed each other around to get closer to him, and he couldn’t take it. It needed to stop, they needed to go away, there were too many and it was too much and—
No warning roar heralded the bear’s arrival. Not a growl, not a snarl, not a peep before blood was being shed and screams were tearing apart the air. The first blood shed in his new world, and it was the blood of his friends, the blood of his own, the blood of those he had made from the dirt. A sacrifice made in exchange for a moment of silence, and as sick as it made him, he was glad. So the bears stayed, and were joined by other large predators, free to thin the sycophantic herd as their numbers grew of their own accord, now that Drow had finally stopped making them himself.
The balance was uneasy, so-called friends watching him with newfound suspicion and keeping a safer distance even as they fucked like rabbits and maintained their population despite the unexpected danger of predation. They pulled away, their adoration slowly twisting into fear with each death to the predators that kept them from drowning him. “Remember,” the voice tried again every time he felt doubt or discontent, every time he wondered what was wrong with the shape of his world, or why he was still dreaming. And every time, he brushed it away, ignoring the sting of rejection that trickled through before the connection was broken. Until the day when he wanted to forget the world he’d built, wanted to burn it all to the ground, wanted to please just finally wake up. Until the day he found his Jay’s body half-eaten by the bears he had created.
Horror surged through him as he rushed to his lover’s torn-open side. He tried to put the pieces back together, tried to patch him up like the Sun and the Firebrand had patched him over and over, and nothing worked. “NO!” he screamed, falling to his knees and shaking Jay’s tattered body. “Please, no, no, you can’t do this,” he begged, frantically reaching for anything, anything that could help him fix what was already…already gone. “Please, baby, don’t leave me,” he sobbed, dragging his lover’s corpse close and pressing himself against the body that would never press back again. “Please?”
Silence.
And he finally broke.
The mountains they had danced upon erupted, lava and ash blowing the snowcaps off the top and flowing down the sides, rushing toward the meadow and murdering everything in its path. Lava devoured the forest, the birds, the happy little flowers. It wiped out friend and foe alike, predator and prey becoming one in their screams as the volcano claimed them as its own. He felt the bear who had claimed his Jay’s life, reached out and touched him the way someone had tried to teach him once upon another dream, and he held the fucker in place as liquid rock flowed closer. Closer. Singed fur with its heat, flowed over claws and toes and feet. He held the bear as it shrieked and screamed and writhed and begged, held it as lava burned it alive.
Until he remembered an iron mountain holding him in place, torturing him and draining him to the edge of death before leaving him broken and bleeding out in meadow not unlike this one. Bile rose in his throat, and he snapped the bear’s neck, killing it instantly. What have I done? He looked around at the world he’d made, being destroyed by lava and the ash that rained down from above. He was just as much of a monster as the iron bastard who had stolen the light from Noellen’s eyes. Worse, even, for punishing innocents for one rogue bear who had defied his only order.
Drow tried. He tried to stop the lava, but once the volcano blew there was no stopping it. He tried to divert the flow, but the woods caught fire and the mountains became a giant inferno. He could feel horses turning on each other, desperate to survive. Tearing each other apart trying to escape the wildfire and the lava flows. Everyone he had made, everyone he knew, they were all dying around him, bodies incinerating amidst screams of agony, and all he could hear was that voice, screaming this time. “Drodro! Remember!”
He couldn’t remember what she wanted him to, couldn’t remember the words or what message she’d been urgently shoving into his head, but the desperation in her voice finally broke through his dream as the world burned to the ground and the last life ended. As his creation fell to ruin, he snapped awake, frantically drawing fresh air into smoke-filled…lungs…
The smoke was still there. The world was still burning, the fire he'd started still raged, but this was the world of the body, and he had no magic to reshape it, no power to put out the fire or to reach anyone he loved who needed him. He ran for the only home he’d ever known, barreling through hordes of horses running at him with panicked eyes and no fucks given for anyone else’s safety. Too many, too frantic, and he couldn’t get through. He tried, god how he tried, desperate to reach the jungle and--“No one’s there, Drodro, just get out. Just go!” There was something off in the shape of her voice, something quieter, a whisper-like quality where she’d always been lilting and dreamy. He ignored her and fought the crowd, pushing past stampeding masses. He tripped over a flailing body, a young boy who had been trampled and was beyond saving without the healing power he hadn’t inherited from the Sun. A leg snapped to the point where it dangled uselessly, hoof-sized gouges, bruised, the yearling didn’t have a chance. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. As he was getting to his feet, another surge of terrified horses rushed over, and the boy screamed again as he was pounded beneath countless more hooves, until the screaming finally stopped. Still Drow fought his way against the crowd, trying so fucking hard to get to the jungle and see if anyone he knew, anyone he loved was waiting by a little waterfall beside a quiet circle of trees that marked their family’s cemetery.
The fire was coming closer, though. More of the horses that pushed against him were burned, singed, one was even on fire, throwing ice at the flames to try to put them out, and Drow finally understood. This was no ordinary fire, no fire of the physical world. This was his fire, spilling over into the real world and devouring it, taking revenge for the world he'd destroyed. “Just go, Drodro. We’re already gone,” the voice whispered, fading. Fading. He reached for it, but that power was gone to him now, and all he felt was the empty echo of his own mind. Strange was gone. He had lost her.
He finally gave in and let the crowd carry him away, limbs moving along with theirs. The fire chased them out, out, out. Away from the only home he’d known, far up a mountain, until it fell back and devoured the world below. Drow watched fire burn the world to the ground for the second time in a day, and just let the exhaustion and the horror wash over him, staring hopelessly at the inferno. He heard sobs all around, the wails of those who had lost loved ones and the whimpers and agonized moans of the wounded. And as the flames slowly started to die down he picked his way through the crowd. Searching. Listening. Listening. Desperate for any sign of anyone he’d loved even as the knowledge settled into his bones that they were gone, gone, all of them gone.
No matter how he searched, there was no sign of any of them. Not his mother, who should have been there. She should have felt this coming, should have acted. She’d promised. She’d sworn she’d always be there for him, always come when he needed her. Maybe somehow the fire had claimed her. She’d wanted the fire to claim her for a long time now. Maybe…maybe it finally had. There was no sign of Hallows or Rakka or Wex, of Gendry or his Arrya, of Xero, of…of Dröm. No sign of Dare or Nish or Strange. He was alone in the ruins of his old life. He’d fucking failed them. Somehow the whole world had burned to the ground, and he hadn’t been able to protect them. Good work, honey. Still think you’re not Nothing anymore? Oh, but he was. He’d failed his family. He’d lost them. He'd set their world on fire, burned them all to ash, and now he was alone. He'd killed them all, and without them he was Nothing.
Welcome home, precious.
Lights sparkled behind Drow’s eyelids, dancing fireflies he almost remembered, long-forgotten dreams resurfacing as they recurred. “Drodro, you have to listen. You have to remember. It’s important. I know you hate the dream time, I know it hurts, but it’s important! Please, Drodro, remember the times you tried to push me out of your head, remember the other world and the way it was built. Remember the dreams you didn’t want to have. And remember we love you. Always and forever.” Strange. Dancing fireflies and Strangelet’s voice, and dreams, always the dreams. The fog that had closed over the missing years, however long he’d been away, it started to clear. And he remembered, because he was dreaming again.
Wasn’t he?
Strange had always said there was very little difference between dreaming and walking between worlds. She’d said a lot of things, most of which hadn’t made a damn bit of sense to Drow, love her though he did. But one thing stuck out, as he walked along the blank canvas of an empty world. “It’s all the same, Drodro. Momma Sol’s shape-changing, Fireball’s healing, my getting in people’s heads. It’s all the same thing, just running through the body in different channels. And sometimes new channels get unlocked, and the magic flows differently, and you can suddenly hear thoughts you couldn’t before, or make the light dance, or take a different shape. Thing is, all those channels exist in all of us, if we can find a way to unlock them. And outside the body, if you can see it right, you can do anything.”
He’d never believed it, not for himself. For Momma Sol, for Strange? Maybe. They had eyes that saw…saw something beyond the world he knew. But Drow was no healer, no ghost whisperer, no shaper of worlds or even of his own body. He was ordinary, aside from his inexplicable ability to survive what should by all rights have killed him. And most of that was Mom and Gendry anyhow. Drow was his body, and at one time he’d been the twisted little voice in his head calling him precious and eviscerating him with his words. Nothing more.
He had been, anyhow. Until he woke from fog and mist and iron knives dripping blood, and he suddenly understood everything his sapphire-eyed baby sister had said. The world around him was a dream, and he was the dreamer. A tug on the tip of a hill, and the land around him became mountains, jagged and unyielding and covered in snow. A knock of his hoof on hard stone, and a spring appeared, flowing so cool and clear and sweet he had never tasted its equal. He followed the flowing water as it became a stream, as it joined up with another newly forming stream and widened and became a river, as it cascaded down a sheer rock face and became a waterfall. He bathed in the falling water as it pooled at the cliff’s base before flowing ever farther down the mountainside.
If it was a dream, he could change his shape into whatever he wanted—so he did. He became a fish in the pool, immersed in water he had summoned forth, and swam down the stream until he tasted salt in the water, until it opened up into the ocean. And then he swam to shore and became a wolf, and he howled at the full moon that hung low in the sky. He sang his mother’s jungle songs, the lullabies and the dirges alike, in an eerily beautiful wolf’s voice instead of his own rough, gravelly bass. The song echoed through the hills – and was answered.
He was not alone.
He knew somehow, knew in his bones that the lonely wolfsong that matched his own was not his blood. The singer was not mother or brother or sister. They were not here. No one he knew was dreaming this dream with him. But the song twined around his own, vibrating in the air together with unexpected intensity, beckoning him forward. Who was he, to resist such sweet invitation?
He ran, his body changing back to its old shape as he did, leaping trickling streams and fallen trees until he crashed into someone racing toward him. Fire, heat pouring across every inch of his skin where their bodies had touched. Flashes, impressions, knowledge out of nowhere – he wasn’t alone. He would never be alone again. Not while they walked this dream world together, he and his Jay. Gentle touches of lips to his neck, warm breath on his skin, the press of two bodies together. Running his teeth down the creamy skin of Jay’s spine, love under the stars washing away all the dark places inside him.
With Jay at his side, the whole world flourished. They played together, growing forests as they frolicked across the plains, leaving life in their wake. Trees sprang up to shade them, flowers burst from the ground and stretched their vibrant, colorful faces toward the two of them as they got tangled up in one another, sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four. The heated touch of skin on skin, the sounds Jay made, the way he sighed and pressed himself against Drow’s side after, just settled into him as if there were nowhere else in the whole of their shiny new world he’d rather be…it didn’t take long before Drow was lost. And for once, he didn’t fight it. He dove head first into love the way he only could in dreams, where it couldn’t break hearts and ruin lives, and leave people he cared about shattered on the ground.
All it could do was light him up from the inside out. Just like it had done for his moms, during those brief times when they were actually together. He finally understood what kept them coming back to each other, even through all the pain. Even through the horrors life threw at them, through the desolation of loss, through the hurt that should have drowned them. Because those moments where skin touched skin, where eyes met and lightning danced in their veins, where just a soft content sigh was enough to set the whole world right? Those moments were everything, and they were worth every bit of the pain that had come before.
For the first time in his life, he knew peace.
They built paradise together, he and his Jay, pieced it together from memories and dreams the way his moms had made their heaven. And they filled it with life, all manner of plants and animals. Some they had seen, and others they only imagined. Trees with a thousand trunks, a forest contained in one organism. A rainbow of birds to fill the trees, and to fill the air with his mother’s familiar songs. And they filled it with people, drawing them up out of the dust. Drow ached for his family, his mom and his brothers and sisters, and for someone he could almost remember, a little girl with golden eyes full of mischief and love. Blood. Sister? Niece? But she slipped through his grasp if he thought about her too hard, the one thing that eluded him in this world that bowed to his will. Whoever she was, she was out of reach, just like the rest of his family.
“Remember.”
The familiar voice set his skin to shivering, made the hair along his spine stand on end, and he brushed it away like a pesky firefly, barely feeling the twinge of hurt as the speaker withdrew. Instead, he threw himself into Jay, into their new-made friends, something he’d never really had before outside of his family. And if there was something off in the way they nodded and smiled and agreed with him, in the way they shaped themselves to his will, in the way their eyes sometimes made him shudder, well he shrugged it off to a quirk of the dreamscape and built more.
But he had never been one to be so social. Everyone he made wanted to bask in his presence, wanted to love him and be near him and never let him go. The way he’d felt about the Moon, each living thing felt about him. They were too much, too many, and he couldn’t breathe with them all so close, so persistent, smothering him. Was this how she’d—no. No, it wasn’t how the Moon had felt about him. You sure, precious? It wasn’t. But they pressed against him, pushed each other around to get closer to him, and he couldn’t take it. It needed to stop, they needed to go away, there were too many and it was too much and—
No warning roar heralded the bear’s arrival. Not a growl, not a snarl, not a peep before blood was being shed and screams were tearing apart the air. The first blood shed in his new world, and it was the blood of his friends, the blood of his own, the blood of those he had made from the dirt. A sacrifice made in exchange for a moment of silence, and as sick as it made him, he was glad. So the bears stayed, and were joined by other large predators, free to thin the sycophantic herd as their numbers grew of their own accord, now that Drow had finally stopped making them himself.
The balance was uneasy, so-called friends watching him with newfound suspicion and keeping a safer distance even as they fucked like rabbits and maintained their population despite the unexpected danger of predation. They pulled away, their adoration slowly twisting into fear with each death to the predators that kept them from drowning him. “Remember,” the voice tried again every time he felt doubt or discontent, every time he wondered what was wrong with the shape of his world, or why he was still dreaming. And every time, he brushed it away, ignoring the sting of rejection that trickled through before the connection was broken. Until the day when he wanted to forget the world he’d built, wanted to burn it all to the ground, wanted to please just finally wake up. Until the day he found his Jay’s body half-eaten by the bears he had created.
Horror surged through him as he rushed to his lover’s torn-open side. He tried to put the pieces back together, tried to patch him up like the Sun and the Firebrand had patched him over and over, and nothing worked. “NO!” he screamed, falling to his knees and shaking Jay’s tattered body. “Please, no, no, you can’t do this,” he begged, frantically reaching for anything, anything that could help him fix what was already…already gone. “Please, baby, don’t leave me,” he sobbed, dragging his lover’s corpse close and pressing himself against the body that would never press back again. “Please?”
Silence.
And he finally broke.
The mountains they had danced upon erupted, lava and ash blowing the snowcaps off the top and flowing down the sides, rushing toward the meadow and murdering everything in its path. Lava devoured the forest, the birds, the happy little flowers. It wiped out friend and foe alike, predator and prey becoming one in their screams as the volcano claimed them as its own. He felt the bear who had claimed his Jay’s life, reached out and touched him the way someone had tried to teach him once upon another dream, and he held the fucker in place as liquid rock flowed closer. Closer. Singed fur with its heat, flowed over claws and toes and feet. He held the bear as it shrieked and screamed and writhed and begged, held it as lava burned it alive.
Until he remembered an iron mountain holding him in place, torturing him and draining him to the edge of death before leaving him broken and bleeding out in meadow not unlike this one. Bile rose in his throat, and he snapped the bear’s neck, killing it instantly. What have I done? He looked around at the world he’d made, being destroyed by lava and the ash that rained down from above. He was just as much of a monster as the iron bastard who had stolen the light from Noellen’s eyes. Worse, even, for punishing innocents for one rogue bear who had defied his only order.
Drow tried. He tried to stop the lava, but once the volcano blew there was no stopping it. He tried to divert the flow, but the woods caught fire and the mountains became a giant inferno. He could feel horses turning on each other, desperate to survive. Tearing each other apart trying to escape the wildfire and the lava flows. Everyone he had made, everyone he knew, they were all dying around him, bodies incinerating amidst screams of agony, and all he could hear was that voice, screaming this time. “Drodro! Remember!”
He couldn’t remember what she wanted him to, couldn’t remember the words or what message she’d been urgently shoving into his head, but the desperation in her voice finally broke through his dream as the world burned to the ground and the last life ended. As his creation fell to ruin, he snapped awake, frantically drawing fresh air into smoke-filled…lungs…
The smoke was still there. The world was still burning, the fire he'd started still raged, but this was the world of the body, and he had no magic to reshape it, no power to put out the fire or to reach anyone he loved who needed him. He ran for the only home he’d ever known, barreling through hordes of horses running at him with panicked eyes and no fucks given for anyone else’s safety. Too many, too frantic, and he couldn’t get through. He tried, god how he tried, desperate to reach the jungle and--“No one’s there, Drodro, just get out. Just go!” There was something off in the shape of her voice, something quieter, a whisper-like quality where she’d always been lilting and dreamy. He ignored her and fought the crowd, pushing past stampeding masses. He tripped over a flailing body, a young boy who had been trampled and was beyond saving without the healing power he hadn’t inherited from the Sun. A leg snapped to the point where it dangled uselessly, hoof-sized gouges, bruised, the yearling didn’t have a chance. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. As he was getting to his feet, another surge of terrified horses rushed over, and the boy screamed again as he was pounded beneath countless more hooves, until the screaming finally stopped. Still Drow fought his way against the crowd, trying so fucking hard to get to the jungle and see if anyone he knew, anyone he loved was waiting by a little waterfall beside a quiet circle of trees that marked their family’s cemetery.
The fire was coming closer, though. More of the horses that pushed against him were burned, singed, one was even on fire, throwing ice at the flames to try to put them out, and Drow finally understood. This was no ordinary fire, no fire of the physical world. This was his fire, spilling over into the real world and devouring it, taking revenge for the world he'd destroyed. “Just go, Drodro. We’re already gone,” the voice whispered, fading. Fading. He reached for it, but that power was gone to him now, and all he felt was the empty echo of his own mind. Strange was gone. He had lost her.
He finally gave in and let the crowd carry him away, limbs moving along with theirs. The fire chased them out, out, out. Away from the only home he’d known, far up a mountain, until it fell back and devoured the world below. Drow watched fire burn the world to the ground for the second time in a day, and just let the exhaustion and the horror wash over him, staring hopelessly at the inferno. He heard sobs all around, the wails of those who had lost loved ones and the whimpers and agonized moans of the wounded. And as the flames slowly started to die down he picked his way through the crowd. Searching. Listening. Listening. Desperate for any sign of anyone he’d loved even as the knowledge settled into his bones that they were gone, gone, all of them gone.
No matter how he searched, there was no sign of any of them. Not his mother, who should have been there. She should have felt this coming, should have acted. She’d promised. She’d sworn she’d always be there for him, always come when he needed her. Maybe somehow the fire had claimed her. She’d wanted the fire to claim her for a long time now. Maybe…maybe it finally had. There was no sign of Hallows or Rakka or Wex, of Gendry or his Arrya, of Xero, of…of Dröm. No sign of Dare or Nish or Strange. He was alone in the ruins of his old life. He’d fucking failed them. Somehow the whole world had burned to the ground, and he hadn’t been able to protect them. Good work, honey. Still think you’re not Nothing anymore? Oh, but he was. He’d failed his family. He’d lost them. He'd set their world on fire, burned them all to ash, and now he was alone. He'd killed them all, and without them he was Nothing.
Welcome home, precious.
Watch the flames climb high into the night
Drow