The Cleansing Flame

[Carnath-Emory]

"There once lived a boy named Kinny Fletcherson," the swordswoman narrated. It was early afternoon, and while ostensibly her audience was a small and sapient snake, she was not at all unaware of Constable Calomel's presence nearby. In this very small manner, she meant to complete his induction into the Order's circle of influence. "One morning, gripped by the certainty that he was able to fly, Kinny leapt from a tall tower, to the shock of the crowd below him.

"It took them days to clean those flagstones, and they never did get all of it out of the cracks. Only much later did they discover that on a nearby wall, someone had written BELIEVE.

"That tower was the spire of St Iona's chapel. You will fly there, small snake, and you will sit upon its point until an hour has passed. Only then will you return to us."

Isn't that often how such things as these begin? Innocently, for a swordswoman had meant most of all to send that serpentine trinket away from her for a time: the alarming combination of a keen memory and ominous loyalties made it uneasy company. The plan had succeeded admirably, allowing happy conversation between Ariane, Calomel, and even Jason Heldenbrand.

The prize with which the snake returned changed all of that.

It was only with some concerted effort that Kinny was laid to rest a second time, and this end was no less bloody than his first. At the gruesome conclusion of it all, it was Calomel who suggested a blazing forge, and who rode to begin its preparation. Only an hour later did she arrive to join him there, for there had been the matter of that serpent's transportation: she could not possibly expect docility, not from a creature which could read the murderous intent from her very mind.

So that when she pressed the forge's door, it was with an arm become heavy with pitted iron; from shoulder to wrist, the limb was weighted by the stuff. Just below the elbow there featured a particularly bulging segment, but this was to be expected: it was there that the serpent coiled, quiet in its tomb of unyielding iron.

[Cinnabar]

The forge itself is not unpleasant, most of the time, being an old and well-established business, handed down from father to son for a respectable number of generations; blackened beams overhead hardened to stone-like consistency by decades of heat and smoke; walls adorned with all manner of tools and utensils of the smith's trade; floor well-swept, kept clean and proper by a proprietor who takes pride in his workspace. A heap of scrap iron is stacked in one corner: old wheel-rims and broken ploughshares and no small number of pieces of battered armour and weaponry, beyond repair for their original purpose, but still useful for the metal itself.

Cinnabar has been in the habit of visiting for a morning or two each week, time permitting, as he finds the art and science of forging iron somehow fascinating. The smith had been somewhat reticent at first, but soon warmed when the earnest young man had offered to assist with pumping the bellows, raking out the furnace, or otherwise making himself useful rather than just "standin' around an' gawkin'"; indeed, the older man had become pleased to have an appreciative audience for his work, for all that the stream of questions rarely let up.

It is through this quiet friendship that this evening the young man has been able to borrow the use of the forge for a time, through the frightening intensity of his demeanour as he had knocked on the man's door, and an additional monetary consideration to cover the coal used, and to allow the smith to be elsewhere when this grim business was done.

So it is that Ariane will push open the heavy wooden door to glimpse a scene from which painters might draw influence for depicting the Hells; a wave of heat as palpable as a blow to the face greets her; in the centre of that darkened space the forge itself blazes with a furious brilliance, bathing the scene in a blood-hued light. Around the fire moves a sinewy shape, stripped of shirt and doublet to save them from the sparks, skin smeared with soot and a dark line of blackened blood along one forearm, silver hair and pale limbs painted orange and red by the inferno at the room's heart.

No apparent concern for the fire's heat upon his skin, he is continually in motion: first stoking the flames, heaping the incandescent coals up that they might burn brighter; then moving to the bellows to heave upon them with a force that has the wood and leather creaking in protest, and the coals blazing white in the centre, seeming to emit not flame but light and raw heat; then checking the coals once again, reaching with bare hands to pick at a couple which might have rolled free of the main pile and toss them back into the blaze.

At length he seems satisfied for the moment and turns to regard the swordswoman with silvered eyes, a broad grin that holds not mirth so much as readiness.

"Ah. You're here."

[Carnath-Emory]

There's some irony here: it had been Calomel himself who'd encouraged Ariane to visit this smithy, who'd spoken with such quiet enthusiasm of forges and metallurgy and tempering. You should see this for yourself, he'd suggested, weeks earlier. It is fascinating. And business had since proven turbulent, and the leg's weakness prohibitive, and in any case the swordswoman had so disliked this talk of transformed alloys that she'd been reluctant...

And yet here they are. Reluctant though she might be, Ariane is not unfamiliar with the look of a forge, so that the ruddy hues with which its world is painted do not seem quite so gruesome as they might have to unprepared eyes. The young Constable himself does not, although much later she might discover cause to reconsider it: this man whose mind is riddled with such strange absences, whose limbs are capable of such monstrous feats. Later, she might wonder -- but tonight is for far simpler work, so that there's but a nod to answer him, as she approaches those coals.

"You've seen its quickness, mn? And there will be no surprising it, for surely the chyort listens this very moment." Surely it glimpses the murder in my heart. "So you must be so very quick with the tongs, for I mean to free just its tail, and perhaps that is all it requires to be free of me for true."

Her arm is lifted in demonstration nonetheless: heavy with iron, that narrow limb, and grown thicker just beneath the elbow. Having seen the armour's work often enough, Calomel will surely realise that she holds the small thing smothered there; will see metal soften and part across her wrist by way of demonstrating this intent.

"To the furnace with it, then. I think ... Hrimfax will do well with new horseshoes."

[Cinnabar]

Cinnabar nods. "Certainly." That grin not faltering at all, eyeing the bulge in her armoured limb with clear dislike, and it becomes clear that it is not a smile so much as a snarl, a display of teeth in nothing but warning. Then he's moving away a short distance to pick among the forge's tools. The firelight picks out subtle, barely-perceptible patterns across his back as he lifts aside hammers, files and other tools of the blacksmith's trade. Not tattoos or scars - though the arrow-wound is still visible as a raised and livid mark below one shoulderblade - but more a slight variation in the way the light reflects from his skin, perhaps in the way that one might discern the path of fingertips brushed against the grain of velvet; a hand's-width line of faint chevrons down the length of his spine, a dappling pattern across lean shoulders and down his back. A trick of the light, almost certainly.

After a moment he selects a set of long-handled tongs, an iron-headed hammer and a sturdy leather gauntlet, holding the tongs near the head and clacking them open and closed with one hand as he returns to the swordswoman. A moment taken to set the hammer ready upon the anvil and pull the gauntlet onto one hand, holding the tongs held in the other, and he nods.

"Stand over here, I think. I'll need to be able to move it from the coals to the anvil quickly, and I'd rather not flick hot cinders all over you."

He repositions himself for a moment and waits for the swordswoman to take her place before leaning forward, intent upon that iron-smothered band upon her arm; tongs poised in one hand, leather-shielded fingers of the other hand spread to grab if need be; focused and alert as a hunting cat.

"When you're ready."

[Carnath-Emory]

That warning suits the swordswoman's temperament very well indeed: a lingering concern had been that time might somehow have eroded the Constable's resolve, for he'd suggested such unusual things, hadn't he? The redirection of the chyort beast's loyalties. Its assignation as a servant, as a very useful gift, but now...

Ah, now there is no mistaking the direction of his thoughts, no ambiguity to that expression at all. It is the assent that she requires to approach for true, to set her imprisoning body in the place indicated. Ah, gruesome work, isn't it? This matter of tongs and hammers, and a world lit in the most crimson of tones: it has the atmosphere of a ... hah, of some despot's cruel dungeon, some place that trades in hurt. This, too, satisfies.

There remains, of course, the fact of Calomel's few ... strangenesses. Hers are eyes which see, not with the acuity of an Aithne scholar, but that is not necessary for what the constable reveals. Oh, a trick of the light, almost certainly. As had been Dhrin's half-hidden scars; as had been the silver glitter of Renne's eyes. A trick of the light, but that is nothing a woman will Believe, and so this sight is kept in mind for ... later thought. There are more immediate matters to attend to, after all.

So here is her arm extended, livid from palm to wrist with the Hunter's arcane inks. Here is a mind very concentrated upon that limb, because it has been granted a measure of control over that armour, but it was not taught the means by which to exercise it. That has come far more slowly. So too will this work: Calomel must watch very closely to see the moment at which it first begins, the softening of scratched iron into quicksilver. Must look carefully to see how it begins as a single, yielding point, how the fluid iron yet retains the shape of worn plate for a little while yet, how it leaks so gently back to reveal the tip of a silver tail...

Now. Now is the moment.

[Cinnabar]

Patience, as the swordswoman's iron skin begins to yield, to flow; still a strange thing, though he has seen it done a handful of times now. No matter, though, as he watches carefully, absolute focus on the softening, shifting metal. Then appears the silvery tip of the thing's tail, wickedly sharp as it is; his own forearm bears its mark even now, though the application of forge-heated metal stopped the wound's bleeding admirably well. That's a score that'll be settled soon enough, that and the other matter of master Fletcherson, or the puppet of meat that wore his childish face and spoke with his young voice.

He waits as more of the tail is revealed, until there is enough to grant the tongs a firm grasp upon it; then it's a matter of darting that hand forward, the tool's jaws pincering closed with a force that might dent and deform true silver. There'll be no escape for this thing, not if he can help it. He adjusts his grip upon the tongs slightly, knuckles paling beneath the layer of soot and ash, and nods to Ariane. As firm a grasp as he's going to get, and one he intends to maintain no matter what.

"I have it."

[SinVraal]

Yes, constable, the serpent considers; yes you most certainly have it.

The serpent remains rather still as Cinnabar's thongs snare about its slender, silvery length. The flames reflect in its polished scales in a vision of a thousand diminutive, personal hells wrought by its monstrous and sibliant voice. The flickering fire casts its shadow upon the wall, portraying it as a wriggling, writhing thing. The reality is far different.

It regards Ariane and Cinnabar with multi-faceted eyes of a ruby hue lent a sinister glow by their surroundings. It tastes the hot air with an onyx forked tongue and takes in the scent of mild sweat and scorched metal and regards its surroundings with new interest. Of the two, the creature considered, it wasn't sure who hated it more. Ariane had, to some extent, retained her possession of it. the Constable, however, seemed to see the creature truly - or at least, possibly, understood all the better just what it was capable of doing and what it actually wanted.

An old magic erupted from its gaze, attempting to taunt the pair with visions of what was and what could still be: visions of hated enemies, dangerous criminals and scheming politicians all laid low before the might of a powerful and seemingly just lawman. The magic whispered, an attempt to appease, before the explosive confrontation about to take place.

There were so many ways, it considered, to control people. Seduction, fear and even loathing or disgust could all be made into weapons. Its tiny head canted aside as it tasted the air once more, however, and it hissed with a small degree of satisfaction. Sometimes the best weapons, however, were those made of steel.

It turned an expectant head towards the door.

"I warned you, Mistress," the creature hissed. "Someone is searching for you..."

[Cinnabar]

It would not be true to say that those images were not compelling, were not tempting; to take such an obviously potent thing - able to do so much, to discover so much - and turn it into a useful tool, to apply those capabilities to a righteous cause... one would have to be a fool not to even consider the possibility.

The High Constable has considered the possibility, and indeed had been on the verge of asking the swordswoman to entrust to serpent to his care, to his disposal. There around her arm is coiled something that might make it possible to root out the cult of the Baie in its entirety; to discover the slayers of children who walk by night and steal the blood of the innocent; to run an organisation so well-informed that it might seem omniscient, the bane and terror of all who would break Myrken's laws or breach the Peace. One would have to be blind not to see the potential in it.

It would not be true to say that those images did not cause him to hesitate, to regard the thing contemplatively for a space of a few heartbeat, to reconsider the act he has planned. What kind of creature would one have to be, not to be tempted by such things, not to have second thoughts?

But one would also have to be blind not to see the danger in it, the risk of becoming a law unto oneself, accountable to none. He had thought himself up to the task, viewing the serpent as a tool, something dangerous in the wrong hands, but capable of being turned to good use; like a fire and a hammer, things that might be wielded to create or to destroy. A matter of choice, and he would be able to choose wisely.

But then Kinny Fletcherson had walked into the tavern bearing the snake on a velvet cushion, and the truth of it had become clear: the thing was an abomination, capable only of more abominations; something that would take a harmless instruction - go here, rest for an hour before returning - and warp it, corrupt it into something blasphemous. No amount of good intentions could guard against such, or render it into a benevolent force, something so twisted and deceitful. So it is that he's carefully pulling it free of the liquid metal that recedes slowly from Ariane's skin, holding the writhing thing clear and glaring at it with undisguised loathing. And then it deigns to speak, to still address her as Mistress.

"Shut up." And then he's turning, moving to plunge the infernal thing into the heart of the forge where the coals blaze brightest.

"Ariane - the bellows, please."

[Carnath-Emory]

And oh, hark at this: the very first occasion upon which the swordswoman has arrived at a realisation before young Calomel.

Oh, this is not to say that she is beyond corruption; quite the opposite, in fact. A woman recognises herself for a monster, after all, if only in the sense that Cinnabar has described it; most assuredly recognises her capacity to become far more, far worse. Consider this: that for some deadly, sickening moment, she had set her eyes upon Kinny Fletcherson, and wondered what else that serpent might summon into being. Having lost so many, having such a list of precious corpses, so that she might imagine Kerrak al'Nerun raised in that boy's stead. Might imagine Bea Kanaya. Might picture a long-dead husband, and nevermind that the murdering hand was hers. Might ...

So that it is somehow fortunate that the chyort offers her power, instead. The swordswoman is certainly not uneffected by this touch, of course: for a time there are great distances in her gaze, for a time there is a mind that is taken towards places far from this one, places in which justice enacts itself.

Flawlessly.
Immediately.

It is a very beautiful vision. Its purity appeals. But her sister's wisdom is the counter to it, and the spectre of Kinny himself, and even the matter of Michael Renne, who if there were justice in the world, would already lie dead. Several times dead. It is the cool balm to the fervour which yon chyort means to inspire. It is the absolutely necessary remedy, so that she is drawing her arm back of a sudden: quicksilver clings to that serpent's hide for only an instant longer, before loosing it utterly into Cinnabar's capable grasp. The bellows. She is there within three long steps, and her own hands set to work there --

As her glittering gaze turns towards that door.
Oh, Cinnabar. Have haste.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The woman who possessed the silver bangle was easy to track. The constable was not difficult either. Given their high-profile positions and recognizable features, silver and gold might have spilled even more information than what he had already acquired through fear and the promise of violence. It was, he considered, a universal currency. Madame Swinton had certainly verified that.

Dealing with a constable, he considered, might draw undue attention. Then again there was the matter of the serpent to consider. It could not be left in their hands.

A shadow fell over the door. Perhaps unnoticed on the other side by people caught up in temptations and trials; in memories and fire. A chill also began to slither inside that might take the worst of the forge's biting heat away although certainly not abate it in its entirety. This chill sought out the heart, the bone, the marrow of its occupants and declared, silently, that another had arrived.

An arrival Teron punctuated with a sharp, swift kick that sends the door flying open. As it thunders against the wall and rebounds the dark, looming figure stalks inside. He towers over six feet in height clad in seared, scarred and battered plate armor silhouetted by a tattered black cloak whose hood sealed away his visage into shadow. Beneath those shadows, a faded grey scarf coiled about the lower half of his countenance; illuminated by searing, livid crimson eyes.

He took in the scene before him; the man clutching the limp, silver serpentine monster with simple smithy's thongs while the woman stood before the bellows. The heat spoke to him as if mute. In one gloved hand he bore a long-bladed sword with a prong-like hilt whose pommel ended in a small metal skull - a blade that had once been in the brief possession of one of the junior constables.

The two, however, he dismissed as the serpent's presence called to him. It beckoned with a haughty, ancient challenge. Why the woman had taken off her servant he did not care to question. It was here, in his grasp, and it needed to be removed.

He moved in silence, despite the heavy armor, towards the Constable and began to raise the weapon overhead.

[Cinnabar]

Annoyance in his features as the forge's heat seems to wane somehow, despite Ariane's work with the bellows; but no, the heart of the fire is still dazzling white, it's the rest of the room that is growing chill, warmth perceptibly draining away. He flinches but does not turn away from the fire as the door bangs open, intent upon holding the serpent deep in the blazing heart of the fire, waiting for the fire's fury to soak into the silvery metal; waiting for that shift of colour, from silver to dull red to orange to brilliant yellow.

He does not turn as the armoured figure strides closer, though his head cants a fraction to one side. The hooded intruder might note the muscles tensing beneath the man's skin, grip strong and unyielding upon the tongs, turning the snake this way and that among the coals such that it might heat evenly.

As Teron steps forward with weapon raised, however, the wiry young man does move: a quick sidestep and half-turn, still holding the snake among the coals for the moment, eyes glittering silver in a face cast into shadows by the firelight behind him; eyes that narrow at the sight of the raised weapon.

And then he moves, blinding quickness that sees the snake snatched from the fire in a shower of sparks, whirled in a glowing arc at the end of the tongs' reach and thrust full-force into the space beneath the looming figure's hood, even as the Constable ducks and steps aside from the expected path of that blade.

That perhaps familiar blade.

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The blade strikes cleanly through where the constable had been standing and crashes against the forge itself, bringing the blade to a complete stop. His searing gaze follows the man's deft movements, taking him for an experienced swordsman almost immediately, and in a moment the burning snake - its scales already throbbing with orange heat, is seeking to spear his hidden visage.

His free hand darts up, grabbing the thongs in an iron grasp although he backpedals, at first, under Cinnabar's outburst of strength. He digs in a booted foot, however, as the burning serpent dominates his field of view and his periphials rippling with the hot air it bleeds all around them.

"You cannot match me..." the figure rumbles in a voice that echoes up from a deep, dark chasm; rich with stirred anger as, the thongs trembling in their contest of strength, he attempts to push the snake ever-closer towards Cinnabar's. He raises his sword and quickly slips it back into a burned scabbard, the hilt slamming home with a resounding clang.

This close the unearthly chill blossoms about the armored figure. Where his shadow falls, the biting cold quickly follows. In such proximity, the burning serpent, that hisses, snapping and writhing upon the thongs, illuminates the pattern upon his chestplate nearly obliterated by ash and injury: a sword crossed at the hilt by two weeping, wilting roses.

[Carnath-Emory]

Someone is searching for you, Mistress.
Cold, rotten...

Ancient.

Teron Ashfiend invades the smithy like a storm, a tall thing clad in armour as battered as her own, and wielding enough brutal competence to justify it. You mark such a man by the thunder of his passage: a door is sent shuddering, a sword strikes the forge with force enough to shower sparks. You mark him by the easy confidence he sets in his own strength: the very direct quality of his attack describes this; the very forceful downwards carve. It is the tactic of a man who expects to succeed, and with very little difficulty at all. Cinnabar's defiance of that confidence is gratifying.

It also provides the swordswoman with certain opportunities.

As he holds Ashfiend's attention, as they clash with fire and molten metal, Ariane is granted the freedom of near-unchecked movement. She is the subtle counterpoint to their glitter and spark, this quiet shadow of a thing who has gently slid her hand from the bellows, and given it to her sword-hilt instead. By the time she has circled towards Ashfiend's back, the woman -- the weapon -- is ironclad from throat to thighs, and yet there is so little warning before her attack comes.

He is twice her size, of course.
And it doesn't matter, of course. Not when her blade can pierce between the plates that line his back, and this is precisely what she means to do: a sudden lunge, schiavona drawn with but a whisper of steel as she closes the distance between them. As it does, driven for where she's sure one of those gaps lurks beneath his cloak, and only in the last breath of this lunge does she answer for Cinnabar:

"He doesn't have to."

[Teron_Ashfiend]

The towering, armored figure threw his strength against Cinnabar's who, though undoubtedly strong, could not last forever against his own unyielding strength - or so Ashfiend reckoned. The Constable appeared mortal, at least, and therefore expected him to grow tired at some point and break. A slow, malicious smirk puckered concealed lips at the thought of how many men he had slain out of hand. This one, he assured himself, for all his courage and tenacity, would perish as the rest. Consumed in the hateful fire of his thoughts, Teron failed to notice the woman who had moved - and acted.

The blade slid home, penetrating a break in the ancient plates to tear into the flesh of his back. At once a dim, growling lance of pain skewers his body and seizes a stilled heart, shaking it with some semblance of momentary life. His vice-like grasp upon the thongs trembles. The pain set his body awash with the whisper of a sensation he had been robbed of for nearly a decade.

Pain.

A breath forced its way between the ruin of his hidden lips, and a second as he attempted to control the sudden trickle of brute sensation that exhaled dry dust across his nerves and into the back of his mind. The pain blossomed into a dead flower without even blood as nectar.

From behind, he stooped, perhaps as if folded by lancing agony. One arm lowered, the other keeping the burning snake from his countenance - although with any luck the demonic creature would soon be his. Their gazes locked for an instant and, in that isntant, they exchanged lifetimes of simmering, seething hate matched by the heat that rolled about them.

He spun then, quickly, releasing the thongs entirely and aiming the back of his hand towards the side of the woman's face. Whether or not it hit he did not even care to check. Both hands darted forward to seize her by the shoulders as he set his feet. If his grip grew secure, he prepared his next course of action:

To hurl this latest enemy onto the burning coals.

[Cinnabar]

Moments of resolute resistance, the tongs slowly creeping back and forth between eyes of mirrorbright silver and eyes of lambent crimson. He contests the armoured figure's strength one-handed, holding well though boots scrape over the forge's floor as Teron presses the snake back towards his face. Perhaps Teron feels that the Constable cannot match him, but Cinnabar certainly intends to; it is a surprising vitality that moves his wiry limbs, a force to his movements that should not be possible in one so slight of frame, and yet that hideous strength is holding the glowing-hot snake clear of his face, for all that the iron tongs creak with the force of his grip upon them.

He meets that crimson gaze steadily, teeth bared in a feral snarl at the face beneath that hood, and Teron might see his own eyes mirrored as tiny sparks within Cinnabar's own. And then the armoured man is slumping, then releasing the tongs to step back and whirl about, lashing out at the swordswoman behind him. The Constable retreats a step or two himself, the heat of the forge fierce upon his back; the tongs are flicked vindictively to dash the serpent against the anvil, perhaps hoping to stun it for a moment while he glares at the armoured figure's back, then he's glancing round in desperate search for a course of action, something that might give him the edge in this conflict.