by Feint » 10/17/2013 1:35 PM
Trauma scraped his bones with its teeth and bled his body dry, but his freedom was more than worth this. He had flown over the tops of mountains and run through the harshest deserts for it; there was no way a bit of scary lava would stop him now.
Shaking, he edged down from his perch. A claw scraped the length of a stone wrong, and the icy, painful sensation rattled the brains in his skull; he drew his paw back sharply and shivered. This caused him to fall.
The fire did not burn him, of course, but the ooze and heat slipped over his fur and skin in a way that was just wrong. It sucked on him, it slurped and pushed and pulled. Yowling, he leapt up and back, shaking and pawing at the melted stone still clinging to his fur.
An onlooker might have thought he was in danger, for the lava clung to him just like it would cling to anything else. But no--he was partly of fire, and the element had sworn a pact with its own kind. He was merely afraid of the slow-moving, blackhearted, ooze from the bowels of the earth. It seemed to live, to move at will, to want for him.
My wraiths, though not wraiths then, wandered deep into the heart of the polar storm. They tried to fight sleep, naive to the inevitability of their fate. When they awoke, they saw before them my own self, so much a part of the ice and cold they almost fail to see me. I wear a crown of the coldest, sturdiest ice, and my claws and fur have coated themselves in it.
I stand aloof to the cold, for I have lived in it so long, been a part of it so long, it no longer concerns me.
My wraiths are cursed to wander the polar tundra, eternally freezing, following mortal explorers and trying to warn them with their presence that they should not travel onward, should not make the same mistake. But there will always be those who persist in pressing on, never knowing what they are doomed to face, or destined to suffer.