Private Popular Monster

[Kyrinov]

L E S S O N - O N E​

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I think I’m goin’ nowhere like a rat trapped in a maze​

His summons were the same as they were days ago at the coming of the Vagaari. <’Meet me on top of the mesa in the caverns. Bring the Veil.’> There was nothing else. Short and concise, just as his Apprentice often was. Valkur, he quickly discovered, was a man of little words. Sometimes, the man didn’t speak at all. That was a virtue that could prove useful if employed in a timely manner. Sometimes action became the catalyst where mere words failed. ​

He knelt in the hardened red clay on the large cliff of the mesa, knees digging into soil that vehemently refused to give way under pressure. The sun above was harsh today, beaming down hard and hot enough to make the very air seem to dance in front of his eyes. The weight of his armor did not help his self-imposed predicament, but that was intentional. He needed it to be difficult to focus on anything except the ache. The man needed to forget the colors of the sun and the ground beneath him, for together, in his mind’s eye, they created a roaring flame that blazed toward him and around him. They moved and screamed at a rate that sucked the air about him into itself, away from him. ​

“Breathe,” rang the voice of the Thyrsian woman in the back of his mind, so soft that he swore he imagined it at its first utterance. He hardly heard her over the crackling and pooping of flames in his ears. His skin felt as though it burned inside the inferno, molten hot under the surface. He felt fragile as nerve endings stood on edge and tingled, searching for some semblance of feeling in the physical sense of the word. ​

Every wall that I knock down is just a wall that I’ll replace​

“Breathe, Kyrinov, breathe,” she was louder this time, far more insistent. Her voice cut through the confusion of the illusions that his mind cast onto him. Though she held his memories and knew every part of his being, she was not a protector. Yet, she instilled a sense of calm in him. ​

451.

Fire is bright,
Fire is clean. ​

Valkur ​

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