All the talk of demons propelling themselves through the air by manifest will inspired an image which I will share with you, but with words for I'm bad with a pen.
Sound and smell took over Lokum's senses. His eyes stung as he stumbled through the hallway to the Grand Stair, but he could only process the stench of the vile, choking smoke and the screaming of his fellow clansdwarves as they lost themselves to the flames.
The flames. Mere minutes ago, everything had been going according to routine. Lokum's breakfast had been suddenly cut short by a deep, reverberating wailing that boiled up from the Grand Stair. The horrible cries of Lokum's friends and relatives followed shortly thereafter, accompanying the thick, stinking and rancid smoke. The smoke brought painful tears to his eyes, blinding him.
Lokum took the corner too fast, and tripped in his haste, spilling his bucket of water over the tiled floor as he fell into the Great Hall. Lokum brought himself up by his arms, breathing the somewhat cleaner air made possible by the much higher ceilings. He reached for the bucket's handle, there might still be time to go back and get more water, after all. His hand stopped halfway, though. The water he'd spilled was mingling slowly with a slurry of black and red, steaming as it pooled in the gaps among the tiles. Puzzled, he twisted to look back to the object that had tripped him.
Lokum was unprepared to see the twisted and tortured remains of what must have been another dwarf, all black except for the thick blood oozing from the cracks in the char. Affording himself a moment, he looked around the Hall. Remains, each one burnt so as to be barely recognizable as having once been dwarves littered the floor. Blood trailed from where each body lay back to the top of the Grand Stair, as though the dwarves had run screaming while on fire and hemorrhaging badly up from the stair into this room. The shields, swords, and axeheads scattered among the bodies told Lokum that these had been the Fortress Guard who boasted to be equipped to deal with any problem.
Then, a small squad of guards rushed up the stairs, their leader calling to hold fast at the summit. Rallying, the armed and armored warriors took up positions encircling the top of the stairs. There, they waited and Lokum watched.
The smoke roiled, the ground steamed – moisture from the blood staining the mosaicked tiles rising silently into the air. The Hall was dim and choked with foul fumes. And, it was getting brighter. And hotter.
The warriors, their seemingly unshakable courage pressed by some otherworldly fear, slowly backed away from the edge of the stair. Lokum crawled back to the wall as he saw tendrils of flame begin to creep their way over the banister, meandering, dividing and coming together, scouting the floor of the Hall as they spread out from the stairs. The warriors seemed not to notice, their attention fixed on the source of the fire as it ascended into the room.
First, a head, huge by any reasonable standard, its flaking, char-black skin pulled tight over its features – bearing a hate-filled expression of unquenchable wrath, but with eyes shut. The chest and arms became visible above the heads of the warriors, the arms seemed to be tightly wrapped in an embrace around itself, as though shielding the creature from the cold. Lokum's strained mind finally realized why this thing seemed so wrong. It mounted the stairs, but not with any gait; rather, it smoothly and evenly rose into the room. Without wings, it seemed like the monster just willed itself aloft, and the floor, as though unwilling to bear the touch of a being such as this one, rejected its feet.
The being had fully emerged from the stair, floating silently several feet from the floor. The heat radiating from its body warped Lokum's view of the tapestries on the far side of the hall. All was quiet as it opened its eyes. Lokum froze in abject terror as he saw the eyes, like slits scored into the thing's face, revealing a hellish inferno within. Fire reached out through those eyes, promising a painful death. And, Lokum knew it was looking at him.
With a sharp order, the leader of the warriors spurred his stunned soldiers into action. However, at that moment, three of the unfortunate dwarves realized that the flame tendrils, that seemed to writhe away from the spot on the floor under the monster, had reached their feet. Even as the rest of the squad leapt to the attack, those three dwarves died. Fire raged from their feet up through their armor and fused the metal of their armor to skin that would know only the agony of burning before knowing no further sensation.
Lokum watched the rest of the squad charge, weapons held high, but hope had died in his beard the moment he watched the creature's eyes settle on him. The forerunners of the attack died the fastest. As their weapons fell and bit into the skin of the demon, they released jets of that inner inferno, blasting them with red, angry hellfire. The thing released its arms, floating slowly, almost casually towards Lokum. The other dwarves, realizing it was ignoring them once again leapt to the attack. Before they could bring any harm to the demon, though, fire guttered through their armor, melting metal and flesh into a solid, blackened mess, all.
The tendrils of flame followed the floor under the creature as it approached, testing the ground, tasting for victims. Each runner of fire lingered briefly over a fallen dwarf, as though savoring in their demises. The thing's approach consumed Lokum's total awareness and he knew that he was going to die.
Within moments, the black-skinned monster loomed over the fear-stricken Lokum. Its tendrils of fire snapped toward him, singing his leg, as though tasting his flesh. Then, it spoke. Its mouth yawning open revealing glimpses of the raging interior of the body.
“I am damaged. You will be my new flesh.”
The creature reached with its hands to one of the ragged openings cut by a dwarf's sword and wrenched the wound open. Fire washed out in a twisting pillar and scorched Lokum's body black as he died. The braided snake of fire tore through what were Lokum's eyes, nose and mouth, searing the skin and filling the corpse.
The dwarf's blackened body rose from the ground, growing in size even as the previous shell fell into ash. Tendrils of new, red flame snaked out from the ground under him. Turning its new head, the new shell floated to the doorway through which the ill-fated Lokum had initially stumbled and the spirit of fire passed through the arch to continue its hunt and slaughter. In its wake, a bucket burned, boiling a slurry of ash and blood – and water, mistakenly spilled.
If someone more talented than myself wants to depict an image of a spirit of fire nonchalantly torching some military dwarves as it fixes a stare somewhere else and floats above the ground, then I shall surely admire it.
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Topic: Fan art competition! *Moving sound* (Read 1455872 times)