Chapter 261 Volume IV – Chapter 106: Death and Flame

“Flame, what is it?”

This question confused me for a moment before I realized what it was.

Her face was hidden by a veil, but the wrinkles near her eyes and her graying hair showed it. She was wearing a traditional red dress.

“The visible part of the fire, right?”

The woman took a deep breath, looked me in the eye.

“Do you really think you can become a priest by saying something like that?”

The old woman, who I assumed was a priestess, continued with stern eyes.

“You are not wrong, but as a priest, you need more if you want to gain understanding over the flame.”

She opened her hands, brought her palm in front of me where I could easily see it, and formed a flame.

It looked like a normal flame. It seemed to be fluttering here and there, trying to rise. It was complex and unstable.

“A flame is normally unstable and uncontrolled. This is the case when you simply define it as the visible part of the fire. Of course, it is up to you to change that.”

The tiny flame changed in an instant. It stopped rising and collapsed in on itself. It took the shape of a marble.

“It is you who will transform it, who will unleash its true potential and use it.”

With an enormous amount of control, the priestess lifted the ball of flame into the air on the palm of her hand and moved it around the room.

Then, suddenly, she threw it at me. The ball of flame hit me in the chest, so I involuntarily stepped back in fear, but then I realized something.

The flame hadn’t hurt me.

“You are the one who will make it destructive or regenerative, painful or comforting, and so much more. That’s why it was a mistake to look for a general answer to the question.”

She raised her finger, pointing at me.

“You are the one who will determine what the flame is, as I said.”

Her eyes narrowed, she asked me a question again.

“Now, tell me. What is the flame?”

I stared at the priestess’s finger. This time I thought and thought and thought. The priestess waited patiently for me. For minutes she didn’t make a sound.

The flame… it is I who will determine what it is. It will take shape according to my desires, and unless I control it, it will be unstable and chaotic.

“The flame… is not just a fire we see from the outside. I understand that…”

The priestess nodded her head in approval. She motioned for me to continue.

“And yet, can I answer for the rest of my life what it is? If the flame is shaped by my desires, my passions, my thoughts… then won’t what it is be determined with me? As I grow, it will grow… As I learn, it will also learn. It will constantly change… it will never stay the same. So the answer will also always change.”

The priestess smiled.

“Don’t stop, go on.”

My eyes narrowed, and for a moment I just stood where I was.

“The flame… Is my flame a reflection of me, then?”

A simple question of ‘what is a flame’ suddenly seemed much deeper to me than it was. The priestess widened her smile after hearing what I had said.

“Let’s leave it here for today.”

She stood up, this time looking happy.

“Accept the answer you have found, identify it as the answer to the question of what your own ‘flame’ is. If you see it as a reflection of you, then study it and discover your own potential through it. Let the flame be your guide.”

He turned around, left the room without saying anything else, and left me alone.

I raised my hand, formed a flame in my palm, just as he had done before, and watched it. For seconds, minutes…

“My flame… a guide…”

The more I looked at this tiny flame that kept burning in the center of my palm, the more I felt I was losing myself in it.

This little red thing… it was so much more than it really was.

The priestess was right.

*******

I felt the burning heat of the flame on my face.

It rose almost to the sky, no less than a gigantic monster. At the same time, it was everywhere. If I turned my head to the right I saw a burning hut, if I turned my head to the left there was a fire too far away for my eyes to see. In front of me was a clearing, surrounded by flames that made escape impossible.

And behind me…

“You are still alive…?”

I slowly turned my head back, fixing my eyes on the spot where the voice came from. An intense fear, a strange feeling mixed with hatred that came at the same time with this fear, enveloped my whole body.

There was a man in front of me. His whole body was on fire, but he didn’t seem to be in pain. His eyes glowed with the orange glow of the flames and his face was cold, but curious as well as cold. His long silver hair waved in harmony with the flames surrounding his body.

As I focused on his appearance, I felt my eyes fix on his, and then… I saw something different about him, his pupils caught my attention. Vertical pupils that looked more like a creature’s than a human’s.

I don’t know why, I clenched my fist. As I stared into the vertical pupils of the man in front of me, fear gripped my body like never before, my instincts begging me to run. Jumping into the flames was much safer than standing where I was.

But… I didn’t… I couldn’t. I gritted my teeth as emotions I couldn’t make sense of took control of my body. Finally… I screamed.

“Why are you here?! Why… just why?! Why did you destroy everything!”

The creature, human… whatever he was… didn’t change his expression even a little. He only sighed slightly as he looked at me with a cold expression.

He didn’t give me any answer. He just raised his right hand, then slightly moved it to the left. Then… all the flames around us became even more alive, as if they had been ignited all at once.

“If you can reach me, you will get your answer.”

Everything I could see was covered only by the orange light of the flames. The heat soaked directly into my skin, literally melting me.

I had no doubt that my life would end here, I was weak, so… at least I wanted an answer.

When I took my first step I realized how weak my legs were, the flames were so hot that they took all my energy. It was hard to even take a proper step when my muscles were literally melting.

But… I resisted.

I took my second step as fast as I could. Even though I staggered, even though the pain almost made me fall on my face, I did everything I could.

My eyes melted, and my vision disappeared. My toes melted, and each step became more difficult. I couldn’t feel my arms or my body, and as the flame burned my body along with mine, I clung to the last desire inside me.

After one last step, I finally couldn’t hold on. It wasn’t hard to realize that I had fallen to the ground with the pain I felt in my face, in my whole body. And with that… a frustrated voice echoed in my ears amidst the roar of the flames.

“Is that it? What a pity…”

I heard him turn around, I realized he was going to start walking away.

But that’s not the only thing I noticed. He was close… too close. He was no more than two, maybe three steps away.

I gritted my teeth again. I pushed forward my hand, almost without flesh, my fingers unable to move, and dragged myself along the ground. I pressed my chin to the ground, pulled myself toward the creature. I crawled…

But that’s when my head hit something, something moving away, a foot.

“Oh?”

In the darkness, where I could see nothing because my eyes had melted, the thing I hit my head against hesitated for a moment. I heard him turn around, I felt his eyes looking at me almost in my whole being.

As the whole world was slowly sinking into silence, into an eternal darkness like never before… I heard a single voice, the proud voice of the silver-haired creature.

“Fate… Little puppet. Fate it is.”

*******

Instead of the eternal darkness where I thought I was lost… my eyes opened somewhere else.

First I saw the sky, cloudless and clear. Then the sun shining overhead. As soon as I turned my head around a little… I saw that I was lying in the middle of a lush green clearing.

The fresh air entered my lungs and the sunlight, which was not too oppressive due to the cool air, was peaceful this time.

I thought about the four different visions I had seen, the decisions I had made, and the things I had said.

This time I knew who I was, I knew why I was here. I understood that the previous things… were simply tests.

The decisions I had made, the things I had said, the way I looked at death and the flame. And now… it was time for another.

“What are you going to do this time?”

I asked looking up at the blue sky, squinting my eyes.

For a few seconds nothing happened, I just lay there on the lush green grass.

And then… the blue sky suddenly came together, collapsing in on itself as if it were breaking. It shrank and shrank until it became two dots. It darkened in color, turning into a harsher, more authoritative blue. Then vertical pupils appeared in the center of these two blue circles that appeared in the sky.

“What do you think, little puppet?”

I didn’t know why he called me a puppet, but knowing that now was not the time to ask, I sighed and answered his question.

“You showed me four visions. In the first one you tried to understand what I thought about death, in the second one you told me something about death and measured my reaction, in the third one you tried to understand what I thought about the flame, and in the fourth one… well, I’m not sure about that, you simply tested me… I think. But in each of them, you wanted me to understand something in addition.”

I took a deep breath.

“The first test was a philosophical one. It wasn’t fatal… or it would have been if I had given answers that didn’t satisfy you. Now that I’m here talking to you like this, I succeeded, didn’t I?”

The eyes in the sky narrowed.

“You have not succeeded, but you have not failed either. Still, you have indeed satisfied me and that is enough.”

I smiled. It was good to know that at least I had earned the right to pass the next test.

“So, what’s next?”

Just as the sky broke and collapsed in on itself, so it did for the whole world this time. Everything came crashing down, there were ruptures everywhere.

As everything was plunged into darkness, the ancient creature said only three words that echoed in my mind.

‘Wait, and see.’

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