Kershin, the Fire Mage

Kershin ran around like a madman with tears pouring from his pained eyes. Inhuman sobs clattered from his throat and filled the air with sorrowed echoes. He had done it. He had done it all on his own. And he would never be the same again.

He rounded a dusty corner and stumbled down the hollow hallway. His heart thundered in anguish and his fingers burned of fire. In his mind, he saw only the flames rise up out of nowhere and consume those around him. It had approached him, but when he had bidden it away, it went. Surely, it went. The fire took to the curtains and the walls, angrily reducing them to memory. Lila’s hand-sown curtains. Tawni’s velvet seat cushions. They were all gone now, and he had nothing left of them.

Never again. His experiments would end now. He could never face his work again without remembering this day.

Laughter sputtered in his mind, mocking the wishes of his heart. He would never give up the art of fireplay. It was a part of him. It was born into him. He had searched so hard to master it, so a simple candle flame nearby would no longer ignite into a careless blaze if he looked at it too long. All he wanted was to be rid of the fire and the pain it caused.

Perhaps his methods were wrong. Maybe controlling the fire was not the option. Kershin banged his head against the wall, trying desperately to pull his thoughts together. He could already smell the wisps of smoke rising from his fingertips. Whenever he dwelled on this, his body reacted. He would have it no more. This time, he would keep his vow. All his pretty things were gone because of this fire. This would be the end.

Gasping around his tears for air, he sobbed aloud his vow. It would be different now. He had lost his precious possessions. Now he had nothing. Now the fire within him had to listen.

Not that it had ever listened before. Not when he had lit the tablecloth at home, and scared his mother into a frenzy. Nor the time his father chased after him with a club, and he willed the man’s boots ablaze so he could escape. The fire burned when the time was wrong, and sputtered when the time was right. But now. Now. Now.

Kershin crashed to the floor in gasping sobs. What about now? This time he had lost the pretty things his daughters had made for him. How would now be different, when last time, he had taken the lives of those daughters, and it didn’t stop him? How would these things cause him to stop?

He rolled around on the ground, hoping someone would round the corner after finding the fires, and set a lance through him. With his luck, the lance would probably explode anyway, and kill the guard instead.

Pushing himself up, he knew he had to get away, not that one really could get away from oneself. His lips flapped lifelessly and he panted aloud as his legs hoisted him up and propelled him forward. His tall, lean body lumbered down the hallway and out the door. Behind him, he could hear the ever-telling sounds of fire chasing behind him. In minutes, he knew, this whole castle would be ablaze. He ran.

Kershin ran hard and long until his legs would carry him no further. The fire crackled across his fingertips and leapt down to his toes. They sprang to life, and he jumped back onto his feet and kept running. He demanded that the fire wouldn’t win this time. He would run forever if he had to, but the fire would not be with him.

The sun sank into the distant mountains and left him gasping and alone in the middle of nowhere. But he could feel the fire sneaking up on him. The stupid thing about the fire was that it was most careless at night. Amidst daylight, the fires surprised everyone and burned so fast, but at night, it trickled along, signaling in the darkness where it was at any time. Perhaps the fire liked haunting its victims.

Kershin looked over his shoulder and cursed the flames that scorched the landscape as it came running up to meet him. He spat air, for his mouth could form no spittle. He cried aloud and ran further.

The fire chased him for hours and hours. However hard he pushed, the fire was always right there. He passed travelers in frantic haste, leaving them behind and burning them in his wake. He never looked back. He ran, and everyone he loved, everything he adored, all burned to the ground in seconds. The flashfires were unbeatable, but he knew he could beat them. Why not?

Staggering up a hill, Kershin stumbled and felt his energy depleted. When the last time was that he had stopped for nourishment, he had no idea. Yesterday? The day before? And now this blaze that had started this afternoon was chasing away his sanity and his resolve. Perhaps it would be better if he just fed himself to the fires that chased him.

He knew that was foolish. He had tried it once already. The fire simply scoffed at him and vanished without a trace. But once he felt relief that they were gone, they sprang back to life. They taunted him. They had taunted him all his life. He fully believed the fire was out to get him. He felt the flames would consume him, but not with fever, not with heat, not by eating him alive. No. The flames would consume his sanity, and he knew the time was approaching. Little time remained. Nothing else remained, so only time was left. And why wait? One day, the fire would catch him, and that would be all.

He started to laugh. He chortled as he crested the hill. He turned around, balked at the fire and fell backward into an awkward roll, the impact of which should have snapped his neck. But instead of pain, he felt only fire. It wouldn’t let him take his own life.

He had once even tried drowning himself to end the misery of his existence. The flames merely burned the water into steam. His skin scorched a little, but healed soon enough. He tried a knife once, but oddly enough, the blade melted into sludge on the floor. No one could come close to him, except his wife on that one fateful day when his twin girls had been conceived. Even then, the fire had burned, but within him that day instead of without. And once they had been born, and he cradled his wife in his arms, he had burned her too.

There was nothing left of his life, except the incessant fire that pursued him relentlessly. He couldn’t give himself over to it, for it didn’t want him. When he tried, it backed away. When he protested it, it spat back. What was wrong with him that he could not die by this fire that had destroyed his life? Why couldn’t it finish the job it had so persistently started? Were these things in his life merely the kindling to some greater fire? He cursed again, daring that to be the truth.

Rage consumed him piece by piece, as it always did, until all sense of reason was gone from him. Fire or no fire. This was the end. This would be it. He had single-handedly ruined everything in his life because of this fire. The more he tried to master it, the more it burned. When he backed away, it burned, still. Nothing he did ever mattered. His life was forfeit to this chasing blaze. He could never escape it.

Kershin’s body started to twitch in his blinding rage. He ran back and forth on whatever energy was left in his ragged body. His breath came in wheezing gasps, and he knew it was over. This would be the end. He had finally done it. The fire had won. The contest was over. He threw his arms into the air, and sparks flew from his fingertips and spread out across the sky in a mad dance. The sparks fell earthward and burned the ground all around him. It was so futile. Even in his dying throes, the fire surrounded him, but would not take him.

He knew he went insane once he thought he had forgotten something. It was such a little stupid thing and he started to giggle once it popped into his mind. It wasn’t even a fully realized idea. It was a mere flash of thought. An image. An emotion.

In his mind, he saw the fire enter his heart, and it filled him with love.

He thrashed at the idea. How imbecilic? Call the fire in to heal? Hah! To what end? It had already taken everything else. He wouldn’t let it take him now that he was already dead.

Of course, if he were really dead, would he even be thinking these things? No. Probably not. But he had never been dead before. No, yes he had. He had been dead for most of his life. For, when he lost his wife and children, he had set himself only harder to master the fire. He hadn’t wept for their losses. In fact, he had thought them stupid to come near him in the first place. They all knew of the danger it was to be near him. The surrounding landscape knew. He had never touched an animal in his life, unless it was already cooked by fire. The once he had tried, the flames had sparked, the dog was frightened, and so it bit him. He had cursed the dog for the bite and chased it away.

Damn the fire that ruined everything. If only he never had to face it again. That would be nice.

Laughter bellowed in his mind as if he were mad. Face it… again? When had he ever faced it?

He never had. He had always run. It had always been such a bad thing, the fire. It was so hurtful, so painful. Look at all the things it destroyed. Look at all the people he had killed and how many ways he had killed them. Some had been burned to ash in seconds. Some were set ablaze from the inside and it burned its way out. Others, he had taken mere limbs, and it so crushed their spirits, he might as well have killed them outright. No. The fire was evil. It was pure evil.

But it was the only thing left to him. It was the only thing left in his mind. He had two options left to him: He could face the fire head on, or he could let it take away the last tendrils of his thoughts. Ahh, that would be such bliss.

The fire gathered all around him, and it froze his spine, for he felt that it was plotting some twisted torture ceremony, or something. He knew somehow, that the fire was mere belligerence. What else could it be? All it did was destroy. Didn’t everyone already equate fire and anger? Didn’t he?

Slowly and methodically, the flames swayed back and forth in a circle, mesmerizing him. He refused to be tricked by it. He would run forever, instead. He would not be tricked by the flames.

The fire rose above him in a wall. He took the chance. He hopped up and leaped into the flames. But they vanished when he would have touched them. They reappeared just feet away, taunting him, ever-smiling. They fed his anger and his loathing. That’s what the fire was good for. It just made his miserable existence even worse, by taking away all that was good. And soon, there would be nothing left.

But there was nothing left.

The fire simply would not consume him. It refused to let him win, the damn fire. Why couldn’t it just burn itself out, or consume him instead? Why wouldn’t it leave him alone?

Flashes of his life blasted in his mind as he stared at the flames, coaxing them closer. He saw the blaze that was his childhood home, consumed in an anger he couldn’t fathom, an anger he wasn’t even sure was real, an anger he tried so hard to deny. He saw childhood friends point at him for his glowing fingertips, even then. He saw his own tears that sizzled against his heated skin. The fire never warmed him, just his body. He cursed the images of his wife and daughters, for he couldn’t keep them away long enough. He especially despised his wife, for she had given life to the daughters he had killed. If only she hadn’t birthed them, he wouldn’t have had them to kill.

Coughing and sputtering, Kershin faced the flames. He kicked up his emotions of hatred and anger for far longer than he had been running. The fire simply grew stronger with each curse and accusation, until the fire was the only thing he could see.

Into the fire, he threw in more memories, now mostly of all the opportunities he had missed in his life because of this blaze. All the friends he could have had, did not his handshake scald them. All the tasks he could have performed, had not the fire destroyed the tools every time he tried. All the family he could have had, had not his flames burned them so badly.

After a few more seconds, he became a mere person consumed with total hatred of all things, for all reasons. And there the fire flickered before him, mocking his anger. In silence, he stood for another hour, unknowing at all how long he had been there. He let his seething writhe up and down every limb, every lock of hair, every inch of skin.

But alas, the fire was undaunted.

All at once, Kershin fell to the ground in a heap. He couldn’t take it anymore. No matter how mad he was at the fire, the fire was the angrier. No matter how hard he ran, the fire was always right beside him. No matter how hard he blamed the fire, the fire still wounded him. No matter how he wanted it to burn him, the fire refused. No matter how badly he wanted it to go away, the fire resisted. No matter how much he wanted it all to just end, the fire wouldn’t let it.

Perhaps he had missed something after all.

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