in tenebris est veritas.
Love.
It is the heat of it that always used to surprise her. That sinking which was also a rising and pulling and an expanding. It is an obsession, not unlike other obsessions, which consumes a person until they can think of nothing else. Like spreading infection, doomed to kill. Like an untamed fire, unshackled and devouring. It is beautiful from the inside, but it inevitably ends in destruction.
These were among the quiet musings of the face behind the mask, which was lit in red and amber by the low glow of the vein of magma a dozen feet away. The tunnels converged into a clearing here, not unlike a grove in a forest, though where a pond might have accumulated instead there is a semisolid pool of mostly cool magma. It glows with a slow, hypnotic sort of pulsation, beckoning onlookers to meditate and stare.
A corner of the pool stirs in what at first seems to be a lazy bubble of heat, but after a moment is revealed to be a small lava wyrm. Its blackish eyes blink as it finds the open air, perhaps not even perceiving the masked figure that crouches nearby. It rides the seam between the solid stone and the viscous material within, sliding with a noiseless grace in an oblong path.
Chaele is transfixed by it. Her dark eyes, glinting in the low light, glare at the innocent creature. She cannot decide if she hates it for embodying the heat she yearns to regret, or if she envies the simplicity of its existence. She wonders what it might take to kill such a beast– water, perhaps, or ice. Though a dagger through the neck kills most things, if she could only get close enough to deliver it.
She does try. The magma is hotter than it looks, but surely she can bear it. Crouching low, wincing with effort, blade outstretched, she inches forward. But before she can even try, the creature ducks below the surface again. She curses under her breath at another thing lost. It always goes the same way, and all one can ever do is mourn.
Love. And then, nothing.
It is the heat of it that always used to surprise her. That sinking which was also a rising and pulling and an expanding. It is an obsession, not unlike other obsessions, which consumes a person until they can think of nothing else. Like spreading infection, doomed to kill. Like an untamed fire, unshackled and devouring. It is beautiful from the inside, but it inevitably ends in destruction.
These were among the quiet musings of the face behind the mask, which was lit in red and amber by the low glow of the vein of magma a dozen feet away. The tunnels converged into a clearing here, not unlike a grove in a forest, though where a pond might have accumulated instead there is a semisolid pool of mostly cool magma. It glows with a slow, hypnotic sort of pulsation, beckoning onlookers to meditate and stare.
A corner of the pool stirs in what at first seems to be a lazy bubble of heat, but after a moment is revealed to be a small lava wyrm. Its blackish eyes blink as it finds the open air, perhaps not even perceiving the masked figure that crouches nearby. It rides the seam between the solid stone and the viscous material within, sliding with a noiseless grace in an oblong path.
Chaele is transfixed by it. Her dark eyes, glinting in the low light, glare at the innocent creature. She cannot decide if she hates it for embodying the heat she yearns to regret, or if she envies the simplicity of its existence. She wonders what it might take to kill such a beast– water, perhaps, or ice. Though a dagger through the neck kills most things, if she could only get close enough to deliver it.
She does try. The magma is hotter than it looks, but surely she can bear it. Crouching low, wincing with effort, blade outstretched, she inches forward. But before she can even try, the creature ducks below the surface again. She curses under her breath at another thing lost. It always goes the same way, and all one can ever do is mourn.
Love. And then, nothing.
