#arctus

It's all a fog. Nothing’s clear since the garrison courtyard – since staring up at the blossom of flame writhing phantasmagorical in the brazier and faced with another stupid fucking choice that wasn’t one at all. (Really? Are we really doing this? What even is this?) They’d been mad about it, they think – not like that’s new – but (It’s something that burns and it’s better than the alternative.) The warden-women of Cylarne gave them a boost, which they suppose was nice. Then they’d crawled into the brazier and swallowed the fire whole.

Or it swallowed them. Or both. Something happened; something bewildering, something surreal. Pax doesn’t know what because Pax doesn’t fucking know anything anymore – but his body feels like a ruined city, people crying out from the mess of him. The fire licked his skin raw and ran through his veins and sewed itself into the lining of his stomach, carved a space for itself in the soft feast of his organs, and it hurt like hell to bear – flame roiling around him like some horrid halo, the colours kaleidoscoping in his eyes (green-gold glitter and boiled lolly hues and the light of the burning sun and the darkest pits of the ocean and all), tearing apart his body and fitting itself into all the seams – it was a nightmare, it felt like some kind of dying, suspended animation, an endless immolation – and he feels so lonely in his body now without it.

Like the mortar has come out of all the cracks. The veins drained of blood, the lungs clamped tight like blacksmith’s bellows, air rattling around in the hollow core of him. He is more wreckage than person. And he’s lying on the Sacellum’s wooden floor, staring into the hearth, the prophet-priests dragging him up to sitting. He hears his dress tearing a little again, crumbling at the touch. It’s definitely ruined.

(What isn’t?)

“Why didn’t,” he tries, licks his lips. (They could barely talk in the midst of it – flame curling out of their mouth in space of words, their voice strange and raspy and aching, too scattered to conjure up much to say. But they remember begging, yelling at the prophet priests to take it – take the bloody fire, it’s here, take it! They hadn’t wanted to be rid of it – felt kind of like they were dying, and also like they’d never die; as long as the flame danced around them they’d live forever. They wouldn’t be alone. It romps in the hearth, now, giving light to the whole city, and Pax – and Pax is feeling that horrible rotten recognition again. Pax wants to tear up the floorboards.) Pax rasps, “Why didn’t you fucking help me?”

“We did,” says the one in red, a soft-edged spot of blood against the dust motes in the light; the other one, pinched-faced and hard-knuckled, tips his head and hedges, “We tried. You weren’t quite here.”

Pax is here now.

Pax is more here than they’ve ever been anywhere.

She sits up, with the help of hands on her back she’d shake off if she were sure she’d stay upright without them. “All hell,” she says, scrubs the back of a hand over her eyes. “Fuck’s sake. That was not worth it.”

That’s just a fucking lie. It was worth it. Pax doesn’t even know what it’s trying to be worth – barely knows what the Flame does, what it’s supposed to do, why it’s so important (for morale, or a symbol of Sheogorath’s power, or maybe just a city-wide heater). Doesn’t know anything about it beyond what it did to them. It doesn’t fucking matter. What it does isn’t the point.

(She’ll take absolutely fucking anything that doesn’t send her back. She’ll rip the Isles apart with her teeth before she has to look over her shoulder.)

The flame curls in the grate, beautiful, glowing. A pair of hands leave their shoulders, and the prophet-priest with the vestments the colour of pond algae slips down the blackened walkway and out the door.

“I knew it would light for Dementia,” the blood-spot one chatters excitedly, adjusting the press of his hands so she’ll be a bit more comfortable. (She hates him for it, a bit.) “All the time I’ve tended –”

I don’t care, Pax wants to say, but she can’t really be assed, so she just sits slumped on the wooden floor, digging the cracked nails of one hand into the fissures between the boards, watching the hearth. She reaches out and dips a bare hand into the flames.

It doesn’t feel nice. The fire still scorches bitter as a blade in the gut. But it doesn't burn. It curls around their fingers, squirming in their palm like a beating heart. The prophet-priest stops, startled; cocks his head and presses a finger to it, too – pulls his hand back just as quickly, hissing, and sticks his finger in his mouth to distract from the pain. He’s annoying. Pax ignores him; the fire twirls like it’s mocking him, licking at the ink in Pax’s wrist.

(He wants to crawl into the hearth. The fire dances, ravenous, incandescent; it glows the red of blood and gemstones, harsh metal-gold, its edges sharp and glittering as broken glass. Pax could cut himself to pieces on it; he would let it consume him until there was nothing left.)

(It’s hard to say, because they don’t know how long it took to get here, because Sheogorath would never give a straight answer in the first place – but they’re pretty sure that they’re past the point of no return. Even if they hadn’t eaten the mad-god’s pet flame, the time has marched inexorably onward, inescapable even here; the doors are most likely closed by now. No-one is getting in; no-one is getting out. Pax is trapped in here with the rest of them. There is no going back.)

(Good.)

The Sacellum door opens again. The blood-spot looks back; Pax doesn’t. The prophet-priest at the door says, “I’ve found a guard to escort you back to the palace.”

Still held up by the red-robed one’s hands, up to their elbow in flame, Pax grumbles, “I don’t need a minder.”

(None of them believe it.)

So Pax gets up, eventually. Pulls their arm back from the flame even as it grasps at them (and all hell, they think before they squash it down, it’s nice to feel wanted, even by this) and trails back down through the pews to the purple city-warden waiting impassive by the door. She doesn’t try to touch them, and praise fucking be for that, because Pax might have actually shoved her if one more person put hands on them, shaky legs be damned; she just leads them out through the city streets in silence and begins to take them up the steep, geometric tangle of the stairs.