Topic: Beyond Control

Kruger · Date: 2013-11-03 01:55 EST

(Many thanks to Koru who worked through this sequence with me. The help you gave was fantastic and great play.)

Nothing was the same tonight, something grating at the inside of his skull, and it had none of the lilting tones of creation he knew. This one thing pricked at his nerves and had him boiling with an anger he neither understood nor knew what to do with. It was part of him, and it moved through his synapse like a wave of power that threatened not to be contained within his body. He was holding on to it now, but he did not wish to. Around him the place seemed normal, every tool in place.

The fires came alive, dark and breathing, a flickering mirror to the beast that he held just beneath the surface. Wrath and ruin would come tonight. He could hear them calling him to their side. He had heard them before and resisted. This night though...nothing was the same. He looked into that blaze before him always amazed by the way this place had accepted him. Tonight he demanded its attention, this night was his. He would burn the world with his thoughts tonight, he would shatter universes with his hammer blows. Tonight he would create an exquisite death, a means to bring about pain to match the anger he was just barely holding in check. His fingers caressed the ingots he had in his stores, running from one to another until he found the one who mirrored him most. She would do, adamantine the metal of the drow. How fitting this would be for his making it always held such fury for the methods used to extract it. Those dark priestesses tainted the purity with their blood rituals.

The smile on the smith's face had turned feral as he contemplated the shape of the thing. Wickedly curved it would be, a crescent of waiting oblivion for those in its path. The hand that wielded her would know joy from the pains he inflicted, Kruger would know joy again as the blood spilled and the bodies mounted. What is this web that fell over his mind the intricacies linking together point by delicate point' He could wait no longer, feeding the ingot into the flames and stoking them with a half thought and the steady pull of the chain on the bellows. Those wheat colored eyes finding the ingot within and watching like a sadistic mother watches her children fall and cry.

Red and orange glow covered the alley ways he walked casting unnatural hues against walls and the cobble, his ink black hair with a slight scarlet section spread thin embers from the flame he slept in still dotting him in every few strands. His eyes, like orbs full of flames, scanned the night crowd of the market. The heavy and angry beat catching those sensitive ears like an echo, pulling him toward the smith like a moth to a flame.

Flowing into the center like the moving flame he was, hearing countless tongues and voices and understanding none. He wore the same dull expression one would come to expect from an animal with all but small hints of the likeness of a child. The sounds overpowering all the voices he approached and silently slipped into the warmth of the building eying the fire and the man pounding away at the metal. He would silently slip his way into the forge without a sound, without a word. The flame was his home and it called him like a mother to her child

Kruger · Date: 2013-11-03 01:57 EST

The pounding in his chest was a heart, which threatened to kill him if he dared stop his current endeavor. His brows dropped low, eyes closing even as his jaw set up. He saw those green eyes of her again, looking on in horror and pain. Was their pain from him' It couldn't be so, he would feel shame if that were the case. This night he felt only a deep hate and he couldn't even say what he hated. Mostly he hated that look in her eyes, he hated its cause and he hated its effect on him. When his eyes opened the wrath within him was mirrored in that blaze, and the metal within was squealing out its pain as the heat abused it without remorse.

That was Kruger this night, no remorse for the things that were happening. Nothing could touch that iron ball that held his compassion. It was locked away in the depths of a mind that he feared to let go fully. An ancient song began to vibrate through his head, he sang the words in a language that the metal would understand, and it hated him for it.

It hated everything now, the flames the air that breathed life into it. It hated the very shape that kept it from becoming what the singer wished of it. It felt the presence of the other, and only understood that it was more flame, and pain. That metal knew what would come, the beating it would endure and it feared for its current life even as it longed for a new one.

The flames wrapped the young pup engulfing him in its warm open embrace. The flames felt cold to his flesh and he longed for the burn he had felt when the villagers dressed as wolves had gave him to Reula that death bringing and hateful burn. The man gave the same feeling as the villagers had the night they offered him to the demoness and he hated the man for that, his hate began to mix and torture the stones of the forge and bring hate from them as well all wrapping together in the extended fingers of the flames.

His heart beat taken back to sitting in the fire pit before he was changed into what he is. His soul screaming along with his body for release, but the demoness held him in her hands knowing she would not release him to the embrace of death. The hatred and pain becoming the hands the flames reached toward the metal grabbing it as he had wringing out its screams of agony and turning it as well into something it had once not been. The twisting of the metal under the hammer, the silent screams of memory from the child and the pounding of the chaotic man all wrapped to grab the metal like thousands of chards and burning hands to chastise it and pull it into hell never to return. The stones in some parts melted from the mortar that held them and the hiss of the flame was like that of the screaming child.

Kruger · Date: 2013-11-03 01:58 EST

It had happened before, the flames responding to his need. He didn't claim understanding he was grateful for it. He needed their support this night, he needed their deep burn to quell the fires inside. Euphoria took him to hear that call to feel the elements lash back at him as he was rough with them. The burning inside had him tempted to reach his bare hand in to the flames, to caress that brightly glowing victim of his darkened whim. He was no fool though, that temptation came often and was as often rejected.

The tongs came to hand, a simple reach over his head to pull it from its place. The forked ends closed down on the square that burned so hotly it hurt his eyes to look at. It suffered and it longed to make others pay for that suffering. There was resistance though from the flames, a strange thing that hadn't happened before in Kruger's memory. He could understand though as the flames lashed upwards with their innocent cry of 'everything burns, give this one to us and let us burn her.' He pulled more roughly, possessive of the torture he meant to give. The heavy hammer was reached for, the wide peen on a heavy head that would force the metal to take a new shape, live a new and more tortured life. It would have many lives this night, many folds to make it scream with its treatment. Those screams were his to give and the sound would become a part of him, and a part of her. There was a flash again of those eyes in his head and the hammer head came down to scatter embers into the darkness.

Burning was what the villagers had made him to do and he was an expert at burning everything. He screamed inside his new found hatred for the metal and all things around him burning him more. His being became the flames his eyes became the smoke and his ears became the hammer blows. The young pup had become the forge its self. His hatred became its hatred his pain became its pain and so to with the memories. He was the incarnation of fire and tonight he would burn everything that was put inside of him. Lashing out with his red tongues that now flew at the tongs he warped the metal tasting every inch calling for it to release, to become as water and slide down into the coals for him to devour. To swallow the soul of this metal as the demon had so long ago to him. To dig his claws into the gut, tear at the flesh and run his scalding tongue from its navel to its skull. All as he had been done. The pain, fear and hatred, longing for death, and the scorn of those who watched, spitting and laughing at his pain. He wanted it wander alone, to know the pain of taking life. He clawed at the bottom of the embers below his casting his heat underneath in a blaze of azure hatred before it rose to the sky in the red faces of hate and death.

He spotted the score marks across the metals face. He sang as he worked the hammer pounding his rhythm slowly each beat a deliberate note to maintain the balance of the ingots thickness. It stretched even as it cooled but Kruger would not let it become too wide. The first bend came over the edge of the anvil a hard ninety degree turn that he made doused with the welding flux and the blows would now rain down to make the ends touch and the gap between become nonexistent. The metal's cries melding into the song of the smith like some baroque harmony that hurt the ears. He would drive the new shape deep into the coals again, to pick up more of the carbon that they were comprised of. He worked those bellows again and felt that same euphoric blast through his senses. The eyes in his head continued third suffering...what was the cause...how do I kill it?

Kruger · Date: 2013-11-03 01:59 EST

The heat rose as his fury began to rise with the bellow's blow over him. He pushed his head into the coals deeper and burned the night of the sacrifice still etched deep in his subconscious. His tail split into four and his eyes burned crimson against the bright glow of the coals all he could do was scream in his mind his voice still silent and the collar burning in the flames. Soon confusion washed over him as hi burning was pushed from him again and he locked. Had he been denied?

Hatred, remorse, fear, longing, pleading for the pain to stop, looking to ones mother and wailing against the flames, the voices, the laughter....the revenge all was put into the flames he made. He made the black dripping sickness he felt that night a part of the coals he laid in. his flame dying in intensity but burning as hotter against his building hatred. Taking a white flame or a blue flame as its description was wrong the only way to describe it was that of hatred burning its evil black hue Hue, it was indiscernible to the eye of a human but to the writhing child it was clear he saw the black tar like hands reaching for the man and the blade. He screamed 'Burn them all!' and reached ever further hoping to grab the object of its masters hate and as so it grabbed the blade in hands dripping with death crushing hope from inside it and filling the void with the same black hate he felt.

Burning void, the flames turning as he needed them to do. Looking into them was like looking into the lightless depths of the underdark. There was no defining line between it and the world of the seen. It seemed to fade in and out of view with the jumping flickers of the flames. Now the real work would begin, the previous screams of the ingot, those wails as it was beaten into shape were nothing to what it would endure enveloped in the void that burned hotter than light. Time was not acknowledged beyond a need to know when to pull the rod, and when to put it back. The smith had grown used to those insistent flames as they struggled to hold to the blade that was taking shape.

Every pull had new marring to the metal, and every reinsertion to the flames would have it perfectly resurfaced. It no longer mattered what the source, for his heart continued its beating, threatening if he gave up in this task. Still within him the need of the green eyes, now he could see the flames of her hair as she looked at him. There was in him a sensation of being torn apart, as though a part of him that wanted to stay at his side was being pulled at. It was being forcibly torn from his protection and he knew its confusion and fear. Confusion, fear, and hate these were the emotions in his voice the themes in that song that had his hammer falling bending the blade into a wicked smile, or the worst of frowns. It was both, it was neither...and it was leaving him empty of any sympathy for the feelings of the blade, or its victims.

Kruger · Date: 2013-11-03 01:03 EST

The voice! He could hear the voice from above the coals. It tore at him the feeling beating into him as the children that circled the post he was tied to do as they sung. He raged under the coals, his fury echoing in the flame to become the claws of the great wolf tearing at the metal above him, etching the same gashes and blood curdling cuts he made into the bottom of the forge. He had fallen into his memory crashing to the ground and clawing against the walls screaming.

The freedom of death eluded him once but he swore he would kill whatever brought this feeling on in him he would bring it to the pit of despair before slaughtering it and dropping the remains inside. Tearing again at the blade like the claws of a predator devouring its prey. The shape of the blade burned into his mind he poured the eternal hatred he felt for the men and women he had for so long hidden this hate from the hunger for blood and the desire to kill into the blade.

Drawing, the smith had done this more times than he could ever remember clearly, stretching the metal longer yet keeping its width down. More imperfections this time as the scimitar came from the flames, except that they meant something and he had missed it until this moment. The scrawled across the blade like the anchors of a spider's web. Kruger hated them and it, yet he would complete the job. His heart would allow no less from him. The chisels came out his finest bladed. The hammer of choice changed to something smaller, more controllable for fine detail work. Bright orange the flat of the blade and metal parted for the chisel easily as though the pattern were there already just waiting to be uncovered in tedious slow circles spiraling out along those anchor lines. The work took long because it needed to be done right.

Every link to the anchor seemed to hold a memory a cruelty and he could only place half of them in his own thoughts. They were all linked, each of them though it was unclear how, the hate of his body and mind poured deep into each cut of the chisel, every tap of the mallet on its head. He still felt that tearing sensation and knew it to be the cause of his hatred. He would give this weapon his fullest attention and never seem to be rid of the sight of her eyes staring but not at him. A final trip into the heat, it would aid the tempering.

He was sitting among the coals his crimson eyes grown hard his hair all standing on end and the depths of his true hatred touched after a decade of farce. His black flames littered with the lies and sweet words of the people of the village all while every lap it made at him screamed the memory of betrayal and the broken heart of one given over to such a mob by his own family etched into the flames and in turn the blade. He was a monument in the center of the flames to that of the hatred life had taught him. He was in all ways broken now, but the blade thrust within sight ignited the final ember that burned within him. With a cold and sickening smile he reached as the demoness had all those years ago and touched the blade with his own hand, not heavy or hard just a light touch that turned the already hot metal a glowing crimson, this touch represented the betrayed, the hated, the lost, and the killers. He found it fitting and though his mask sat in a smile under the paper thin visage sat the cold black eyes of one touched by the dark goddess and forsaken.

Kruger · Date: 2013-11-03 01:05 EST

Koru poured his last pools of hatred into the blade and the blood that soaked his hands filled every hole along the blade, the etchings in the hilt and the soul the once single metal had. He branded it with a small mark in the metal, the burn of Reula. The two now bore a bond of hatred and memory and the want to exact vengeance on those who wronged them. This blade carried no hope, no wish for peace and no mercy just as he did. The fires died down but the heat remained and to the eyes of crimson flame he could see the black sickening hatred leaking from the blade. It was done

Kruger watched the blade, it shouldn't go too hot this time, that could destroy everything he had done...how long had it been? First cooling, a quick one to harden the outer shell. Nothing had changed he still held the hate in him though his body was weakening at holding it in. The second cooling would be the key, the heavy oil that would cool the metal slowly and make the temper. The squelching steam released was like that call he kept hearing, the ghost in his dreams, his nightmares.

Time, and the fires never died, he had needed no fuel to be added, a mystery but not one he would question...not now anyway. Sound was important here in this place where the vibrations would be funneled back above the anvil and the smith who worked above it. He would know when it was time. Knew it would be soon, the hilt created yesterday came to his eye. He only just recalled even making it.

Mithril, he loved working in the expensive metal. It held details so well, was durable once it was finished. Mostly he loved the look of it. That silver sheen that caught the eye no matter how high ones seat or caste. He should have realized as he took it up, the lady spider Queen Llolth resting in his hand. Eight legs spread out in pairs, the four from the back spread wide and forming the hilt. Four more stretched from her upper body and held to the jewel that rested in the pommel. It was green, a dark jade and cloudy. Had he shaped it' He wondered as it was in the shape of one large tear. The bath in oil was nearly the finish, yet he still needed to attach the handle. It went in as though he had created it with the measurements already in mind.

The snick of spring-loaded rivets falling into place on the tang. Horrors were in the metal and Kruger could only feel that tearing sensation. The blade hadn't helped, the hilt made it worse inside him, and those eyes were growing dull in his vision. He cast the sword away moving back towards his anvil back to all he knew and loved even as he dropped to his knees and rolled to his side, holding to his chest as his heart burned with a loss he couldn't understand.

Emerging from the coals came the wolf, embers dropping from his pelt and fur. Each step dropping more embers dropped and the raging inferno that surrounded him burned the ground as he stepped to the sword. Biting into the hilt he lifted the sword in his jaw his side glance to Kruger burning as the inferno inside the forge had. He gave a deep exhale blowing embers and bright orange light against the smith shop and him and made his way out into the market every step leaving flames.

Koju's glow stayed bright all the way through the market being accented by the now cherry glow of the sword between his jaws. Even against the glow caused by the heat the sword held its form, it was now a part of Reula just as he was. Kokujin, he named the sword what the villagers had called him in a bitter form of irony. The sword was his rage and anger toward then and now it bore the same humiliation from that name he did. With the sword in tow he disappeared into the night.