Chapter
1 – Ignition of a Quest
The world burns. After so many centuries
of rot, violence, and sin, the blood-soaked world dries up to fire. One day,
the sun seemed to grow wings under a bird made of fire descended on earth and
set everything on fire including the moon. Those who are in a state of grace
stay on fire as the divine flame burns the sin within their soul. On the other
hand, those who reject the pains of the flames become what’s known as the
charred and only endure some of the heat of the world, but to no profit to
their soul. These sinners suffer the flames and pains of life for no reason and
cling to their passions for as long as they can in this burning world.
In this world that is meeting its
end, a young woman by the name of Oriana is one of the soldiers of the Church sends
out to bring those outside of it to repentance. She is distinguished from her
peers only by her mohawk flame hair, flame scarf, a distinctive dress of fire
that’s different from the other girls, and the places on her body where she isn’t
on fire. Otherwise, she is no different. She carries the same whip of penance
as the girls and boys do and has no achievements in battle. Her squad and she have been deployed on a hunt to bring back more lost souls, but it seems like
they are the ones who are hunted since they are ambushed on the way to the
place they planned to ambush the charred.
The chaos separates Oriana from the
other soldiers. Seeing that she is alone, the charred gang up on her, but
before they overwhelm her, she takes out a few of them before catching sight of
someone that she thought she would never see again or at least hope not to see
again. Oriana and the young man she knows look at each other in disgust before
he tells the charred around him to go after her.
Before the charred descend upon
her, Oriana is saved by her fellow soldiers and the battle is evened out.
“Isn’t that Umbriel, your ex?” one
of Oriana’s fellow soldiers asks.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Oriana says.
“Don’t show mercy to him.”
“Like I need to be reminded of
that.”
As the fight goes on, the two sides
separate as one goes after the other. Oriana then catches Umbriel and his group
running away and it isn’t until she is a fair distance away that she notices
that she’s the only one chasing them.
At this moment she says to herself
and to God in part, “How did it end up this way? I can’t go back now. I just
wish it wasn’t me doing this by myself.”
Part of herself wants to punish
Umbriel for his betrayal but another part wants to leave him alone and forget
that she even saw him.
“That idiot. Why now of all times?
Why, God, have you made me cross paths with him again?” she continues.
With seemingly no choice but to
continue forward, Oriana does so and comes across a town that the charred are
ransacking for supplies to heal their wounded and forcibly bolster their
numbers by giving the townspeople the choice to join them or die.
Umbriel sees Oriana and gets his
charred to surround her then says, “Leave her to me.”
He takes out his sickle and circles
her before attacking. They exchange attacks then back off.
“Still dedicated to that corrupt church,
are you? When are you going to realize that damned place that our parents
forced us into wants the world to burn and people to embrace pain?” Umbriel says.
“There’s more to it than that,” she
responds.
“Are you sure about that? Those
notched whips are meant to cause the most amount of suffering possible.”
“They cause pain to the soul so
that you remember your reliance on God and wake you up from your sinful mind.”
“As if that makes it better. What
has God done for the world that’s made it better? First, it was rotting, then it
was bleeding, and now it is burning. Has there ever been a point in history
that the earth didn’t smell like death? All of us are born weak because of God
and we either struggle our entire lives while falling to sin and rising from it
or live life how we want to and be punished for it.”
“We are to embrace our weaknesses and
learn from them, which is something that you would know if you weren’t so consumed
by your weakness.”
“Is being consumed by flames that
much better? It’s been so long since I was on fire. How is it being in pain every
moment of your life?”
“It’s better than pretending to be
God and unlike you, I can handle it.”
The two resume their fight and keep
fighting until they reach a standstill. Oriana’s allies finally come to her aid
and join the fight; however, the two ex-lovers continue their fight as if a
battle isn’t happening around them. She manages to injure Umbriel and he
retreats to recover from his wounds.
A commander in her group who is almost
completely clothed in flame says to her, “Go after him while we take care of
these people!”
“Let the coward retreat! He’s
chosen his fate as one of the damned,” Oriana counters.
“Everyone deserves a second chance
or we all don’t now go after him!”
“Why me?!”
“Because you know him best, now go!
That’s an order! No soul will be left behind!”
Knowing that her soul-cleansing
flame will die out if she disobeys her orders, Oriana reluctantly goes after Umbriel.
Since she didn’t immediately chase after him, she is unable to find him and has
to resort to following his footprints to find him. Because the charred are not
one with the divine fire that scorches the earth, they leave footprints that
stain the burned earth like blood in the water. These footprints don’t take
long to fade away, but since Umbriel passed by recently, Oriana can follow
his trail as his footprints disappear. Even so, she can’t see him anywhere.
“Why did you have to be here? Why
am I the one who is forced to go after you? This is a pain worse than these
flames I suffer,” Oriana says to herself as she continues forward hoping that Umbriel
dies from his minor wounds.
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