The cold flame is burning over Crucible, and Pax lies gasping on the Sacellum floor.
The fire glows in the hearth with all its too-many-colours; the prophet-priests crowd around her, hands on her shoulders she can’t dredge up the energy to shake off. There’s light in her eyes and her body feels wrecked and they won’t stop talking and for a moment it’s all so sadly, sickly familiar that she digs her nails into the floorboards, carves crescent-shaped dents into the soft wood.
The wood is already burned. There’s a path seared through the walkway, blackened and charred; the fire smells clean and bright but the little chapel stinks of smoke.
Not just the chapel – Pax’s eyes are adjusting, and the rest of them is adjusting, and they can feel the holes singed into the fabric of their skirt, pressed against the raw skin of their knees. The fabric is torched, the weave of it coming apart under the clumsy press of their fingers. Damn it. And it’s not just the skirt, neither – it’s all a fog but they remember other things. Their bow’s gone to shit. Doesn’t matter too much – not like it was a good one. Not like their old one, left out in the other world. The skirt tears with a sound like snapping twigs. They blink.
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.
Pax looks back at the shadow of the Sacellum once. The Flame is unmissable as it burns in the Isles’ writhing, sunless sky; if she squints, she can kid herself into thinking it’s close enough to count. It shifts constantly, jagged and garish, glaring as if with revulsion – but at least it’s looking at her.
"My good friends, a most jubilant time is once again at hand. The Flame of the Maniacs burns bright, and we must celebrate! Now is a time for indulgence. Partake of the wine and the Greenmote! Cast off your clothing and your inhibitions! Sing and dance until the sun rises! Feast until your belly is full, then fill the wine goblets once more and toast our fortune. We shall raise our goblets to the great Sheogorath, may he rule the Isles for another thousand years. We shall raise our goblets to the Demented. Though misguided they are, we are all children of Arden-Sul's teachings and therefore equal. And finally, we shall raise our goblets to the great: poet, thespian, author, lover, virtuoso, and artisan extraordinaire. To be a Maniac is to love and be loved. Spread the compassion and the warmth throughout New Sheoth and beyond. Smile at your fellow man. Help him when he falls. Remember, these are the times of mirth and cheer. These are the times of Mania!"
Sheogorath: Ah,Dervenin , you see how the Sanguine picks me out for special greeting?
Dervenin : No, my lord.
Haskill: I saw it, my lord.
Sheogorath: And what is your name, little fellow?
Haskill: My name is Haskill , my lord.
Sheogorath: Then I shall call you... Haskill .
Haskill: And I shall call you "my lord," my lord.
