Wailing, cries of agony, and primal screams of raw emotion permeate the streets of Scozeg in the aftermath of the thunder toad's attack.
A group of people yell at guards and town officials, needing a direction for their anger and grief, other lie in the ruins that were once their homes looking around as if watching ghost move through the wreckage, some lament over their dead alternating between cursing the gods and begging for their mercy, spirits can be seen hovering over their former bonded partners, small evanescent tears flowing down their faces.
While stone faced men and women with hard set jaws, moved between destroyed streets gathering the dead and clearing out debri left behind, because it needed doing and someone had to do it.
Ingrid Brim and Karl, her husband, were part of the last group. Ingrid rushed from patient to patient, treating the wounded and easing the pain of the dying.
Karl carried the wreckage of homes to a pile outside of town, his eyes refusing to look at the ash pile that was his home, where he knew they would find the burnt remains of his beloved children.
His sweet, sweet, daughter, Nadia would probably be found next to the fireplace hands outstretched for the hearth spirit she loved so much.
Heath, his boy. So clever, he had wanted to be a trekker, despite Ingrid’s protests.
Her father had been a trekker, a fairly good one from the few stories he was able to eke out of his wife and mother-in-law.
Karl knew his wife's feelings and understood, but the look in Heath's eyes when he talked about being a trekker, saving people from monsters, diving into unexplored dungeons, discovering lands unseen.It had made him proud.
He had been secretly putting away coin to hire a group of trekkers to help Heath find a strong wild spirit to bond with when he reached adulthood, one that would have kept his son safe. Barely two years and his boy would’ve been a man.
“DEM IT!”, Karl screams, rage, sorrow, guilt, regret, and raw pain claws its way from his throat. Tears fall freely down his face as he flips the cart he was pushing, the grief no longer allowing itself contained.
Karl’s feet lead him to the wreckage that was once his home, now his children’s grave. Falling to his knees he crawls through the former threshold.
He had poured all his love, care, passion, and pride into making their home something his children could be proud of.
Dem it, his boy was going to be a great trekker, and when his daughter had grown he was sure she would have bonded with the hearth spirit, maybe she would have been a cook or an innkeeper, now they were gone.
Falling forward, Karl sat on his hands and knees in the ash, his tears dropping into the ash making clumps of black and gray mud.
Karl’s crying grew silent as his grief consumed him, even the effort to give sound to his sorrow too much.
A sudden wave of pressure in his chest pops, and a small hand wipes at his tears. Karl let a weak smile flicker on his lips before dropping it.
He allowed his eyes to look up and see his own spirit, Batten, a wood spirit, its smooth mahogany face framed by ashen bark contorted into a mirror of his own sorrow.
“Thank you old friend, but I don’t want to be comforted right now.”, Karl croaked out, his voice already hoarse from his outburst.
Batten simply nods, gives him one last pat on the side of the face and returns to his place next to Karl’s soul.
As Karl sits there in what had been his life, his eyes wander over to the only remaining piece of his home, the stone fireplace. With a deep breath, Karl gets to his feet and trudges to the fireplace, placing his rough palm on the stone chimney.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to protect you. I’m sorry you most likely died afraid and confused. I’m sorry that you called for me and I couldn’t answer. I’m so sorry I won't get to watch you grow. I’m….. I’m just….so so sorry. I love you and I always will.”.
Karl stays this way for several minutes, letting his grief and love swirl inside him.
With a nod to himself, Karl lets his hand drop limply to his side.
Turning to go, a soft muffled noise reaches his ear. Karl stops. Holding his breath, focused on listening.
A barely audible “ pa”, whispers out from the fireplace.
Instantly, Karl is there flinging the stone covering across the charred wreckage of the house. Tears flow freely as the most beautiful sight and sound in the world reaches him.
With arms reaching out for him, Nadia with tears streaking down her soot-covered face, lets out another weak, “pa”.
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Heath wades through scorching flames, smoke choking the air from his lungs.
“Nadia!”
“Nadia! Where are you!?”
“Nadi-cough-cough-Na-cough.”
His feet collide with a solid object. Heath crashes to the floor, looking back, horror contorts his face as he sees what tripped him.
His mother’s lifeless body stares at him with vacant eyes, half her face charred and blistered, blood blossoming from a gaping hole in her stomach.
Scurrying backwards pushing with his feet and hands.
Heath’s right hand lands in a pool of hot sticky fluid. Bringing his hand up, he gazes at the stained red palm. Jerking his head back, Heath’s sight falls on the mangled corpse of his father, the face just a formless mass of raw burnt flesh.
His stomach heaves as bile erupts from his agape mouth, sloshes to the floor mixing with the spreading pool of blood.
Heath flees the sight of his dead parents, rushing back into the fire. Heath keeps running as his clothes begin to burn and again still even when his hair lights ablaze.
His directionless flight comes to a halt when he spots Nadia lying on the ground off in the distance.
Heath charges toward his sister, but never gets any closer. Heath watches with silent dread as he watches the hearth spirit appear and floats down next to Naida.
“NOOO!”, Heath tries to scream, nothing comes out.
The spirit seems to hear Heath, and looks at him apologetically.
The spirit touches Nadia and they both glow. The scene shifts and he watches Nadia begin to age rapidly, her skin turning orange, her hair flowing fire.
Then she is suddenly a middle-aged woman, the woman screaming in agony as fire begins engulfing her body before exploding.
The expanding wall of flame overtakes Heath searing the flesh from his bones.
Heath jerks up in bed, a pain radiating across his back.
He looks around to see a bare wooden-walled room, light coming in through a window above a bed across from him.
Gentle, but firm hands seize hold of him, his mother is before him with a caring voice, “ You’re okay. You’re safe. Nadia is safe. Now you need to lay down. You are still healing.”
Heath throws his arm around his mom, burying his face into her chest Heath cries.
“Momma!”, is all he can get out.
Ingrid smiles down at her son, wrapping her arms around him while being careful not to brush against Heath’s burns.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
She holds him while he cries into her chest.
The two are interrupted at a knock at the door.
A creak escapes the door as it opens ever so slightly.
Through the thin gap between the door and its frame, Karl croaks out, “ Can we come in?”.
Ingrid looks at Heath, “ Do you think you can handle it?”
A grin stretches over his face, with silent rapid nodding.
“Come in.”
The door swings open, his father standing in the doorway. A blur lunges at Heath. His mother plucks the blur from the air.
“Heath! Ya awake!”, Nadia, with bandages on her hands and feet, squeals from Ingrid’s arms.
“Yes, my flower. Heath is awake, but he is still hurt. So you have to be gentle. Okay?”, their mother informs her.
“ Ok mommy. I be gentle.”, Nadia promises.
Ingrid lowers Nadia down while keeping a hand on shoulder should she need to grab her quickly. Slowly, Nadia comes to stand by Heath.
Placing her small bandaged hand on his, she beams up at her big brother.
“ Mama wouldn’t let me see ya, cuz she said you were sick. Are ya better now?”
With a sting in his throat and lungs from the smoke damage, Heath wheezes, “I’m much better now that I know you're okay.”
“Papa says ya are a hero.”
Heath looks to his father, tears forming in his eyes. With his own tears Karl nods.
Karl rubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm.
With a clearing of his throat, “Ingrid would you take Nadia down to the mainroom to play with the other children. I wanna speak with Heath.”
Karl looks at Heath and adds, “ Man to man.”.
Ingrid looks at her husband with a frown, but simply nods. Turning back to her son, “ Heath I won’t be far. If you feel any increase of pain, or something doesn’t feel right, you tell your father right away. Promise?”
“I will, promise.”, Heath says, crossing his finger over his gauze wrapped chest.
“Okay, sweetie. I love you. I will be back later to check on you.”, She says, placing a soft kiss on his forehead, holding for a moment.
A single tear splashes against Heath’s skin, before she pulls back.
“Come along Nadia, Papa wants to talk to Heath alone.”
“Mama I wanna stay with Heath.”
“ How about we see if the nice cook downstairs will make you and Heath both caramel apple slices? And after you eat your slices you can bring Heath his. That sound good?”
Nadia scrunches her face, lips puckered moving from one side then the other. Finally, a toothy smile takes hold of her face, “ Alright.”
Nadia runs from the room giggling, her mother chasing after her.
With mother and daughter out of the room, Heath’s father closes the door.
Picks up a wooden chair from against the wall. Placing the chair beside Heath’s bed he lowers his towering frame into the seats.
Neither father nor son say a word, both just staring into their laps.
Unable to stand the tension anymore, Heath turns to his father and is stunned to see something he’s only seen once before, when his grandmother, his father’s mom, had died.
His father was crying, eyes red and puffy, cheeks wet, jaw clenched, lip quivering.
“Pa?”, Heath whispers as he places his hand on his father’s.
His father seizes Heath’s hand in his holding on to it, like a drowning man to a life line.
His father looks into Heath's eyes, with a quivering voice, “ I love you. I don’t say it enough, but I do. I’m proud to be your Pa. Ya really used ya head, hiding in the fireplace. I wouldn’t have thought of it.”.
The corner of his mouth lifts into a half-smile, with a sharp chuckle, “ I wouldn’t fit either.”
Heath laughs too, his face a mirror of his father’s, quivering lip and all.
“What happen? Son, I know it’ll be hard, but will ya tell me?”
“Okay, Pa. When ya and Mom left Naida started to cry……..”
Heath tells his father everything; sending Nadia to play with the hearth spirit, the lighting, the shaking, trying to go to the ceiler, the roof falling, the fire, the spirit trying to bond with Nadia, and him bonding with it instead, then climbing into the fireplace.
All through the retelling, his father simply nodded along and waited patiently when Health would get choked up.
His father pulls Heath into smothering bearhug, not being gentle or mindful of his burns. Health didn’t care, hugging his father back.
Releasing him, Health’s father, with pride in his eyes and a smile, “My boy’s bonded, huh?”
“Yeah…but I’ll never be a trekker now.”
“Why the Agospi not?”
“Pa, it's a hearth spirit. What am I gonna do? Cook for the monsters? Stuck them in at night?”
His father hums, nodding his head, “It is true, I ain’t never seen no trekkers with a hearth spirit as their first bond.”
Health drops his head and then jerks it back up when his father continues.
“I have seen them for a second.”
“Really Pa?”
“ Oh yah. Helps with the cold up north.”
“I ain’t never seen nor heard of a trekker saving four people before even fourteen, either.”
Cocking his head to the side, Heath asks, “ Four? Nadia and who else?”
With a thick finger, his father points at Heath, then himself and behind, “You for starts. Me and ya mother. If anything happened to you or Nadia our lives would be over. I didn’t get tutoring like your Ma, but by my count that’s four.”
His father wiggled four big fingers in front of Heath.
“That’s some great counting Pa.”, Heath said with a smile.
“I know, I know. Should’ve been one of those that talk at the universities back across the sea. Maybe even the Empire. Sure da elves would love me.”
At this Heath laughed and it felt good.
“Pa, why ain’t the hearth spirit come out yet. I would’ve thought it would want to see Nadia.”
“I’m sure it does. But your bond is fresh, it needs to familiarize itself with its new home. You. Besides, ya still hurt. If it popped out you’d lose whatever bonus it gives ya.”
“Bonus?”
His father looked at him in shock, “Are ya telling me, ya haven’t looked at your status yet.”
Heath shakes his head.
“What are ya waiting for, let's hear it.
Ya need to think about them in front of ya face.”
Heath shuts his eyes and envisions the screens he had seen for a second during the fire.
Opening his eyes he saw.
Name: Heath
Health: 67/85
H.Reg: 1.7(1.87)/ph
MP:
75/75
M.Reg: 1.2(1.31)/ph
Stamina:
65/65
S.Reg:
1.3(1.43)/ph
Stats
Base
Spirit Bonus
Str
13
Con
16(17)
+1
Dex
19
Agl
22
Wil
25
Int
15
Wsd
12
Per
10
Cha
11
Lck
17
Spirits Contracted
Hearth Spirit (Fire): Name -Fi-ya
Rank: F Level:1
Spirit Abilities
Hearth Spirit: 20% increase resistance to fire and cold damage.
20% increase to recovery rate while resting.
Magics Available :
Hearth(Novice) - Take the comforts of home with you wherever you may go.
Fire(Novice) - Wield the primordial element of fire.
Spells:
No spells known.