As the voice said, I had been a fool.

The flames, the fire, the searing inferno, it never destroyed me, killed me or tore my very own self apart, it simply cleansed, yes, it cleansed me. Like a purifying fire can cleanse the dirt from brillinat ores so did the flames to my own self. They marred this, this useless hull off of my being, they made me understand what I really am.

The heat, the hot scars that cleft and created ridges into my soul, they were all necessary. For the greater good, for the oncoming inferno, it had to be done.

I was baptized by the fire anew, reshaped by their blazes and turned into something much grander. Confusingly I had not adapted to the fire's volatile temper, instead I became... rational, sane. It was bizarre, truly bizarre. But something pricked at my mind, yes the vocie, the voice of hope. Fire was chaos, living destruction, but I knew there was another meaning, closely entangled with hope, to fire. The aspect of fire, it breathes, lives and grows; it destroys and razes life from its ground, ash is left. Ash..... there was this distinct something, on the tip of my... tongue? I was unsure how to define myself.

For a moment I let the thoughts sink in, they sagged into a dense mud of uncertainity and endless questions. What was I? The flames and pain, purgatory; yes but also no. I was more, I could feel it. Where do I come from? The idea I had been created, born, and was not simply 'there' stemmed from the absence of any memories of an eternal past I should have experineced before this... punishment?... Tribulation? Was it the darkness that bore me? Another vague answer, yes and no. I was unsure what to make of the situation.

Since I could control the flames I and the voice became one, we were one after all. It gave me back parts of my sanity, as if everything that the fire consumed was only locked away, but why? Why have I locked away my own self? This much I could reason as 'I was hiding myself, wasn't I?'. But something more meaningful peaked over this sudden insight. A mountain's peak covered by clouds, such was my mind right now.

The questions reared their ugly heads, lampooned me and my ignorance. A red wave surged from my core, they dared! I was furious and the flames reacted with me. They roared like starving beasts and pounced onto my mind, ripped apart every-and anything that bothered me. 'No, I am in control.', I urged myself and began to stifle the flames, tame them and keep them in check. It was hard work, the fire was more destructive than I could ever hope to imagine. They were unbound by anything besides myself and I only worked as a small tether that gave the flames an illusion of imprisonment. If they wanted to, those sentient flames, they could easily penetrate whatever defense I could muster to restrict them. But for now they kept low, purred with menacing crackles whenever I wielded them.

Too many questions. This was my life, if one could call such a miserable existence as such. I was nothing more than a prisoner in the darkness. The fire was one thing but the darkness was something entirely else. It had no emotion it was not even 'dark' in the sense of absence of light, it was a nothingness filled to the brim by the void. Paradox, eh? I know but there was nothing that could explain it. Pain, I could couch it in words. Fire, it was something far more than primal, the knowledge of it, it was inside me all the time. But this?! This was something that drifted apart from the realm of existence. Limbo, Nirvana, Chaos. It's purest form was a unstable void, something threatening to spring forth every second. Eyes and ears, the darkness had those. Unlike the fire, a part of myself, this darkness was an entity for itself and it ignited fright inside me.

I shifted my thoughts to and fro, away from the darkness but I was pulled back in. The darkness was intriguing. dangerously intriguing. When whatever I could call myself and constructed my body reached forward I felt a numbing sensation in my mind. Ticklish at first but the more I fought back at the alarm bells that sounded through my being the intenser the tingle became, from a little numbness to agonizing pain that could dwarf the fire's torture.

In time I learned to fear the darkness, to not touch or even get close to it. But it was all around me! What was I supposed to do?! So I kept myself busy with questions that need to be tend to.

Images, wording, fragments of memories. They all popped out of the fire, they were from a time before the fire consumed them and twisted them. The fire retched it all out when I commanded it. The idea to force the flames to let whatever they wolfed down resurface came intstinctive. Something in those memories called out to me, something that had to prove itself as helpful.

But everything was charred, crumpled and tattered. Nothing of worth, only the faint idea that something in there could be the key to many questions. Where the idea ccame from, I can't say. They simply come and go whenever they want. It was like a glimpse back in time where I saw things that were forgotten shortly after. I was a forsaken existence, another idea that blossomed from bright flashes of memories and thoughts. But as bright as they were as short did they last.

I was scrutinizing over the various questions and problems, but they kept being spewed out from who knows where. I got the answer to one but two took its place. AH! another flash of inspiration. A hydra! Slay one of its head and two will regrow, those questions were oddly resembling a hydra. They would multiply the more I answered, felled, an uncanny property if you ask me.

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And see! There it was again. I knew what to make of these questions but why, how and from where did I get the answer. A hydra! A mythical creature, there was no such thing in this void, there was no such thing extant but I knew there was something that believed in their existence. What were they? They had a name... they... they were knowledgable but more so greedy and egoistical. Fickle creatures of deceit, only the rarest were beings worthy of trust.

What were they called....

They had a name...

A foreboding drumming bommed in my mind, it was the same, the same with the darkness. It even exceeded the writhing agony of the darkness. I was feeling unwell, nauseous, I wanted to vomit with my incorporeal body, disgust. I was DISGUSTED!

The drumming got louder, the next epiphany was close. I felt it rush into my mind, overspeeding and turning into a blur of information. So sudden, my 'breath' balked, the flames were silenced, there was no pain, there was nothing anymore. Even the darkness was just background at the moment.

Humans.

That's how they were called. Hum... There was something. Humans... hahahah... they are funny, all red, covered in gore and flesh. Yes, they are indeed funny........ ahahahaha...

Humans. Little more than apes. Just a bit more than primates. And yet so endlessly more arrogant. It was comical. How could that be?

Humans are so... weak, need protection, they are helpless. Yes, humans don't amount to much, with their warped grimaces and masks of betraying love; humans are... despicable, small, vain, conceited, impotent, evil, scathing, destructive, truculent, hateful, bastardous, treacherous, insidious, spiteful, disgusting, ignorant,pitiful, wretched, malignant, doomed...; they are the bane of existence. They need to be wiped from the face of the world...

Humans... HUMANS! I hate them. I don't know wh-! *!!!!!!* It was them... IT WAS THEM! They took it away from me, they took them away from me, ripped them apart from my soul, from the special place I kept them inside! It was none other than the humans! THE HUMANS, WHO ELSE?! How... HOW DARE THEY?!

"HUMANS!!!!! -You will all perish-!!!!!!."

They took it from me... hehehehe... So I will take from them.... Hahahahaha.... I will pURgE them, EVErYONeeeE. 

"AHAAHAHAHAAHAHA!"

With a final manical laugh the curtains openned for the first act and I bathed in the lights of the stage that would soon be mine. Perish, so it shall be.... I will let the flames rain upon them.