Malcear Balfier: Dream of Fire

Oh simple flame

We see you dance

Consuming all

With happenstance

Upon a wick

Or match

Or pyre

You stand for life

Oh sacred fire

To keep us warm

To let us see

Without you

Would we even be?

And though our love

For you is great

Your sad life

We commiserate

You can't be held

You can't be kissed

Both rain and sea

Turn you to mist

You stand for freedom

Hunger

Lust

Lock you away

We must

We must

But when the flame

Got trapped inside

It starved to death

And quickly died

So when confined

Your fate is met

But your last breath

Was brightest yet.

Malcear bolted upright in is straw-mat bed. The inn was bustling with noise down below, and the Dwarf's snores rattled the walls, but that wasn't what had woken him. It was that dream again.

He was deep in the lowest dungeons of Skylight Temple. But the temple had no dungeons.... And it was there he was bound and chained. It was there the white flame was put against his skin, and forced inside him. The song of the priests washed all memory and thought from his mind and he slowly screamed away his past. They told him his new name. They gave him the faith he thought came naturally, sewn like a hot silver seed into his soul. The warm glow of Noreal's love had turned to a cruel burning. A torture disguised as ritual. 

He knew he had trained with a sword his whole life, until it was a part of himself, only now outside the temple in the real world the weapon felt bulky and challenging. He fumbled with arrows when drawing his bow. He couldn't remember the scriptures he had taken to heart his whole life. At this moment all he could do was remember the fire being put in his chest. The white light that engulfed his heart. 

But this couldn't be a repressed memory. The priests were his family. They loved him, and showed him the light. Yet, for the life of him, he couldn't remember the moment he chose to pledge his life to the Northern Goddess. He must have been very young. That was the answer. He convinced himself. Without thinking he reached up to run his hands over the faintest hint of a burnt scar over his left breast. It had been healed long ago. Healed with the magic of Noreal, the truth seeker and the beacon in the night. Magic was a powerful gift to those who knew how to use it.

He did no more dreaming that night.