Sorcerer, chapter 1

Chapter 1
The days were long, but the nights were far too short.
His nightmarish past was manifesting itself in true nightmares. Pitchforks were raised and thrown. The fire, the blessed fire had turned on him. He defended himself from sword, spear, arrow, and a collective consciousness bent upon his destructio`n.
He dreamed of death and murder, of hate and broken love, and of the fire. The fire that was in him. The fire that would never leave his soul, however many times he attempted to pull it out.
The voices of the dead called out to him in his dreams...

MONSTER DAEMON.
KILLER MURDERER
The voices of the dead. The voices of the damned. The voices he damned to Hell and darkness with the very fire that was consuming him inside and out.
“Help me! Please help me! Zustaske save me, please!” It sounded so very far away, like something that was in the background. Yet those words would haunt him always. And as he dreamed he remembered what happened.
“ANGE! I’ll save you, I swear it. Let me go you monsters!” He was being held by four men, two held his arms and two held his legs. He was suspended above the ground by these men. They were going to kill his family, those bastards, they were all he had left! The fall of the order had left him with nothing.
They laughed, “You are the monster, sorcerer. It is your kind that have destroyed us. You kill all you see fit with no heed of our laws. Who’s next? The king? Our wives? Our children?”
He remembered the fire. It came through him as he had never known. It burned his face, dried his eyes, and scarred his body as it came. He felt the pillar of fire as it left him. Draining his power. He saw the men disintegrate even as they were calling him a monster. He saw the whole village disappear before the fire. This power was something he had never experienced. It was terrible, it was destructive, it was evil, but it was also magnificent. A feeling of pure ecstasy.
And then he heard the screams. The soul ripping screams! The terror in their voices showed him what a monster he truly was. But one scream stood out. It was shrill and scared him deep.
It was-
Zustaske du Reclu a Verin awoke in a cold sweat.
“ANGE!!” he screamed, “Oh god, oh god what have I done?” He looked around, he recognized the small simple yurt, with the small hand made table sticking out of the wall. The fire pit in the middle of the room still smelled of last night’s fire, and the elaborately carved doorsill and window.
He was in his hut. Not a house and certainly not a home. His home was destroyed with the city. He wasn’t in the city. “The city is gone,” he told himself with his eyes still taking in his hut, “The city is gone, you destroyed, it’s your fault, the dream people were right, you are a monster. But the city is gone!”
But a part of him said, just as it said every morning, that it wasn’t true, he was here to study the lights and divine from the fire. Ange is at our house with breakfast on the stove, and our child is getting off to school, about now, and he’ll be disappointed that he didn’t get to see me before he left.
He focused on that idea, and fell into it.
“Right, well I ought to get going, then, if I’m going to make it back before noon.”
He looked around the room one more time, having completely forgotten his dream, got dressed in his orange robes, then took them off, deciding that he didn’t want to get funny looks in town, and instead got into his cloth pants and shirt. He decided that he ought to bring a gift for his son, so he grabbed the crystal he had found in the fire ling ago. He believed this crystal to be a powerful alloy, he had found after one of his divinations in the fire.
It was three hours walk to the city and he was there by noon. He was unsettled by the complete lack of life in the forest. Not a bird sang or a frog croaked. But it was almost midday.
He was within the sight of the city he saw a plume of smoke. He smiled, some one was at the stove.
He walked in sight of the town and froze. It was gone. All that was left were stone foundations of houses, all else lay in ruin, of didn’t lay at all. X’s spotted the ground in the foundations. And he remembered, it was the fire. He heard the voices of the dead once more. They were taunting him. Telling him what he’d done. How he murdered them all, and then killed his wife.
He fell to his knees, head in his hands, sobbing uncontrollably. But then there was thought. A smoke plume! That meant someone was alive, maybe Ange…
He got up and ran to where he sensed the fire. He got there in seconds, tears still wet on his face. But when he looked around there was nobody there. Then he heard it. A heartbeat. He turned toward it, ready to incinerate it, for it was not the heart beat of his one love.
They were soldiers, out fitted with a sword and a shield, and some of them even a spear of a pike. Then there were archers all around in the ruins.
A man stepped forward, he carried no sword but instead had to large shield covered in spikes. His arms must have been huge to hold that kind of weight.
“We are looking for a man, a sorcerer, by the name of Verin. Could you take us to him?”
Time slowed down. These men were after him, and they had destroyed the city to find him.
“YOU BASTARDS, YOU DID THIS, YOU KILLED HER!” and with that he let loose a stream of fire that melted all there blades to a liquid steel. The archers fired in shock, but there arrows burned up long before they could have reached.
He almost gone into the fire, almost burned out. A flame that the wind decided had burned too long. His emotions were high, so high he was looking down on himself even as he looked down on himself, feeling so justified in killing all these bastards.
But there were those who would never let him forget, or place blame on another. Some that kept him real, and sane. It was the voices that were there to bring him back, and that is just what they did. They reminded him who it was that had slain the innocent, and the righteous. And who killed her…
He fell to the ground with a thud, and cried as he had never cried before.
This is the last time I shall live in these illusions! He realized, for he could never forget now. And he was sad for it.
But then he remembered, he was surrounded.

To Be Continued…