Flassche:The prince who burned(open)

[DarkEnigma]

Please refrain from replying directly to this thread, Pm me if you are interested.

Title:The prince who burned

Excerpt:
Would you sacrifice your soul to cling to life once more in hopes of finishing what you could not in life?
We follow the tale of a tortured soul who’s very hatred brings enough warmth to draw the dead back into the realm of the living, syphoning of his hatred and his heat.
The journey will take you from the realm of the dead into war, political intrigue and a dynasty that has been stained vile from corruption and betrayal.

Content:
-Necromancer/minion
-Multiple characters
-Drama/dark-romance
-Court/political play
-Possible snuff/gore
-Possible necrophilia

Setting:
Medieval

My Character(s):
I would play the feared Prince of ash, a soul tormented when he was still living and now out for revenge. He would be a sort of necromancer, yet relying on his burned nature to bind the undead to his service. In a world where global war and famine reigns, dark forces and necromancers attack the innocent, he is but a small pawn in the greater story, yet one that will enthral the reader.

Beyond him I will be playing a large cast of side characters on both spectrum to enrich the world and the plot.

Your Character(s):
The story was written with both males and females in mind.
Their genders, ages, personalities, physical traits would be up to my character to decide.
The character starts off as one of the dead, now brought to life. Wounds/injuries can be healed through the clay/earth they were buried in, or simply remain a wound if you prefer those elements.

Inspiration for the scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_attYP-cLPU

[DarkEnigma]

Prologue

Run, hide, run, the Prince of ash is here.
We used to laugh when he did burn, yet now we have to fear.

We burned the prince with wood and flame and danced around his screams.
Now, flame and ash deep in his heart, he haunts our very dreams.

He reaps the living, collects the dead, his touch defiles us all.
No man nor woman is safe tonight, no soul escapes his call.

He claims the dead with eyes of fire and lips of ash and smoke.
The very night clings to him, an endless blackened cloak.

The dead rise to his scorched touch, seeking warmth in any manner.
In weeks or eons after death they all flock to his banner.

He thirsts for those that had held the torch or placed him on the pyre.
Eventually we all dance of screams and howls as he tunes us even higher.

And pray that when you lie dead and still, so quiet in the ground,
No hand of ash and flame finds you and pulls you from that mound.

Run, hide, run, the Prince that burned is here.
We used to laugh when he did burn, yet now there is only fear.

What strength there was left inside him was leaving him with each droplet of blood that was spilling out of his stomach wound.
His right hand was no longer pressing the wet red cloth against his stomach, trying fruitlessly to keep it all inside. One tended to lose hope when you got to see the inner workings of your body, to see what the holy divines had put there at the beginning.

His left side felt cold and wet… or was it a feeling of nothingness?

He dared not glance left again, knowing somewhere in the back of his mind that the sight of his left side might even be worse than that of his centre. He knew he was dying… could feel it in his very core. Too much of him had been opened up and spilt out of him. If some forgotten hermit of a surgeon where to spring out of the ground and stich him back together, the fever would still see to it that he would join the rest of his village.

He was having trouble to remember things.. He still knew they were attacked.. or had they done the attacking? Judging by the wounds he had sustained, he reckoned it hadn’t gone as plan, either offensively or defensively.

He shivered deeply, colder than he had ever been before in his life. Even the burning farmhouse behind him wasn’t offering any heat. Perhaps death was a realm of ice and cold. To preserve you until the time of the second moon was over?

He smiled at that, weakly, his hand falling to the side and his vision growing hazy. He was fine with this, wasn’t he?
It no longer was hurting him that badly. Everything simply became like an old ache in the back of your mind as it slowly froze over.
And so he let himself go, no longer fighting the cold and the pain. He accepted it for what it was and what it offered… relief and an end.. a final one.

Finally all was quiet.

.

.

.

Warmth…. Blessed warmth..
His eye gained some semblance of function again, as if some relfex in his abandoned body was reacting to the heat. He had no time nor ability to ponder what had happened. He couldn’t register the fact that days had passed, that the buildings around him had burned down to the ground and that many of the scattered dead corpses around him were half eaten or torn apart.

He wasn’t himself, for he no longer was. What he was at the moment was the last flicker of himself, a sliver of who he had been and could have been.
The warmth came not from the sun, the moon or the stars above, nor any paltry imitation that man or nature might offer.

The warmth he felt was something that he craved beyond words. As if that warmth could rip him back from that endless cold and stillness he had accepted.
A part of him knew it felt wrong, that it felt unnatural, yet every fibre in his body craved that warmth, as if it might bring back even the tiniest bit of himself.

He watched with one eye, unmoving. He just stared what was in front of him with his last eye, the other one having been torn out by wildlife.
He stared and could see a figure in the distance, slowly moving closer and closer towards him and the others. Each step it took was adding more and more layers of heat, as if the figure brought the spring and finally the summer with him, until it became scorching. It all felt blissfully overwhelming, like a starving person finally sinking its teeth in a warm meal.

The figure moved unnaturally from corpse to corpse, leaning over them and moving  closer towards their faces. He was unsure if the figure was actually touching them or not.
Some of the bodies stirred when it neared them, yet nearly all of them grew still again as it moved away of them. Those that he touched stirred longer and were covered in clay and earth, whispered to in ash and smoke.
Those that had heard its questions and answered to its liking were still moving in their earth and clay mound, longer after it had left them. Those that had failed its questions grew still and cold again.

Finally the figure kneeled before him and gazed deep within his remaining eye, breathing in smoke and ash as the figure spoke in fire. It was covered in darkness and ash clung to its skin. It looked horribly grotesque and perfect in every way that mankind could explain and beyond.

¨I offer you fire and ash for your soul. Fire and ash to keep you away from the eternal cold. Your soul for a chance to save or destroy that you could not in life.¨

Even in death the man wanted to scream, wanted to back away from this monster despite him wanting so desperately to cling to his fire and finally feel life again.
As the figure rose up again, so did the heat leave this place again. With the last remnants of fire left in his last eye he could see the mounts of clay and dirt move and those that had died slowly rise, somehow hole in body, yet never again in their eternal soul. They slowly rose to their feet and followed into the night, never to rest again. Forever thirsting for the warmth.

[DarkEnigma]

Change log

28-05-2018 – Added the plot.
15-3-2021 – Bumped the plot.