And she burned
A/N Prompted by a tumblr post.
This is not a happy fic, I'm afraid.
They all burned.
The fire blazed around her, dancing shadows in the bright orange flames that licked the bowels of the Mountain. Vicious, ruthless, scorching. The air she breathed was terribly hot, burning her lungs as it filled them, and so thin, so chokingly clogged with smoke, she felt her chest was a crucible of bone and flesh waiting to be spilled on the debris she was treading on.
But she kept pushing her feet forward. Her eyes were wide open, burning in the heat, tears parched dry on the corners while she walked towards the thunderous sound of giant feet in the distance. She passed cloven pillar after cloven pillar, struggling to breath as she ascended a flight of stairs that had never seemed so long. So endless.
Her own heartbeats were nothing but the flight of a butterfly - of a moth drawn by the flame. With every step she felt the thick fabric of her dress stick her sweat-covered skin, while the gold and silver jewels encrusted in it scorched through the layers of cloth and bit her skin, sharp like a thousand needles. But she kept pushing her feet forward.
She could smell the tang of her singed hair where the flames had licked the back of her head and she had fallen on the floor, rolling on the dirty stones to put the fire out. And then she had seen them, lying only steps away from her, their eyes unseeing.
The flapping of leathery wings made the air move, blowing into her face like the billows of a forge and the blazing fires grew fiercer, licking at the stone pillars. At the bodies. But she kept pushing her feet forward. There was a growing emptiness that ached within her, a gaping abyss dark like the deepest shaft of the mine, but burning, burning like the skin above the ankles where the hem of her dress had caught fire and scorched her legs.
The vast halls echoed the screams, the distant ones and the close alike as they mingled with the roaring of the giant beast that wrought death and destruction just farther down the hall, hitting with his long tail the last remaining warriors, scattering them like pebbles on the marble floor. And they screamed as they death ripped their souls from their bodies, tramped under the feet or burning within their melting armour. But she kept pushing her feet forward. Toward them. Towards it.
And there was emptiness inside her. Death.
The fumes grew thicker, and she coughed, gagging at the acrid smell of burnt flesh, but her feet did not falter. There would be no stopping now. There were only flames and smoke and the ashes on her trail. The world was done, blazing in vicious reds and yellow, dark like the smoke that blurred her vision. The world was lost in the shaking of the broken walls and pillars. Her world. They were all dead.
She pushed her feet forward, with each step coming closer to the fire-breathing beast. Empty inside. Empty.
And then the dragon turned its head. Large and horrible with the sharpest row of teeth within its muzzle and large yellow eyes. Horrible eyes that looked at her with glee while the bright glow of flames pooled within its chest. It looked at her as its maw opened.
And she burned.