Far over the misty mountains cold

To dungeons deep and caverns old

We must away ere break of day

To find our long forgotten gold

The pines were roaring on the height

The winds were moaning in the night

The fire was red it flaming spread

The trees like torches blazed with light

-Misty Mountain, The Hobbit

Viper sat in the plush chair looking over the body Skull. The others were asleep. With the fire throwing uneven light on his body as it sat on the couch with twin gouges where he had taken a charging forklift in the chest. The dead man's body was healing. Her gaze turned introspective. What made him who he was?

She moved over and rested his head on her lap, blood splattered against her cloak from the hole between his eyes. She put a hand on either temple and over lapped her mind with his. Her mind was a dark forest filled with dreaded things, his mind a barren waste bathed in darkness with mountains that stabbed upward like a knife against god. She moved deeper into his mind. Smoke pored out of the ground and black sulfurous liquid blended in with the volcanic rock. This place had been blasted with heat once, the entire plane was scorched. Her first thought was rampant death, she revaluated, there was never life here. She pulled her mind out far enough to see the entirety. In his mind there was only one place where he could be hidden. Soon she found herself at a ruined place. White stone had fallen and been charred with fire, the castle was destroyed, all that could have survived would be deep within the foundation. She found stairs leading down, she conjured an orb of fire at her fingertips and took a breath against the waves of oppression coming from the dark pit. As she descended a deep hum surrounded her, it filled her with profound sadness, deeper than the ocean, darker than obsidian and crueler than love. On those narrow steps she crouched and wrapped her arms around her legs. Tears slid down delicate bone as she felt sorrow drown her. Her body slowly crawled down the stairs until she stood at the dungeon door, the only place standing in this picture of absolute destruction. One cell sat deep within the rock, bars tarnished with years of neglect and abuse. The acrid air carried its poisons to the occupant. This was the true Skull, a malnourished man with purple spike hair and scars melted into his body. The tattered rags that covered his legs were completely useless against the frosted air. The shackles that bound his hands to the wall were huge around his emaciated frame. The twenty year old body rested his back against the red hot rock and felt the flesh smoke and heard the crack as skin dried and shattered. He was a broken marionette, severed strings and broken limbs, cracked paint and chipped wood. He saw her for the first time and hissed into the frozen inferno of air, it carried with it a memory.

A baby still in his new blue blanket opened his eyes to see his mother peacefully smiling down on him, in her hand she held something he didn't recognize. He squirmed, she wasn't holding him, a glint caught his eye. She held the double headed axe high in the air. The stump the baby sat on was dyed red as the newborn's blood soaked in. His mother picked up the two parts of her baby and cradled them and lulling the pain away with a song. Soon he would wake and the cycle of torment would start.

Viper jerked back from Skull and gasped and took deep breaths until the heat of the fire gave her some measure of peace. Uni had rushed in when she heard Viper's scream. The questions the sky asked were muted by Viper's mind rushing, filled with questions. The illusionist touched her forehead to the dead's and dove back in.

Staring at Skull his purple eyes held only hatred and contempt. With the flick of a boney finger the prisoner rolled his head to the other side. A deep breathing came from behind. She turned to find a huge dragon staring at her with unblinking predatory eyes. Irises made of every color glared into her soul as a sharply angled muzzled pushed past her. White scales brushed against her skin, sharp edges cutting until the head reached the broken and battered body. The mouth opened and the stench of pure horror burned her. Without even seeing the mouth she could feel the fear. Skull's eyes gazed past the dragon and to her. With a finger he wrote on the burning stone and smoke whispered a message to her

You should not be here

She opened her mouth but no air entered her lungs. Another memory pushed her out of this world.

A black shadow pushed him into the device. Iron maiden and copper bull together, the sharpened spikes pierced his body and the fire underneath heated the inside until his blood boiled away leaving a dried husk of a man. Twelve hours later he was healed and had been placed back inside.

Again she was pushed out by the physical memory of the pain, deep and unyielding. She looked and saw her sky's scared look. She put her arm around the tiny girl "it's alright. I'm just trying to help. All I want to do is look at his mind. Shh, it's alright"

The little girl sobbed "you were crying so much and you wouldn't answer me when I called you" Uni pushed her tear stained face deeper into Viper's cloak.

Viper tighter her hold on the girl "when I'm looking at a mind I'm not here, I'm in here" and she tapped her head. "and there are very bad things in here, I want to see why" and she put a hand on Skull's forehead. A faint heat traveled up her arm, Skull was alive but in a coma. He was healing. She leaned down to touch his forehead until Skull's hand caught hers and jerked it away.

The dead sat up and glared at the illusionist. He stood up and patted the little sky with a bloody hand "my mind is my own. A prison in which I am jailer and jailed. No one may look at my mind without learning it through me first. My nightmare is mine."

Each step the immortal took left a bitter taste in the illusionist's mouth. Each step was a confirmation of the hopelessness of the one they called Skull. The group knew nothing about their cloud, his name, his circumstances, his life, none of it. To them he was a acid, a thing nothing touched. To his family he was a medicine, a sparsely used tool meant to be rid of a problem then put away so that it wouldn't hurt the owner. But he was an toxic blossom, a bloom that would capture any eye, a poison so strong a touch of the feathery petals would place you in death.

A cloud of oleander, a single beautiful massacre.