Prologue

"Fire fire burning bright,

Choking smoke and monstrous might.

Blackened soul of darkest delight,

Let hellfire burn all who slight."

Fire and smoke filled the air all around me as I stood in the smoldering pit that had once been the very heart of the local boat graveyard; the scent of melting steel made my nose crinkle in disgust. My teeth clenched as I fought to keep my mounting anger under control, like trying to contain a roaring forest-fire, and I could feel my skin crack like dried wood. All the anger I'd ever felt in my entire life, both justified and petty, came bubbling up to the surface like a volcano about to erupt over lowly Pompeii.

I didn't dare release my control for even a fraction of a second, even if I knew in my very soul that the fires I kept within would burn me if it could not burn others, but it felt like I was going against my own nature by doing so. Thus as I stood there, my clothes having long since burned to ashes and the ground beneath my feet melted into liquid glass, I finally tilted my head back and let out a roar so mighty and dominating that the world itself seemed to shrink back away from me. From my mouth then came a wave of fire and boiling air hot enough to melt mortal flesh and with it all the anger that had built up to that point.

My knees hit the floor a moment later, my firewood cracked skin glowed with the embers of a flame that was only just waiting to be released once more, and I closed glowing eyes to the world.

Then came the changes, I could feel the shadows and smoke around me shift to a pattern that felt all too natural against my blackened skin, and with it I became the beating heart of something truly horrifying. My perception changed, I could see out eyes that were made of fire, I stood like a giant over the ruined and abandoned ships that survived my initial outburst, and I heard a call in the back of my mind like the whisper of a faint friend from far away.

A call that spoke to me.

A call that said.

"Remember"

And I did…

I remember that day like it was yesterday, sitting in the passenger seat as my mom drove me home from my best friend's house. Summer vacation was almost over and, like all the years before, I spent an entire week with the Barnes family doing things that only Emma and I enjoyed. Emma, despite being the prettiest looking girl I'd ever known, looked like a nervous wreck about now having to be the new girl all over again. I, on the other hand, was just glad that the two of us would be going to the same highschool; even if we did have to spend quite a lot of time convincing her lawyer of a dad to agree.

Needless to say I was riding high on life and my mom, despite getting on mine and dad's cases about using our cell phones when we should be concentrating, was on the phone with said father. I wasn't listening to what they were talking about, grownup stuff was boring and I'd rather watch the city fly by outside the window, and that's the moment it happened.

Fire and twisted metal became my world, my mother's cry of alarm before a deep blackness consumed me and the only thing I knew was the heat. In that blackness I could hear a roar of such primordial rage that it nearly stopped my young heart out of pure fear, for only a true monster of hell could make such a sound. It was also in that blackness that I felt something shift its gaze upon me, small in body and innocent in spirit, and it would take me a long time to realize that such things corrupted were pleasing to evil creatures.

Then the world came roaring back to life and pain became my norm, for while I slept in the blackness the fires of the now burning and upturned car had crept ever closer to my fragile form. I could still hear the sound of roaring, of something truly massive crashing into buildings much further away now, but the pain consumed me as the first tongues of fire licked my skin through the jacket I'd been wearing. So I screamed for help, screamed at the top of my smoke filled lungs for someone to save me from the fire.

Just moments after the fire began to kiss me, leaching up my right arm like some creature from hell, a firm hand grabbed me by the back of my jacket and I was suddenly yanked away from the burning car. I still screamed as the pain from my burned flesh scraped against the street, my mind in a fog to everything else, but what I do remember seeing are a pair of hard brown eyes and shadows darker than they should be for this time of the day.

I wouldn't know it for at least a month, but this was the day my life would change forever.

I remember…

I never really thought I'd get into the Worm universe, it always seemed a bit meh to me, but then I can across a wonderful little crossover called Ring-maker by Lithos_Maitreya and that inspire this little story. So now here we are, taking a break from my normal stories to write something completely out of left field.