Chapter Six: The Ensuing Blaze

Jaceyn sighs as he sits back down in his chair. He had run his hands along the door and inspected the intricate carvings, attempting to divine what they meant. The pictures seemed to depicate scenes of a great fire, presumably the Great Flame, and many people kneeling before it and mean, that appeared to be priests, waved staffs that trailed fire. Jaceyn attributed this to the face that these ruins were presumably built by an ancient group of pyromancers known as the Eternal Flame.

The Eternal Flame was a very large influential cult long ago that had dedicated themselves to bringing back the fire sorceries of Izalath and her Daughters of Chaos and even improving them. They built prosperous towns, monuments that were massive ever burning fires, forts and even became a very noticable power. They had been a hated enemy of the Way of The White Church for their blasphemous use of pyromancy. They had many short battles in the past, with the Church nearly always prevailing. Then, surprisingly, about two centuries ago, they disappeared. Their monuments, towns, and forts, simply abandoned. Many believed they just disbanded, while others say they faded of into different factions, and yet others say they went to ground and are still active even today. The discovery of these ruins may just take the latter into a more literal sense.

He frowns and shrugs to himself, then gets up and goes over to his pack laying on the bed. He unpacks his meal and sits down on the mattress and chews mindlessly on a half stale loaf of bread and goat cheese. He takes a swig from his wine skin and wipes his mouth off before standing and stretching. He gets on the ground and starts doing push ups to keep himself active and awake. He grunts after about twenty quick push ups in his medium class leather armor and starts to stand when he notices something quite odd.

The embers, still brilliant red and sizzling in the brazier. He frowned and sat cross-legged near the brazier as he looked at the strange embers.

It's been at least two hours since i've been here, plenty of time for embers to burn out. So, why then, are these embers looking as if the fire had just been put out a second ago?

He grabs the longest stick from the small pile of firewood gathered near by and prods at the embers to see if maybe they're an odd colored piece of brush or wood. As soon as the wooden stick brushes against the ember, it catches as if it had been thrust into a furnace. Jaceyn jumps to his feet after throwing the stick into the small hungry flame that has erupted in the brazier before him.

"What in Gwyns name?!"

His utter surprise gives way to a startling theory. He quickly gathers two good-sized logs from the fire wood pile and throws them carefully in, and as he expected, they instantly lit into a blaze as soon as they touched the small fire already ablaze within the strange brazier. He grins to himself and crosses his arm, sitting on the mattress once more and watching the flame dance and flicker before him. Another strange aspect is that the flames seemed to stay confined within the brazier. It never licked or flicked outside the rim of the odd brazier or even through the gaps in it's seemingly wiry from.

There was no doubt in his mind now; these ruins were defiantly built by the Eternal Flame.

It was often speculated that the Eternal Flame had experimented with the Spiritual Bonfires that linked the world, and on how they stayed lit, even in the coldest and harshest of conditions. It appears they had made some startling advances in this respect and had indeed found someway to make lasting and strong fires, just as a bonfire would. This was almost undeniable proof that these ruins are indeed the work of the Eternal Flame, or The Flames, as most nicknamed the cult. The brazier, the markings, the structure of the ruins; it all fit. It was a perfect match with what the Church knew of The Flames.

Jaceyn, still grinning, retrieved his journal and log book from his pack and wrote his findings down. He was electrified with excitement at the fact that he and his master and fellow apprentice had discovered what the Church had searched for since the war. Jaceyn finishes his journal entry and laughs and stands up and begins inspecting the entire room with a new interest and new perspective. He was standing in the very ruins of the very people that he had majored in studying back in the homeland in the church. It was exciting to be out in the field in the very ruins he had searched for in books and texts. He then walked over to the large mysterious door and grinned, having a feeling on how to open it. He quickly went to the entrance and made sure no-one was around before disappearing back inside. Once back inside, he began taking the armor off his right hand, then removing the thick leather glove, revealing something quite odd to find on a Battle Cleric of the Way of the White; a Pyromancy enhancing glove.

Jaceyn paused to look down at the glove, the glove he had found about two years back, in one of his first outer missions with Diaru as his master. It was to join the guard of an excavation team in the swamps. It was an excavation of one of The Eternal Flames abandoned towns, something of great interest to the church, kept secret of course. He remembered being told to help carrying some tools down to the workers in one of the buildings from the watch tower he had been stationed in. He remembered tripping on a fallen stone and dropping the tools into a small stone building, yet to be examined. He had gone into the stone building and found something peculiar; a small wooden chest, seemingly untouched. Strange, he had thought, how was this not looted or taken yet? He had then looked around, sure no-one was watching and opened the chest to find nothing in it but a glove of sorts. It was more like the framework of a glove, if gloves had framework, or a fingerless gloves with small rings attached to it, about the place the middle of ones finger would be out of each hole. Jaceyn had been immensely fascinated by it, having it being a discovery along the lines of which he most researched. He quickly looked around as he heard a commotion near by and remembered the tools. He had pocketed the strange glove and quickly gather his tools to deliver to the agitated workers.

Jaceyn smiled slightly has he remembered the feeling of finding the strange glove, and then of the feeling of secrecy and apprehension as he began practicing Pyromancy to better understand his own reasearch and for the sheer fact of intrigue Pyromancy had around it. For the past year, Jaceyn practiced Pyromancy in secret, taught only by the books and texts in the Great Library of the Church. He became quite skilled with it, in his own opinion.
Jaceyn grinned as he raised this gloved hand, a small spark dancing in his palm, toward the stone door, once baffling to him, now clear as crystal, and said;

"I may not have been able to meet the great Salaman, but I may just be able to meet his daughter."