i cannot ease the burden of your fears; or make quick-coming death a little thing

[ofnwch]

In mastering the dominion of fire, Vortigern had to understand its fickle ways as well as he knew himself. Life-giving, and a breathing thing, it was also capable of such great destruction, and agonising death. Among the ancient tongues he studied to crack apart its arcane secrets, some had called it the living death.

He did not deal in flame, now. Now, his greatest ally was ice.

It meant destruction in its own, too, in its own slow way. If fire blew souls from the body as quickly as it reduced flesh to cinders, then the creeping cold of this new magic followed their path, and was capable of drawing them back. Of preservation, of manipulation.

Fate had failed him. To take back what he had sold felt only correct.

The sky is white as snow, the sun hidden and diffused through blanketing winter clouds. At the edge of the giant expanse of lake, as clear as a mirror, Vortigern is kneeling. Listening. His heart still beats, but it's a sluggish, lazy thing, pushing blood through his veins out of a sense of duty and resentment, but this is mere physiology. Ice, death, doesn't remove all kinds of pain. Sometimes it crystallises it. A permanent part of him, now, woven into the walls of his heart, his nerves, his viscera, in the process of reconstruction.

As he winds magic around himself like a veil, his skin greys. His green eyes shine blue. He plunges his hands into the water, impervious to the sting of the cold as he reaches. He knows the fresh pain of Catia's life leaking away in his arms, between his fingers, staining his clothing; but he has mourned his wife for far longer.