Autumn colours dominated the skies, reds, yellows and oranges spread everywhere in a riot of colour. Flickers of lights standing proud and bright against the midnight sky, lettings all see their remarkable shades as its flickers and changes with each passing second. Their pedestal twisting and blackening as they leap free to their own wild delight in the sky. Vested within the screeching forest a crimson sun dances among the branches setting free more colours of autumn. The fallen bed rising up to greet their already soaring brethren, regaining their colours, the dull and gloomy browns revitalised. Distorted and gnarled the shadows caper around each other in maddened, flickering steps.
Creaking screams flood through the forest as the first begins to topple, august presence gone, towering branches now withered and frail. Imposing monument to life shatters into itself and dashes apart, only to be swept up into a brief flash of memory. With the first starts the fall of all, the screaming, crash, and twisting of transient life coalesces into a resounding roar that rolls beyond sight. Still the bloody sun dances through the powder of detritus, the colours of autumn gradually fade away. Imposing black takes its place as the cold of winter surges in to embrace the slowing sun. Circling in place, entropy twinning around the land as tendrils of ice smother the debris. Clawing fingers climb out on top of each other, ever grasping towards the flowing light of the living sun above. Fusing into a nebulous caricature of a mask, ambiguous in features, until eventually it rests upon the halted sun.
A rising cloud of frozen soot and ash greets the first footfall. Another even large cloud greets the second. An obscure body begins to develop until it is constituted into the vague appearance of a red robed figure. With every step in its place a small tendril of red sprouts and quivers briefly shedding a light before fading away. Blood red hair with tendrils of black drift behind as a gaseous white mask shrouds its face. Breezes seen but not felt blow the figures clothes and hair back as they ripple like fire. The grasping fingers of ice littering the scorched land melt like snow under rain. Gradually the figure fades away leaving a charred land, ancient forest now gone, rivers steamed to nothing, rocks and stones mollified to pools of slag.
Halted breath returns to cindered lungs, frozen eyes unstuck from uncontrollable horror. Shuddering breaths tremble through tightened lips as reality strikes back at a failing to escape mind. The ancient book clasped between my fingers slowly slips out to land within the ash. It’s yellowed pages stained, the runic words concealed beneath grime. A strained screech of a laugh slips from my lips that evolves into crazed bellows. Fox tears clean the grime from my checks while I grasp my eyes with my remaining hand. Falling to my knees I feel the shudder in my shoulder as my blackened, ruined arm collides with the ground. Shrunken and twisted scraps of flesh entwines pristine white bone. The book on the ground dimly glows as it turns into motes of light that start to blend into the exposed bone of my ruined arm. Between the strands of black, runes appear on the bone that glimmer with the same red light as the dance crimson sun.
