Scarlet hell

In this same state I saw these birds flying around Egan and saw a few take their chances and stab Egan's motionless body with their claws and beaks. My emotional void suddenly burst as easily and violently as a soap bubble and my world turned red!

'It's entirely your fault, you're unreliable, you're too weak!'

An unreal, all-consuming, uncontrollable fury shattered my emotional void. Magic exploded in a shockwave around me. Then the world burned in my retinas. Just like the moment I put my emotions aside to be effective and fell into that empty, soulless state, I was once again emotionless except for the one that devoured all the others. Unlike my other state, this time I was left with only a half-consciousness and no rationality was presently found within me. I was completely and irretrievably plunged into rage and the rage was consumed by me.

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Egan POV:

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Tired, I am so tired… But a suffocating heat pulled me from my unconsciousness.

When I opened my eyes, my heart stopped!

The spectacle before me made me doubt the state from which I had just emerged. It must not be that of unconsciousness but that of death! This vision cannot be real, it cannot come from the world I come from!

My retinas only reflect a world of flames and the kind of flames that shouldn't exist...

Flames of intolerable heat, of ridiculous intensity and volume that dance as far as I can see through this crimson panorama. I'm completely surrounded by flames dancing at a breakneck pace! Only a circle of about twenty meters of which I seem to be the epicenter is spared by the fire.

An avian cry took me out of my stupor because this cry is unpleasantly familiar to me but strangely distorted. This cry immediately brought me back to earth and alerted me to extreme caution. This noise reminds me of what happened in the events that should have preceded my death.

When I try to take support on my front legs, several points of pain form in my back and it is with a rumble that I continued my movement.

But my mind stopped working when a death sensation and a visceral fear froze me in place. I then had the impression that even my heart was doing its best not to move, not to emit sounds. I stayed in that position, choking in utter, uncontrollable terror for what felt like several minutes.

During this moment, the loss of control is total. I am unable to think, as if frozen in time. After an indefinable moment, a tiny little bit of cold blood took hold of my mind and it gave me the strength and the courage to turn my head in the direction of whatever is causing this reaction in me.

My world then stopped again.

My gaze met those of a young elf, this silhouette, this face caused tremors throughout my body. I held my breath again in an attempt to be as insignificant, quiet, and uninteresting as possible. I didn't decide to act like this, I did it instinctively in the hope of not provoking any reaction from the being who meets my gaze at this moment.

In all my life, I've only really felt fear once and that was during my first fled, the day I was born, from this panther. Even today when I thought I was going to die, I was furious with these sparrows and with myself, frustrated at my helplessness and sad to leave my little protector, but I didn't really feel any fear, even when I knew that it was surely death that would deliver me from this situation.

But now, I'm so terrified that I can't hear the flames anymore, only the completely panicked beating of my heart beating against my eardrums. I no longer hear the cries of birds, only the sound of the friction of my scales caused by the powerful tremor of my limbs.

I sincerely think I'm dead when this apocalyptic vision imposes itself on me. What I see now, I am sure, will haunt my nights for centuries….

The familiar face of my little protector is now entirely black, only a few crimson furrows dispel his mask of darkness. Even though his face is covered in a viscous black that partially conceals his features, I can clearly see that his face is completely disfigured with hate.

If there were other elves here, if he didn't have those unmistakable eyes, I could have sworn that thing in front of me wasn't my brother, he couldn't be!

A fine and delicate face once beautiful and flawless is now stained with tears of blood. Blood is also flowing from its nostrils, mouth, and pointy ears. An expression of pure fury, so marked that his face is totally disfigured, he gives off an impression of furious madness.

His eyes once so fascinating, of such a particular and intense green that were once colored with a multitude of very small lighter green dots and even smaller and numerous gray dots. Are now irises of a plain and intense green, they are enclosed in vertical pupils, pupils similar to mine except that his shine. They shine, literally! As lit from within.

This thing in front of me is terrifying, in this moment my instinct is screaming at me with all its might to run away as quickly and as far as possible but seeing those eyes fixed on mine, I know that if I move, I die. I have no doubt that this thing will kill me in an instant if I go against it in any way. This feeling is in my gut and the instinct of a dragon is more than reliable.

However I don't need my instincts to know, his expression, his eyes, the aura of fury of his magic that swoops uncontrollably around him, those furious, sulphurous flames that I'm sure are burning to the rhythm of his furious madness. Everything screams at me that the being who is currently in front of me is only the incarnation of death and that I am currently the target of his gaze.

His fury screams with frightening intensity in the spectrum of our bond. The force of his anger gives me a long, unpleasant shiver that runs through me.

His mind is totally closed to me, the bond that unites us is only the ghost of what it was. As I did to protect myself from those birds he closed his mind, but with much greater efficiency. Even then I feel the specter of his fury sweeping through our bond when it shouldn't even be working. It's as if his being couldn't contain all the force of this fury and that he evacuated it as best he could.

Currently my little protector cannot be found, he is as if dead and it is death itself that stares at me and burns with fury in front of me. At least that's the impression I have in front of this nightmare vision: my frail brother with a face worthy of becoming my biggest nightmare in a setting that would fit perfectly in the underworld.