0.2 || Algor Mortis

02:43

Warning - The scenes described here might not be apt for some readers. Please read at your own discretion.

It felt as though his lungs weren't enduring as he tried to quaff the air in. He could assess his muscles toiling and the thoughts in his head turned from fear to a dizzy cacophony. He reach for the inhaler and found it there, in the pocket he always kept it in, always ready to open him up, to allow the torrent of air to flood in, letting his medicine attack his inhibition.

Gael felt his insides burning. The unfettered light illuminated his scorched pneuma and still that smell of burning lingered. His digits trembled, as his larynx parted, the gush of air replenishing whatever life he had.

Iseul walked towards the the foot of the gelid steel frame on which the man laid. His hair had been burned short and the new hieroglyph adorning his skin let whatever blood he had left ooze out. The excommunicated fluid dropped down, the slow dribbles hitting the floor, creating splotches on the tiled canvas.

"I've never seen..." Iseul trailed off, her gloved digits smearing the crimson lifeline of a fluid across the wrinkled arm. "What is this?"

Gael's undulating heartbeat hadn't died down to normal when he replied, "I don't know. But it seems familiar." The volant thrumming within his ribs jeopardised his esse, threatening to knock the air out of him, yet again. "Wait a minute."

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Sequi. The atomised socially darwinistic culture with ever-increasing proportions of the population. Deliberated into the Sixth Stage of Mass Extinction.

Their belief, however, is to be descried.

❝ Those who fear witchcraft have not cognition of their own tongue, for they speak, "Which craft?" It is as if they feel there are two ways to travel, as two boats upon water, and they fear a wrong choice. So we answer that 'all that is good comes from God, that his 'craft' is a part of nature and of us also.' For the ones who seek only the light, the love, the healing that flows in all creation; our magic isn't ours at all. We are not as conductors of an orchestra with a wand, but more as the soft music of the flute. We are ones of duty, filled with love, moving with nature, inspired by the beauty of creation.

The chaos of the universe has a synchronicity that can only be seen by those committed to either the positive or negative side, the forces beyond what we call 'reality.' Sacrifice.... Sacrifice of the self is hence, noble. The protection that hatred or loathe precedes the one associated with love. Adulation holds not true, it's your God that decides it. All of it.

Blood, the sanguine fluid of boon, is to be worshipped. The only connection with God that shouldn't be severed. The blood will prove to be the only pathway for you to reach the Unan*. ❞

Curses were what their witchcrafting segment of the society thrived with. Talismans inscribed with blood, pendants of luck with the tears of the dead... It all stops short at one major practice. Le Fléau Éthéré.

The plight of the diabolical ones were decided not through simple banes... But through The Ethereal Scourge.

Carving the wight's skin with peculiar, symbolic representations; each part of their soul being promised to each element give ring the world - earth, fire, water, air, and finally... Aeon. The element of death.

The circle inscribed with secting triangles, marks the exordium of Le Fléau Éthéré. The peroration of their term in the world. The abdication to the Aeonic realm.

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❝ Get busy living or... Get busy dying. ❞

- Stephen King

* Unan - heaven as according to the Sequis