[center][h3]Ashes on the Wind[/h3][/center]

I tell you, young one, that there is nothing so sacred as fire. The flames are many things: warmth, death, light, passion, destruction, an embodiment of change and power. The young might take this gift for granted, since it was the inheritance of their fathers for a thousand generations back, but think back to the dawn of days and the time before time; when long winter came, the earth itself shivered. The sea became a white plain and the biting frost would freeze the blood in your veins. Such were dark days.

Do you see it now? Fire is life itself; there is nothing more precious. I will tell you a tale of the cursed Life-Deer and the flame that followed in her wake, for though I may be blind and decrepit, I have seen many things in my visions.

Our tale begins amidst a sea of sand: the great Firewind Desert. On this day, the heat was merciless, relentless, terrifying in its power! The brazen sun baked the air itself, and the air became so unbearable that birds fell from the sky in exhaustion. The broiling sands scorched my bare feet as I walked, and though I knew that I was standing upon the plane of a mere dream, by the spirits I felt a searing agony more real than the touch of my hand on your face...

Of course, what I felt was surely nothing beside the pain that wracks the cursed Life-Deer. I saw her trek torturously across that dusky, bleak landscape, pressing on through sweltering heat and smothering, blinding sandstorms. From her body, the vicious wind flayed her flesh and that nourishing rot sloughed off from her bones. From this rot there bloomed life of a million shapes, and so in her wake she left a thin trail of verdant green. 

In such a place no life could find permanence. The green grass withered, yellowed, and was reduced to dust.  The shrubs and cacti were smothered beneath the shifting sands. Even Slough's power waned in the blistering desert, and while some kind spirit of the wind tried to keep the heat at bay, erelong her rot sprung forth nothing more than dried bushes and shriveled husks.

I sense sorrow in your heart, but why? Rejoice, young one; for as I have said, fire is life. What likelier place might the winds of Fate chance to kindle a fire than in the Firewind itself?

Kindle a flame they did. There was neither spark nor lightning, merely a parched shrub and an air that simmered beneath the sun's baleful glare. A small flame simply burst into being on its own volition, and greedily, hungrily, it began to consume the wilted shrub. The husk did not burn brightly nor for long, but you must realize that men are fools to respect only the great, ruinous blazes that devour all in their path; it is our folly to revel in destruction and might rather than beauty. It is the comforting campfire and the illuminating flame of a torch that deserve our reverence. Never forget!

But I lose track of the true story...as I told you, there was a small bush in the Firewind that became engulfed by flame. I knew this to be no mere whim of chance, for as I gazed in delirium at the beauty of the blaze's dying embers I felt a strange force in the air. With my own eyes I witnessed the flight of a tiny spark of magic as it found its way to the fire's fading remnants. 

That ember of magic met with the glowing coals. Their glorious union was consumnated by a bright flash and a nascent force, and from the warm ashes of that mundane heap a new fire was born, only this one moved. It thought and felt like you or I, though consigned to follow only the basest of instinct. A spirit of fire had been born, and this tiny spark had a great destiny.

Desperate, starved, that tiny flicker of flame perservered and followed in the Life-Deer's footsteps, feeding upon the withered plants that always marked the path she trod. The tiny spirit's light lit the desert sands for many fortnights of restless travel, for the fire moved along at a lazy pace even as the sun's heat rejuvenated it; all of its energy had to be conserved, lest one paltry sandstorm snuff out the spirit's fire and condemn it back to the oblivion that had preceded its life.

No sandstorm assailed the tenacious flame. It was by a spirit of the wind that the fire was so often beset upon; the wind nipped ceaselessly at its rival with mocking scorn, until in a fit of arrogance and pity it moved to snuff out that fire for once and for all. The spirit of fire had forseen this, and so it breathed in deeply. Its flame swelled in size and the wretched wind was pulled into the spirit's fiery core and consumed. From feasting upon the essence of that hated spirit, the tiny flame gained more power than burning a thousand dried bushes in one great pyre might have offered. As you will know by now, to the elementals size is not simply strength. It is power, intelligence, worth.

That tiny spirit had now grown stronger, and while still weak the seeds of intelligence were sown. He pressed onward with vigor, no longer content with feeding upon mere bushes. At long last the fiery one came to the banks of a mighty river in the desert, and here life abounded! Vegetation of all sort grew, and it was green, vibrant, strong, plentiful...

The fire, still little more than a walking flicker of flame, immolated a palm. He gorged upon the wood's heat as it was reduced to nothing more than ash upon the wind, and after this feast he had enough strength to think clearly. To earn himself a name. He chose to be known as [b]Char[/b], and from that moment until his last it would be so.

Char was already a wise and noble custodian of the lush river valley. Rather than reduce it all to an ashen waste, he merely fed enough to sustain himself. Equally, he did not stay in one place for too long; he roamed up and down the river, starting small fires where the overgrowth was too thick and was choking out life. In this way, he cleared away the excess and the dead vegetation to make room for new sprouts...do you understand now? Fire is life, and life is fire. They are kindred, and where one goes the other follows faithfully.

Char roamed the banks of that mighty river for many years, and though he never did see the Life-Deer that we all must thank for our food and our very existence, in all of her creations he saw beauty. This was of course never reciprocated; the beasts feared the djinn of living fire and so fled from him wherever he might go. The tyranny of the winds never ceased, either; for as you know the various elements all hold nothing but contempt for one another. The cruel spirits of the wind frequently assailed him, though with his growing age came growing power and so he repelled his attackers with increasing ease.

There at last came a day where the sight of a fleeting animal acorss the river no longer kindled the warmth in  his heart that he once had. It was then that the wanderlust crept in, and Char that it was time to move on. Already more spirits of the flame had found their way to the Mahd's banks, and so moving on to new lands he would afforded the chance to have the river and its bounty to themselves just as he once had.

Yet Char was no dying flame, having only a paltry few centuries to his name! It was still in his youth that Char found his way to the Venomweald Jungle, which you know to be that blighted place at the head of the mighty river. Here, life abounded and the trees grew so thick that their canopy shrouded the ground in darkness. The jungle floor was so choked by vines and briars that one could hardly even tread through!

Once more, Char became custodian of life. Feeding out of necessity rather than want, he only charred and scorched those places where life grew so thick that it turned upon itself and strangled out the young.  Nonetheless, despite his temperance he found himself gorged each and every day, for one elemental could never hope to maintain such a large jungle. This was the prime of his day: he grew in such power, size, and voracity that none would hesisitate to call him a firelord. From the cinders left in his wake new flickers found life, and so he fathered many sons of the flame that followed him as he wandered through the jungle. He was Lord of the Venomweald.

But you know that our story is has not finished yet. No Lord can reign forever. No kingdom is exempt from war. 

The skylords above witnessed the constant plumes of smoke rising from the jungle, and then they contemplated that strange portent. With a start they realized that they knew where their ancient enemy had fled, so it was without hesitation that they unleashed one of their most vicious winds upon the Venomweald. The new windjinn did everything in his power to root out the influence of the flame, and so he brought rain, raging tempests that howled through the jungle's gaps, and wild twisters that uprooted trees.

The stonelords too found their way to the Venomweald, making a home amidst the crags and slopes of the great Ironheart Mountains. The masters of the earth were slow-moving and solitary beings, but you will know that as a mountain stands tall and strong, it feels the need to cast a large shadow. In nothing more than petty displays of their own power, they unleashed mudslides, avalanches, and earthquakes to bury the jungle or rip it asunder. All would be made to bow to their might, be it out of respect or terror.

From the springs, stagnant pools, and flowing rivers welled up waterlords. The occasional creature drowned by their hands, but such was simply a part of life. Their floods could erode and destroy, but so too did they bring fertile silt to feed new life. These waterlords might have been tolerable, allies to Char even, had they only not sought to quench his flames with more hatred and zeal than mere words can describe. Like a plague they followed Char and his sons, and at every opportunity the surging waters extinguished a spirit of the flame and consigned it to oblivion for the mere sake of their own amusement.

Char could only weep tears of ash at the senseless destruction and reckless abandon with which his spiteful enemies made war. They brought utter ruin to the Venomweald, disrupting the balance and destroying the fragile equilibrium and peace that he and his sons had curated for so long. His noble heart was sundered, drowned, flayed. Where his good intent had been weathered away there came only rage to replace it. 

He finally realized that [i]he[/i] was the true Lord of the Venomweald, and that flame was the truest, purest, and most noble of all things. Following in the very footsteps of those enemies that he hated with every ounce of his infernal strength, he swore to purge the Venomweald of all lesser elements. He would not rest until flame ruled supreme and his now-flawed ideal of balance was restored.

Do you remember the unbearable heat of the Firewind that I described? That was nothing, like the apricity of a sunny day in winter when compared to the flames of a forge. The Firelord Char was a terror to behold. For hundreds of years his rampage continued, and a thousand thousand lesser spirits were purged by his infernal flames. Nothing could stop his infernal fury. Bird, beast, wind, water, and stone alike feared the indomitable holocaust that was Char. His power could not be contained and where he was once wise, now he had transformed into the devious, plotting sort of monster that the Great Adversary sometimes sees fit to unleash upon the world so as to torment us.

[center]Char, the Blazing Lord of the Venomweald
[img]http://www.artofmtg.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Mahamoti-Djinn-MtG-Art.jpg[/img]
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There came a day when Char and his fireguard rose early, the burning djinn rising from beneath the smoldering Ashpit that had been their camp for the past week. Char had never abandoned his roving tendency, and even now he preferred to stay eternally on the move. Only by this point all regard for the living had left him, as the blackened bones and ashes of countless trees could testify. Wherever he rested, the jungle was razed to a bleak bowl of nothing save ash and cinders lest his treacherous enemies find a way to approach him unseen.

From this Ashpit the many spirits of fire raced quickly for the cover of the dark canopy, for the open sky itself had eyes. Even though the creatures of air loathed the plumes of smoke that rose from the jungle and dared not approach Char, he still erred on the side of caution. He wanted to lay ambush, and to do so the spirits of the wind could not know of his movements.

Fortunately, on that day all his foes were distracted. The earth spirits raged wildly with no Master to control them, for earlier that year Char had grasped the Stonelord Cliff and cast him down into a volcano. A most unusual thing had happened: Cliff's mighty body was cracked and shattered by the fall, and into his open wounds the red-hot blood of the earth seeped. The magma fused with his very essence, transforming him into a monstrous giant of molten rock. He called himself Slag, yet the Venomweald still knew only one King of Fire. Slag's volcanic home was too distant to be a true threat, and all the elementals knew him to be no being of true flame, merely some sort of bastard abomination of the earth and fire. In a way, they hated him even more than they did Char.

Both Slag and the being known as Duke Aquarius, master of all the Venomweald's waterlords, moved to enslave or feast upon the hapless earth elementals that still raged through the crags. The spectacle no doubt had captivated the attention of Skylord Atmus, or so Char thought.

It offered the perfect moment for Char to strike the waterlords from behind, and he had carefully plotted an ambush upon the springs where Aquarius' favorite son made his dwelling. Invisible to the eyes of any but one another, hundreds of the fire spirits raced through the jungle's black depths. They struggled with all their might to bridle their rage and the heat that emanated from them. It was hard to willingly starve themselves and refrain from feasting upon every tree that they passed, though they knew that patience would pay off. When they reached the springs, they would make a conflagration worthy of Char's reputation: the pure, pellucid waters would be choked and poisoned with ash. They would leave nothing in their wake but a mighty blaze of terror and destruction.

As he lead the fireguard on their prowl through the darkness, Char chanced upon a serene sight that brought a tear to my eyes as I saw it in my dreams: there was a sunlit clearing, almost heavenly in its glow. In the middle there floating a nascent spirit of the air, joyfully at play with one of those floating Chime-Lilies that the Goddess Meimu gifted to the world. 

Where I saw beauty, Char saw only a threat. Best to cull that weakling before it grew to threaten his power, he thought. With a flick of his finger, he sent his favored lieutenant forward. Oblivious to the danger, the tiny, fragile thing was destroyed in a moment as the fingers of fire shot out from behind a tree. In a moment there was nothing left save the ashes of that flower floating back to ground...

A short time saw them to the edge of those springs at the border of Aquarius' domain, where his son stood guard as always. Silently, the hardly-glowing fireguard moved to encircle the spring. As one, they then roared to life. In an instant fire had engulfed the trees around the spring; there was no escape. Char strode forth, and the walls of fire advanced with him. The waterlord quivered in fear and retreated to the deepest depths of his spring. Laughing, Char leapt into the cool waters after his quarry, and the spring's waters boiled and joined the plumes of black smoke that rose to the sky.

It was with perverse glee that Char took his savory retribution, or at least a small part of it, by claiming the life and the power of this cowardly waterlord that had thought to hide in the bottom of a puddle. He knew the suffering that this loss would inflict to his enemy; in Char's time, the likes of Aquarius had claimed many of his sons as well. Each and every one of Char's slain sons had been avenged tenfold. It still brought no satisfaction to the King of Fire; deep down, he knew that they would only be at rest once he had burned [i]all[/i] of the other elementals. That was the only way.

Just as Char finished his climb from the dried hole that had once been a spring and his fireguard finished satiating their appetites and prepared to take their leave, all chaos was unleashed. Rolling thunderclouds descended upon them from unseen heights of the sky, and a horrific deluge of rain sent many of Char's weaker fireguards fleeing for their lives. Char remained dauntless even as a hundred spears of lightning were hurled from above to smite him. He laughed, grew his fiery form even larger, and filled the stormy sky with an acrid, sulfurous haze.

From above, a thunderous, screaming voice of the wind called out, [color=7ea7d8]"You face Atmus, Skylord of these-"[/color]

Mocking laughter roared out from Char's burning chest. [color=f26522]"HOW MANY BATTLES HAVE I WON? HOW MANY SKYLORDS HAVE I SLAIN?"[/color]

He inhaled like the bellows of a furnace, and the air was helplessly caught in his inescapable grasp. A hundred spirits of the air were pulled from the tempest above into his burning form. [color=f26522]"I WANT TO SEE YOU BURN, ATMUS! I WANT TO SEE THE WORLD BURN!"[/color]

The foolish windjinn now saw their mistake in coming; even with all their combined strength, they could not stand up to the monstrous flame. Nothing could. They tried to conjure a great wind to blow their tempest away and to safety, but Char would have none of it. Mercy was for the weak.

With one great breath, Char breathed out a plume of flame that reached up to touch the heavens. By his will, a thousand seeking Flickers felt the warmth of his breath and came to life. His sons were but mere sparks or flickers of flame; they stood no chance falling into that tempest. Yet together they still brought enough chaos to break the windlords' concentration. Their sacrifice would not be in vain.

With a roar and several seconds of summoning his horrible power, Char launched a plume of fire below him so forceful that he shot up into the sky. It was unheard of for a being of the flame to fight the windlords in the sky, their dominion and their own element, and yet Char did so. His burning grasp found the surprised Atmus before gravity returned him to the earth, and with all his strength Char dragged his great foe to the ground. In the midst of the burned clearing and raging windstorm, the monstrous, giant djinn of flame pinned the living cyclone of Atmus to the ground and began to consume him.

Then all at once, the air bcame alive and writhing with unseen forces once more. A hundred air elementals sped into the scene from afar, using the clouds as trapezes, and they landed upon Char's back. Desperately they pried him off their Master. Char only laughed at their futile sacrifice. Even now, the doom of his flames was inescapable.

But then, lo and behold, the jungle itself was swept aside by an unstoppable wall of surging water, for Aquarius and his waterlords had amassed every last river and well of water that they controlled into one great wave. Their arrival finally brought real panic into Char's raging heart; individually Atmus or Aquarius were no match for his might, but together they might prevail. The windjinn, those of Char's fireguard that had loyally remained, the trees, the animals: all were drowned beneath the crushing weight of a hundred fathoms!

And then the weakened yet still furious Char felt the earth shudder. He looked up and saw his doom: two giant forms lumbered toward the scene, that of his nemesis and rival Slag, and another of Slate, the stonelords' newest master. It had all been a trap; his information about the ongoing battle was false and Aquarius' son had sacrificed himself, knowing that his life would surely draw the opportunistic Char into the clutches of the other elemental lords.

Earth, water, wind, even fire--though of a different sort, were present. All were assembled to see Char's doom, for he had grown too powerful and had disrupted the balance for far too long. They circled Char, who was admittedly weakened from the wave's onslaught. All around, where there had been a spring and jungle there was nothing but an ashen quagmire for miles before one could see the jungle's trees.

The four elementals circled around Char, then began to converge. There was no escape, and the King of Fire knew it. [color=f26522]"My final words..."[/color] the once terrifying being managed to choke out. Though they hated him, they could not help but respect him; his power was unimaginable and his reign had lasted longer than even they could remember.

[color=B8860B][b]"Speak...then...before...your...end..."[/b][/color] Slate spoke, voicing the will of the earth.

[color=0000CD]"Quickly, then, foul one, before I find reason to suspect a trap and prolong your suffering!"[/color] Aquarius intoned with the water's desires.

Atmus was silent and distant as the sky. Slag only hungered for his vengeance.

Strength and power suddenly raced back into Char as he roared his dying words, and in an instant the four bringers of his doom leaped back in terror once more.

[color=f26522][b]"EVEN NOW, YOU ARE ALL BUT INSECTS BEFORE ME. I WILL DIE AND REDUCE MY KINGDOM TO ASHES BEFORE I YIELD THE VENOMWELD TO YOUR ILK."[/b][/color]

Slag regained his composure, thought that this was no more than a bluff, and advanced forward to finish his dying nemesis. Char only laughed as he continued, [color=f26522][b]"ALL WILL FEAR MY FLAME! I WILL MELT THE MOUNTAINS, BOIL THE SEAS AND RIVERS, INHALE THE SKIES, AND CHOKE YOU ALL WITH ASH AND SOOT! MY FINAL FLAME WILL PURGE ALL THE LESSER ELEMENTS!"[/b][/color]

Without another word, I saw Char's end: he exploded in a nova of such fury and power that he engulfed all the other elements. Atmus, Aquarius, and Slate all met their doom. Slag alone was fated to survive  the heat, for pain and fire were ingrained into his very heart. He  retreated back into the magmatic depths of his volcano to simmer in rage, for like Char, he found no happiness in vengeance. Only hunger for more.

The blast reached even to the edge of the devastation that had already been wrought, and then farther still: in an instant, he had incinerated a swathe of forest so vast that it could not have been felled in the lifetimes of a hundred woodsmen. The conflgration continued to rage on, of course, and for one year and one day from that very moment, Char's holocaust continued. Then he was no more, simply ashes upon the wind.

The bickering, wroth tyrants of the Venomweald were all gone, and new life could spring forth. The cycle began anew.

[hider=Summary]
This was my Slough Week contribution.

The story takes place far into the future. An elderly shaman muses to you, the future shaman, about how life and fire are intrinsically connected.

He then recounts the tragic tale of Char, a fire elemental who reigned as the glorious king of the Venomweald for more than a thousand years. The tale begins from Char's very birth and goes on to his glorious end in combat.

There's all sorts of little moral implications and themes in the story: pride goeth before the fall, hatred and vengeance are a hunger that is never sated, honor and loyalty deserve more reverance than glory or destruction.

So maybe now you can all grow up to be wise shamans.[/hider]