Chapter Text
It burned.
Hot as an ember, a tiny furnace at once as wild and scalding as the liquid fire of the infernal vent behind.
Bright gold and all the colours of an open flame it shone. Crimson red and saffron yellow, sapphire blue and white. The pain was exquisite.
Slowly it cooled and as it did the very metal hummed with pleasure, relieved it would not know the touch of the forge from whence it came. A dullest gold arose and the flowing words slept once more.
The pain receded but did not end. Diminished but not extinguished, banked like a bed of coals, it would live forever in his flesh.
One fire cooled. Another licked to life.
This time it ran, fast as a conflagration, hot and untrammelled through his blood. The ever more insistent tongues were fed not by air but ardor, by the deepest raw and yawning need.
Precious….
He would, by its own device, not suffer it for long.