Skaffwory Former's death set the fires of Quartzal on edge.
Skaffwory Newer noticed the change immediately, and his long silence had been in part because he had become overwhelmed by the sudden mutterings in Quartzal, the hissing and smouldering of mourning salamanders. They missed her. Her favorites crawled toward him, twisting their bodies around the ironwood beneath his talons, languishing with him whose presence (and perhaps blood) they recognized from his training with her. Meanwhile he found that the salamanders in general, the weaker ones, had become confused, befuddled -- he noticed this because the ones near him would move about sluggishly, yet endlessly, rather than settling calm and burning in place. Yet when he descended finally from his perch, he noticed that it was affecting the whole district. The salamanders that Skaffwory Former had sold grew very dim, or went out completely; and throughout the caverns and cliffs rang warning bells for fire, as embers leaped from ovens and stoves and grew inexplicably, out of control.
The slyphs were alight with the voices of salamanders. "Skaffwory! Skaffwory...!" He followed the call of it wherever he went, to spitting hearths and violent candles, to embers that wouldn't go out. He answered them, introduced himself to them, tried to set them at ease, to the initial skepticism of the fires' watchers.
"Who are you?" they would ask; and at his terse reply, his new name, they would purse their lips and say nothing more. The Skaffwory they new was different. Some fires too, didn't obey him -- they screeched in denial, seeing straight through -- his feathers singed but never his body, thanks to the favorites, who clutched the flesh beneath his shoulderblades and arose against confrontation. The lesser fires would subdue; and Skaff went on with the favorites tugging at feathers, pressing their bellies and warming him to the bone and muscle.
He worked. But there was not a lot that one newly initiated fire elementalist could do, especially in the stead of a fire elementalist who had been the most powerful one in several districts (if not, he thought to himself, one of the best in the entirety of Anthem Low). Beyond Quartzal, kitchens were overheating, forges were going out of control. The odor of smoke grew denser. Soon, the guild sent one of their own.
The slyphs were alight with the voices of salamanders. "Skaffwory! Skaffwory...!" He followed the call of it wherever he went, to spitting hearths and violent candles, to embers that wouldn't go out. He answered them, introduced himself to them, tried to set them at ease, to the initial skepticism of the fires' watchers.
"Who are you?" they would ask; and at his terse reply, his new name, they would purse their lips and say nothing more. The Skaffwory they new was different. Some fires too, didn't obey him -- they screeched in denial, seeing straight through -- his feathers singed but never his body, thanks to the favorites, who clutched the flesh beneath his shoulderblades and arose against confrontation. The lesser fires would subdue; and Skaff went on with the favorites tugging at feathers, pressing their bellies and warming him to the bone and muscle.
He worked. But there was not a lot that one newly initiated fire elementalist could do, especially in the stead of a fire elementalist who had been the most powerful one in several districts (if not, he thought to himself, one of the best in the entirety of Anthem Low). Beyond Quartzal, kitchens were overheating, forges were going out of control. The odor of smoke grew denser. Soon, the guild sent one of their own.
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