The Blazing One
by Arda Mori
Content Warnings: Blood, Violence
My destiny was written when the gods brought the Fire Bringer to his knees.
As a toothless fledgling bound to the nest, I’d imagined how fearsome he was, how many eyes of flame and razored, venomous limbs he must have! His fury would rip a hundred eagles open, while his words of sweet incense lured others to his deathly, burning gift—a terrible gift that peeled skin and singed hair, and turned homes to ash.
And I ached to see him. I pleaded with you, Mother.
When I was old enough, you spread my wings, measuring me with your arm span, grazing me with dew-slick scales—one of your attempts at an embrace.
A hiss escaped from your teeth. You may go.
Only later I realized why you’d agreed; The Sky-Father needed a new punisher. And as your daughter, it was time for me to prove my worth.
⛧
Like you and my brothers and sisters, I was a natural hunter; my tongue made worship of blood like a forbidden temple. But by the rock where the Fire Bringer was bound, I was no more than a paring knife. That was the mission the Sky-Father demanded of my body.
You shall wound. You shall torment.
Against the great cliff, the Fire Bringer was smaller than I’d expected, not unlike a bagworm’s cocoon, a spider’s prey web-wrapped, withered. His skin flaked like torn parchment, and his chest dripped with sweat and molten sunlight, boiled pink upon his chains.
But what rocked my heart was the hole in his torso, the explosion of red that was the reds of kalanchoes and cherries. A terrible door which I would pry open in promise of its fruit. A door which clasped shut at night, said the Sky-Father—ready for me to shatter its locks by dawn.
Far from the swift deaths of rodents and birds I was accustomed to.
For my first bite, a zephyr dragged me by the neck to my prey. The Fire Bringer lay half-asleep, parched lips half-open, possibly wondering what winged scent approached. It unsettled me to think of his muscles, torn upon my talons.
Still, I had to demonstrate my strength. My feathers flapped as wide as sails; my beak, a heroic sword plunging into a long-sought villain.
Bitter was his liver-flesh and his cries deafening the wind. For a long time, I did not know why.
⛧
Mother, did you know? It was not fire that taught me destruction, but water.
Water, the base of scarlet that fueled the Fire Bringer’s organs, his engines. Water which came with the storm that lashed and eroded him until he resembled the lump of mud he once gave life to. Water, the droplets burrowed out of his face, shaping his heavy breaths—an ever-repeated language of despair.
An invisible dark began to fester within me.
When I was younger, you told me about how powerful and glorious my siblings were. How my three-headed hound brother braved the savage cold of the Underworld; how my winged sisters with limbs of lions and doves conquered the clouds and woodlands.
People, too, cursed me as a child of Echidna, the Mother of Monsters. How could they spit on the beloved name you bestowed me—Aithôn, the Blazing—when I was no more than a cat to a mouse, or a torrent to a ship?
That was what I told myself, every time, until my gaze met his and his cut my soul, beneath the ever-watchful eyes of our Sky-Father.
⛧
In the stories the humans tell their fledglings, those like you and I do not live long. Always there was a valiant hero awaiting us at our road’s end, proud blade in hand.
Mother, here was the man they called a thief, a monster, and yet across the cloak of time, his yells rebelled against thunder, as though he willed to steal a thousand lights more from heaven. And why was I not born with his courage, his spirit—his strength that heralded peace and understanding, instead of violence?
Perhaps this was why you hesitated to let me meet him; he showed everyone who we truly were. What I yearned to know all along.
When I imagined my death like in those stories, I circled that cliff still, blissfully unaware of the hero’s weapon stalking my heart. By then, the Fire Bringer and I had long burned in a pain only known by those sentenced to eternity—the pain of witnessing something out of reach, forever. Our fates were sealed from the start, for the hero will never strike down the one that resembles him the most.
⛧
Mother, he must live and surpass me—for if I cannot be him, then I adore him.
Arda Mori (she/her) is a Malaysian writer. Her work has been published by Horns & Rattles Press, Apparition Lit, Eye To The Telescope, Haunted Words Press, and elsewhere. Find her wandering on Twitter/X at @armori_ or at ardamori.wordpress.com.