The Dream of Flame

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AN: To remind you. ^ This is the difference in sheer text editing between the PDF and the Patreon paste. This website, unfortunately, has unbelivably limited formating options. Like, missing completely basic features like centered text or custom paragraph spacing. Which is in big part why I provide a PDF for every chapter. Once in a while the differences are on bigger than small side.
Additionally, I am spitting this chapter into 2 for... reasons. To save you some hassle, I provided PDF links for both in this one.


Irwyn walked with nervous anticipation, stumbling as he took the initial steps through his father’s palace for the very first time. It was so… different to all he had ever experienced. Unlike anything in the whole of reality. He experimentally took nine steps forward and they each carried him the same distance! The walls were so concrete! Set in place by the Allfather’s infinite power.

His mother gently hurried him forward. Hurried, because so firm were the rules in the palace that things happened even without a greater will harnessing them. The world was suddenly wound in a measured continuity rather than by whim and inspiration.

Errant thoughts were coursing through his head and unlike before they didn’t just manifest as they would beyond those outer walls. Even just the experience of walking would have been inconceivable if not for his mother’s warnings.

It took a good deal of his focus to not stumble across the unchanging vistas. Sights beyond comprehension and immutable to thought. He had never before known anything but permutations of Light and Flame so his mother had to constantly keep him from getting distracted by the endless sights, constantly asking for explanations as they went.

And the strange regularity at which he experienced all of that with. He did not know how to properly put it into words but things were incomprehensibly just happening one after the other and for reasons. When something moved it was because something else made it, unlike the spontaneity he had always known. And there were SO MANY different things just existing. More than he could have ever imagined.

He watched in awe as ‘water’ fell, always in the same direction and at the same speed. Painting in more colors than he could have imagined existed depicting scenes he could not begin to describe. Chandeliers above illuminating a place, and - much more incomprehensibly - the existence of shadows.

In particular he liked the sceneries depicting ‘skies’ as his mother described them. From great towers reaching towards them or canopies with clear views. The lazy wandering of clouds and the motion of ‘suns’ from horizon to horizon. He felt close to thoe in particular - after all, was he not the son of Light and Flame? Perhaps he should create something like that outside the palace walls. There were only a few such sights but for each Irwyn insisted to briefly stop and appreciate them.

Eventually - which was such a weird concept to wrap his head around as well - his mother finally brought him to the father. There Irwyn found Umbra already waiting, a step behind his brother already. Irwyn’s twin, and it was undeniable. They were children of a single progenitor, conceived and made in the same exact action. Born together, forever bound together. A little glitter of joy passed through Irwyn’s eyes. Then, for the first time he gazed upon the Allfather. Upon the Name.

There were no words that could describe Ignis. There was nothing that would come close to depicting the throne upon which he sat. 

“Approach,” the creator beckoned and the two aspects as well as the twins followed his will, step by step until Irwyn stood just two levels beneath the pedestal’s top, his father’s eyes bearing into him with much he did not understand. But it did make them stop, not even really understanding why.

“Show me,” Ignis commanded and the brothers both did.

In front of Irwyn’s palm rose a brilliant nine-colored flame. As beautiful as his mother, perhaps even more. It was his inheritance, he knew, for something like it could not have possibly come from anywhere but their. Nor any other power that could equal it. Deep down in his core, Irwyn understood exactly what it was:

Omnipotence.

The ember that could create anything and everything. The first spark from which the very aspects were carved. A blaze as primordial as the creator of everything himself, with a capacity without any limit. A trait passed down to the two brothers. To the first children to be born, unlike the aspects who had been created with exacting precision. An unexpected variable.

“No,” Ignis decided and the flame vanished.

In its place, new conflagrations sprouted. The emergent flame turned to mere red with the slightest tinge of orange, retaining only heat compared to the prior everything. It was not the same - brutally so. Lesser beyond any doubt by such a great margin there were no words usable to compare. Irwyn felt something he did not understand then, deep in his chest, seeping through the depths of his soul. It was… unpleasant. So intensely unpleasant, it felt like it would rip apart his flesh from within. 

PERHAPS THIS, AT LEAST

His mother spoke and something surged from her, burrowing into that red flame. A brilliant yellow streak _s bright as the Cradle within which Irwyn had been born. It mixed and altered with the red spark, merging bit by bit into one. Before he knew it, Irwyn was holding a golden-orange blaze that seeped into his very being, following the Allfather’s transformation and eternally altering his nature again. The feeling in his chest lessened somewhat, at least.

Umbra, not to be outdone, did not even hesitate, injecting the very same into his twin’s new flame. Rather than sharing that bit of red like Irwyn’s, it grew pitch black, and so deep there would be no end nor bottom within. Nothingness that caused Irwyn pain just to look at. But still he was glad, for it surely also lessened his borther’s soulreaving pain.

“You are dismissed,” the Allfather decreed, not commenting on th_ actions of his sons or wives and the two Aspects brought their sons away. 

As Irwyn w_lked back through the palace, he c_uldn’t help but think about how it had somehow lost mo_t of its wond_r.

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Not

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Quite

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Over yet.