Coldfire

Cold fire. Always burning within and around her, never warming anything. When she breathed it out, it did not burn. Instead it settled into darkness, a shadowy fire that warmed nothing and whispered despair to her enemies until they doubted their own abilities and put aside their weapons. The cold, shadowy fire was not well understood, even in the shadowlands. She was feared, shunned, forced to live apart from her clan in the outskirts of their territory.

She tried to hide it, but could not. She wore clothing woven from fireproof cloth and filled the pockets with the hottest coals to disguise her innate coolness, but no matter how hot the coals when she put them in, they were cool to the touch within minutes. She covered her face and mouth and shied away from fighting, so that the miasma that was her strange fire would not draw comment. None of it worked.

She began to seek answers more desperately. She traveled far and wide, visiting libraries, scholars, monks, physicians, and visionaries. Some of the scholars told her of a library in the Earthen lands which held a great many rare books. (1) She packed up her notes and various tonics and unguents and set out to see if it held any answers for her.

To her great surprise, there was an ancient text in the library describing the shadowfire. Not just as a rare condition, but as a desirable one. The text described some uses for the shadowfire among the front lines of armies and defense forces. There were scholars at the library, too. One of them, a military scholar, begged her to let herself be studied, and she consented. The scholar was delighted and the attached school was also very interested in her. Before long she found herself being invited to participate in training exercies for the older students.

A weaver approached her too, a pearlcatcher named Glyph. She had noticed the failure of the fireproof garments and suggested that a special cloth that repelled shadows would be more effective. Fire escaping was not the problem. Shadow entering caused the embers to extinguish and sit like mere rocks. With the help of the dragon whose name was only a sound, she had woven cloth and imbued it with alchemical properties. Although the snapper no longer felt she needed to hide her abilities, she tried the cloth on anyway, and with coals in the pockets, she found herself warmed for the first time in her life.

And when she looked around, she knew she was among friends.

(1) Carl brings home extremely rare manuscripts from time to time. From his description, he may get them from an ancient and forgotten library. Unfortunately being Carl, he cannot ever find it on purpose. Thus the rare old texts appear sparodically.

a member of the stardrape lineage