longer.blue

The night of the summer festival.... He could still remember it quite clearly. How could he ever forget that horrible night? How could he ever forget... That face. With the dawn of the knights' ceremony, Sirius expected very little in the way of excitement or even awkwardness. He simply saw it as confirmation of nearly a lifetime of training and commitment to the ideals he held dear. It did strike him as strange however as the man who he would come to know as the Scourge, once a mentor to this generation of knights, had not made an appearance during the practice drills. He knew him to be a preoccupied fellow, certainly... but he could not have imagined what the magus had plotted that night. Before his brothers and sisters, and the elder statesmen of the Order, Sirius was deemed fit to the serve the fraternity as a knight proper. As his father before him, he was given the crest of the Canis Major, a symbol of his undying loyalty and a desire to serve those who needed him in their darkest hour. Though he wished his father were still alive to see this, he felt his spirit looking upon him with absolute pride. That night, he celebrated with his closest friends: Phoenix Solange, Ursa Major Ivan, Monoceros Ricard, and Draco Dione. Their group had left the Order's headquarters to the nearby town of Silverspring to treat themselves to hearty ales and the most succulent roasted shanks this side of the Dreamlands. However, after a few rounds of heavy drinking, the smell of smoked meat was quickly subsumed by the acrid scent of burning wood... In the distance, the young knights watched as their castle was consumed by deep crimson flames: the sign of dark magic at work. Still sobering and panicked, the braves took their horses back up the path to try and save their home. It was a decision that Sirius came to regret the most that night... Pushing through the smoke and fire, they came upon a grisly scene: bodies of their fellow knights being strung up by red-hot chains. Some had pierced through armor and flesh to create grotesque facsimiles of puppets. Some, unmercifully, were still screaming for help even as they burned where they were held. At the center of it was the Magus.... his eyes sunken into black pits, his body surging with devilish red veins, and a twisted sneer that replaced his once stately and kind expression. Without hesitation, the braves attacked him all at once, though Sirius was hesitant at first. The sting of betrayal had set deep, but he came to the aid of his brethren-in-arms when he saw they needed him. Though they were strong, fierce, and cunning in every way that mattered... the young knights were quickly dispatched, one-by-one; Dione lost his head; Ivan crushed by debris; Ricard torn in half;... Solange, his dearest friend, was forced into a burning embrace with Sirius, charring his armor and scarring him... His mind blanked with pain before passing out. When Sirius came to, not only had the fires died, but the town guard that had come too late to rescue the knights had dropped him amid a pile of bodies; Solange's corpse still staring helplessly at him... His screaming only ceased when he was sedated and brought to a healer to be attended to. Sirius was quick to recover from his injuries and had been looked after by the militia with a concerned but cautious vigil. In the end, all knights of Silverspring Castle, sparing those that were retired from the Order's ranks or were abroad and unaccounted for, were dead save for Sirius. In his mind however, the young man was among the deceased as well. With rage burning in his heart and a deepening hatred for dark magic growing within him, he abandoned Silverspring and took what remained of his father's legacy as tools on his journey. Soon, he was on the move... Some time passed, and the Scourge had been left in a near asylum, a far more broken shell of a man than when he assailed Silverspring Castle. He had been stripped of his magical abilities and crippled by aggravated injuries caused by a fall from a wizard's tower. When asked what had happened, he could only reply through broken and missing teeth before falling into complete catatonia: "𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐥 𝐈 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫... 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬."