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Zombie Hemlock didn’t trust Pyro with the family business.
That was a fact.
This is because he hated Pyro.
This was… also a fact.
The son was slumped over his desk, paper and ink spread across the table. Some shareholders were upset about Zombie's recent absences and overall disconnect from the company.
“I wish you were in charge of these parts of the company, Pyroscythe. It would make things so much easier."
But no, Pyro would never inherit the company. It would go to Zam, maybe. Even though he was more interested in going to parties and hunting with his friends.
A quiet knock sounded at the door.
Pyro groaned, and sat up, and accidentally knocked over an ink pot in the process.
He cursed under his breath. "Come in!”
His maid, Ivory, walked quietly into the room. He watched as she surveyed the scene, ink dripping onto the already black rug.
“Oh-oh, sorry s-sir, I was just to-told to tell you that lunch it-is soon," she stuttered. The maid watched the ink drip again. “And, uhm, sir, would you like for me to clean that for you?”
She said the second part hastily, wringing her hands.
Pyro looked over the mess and sighed.
“Yeah, you can clean that up if you're up to it, Ivory. Thanks for the lunch warning,” he muttered.
Black ink stains still covered the carpet days later. He could still see them faintly, the ink had turned somewhat green against the dark carpet. When he and Ivory sat down to talk, like human beings, equals, two adults sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, he hid the stain with a hand.
Ivory didn’t notice.
She stared into the coals of the fire and the dancing flames. She seemed quite calm, as if it brought a small comfort in memory to her.
Pyro quite liked fire too.
It was his namesake after all.
She stared into it like a lifeline, confessing her love for women with orange in her red-brown eyes.
Pyro understood.
Black rugs can’t turn darker when they burn. Other things char, but in fact, black rugs turn to ash grey, a lighter colour than they were before.
When Pyro first smelled smoke, he thought maybe one of the servants had burnt something in the kitchen. He ignored it at first, but it bothered him.
“Does anyone else smell that?” He asked at the dinner table.
“Smoke,” Muu nodded.
Zam stood up. “I’ll check the kitchens.”
The siblings nodded.
A few minutes later, Zam hadn’t come back. The smell of smoke only got stronger, and Pyro started to hear the crackling of fire.
Then Muu started shrieking. “Look out the window!”
Pyro was horrified. The windowsills outside were burning. Everything was burning.
Smoke had started steaming into the room, making Pyro’s eyes water.
Muu looked on the verge of tears, Izzy was not much better.
Vi just looked… scared.
“If there’s a fire, I still have a spare pipe bomb in my room.”
Everyone exclaimed at this, a few people yelling at Vi. Muu burst into tears.
“We need to leave, now!” Pyro yelled over the commotion.
Everyone leaped up from their seats, quite all of a sudden. It only made hearing the fire easier.
The siblings crept towards the doorway, only to find more and more fire.
“I’m going to jump out of a window,” Vi muttered.
Izzy spun on him. “You are not! That’s unsafe!”
“And going INTO FIRE isn’t?” Vi yelled. “I know how to climb the roof, and you can’t stop me!”
Vi rushed to a window and threw it open, then basically leaped out and down from it before anyone could stop him. Pyro could hear the creaking of the house now, and added to it was Vi climbing down one of the gutters.
“NO!” Muu howled. She tried to go after him, but Izzy caught her arm. “Come on. Please.”
The three of them now began their way to the main entrance, Muu’s sniffling only getting worse with the smoke.
She was coughing more than the rest of them.
Thick clouds of smoke came towards them, coming from the kitchen probably.
There was no oxygen left, it seemed. Pyro’s lungs were filled with grey like a smoker.
He could see the fires now, brilliant orange and yellow and red. Crackling and burning, the sound that Ivory found so comforting was now enveloping him, surrounding his every being and suffocating him.
Some passageways were cut off by fallen pillars or burning walls, so getting to the main entrance took a lot longer than expected and by the time they were halfway there, Muu was practically unconscious so Pyro and Izzy were half dragging, half carrying her along. Izzy’s eyes were red. Her pink hair had taken on an ashy hue.
They kept going. They had to get out of here alive.
So many things ran through Pyro’s head.
Maybe, if Zombie let his children go places without being heavily monitored, the three of them wouldn’t be here, Muu half dead and Izzy having a mental breakdown. Vi wouldn’t have jumped out of a window. And Zam would be with them.
Where even was Zombie? Maybe this was his fault, he set the manor on fire with all of his “lousy servants and kids” in it to get away.
No, he’s too greedy for that.
A painting fell off of a wall and slammed into Pyro’s arm. He yelled, clutching his arm that was now bruised and a little burnt, dropping Muu in the process.
Izzy grunted at the sudden weight, and glanced over at Pyro’s arm.
“Are you alright?” she asked. Her voice sounded hoarse. Pyro gritted his teeth although it hurt like hell.
“Just a bruise, I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
Izzy didn’t look at him, but she nodded, and Pyro helped Muu up with one arm.
The main entrance was now in sight, and Pyro started calling out names.
“ZAM?”
“MADDY?”
“ASH?”
“SERAPTER?”
“KANTJE?”
“Can anyone even hear you?” Izzy mumbled. The blazing fires had turned to a roar. Pyro was very glad they’d gotten out of the smaller hallways now, because they were all engulfed in thick walls of flames. All of the wallpaper had caught fire, but that was easy enough to avoid now that they had more space.
It wouldn’t be long until the floor caught fire too though.
Regardless, Pyro kept calling out names.
“BIT?”
“ROSS?”
“CLOWN?”
“LOPEZZ?”
"DIV?"
“IVORY?”
Even his dad.
“FATHER?”
Izzy kept coughing at his side.
At a point, they found Zam lying unconscious at the bottom of a flight of stairs. He must have tripped. Pyro gave Izzy a look, and she nodded. She grabbed Muu with both of her arms, and Pyro took Zam. Finally, they were at the main entrance. The door was in sight.
But when they got there, it was so much worse than Pyro thought. Everything was on fire. Another chandelier had fallen and was burning.
All Pyro could see was red. His vision blurred. He wasn’t sure if that was him going unconscious or the smoke getting to him. Probably both.
The door was right there. Someone was already pulling at it.
Clown was yelling at the door, pulling and yanking at it with all of his weight, coughing all the while.
Pyro staggered over to him, and now two sets of hands were pulling at the door. Flames licked at the bottom of the wood. Clown cried out and collapsed onto the floor. His mask was ashen, parts of it burnt off. Pyro could see tear streaks down his face.
“Ivory said that she saw Kantje smashing the boiler,” Clown said in a small voice. Pyro had never heard the man so vulnerable. “Serapter said Ivory was chasing after him.”
And Pyro understood.
Maybe, if Zombie had paid the servants more, instead of complaining about it, this wouldn’t have happened and Zam and Muu wouldn’t be lying together on the floor unconscious.
Pyro balled his fists and growled, then coughed at the notion.
Then a pillar collapsed.
It made a harsh rumbling noise before crashing to the ground. Pyro spun around right as it landed on top of Zam.
Izzy screamed, yelling and howling at the rubble. Pyro could only stand shaken. The sound of fire and flames was dwarfed by Izzy’s cries. He could even ignore the smell because all he could feel was Izzy’s pain, his pain.
A very small part of him was glad that Muu was unconscious for this.
“DON’T JUST STAND THERE, DO SOMETHING!” Izzy roared. Her voice was broken. She coughed in the middle of her sentence. Even from a distance away, Pyro could see her grief stricken face.
He staggered towards her as quickly as possible, heaving around the pillar to uncover Zam’s body. When he saw it… he couldn’t look. His head was an unnatural shape. His torso looked caved in.
Izzy kept howling with tears, screaming obscenities as if it would douse the manor with water and bring Zam back.
Pyro, shoving his own tears back, though he knew some had escaped, hauled Izzy and Muu away from any other pillars and then rushed back to Clown. He’d gotten back up and was pulling at the door again.
“I’m going to go try to find the other servants,” Pyro managed to sputter out. Clown only nodded grimly.
He ran towards the servants’ quarters yelling out their names, but the smoke was so much stronger here.
Every name turned into a coughing fit, and at one point, Pyro tripped over a fallen chair, and didn’t get back up.
Darkness overtook him, and the smoke became his burial ground.
Right before he went unconscious, a door fell over near him, covered in flames. They creeped towards him, and he finally cried, hacking, choking cries into his knees.
He’d really hoped that his siblings would one day get out of here too.
He really hoped that wherever Ivory went, it was to get help.
He’d really hoped that before he died, he would make something of his life.
“I didn’t want to die in this house.”