A hooded figure limped around the drawn circle that enclosed the pentacle. The figure was female, shrouded in fine, embroidered black and silver robes. After one complete circle around the fire, the woman snapped her cape back with flourish. The fabric billowed behind her in the slight breeze, and the candles and bonfire flickered. Light reflected off of her monocle, and illuminated the raised areas of her face while shadowing the gaunt hollows even more.
"Here you are, Lady Price… wicked witch, fallen from grace, left only to your schemes and little games. You have no country, you have no companion, you have no love," the woman spoke to herself in a voice hardly above a whisper, "Only hate. Only schemes."
Her skeletal fingers reached under the collar of her robe, and pulled out a long golden chain with a locket at the end. With one sharp tug, she broke the chain and held the locket out in the palm of her thin hand.
The tiny fingers opened the oval locket, revealing a small painted portrait of a man and woman, both tall with dark hair. They were in grand uniforms of silver and gold, smiling, holding each other. Carefully, she slipped the portrait out from the locket and held it up.
"You are lost to me now, my love. We cannot be together. Criminal and corpse does not make a suitable marriage. Your mind is weak, you have fallen prey to powers beyond either of our control. My husband, Urien Fuoco, died in Andorhal. Should I come across the maddening, murderous corpse that once belong to him…"
With a simple flick, she tossed the portrait into the fire.
"I will burn it to nothing but ash. Your soul will see no torment; only rest. I loved you," she kissed the locket, and threw it into the fire along with the portrait, "No longer will your body be my weakness."
Faronne Price stretched her hand out, fingers extended, and turned her wrist to face her palm to the sky. A small ember danced there, flickering and moving about in tandem with the bonfire. Squinting to focus, she uttered a small incantation under her breath.
In a brilliant display of fire, red with fury, tempered with the blue of arcane frost, both the bonfire and flame in her palm grew. The bonfire raged, fueled by only the will of the arcanist. She could see the metal locket become orange with the heat, then begin to bubble and ooze into liquid droplets.
The fire burned through the fabric of her glove, and Faronne only hissed, relishing the pain. A moment later, she closed her fist around the flame. Simultaneously, the bonfire and flames at the pentacle's points all went out.
"And so the Covenant is reborn," she said lowly, smelling both burnt cloth and flesh. Her fist released, extending each finger one by one. Smoke streamed up from it, barely visible in the moonlight.
Abruptly, she teleported from that spot outside of Raven Hill. A swirling vortex of mana was left in her wake, knocking the candles over and covering the pentacle with dirt. The wind settled and mana dissipated, leaving only the destroyed ritual site.
"The Conception" -Shoji Meguro
