His eyes opened a crack, their gaze bleary and unfocused.
Warmth bathed him, and for a confused moment, he relished in the feel of the fire's heat, letting it soothe his aching body. Aching....but why was he in so much pain...?
The black, flame striped wolf sat bolt upright on his haunches, his world tilting precariously as his head ached, orange eyes still unfocused. The golden bangles around his ankle jingled softly, and he tried to focus on them.
Where was he? Who....who was he?
At first the answers to both questions escaped him. But as his eyes cleared, the bangles gaining back their detail, he remembered who he was.
Or at least who he -thought- he was. Someday he might remember the truth, but as he sat there beneath a smoldering, ancient tree, larger then any other in the forest, Rhazgorat'zhana remembered himself as a god.
Soot coated him, and the warmth he felt emanated from the smoking, blackened husk of the ancient tree he sat under. It towered above him, the charred wound where the bolt of lightning had struck lost to his gaze.
But in his mind, he remembered setting the tree ablaze. He remembered other events that hadn't actually occurred, but the black, flame striped wolf didn't realize his brain was terribly addled, and that the intense ache in his head was a result of his skull striking the large jagged rock beside him.
Remembering but not remembering, Rhazgo tried to stand, finding his legs as wobbly as a whelp's. A god shouldn't be this weak, he thought to himself. I must be completely drained. And why am I in this mortal world?
Completely caught in the delusion he saw as fact, Rhazgo looked back at the tree, wondering why he had set it ablaze.
And why, now, he could not summon his warm, soothing flames. He was the god of fire! And yet his fire did not come.
It unnerved him, and sent his temper ablaze even if he could not make the true blaze himself.
Convinced that he was being punished for a crime he couldn't remember committing, Rhazgo set out in search of his missing fire, and those responsible for its absence.
