Tears trickled down the tears of the people present. After all, despite all outward appearances, the Albrechts were actually quite tight-knit. The grown ups forced themselves to look, with dark fury in their eyes.
The all looked ready to kill someone, weirdly, they didn't look to fault the Baron. In fact, the glances they sent towards him were filled with pity more than anything. He was the one being hurt the most by this. After all, he blamed himself for all of this, and this was the best he could do for his children.
The children , however, couldn't look. The all looked away. Esme sobbed with an indescribably pained look on her face. After all, the person she was closest to in the world was currently rolling around on the floor as they could see as his flesh literally boiled and burned in a translucent golden flame.
He rolled on the floor and screamed himself hoarse as he begged them to put it out. He begged and begged but no one dared to stand up. After all, they couldn't even feel the heat. Even when he bumped up against the table all he left was the soot from his hair and his own flesh.
In fact even as the fire blazed, it healed him, and penetrated deeper.
Somehow Rick held onto his consciousness. He had read about placebo effects mind over matter and mental mumbo jumbo. About how the mind was powerful, so quickly before he even knew what he was doing, he thought up something to bring him comfort.
The core of his mind focused and all he could do was hold the image of a single jet black flame. He hated the golden flame with a passion, so he imagined something cold and antithetical to it, the exact opposite of the flame.
Where it heated everything up the dark flame cooled.
Where it gave light, his flame spread darkness.
Where it gave life, his fire only brought death.
Oddly enough, the thought of his flame helped. The heat was still unbearable, but oddly enough, now it was just at the edge of what he could bear. It felt like his dark flame was sapping the power from the golden flame in order to grow stronger.
The golden flame didn't like that. In fact, it grew more and more intense. It grew from golden to white as the heat grew more and more. In exchange, the dark flame grew a deeper and deeper shade of black.
This took seconds. So in the eyes of Irik's family, the fire turned from white to gold. As time passed, the flame seemed to root itself deeper and deeper in Rick's body.
The rest of the family might not know, but the Baron certainly did. The recent record for the deepest the flame went was muscle, and it was him. By that time it feels like you're being deep fried alive in scalding hot oil.
Irik had not been nurtured by the True power of the Albrecht family like the Baron had, he had a vastly more robust foundation than his son. Sure his son was more talented, but did he have the will it took to be what he needed him to be? The Baron did not know.
But he soon found out. His eyes widened as the flames turned white. This was a mutation! Mutations in bloodlines were commonplace. Any odd reason could cause them, from chance to careful construction.
But the Albrecht almost never mutated, and when they did, the mutation was strong beyond measure. The Albrecht bloodline actually had many branches, not that the traitors would acknowledge that, given that they were now true behemoths in Existence, with stories ringing among the stars.
But it was hard for the Bright bloodline to mutate because it was already so strong. It actively resisted change, and its domain had substantial control over life. This meant that for anything to break out, it had to be very strong in and of itself. Irik was far more talented than any of them knew.
So he was not shocked to see the white fire reach into his bones, and start to burn them as well. By this point even the air itself trembled from the force of Ricks screams. Only 2 minutes had passed, but it felt like an eternity to his loved ones.
Esme was practically begging all of them to make it stop at this point from her parents to Rick. She kept begging him to stop, to give up. She couldn't bear to see him like that. The other children however, were silent.
They decided to have faith that the adults knew what they were doing. Besides, Begging wasn't working and none of them had any idea what was happening. All they knew was that there were secrets going on.
It was actually rare for them to be alone without servants like this. It only happened on days of utmost importance. Otherwise, how could they keep up the ruse?
Mira was lost. She looked like she wanted to do something but didn't know what. At some point she went down behind him and held him. The fire couldn't affect anyone. In his wildness he kept hitting her and resisting like a wild feral man.
All he could do was leave the rest of his body to his baser instincts, as he struggled to balance the 2 flames and feed the dark one that was helping him. He lacked the mental bandwidth to pay attention to anything else.
He also held it back when it tried to take over. As time went, It got greedier and greedier.
As his mind grew colder and colder his body grew hotter and hotter.
He had to stop it from growing too much and too fast. He didn't want to know what would happen if he let this thing loose. He didn't know if it was part of the process but he decided to trust his instincts.
When the fire touched his bone marrow he went limp. His brain forcibly shut down his control over his body. All that was left were tears of bright vivid blood rolling down his cheeks as he burned in the embrace of his attendant.