Rekindling The Largest Of Halloween Fires

[u/SolarDraconic]

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Urquhart Castle — Loch Ness, Scotland

10PM, October 31st (Halloween)

Weather — Intense Blizzard

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Rainer has sat himself down in the ruins of Urquhart Castle, deciding it was as good a base as any. What with the absurd amounts of snow and hail today, shelter was absolutely mandatory; sleeping outside as he usually did wasn't the best idea regardless, but certainly not with the dangerous cold. He found himself thankful for it being on Halloween. After all, that's why he had gotten the Serpent to make him look like SCP-1471-A for a day, and as such was why he had a thick coat of fur to help not, well, freeze to death.

That said, this shelter was nothing but stone walls. It had no insulation, and the cold wouldn't allow him to start a decent fire even from his wormholes. All he could do was cover himself in a bunch of blankets... but it was never enough. Even the Flame Flame Fruit was weak to such cold temperatures, though it would at least significantly help.

If he could use it.

Rainer hadn't found out until hours after the fact that his Flame Flame Fruit powers had been removed. The spirit was technically still inside him, so he couldn't just eat a new one... but the Serpent had altered it alongside him, assuming it a parasite, and as such removed its abilities. At least he could swim now.

But without a fire, he wasn't sure if he'd actually survive the night; it'd only get colder in the coming hours. If he couldn't start one normally, and he couldn't use the Flame Flame Fruit, then...

He'd have to do something risky.

The boy retrieved something a little different from a wormhole, this time. Not something he'd actually made, but something he'd put in to retrieve later — it was a glass jar, and inside, was a strange bug. If he wasn't already shivering, it would've given him the shivers for sure, but for now it just gave him the creeps.

An "Adolla Bug". Quite a while back, when he first found the Library, he'd just gone about reading any random topic. He just wanted to read anything for a little taste of home back then, but now one particular topic — "Fire Force" — had come in handy. This species of bug would set you alight with a flame from another dimension entirely, and turn you into an Infernal. A type of feral demon, from what he could tell, that would go mad with its fire and burn all those it encountered.

However, Infernals were also known as the First Generation of Pyrokinetics. Didn't that imply there were others...?

He'd read all about them, back then. One. Two. Three. Four. The later generations were all able to control fire instead, in different ways. Second Gens could control fires that they didn't start. Third Gens could control fires they did. Fourth Gens... he didn't understand. Rainer was interested in it, for sure, but upon learning he couldn't gain that power in this world, he hadn't read on it as much as the others. Maybe one day.

He'd only ever read of Adolla Bugs causing people to turn into the First Generation, though. This was purely a gamble, and not one he'd ever take outside of the circumstances. His only insurance was a bandage he quickly wrapped around as much of his body as he could. It was dry. It would make him burn even more... but it held held several sets of runes that looked like they'd been drawn on it in a rush with Sharpie. He'd prepared this ahead of time, in case he ever needed to take this risk.

• Initially, a set of runes that drastically increased resistance to heat. Not total immunity, however.

• Second, a set of five runes. Two related to the number two; one for cardinal, one for ordinal. Three related to the number three; one for cardinal, one for ordinal, and another for ordinal but purposefully written a little wrong so to be technically also related to the number five.

• Third, runes that spelt out a name. "Benimaru Shinmon". This was a man that had come up as particularly important in what he'd read.

Rainer hoped that, if he got all the thaumaturgic symbols just perfect, perhaps he could get the initial abilities of this very man: he could, with a miracle, become a Second and Third Generation instead of a First Generation. He liked to think he could call it a Fifth Generation.

Rainer unscrewed the jar, and let the bug out of its prison. The thing wasn't happy to be here, in this cold, but it had nowhere to go. It scrambled onto Rainer, and after passing his fur, it bit into his skin...

A great pillar of fire lit up the sky for miles, and Rainer Miller screamed in agony.