Burn It with Holy Fire

“Spirits— what is that—?”

What I can do does occasionally traumatise others, especially when they’ve never seen it before. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Better now than in the thick of battle.

“You might call it a curse. I find it useful.” I draw the blood back—swiping my dagger clean first to get the last of the ichor—and it shrinks into a neat red welt glittering under my sleeve. “I’m only harmful to anything that comes from a fissure.”

None of them return my faint smile. They never do.

“Sire, you’re... you know it’s forbidden?” Eruto seems paler than the others.

“Perfectly.” I stride towards the river rather than attempt to wrangle the nervous mare. “Tokon, take care of the horses, we’ll track the scout’s trail on foot.”

“I— yes, sire.”

“Wait,” Eruto’s voice cracks out sharply. “We should regroup to Devil’s Mouth and contact the others before seeking out this fissure, sire. It could be too much for only the three of us.”

I cross the river, watching the treeline for any other movement. Nothing to sense, but I don’t trust what I can pick up with only the twinge of half-raw gouges and the mere bud of instinctive unease to go on. “Tokon can ride for them if we don’t return by nightfall.”

A splutter follows me, succeeded by the belated pounding of boots and jangling of metal. “Sire, we must—”

“You aren’t equipped for this, my lord,” Makolo puffs over him from behind. “If my lord will accept my humblest apologies, you’re weakened, you don’t have any armour, and you don’t even have a sword—”

A thin scream interrupts all protests, cutting up from the town below.

“We’re too late.” I switch directions, brushing past Makolo and seizing my horse again. “They’re already moving, headed for the town.”

“But my lord—”

The mare shuffles and tosses her head, threatening to protest. Soothing her, I guide that nervous energy forward, urging her into a gallop.

There shouldn’t be a fissure here. I don’t remember any appearing after our attempt to defeat Noruaas, apart from small, minor eruptions on the fringes, easily dealt with. None came to Fishmouth until much, much later.

I can still see the smoke staining the dark waters, a whistling breeze ruffling Sels’s limp wings as she stands, silhouetted. A future that doesn’t exist, yet.

It comes into view as the mare’s hooves thunder down the hill—hints of embers glowing in a thin black crack oozing out of the woods, spreading down the hill. And from it, a multi-limbed monstrosity with a ridgeback of flames tears towards a group of women and girls by the stream. It stretches scaly jaws wide, thick black ropes whipping from its maw. Ugly as sin.

Ugly as the sin I commit by brushing ichor over my dagger, imbuing it, and slinging it straight for the monster. Flames spark from blue to red along its blade, embedding deep between scaly plates as the beast looms above an older, slower woman.

And it screams.

My horse startles, badly. With the slap of an imbued hand to light cuirass, I leap off, yanking myself across the stream and spearing the beast with a sharp red rope of my own. Fire flickers from its mouth, blue-red-white, ichor lodged deep inside eating under its skin. The ichor I set on fire.

“Come here. She’s not worth your time.” I grin, crimson cord snapping around it, cutting between scales and thick skin, dragging it to its knees.

The foul wind of its breath shrieks in my face, teeth like blackthorns not quite close enough to bite off my arm in its throes. I’ve seen creatures smaller than this fight harder. “You might be big, but you’re not much in the end.”

With one twist, it implodes, leaving behind only flames and ashes.

Drawing spiriscence to my hand, I douse that with a touch to the stream, sending its waters sizzling over the coals.

“A... what manner of devil are you?” the woman’s voice quavers behind me, more likely at the crimson cord writhing around my arm than my dousing of the fire.

I smile at her. “Return to town, quickly now.”

She stumbles away, mumbling broken prayers to the spirits. And today, the spirits plan to answer her prayers, since I don’t particularly feel like letting the beasts budding at the corners of this widening fissure decimate a town in front of me.

I reach beyond time, past the chain, red twining over my skin to etch sizzling markings edged in white. My fingers wrap around worn leather, the glittering sun burning off a shining blade.

It’s only been a day or two, but I’ve missed her. She comes pulled from wherever my spirit resides in time, as attached to me as an arm or a leg—Atsukute, my Holy Flame.

“You laugh, human.”

The twisted smile fades as something with a multitude of bony spindled wings claws its way free of the fissure and rumbles at me. This is familiar. In many bad ways. “A speaking devil. You’re a long way from home.”

“You believe you can hide from the eyes of Noruaas.” Not so much a beak as a spiral of daggers twists open, a glow like molten iron in the back of its throat. “You believe yourself hidden by magic of weak human blood, but we see you. We see the future you think to change.”

“Then you’ll know I always hated being sent messenger birds, Ilempo.” So, while the chain was shattered someone violated my memories and decided to appear sooner, did they? The birdbrain will never tell me how much he’s supposedly seen, though. “I hope the feverish ramblings were entertaining. Your death is a personal favourite.”

The beast looks down the length of my shining blade and rocks the ground with its guttural rumble. “You mock me, when you are weakened enough to crush with only one of my talons.”

I’ve had enough of this nonsense. Before the glow can brighten, I spear through the open mouth with the cord and touch Atsukute’s edge to it. The blade flares with blue spirit fire, setting off a spark straight down the throat.

Ilempo’s oversized pigeon catches like lamp oil.

“You’re still overconfident. I don’t think you’ll be too much trouble, really.”

The blades of its maw sever with one slice, its shriek shifting another ear-splitting pitch upwards.

Unfortunately, slowed as I am, that still leaves flailing spines to attempt eviscerating me. The hiss of one cuts past my face, a wall of slashing wing-knives barely slowed by crimson cords. One catches my leather cuirass.

Add to that a horde of buzzing hornets, and things get frustrating.

I spear them with more cords drawn from fresh blood, sucking them dry, cleanly cutting off one wing; blocking another with hardened ichor.

A stinger still breaks through, punching into my shoulder. Gritting my teeth, I reverse my grip on Atsukute and stab into its heart, grabbing it and hurling it into the bird abomination’s neutered mouth. The thing pops like a pig’s bladder, spattering burning ichor everywhere.

Atsukute hurling after it seals the ugly thing’s fate. Though not before one last wing catches me in the arm, tossing me like a bony leaf.

I see stars for a moment, my hand splashing into hissing water. Holy water. I could—

Bracing myself, I cup it, imbuing half a handful with no focal marking. It burns, instantly, but it also melts a hornet arrowing for me when I hurl it.

My other arm doesn’t move easily, something in the shoulder affecting it. That’ll protest vehemently later. Right now, I bind it as best I can with my own blood and call Atsukute back from the flaking remains of the bird, hobbling over the stream towards the fissure.

The blade crunches through the middle of a hornet struggling to escape the bubbling fire-threaded ichor of the fissure, more monsters crawling out of the trees further up the hill. Ilempo’s spread himself thin here, trying to extend into the town, probably believing he can overwhelm me with a few dozen weaklings.

He must have rushed this, following us here from the nearest root. These fissure beasts are pathetic compared to what I know he can manage. Even the bird barely had a hide.

As much as I’d love to trade blows, I think my body would protest more of this. Even summoning the spirits to help me would send me flat on my face, at this rate.

“Let’s make this more of a fair fight, Ilempo.” I lift Atsukute above the bubbling fissure. “You gather your strength, I’ll gather mine, and the next time we meet, we’ll see who triumphs.”

A gurgling snarl comes from behind before I can plunge the flaming katana into the fissure. And I didn’t sense it. Curse this—

I twist, bracing for teeth to draw more blood from me. But they don’t. Instead, a high sound I can only call a violent honk mingles with a demonic shriek, and ichor splatters me. Ugh.

I squint over my arm, ignoring the pop of something in my shoulder, and find a little black-necked goose gryphon standing there fluffed and panting, wings out.

“You gonna blow this butt-crack up or what, freaky?” Sels hisses, a wild light in her beady eyes. “Hurry it up before more of those things crawl out!”

I’ll ask later.

Plunging the blade in, I let Atsukute flare, blue flames roaring through the ichor and searing uphill, sapping more spiriscence from me than I’d like, but throwing up an explosive wall of white.

Anything of the fissure caught in it instantly vaporises, and with a grinding rumble that shakes me to my knees, the earth closes.

All that’s left is a trailing scream disappearing over the hills.

“Spirits. Spittin’ sputterin’ spirits,” Sels’s voice spits and sputters. “The hells you are damned crazy. That how the priests do it because HOLY—”

“Usually,” I puff raggedly, “there are more of them. And what— are you doing here?”

“Well yeah chew me off for saving your life. Even if it’d give you more freaky blood tails.” She tracks around where the beast left an ashen mark, scowling at it suspiciously, and snaps the locket open in my face, not that I can focus on it. Finally figured out what it is, has she? “I’m kinda thinking you stole this, but also you just saved the town and everybody else is sayin’ you’re a devil. So are ya? Because that was pretty cool. Ya some kinda devil priest?”

“No.” I cough, gritting my teeth. Deep injuries? Can taste tar. “More cursed—”

My body chooses that moment to cough up an obscene amount of ichor, and a spattering of blood. Ah. Highly... unpleasant. I... forgot that happened... in the beginning. This body’s not used to it. Unfortunate.

Sels says something; it’s distant, as watery as the rocky dirt swimming beneath my cheek. I don’t remember falling.

I don’t remember closing my eyes.