by Dante King
Kegohr let the shield fade away, then closed his eyes and took a series of deep breaths. I felt as though I should have been able to see something—a rippling in the air or a wriggling under his skin, anything to show the channels changing. But it was all inside Kegohr, invisible to the rest of the world.
He opened his eyes and raised his arm again. The shield appeared once more, a simple disk of swirling flame. As far as I could tell, nothing had changed.
“Maybe if you try—” Vesma began.
“Wait, wait, wait.”
Kegohr thrust his arm forward, stamping his foot as he did so. The front of the shield seemed to break away, a disk of fire that surged a dozen feet across the practice yard before dissipating into smoke.
“Now, it’s good for attacking as well as defending.” Kegohr beamed proudly.
We spent the next hour trying different variations on our techniques. I learned how to send Untamed Torch in circles and spirals to left and right. I manipulated the fireball into totally different shapes, including a jet of flame for enemies at short range.
Vesma and Kegohr tried larger and smaller shields, pointed ones they could stab with, and, of course, Kegohr’s ranged attack. We fetched wooden practice weapons and sparred against each other. We tested the use of our abilities in a real fight, until the weapons were charred from bouncing off burning shields and we were all in need of a rest.
“Damn, we’re good.” I sat and quenched my thirst with water Vesma had fetched.
“You lot learn quick.” Rutmonlir walked into the practice yard, his habitual scowl replaced by a grin.
“How long have you been watching?” Vesma snapped.
“Long enough. And you might want to be a bit more friendly to the guy who nudged you in the right direction.”
“Thank you, Master,” she replied with a bow that was not quite low enough for his stature.
“That’s more like it. I came to tell you that we’re taking the class down into the valley tonight, for a lesson in nocturnal animals. But I reckon you’ll be better off staying here, practicing what you’ve just learned. I’ll tell Faryn and the rest that you’ve been excused from this one. Unless you’d rather go look at owls?”
“No, Master,” we said as one.
“All right, then. Carry on.” He stomped away and vanished into the guild house.
We looked at each other. None of us had ever been excused from a lesson before. I’d asked him for the chance when we’d been on the mountain path, and he’d refused. Now, he’d had a change of heart. I could only guess at the reasons, but I suspected I’d somehow made him proud and earned a night off. The unexpected privilege would have been exciting, even if it just gave us a chance to keep sparring, but I could think of a better use for the time.
If the masters left us here while they went down to the valley, then no one would expect to see me until the morning, and even then, the class would be sleeping in. I had a whole night to get up to the Ember Cavern, rescue Nydarth, and come back to the guild. An opportunity like this might never come again.
“I have something else I need to do,.” I said as I set aside my cup of water. “Can you two cover for me?”
They looked at each other.
“You off to meet a lady?” Kegohr asked.
“Nothing like that,” I said. But then, I remembered Nydarth in her female human form. “Well, not in that sense, anyway.”
“What are you doing?” Vesma asked.
Back on Earth, whenever I’d had a secret mission, I’d kept it to myself. But then, any other time I’d had a secret mission, I hadn’t had friends I could trust the secret to. Colleagues, yes. Superiors even. But not friends. Not like these two. I didn’t want to put them in an awkward position, but didn’t I owe them the truth?
“There’s a dragon,” I said. “Or a dragon spirit, at least. Her name’s Nydarth, and it’s thanks to her that I ended up here.”
“You’re off for an evening with a dragon?” Kegohr raised an eyebrow. “And they make jokes about a human and an ogre.”
“It’s not like that. She’s trapped in the Ember Cavern, and I’m going to rescue her.”
“Are you stupid?” Vesma cuffed me across the back of the head. “The Cavern’s full of monsters.”
“I know. I’ve been in there, remember?”
“That was just the top levels. It gets more dangerous as you keep going down.”
“I can handle it.”
“Really?”
“I’ve been waiting for a chance like this. Besides, I have new technique variations. Where better to test them than the Ember Cavern?”
“Idiot,” Vesma said.
“Guess you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do,” Kegohr said. “Can we help?”
I shook my head. “This is my mission. I’ll do it on my own.”
It took most of an hour to collect my sword and some provisions. By then, night had descended and the other initiates had headed down into the valley, escorted by most of the masters. The guild lay silent as the servants took the opportunity to rest.
The pillar of fire illuminated the front entrance, and guards were stationed along the battlements. The rear fortifications were also guarded, but the only light they could see by were the two torches above the gate. So, I avoided the gate and snuck out through a back door Faryn had showed me.
I jogged up the hill, determined to waste as little time as possible. All those runs were paying off, as I made good time and barely broke a sweat. Around me, crickets chirped and owls hooted. I heard something rustling in the long grass beneath the trees, then a squawk as a predator descended on its prey.
Soon, I’d left the trees behind and was on a bare slope. Small rocks rolled away from beneath my feet as I ascended. I went slower to make sure I kept my balance as I focused on my surroundings for any potential danger. At last, the ground flattened out and I found myself standing in front of the entrance to the Ember Cavern.
I adjusted my belt, checked the sword and knife sheathed there, and shifted the pack on my back. It held a few things I might need in an emergency or if this took longer than planned: water, dried beef and biscuits, bandages in case I got wounded, even a few healing herbs that Faryn had shown me how to find.
This was it. Another step into the unknown.
Four guards assigned to the cave mouth stood 50 feet from the entrance, and I paused by a copse of trees to watch them. Each carried a spear, sword, and shield, but no beasts ventured outside the cave without the attraction of a lure. They weren’t Augmentors, but they’d still report me to the masters if they caught me.
I heard something from behind me and drew my sword. Someone or something was trying desperately not to alert me to their presence.
“Effin!” Kegohr’s voice sounded from behind me.
“Shhh,” I said as he emerged into the starlight.
Vesma appeared behind him, a long-bladed spear in hand.
“What are you two doing here?” I asked.
“Helping you, dummy,” Vesma said.
“I told you, this is something I have to do alone.”
“We’re your friends,” Kegohr reminded me. “That means you never have to do this stuff on your own.”
“If the Ember Cavern is as dangerous as you said, then I’d prefer to go alone.”
“Rutmonlir told us to practice our techniques,” Vesma said. “Where better to do that than in the Ember Cavern?”
I shook my head and laughed. “You two are crazy.”
“We’re not the ones who think a dragon needs rescuing.” Kegohr said as he tapped a thick finger against his temple. “Have you seen the shadow puppets of those things? No way they need our help.”
“But you do.” Vesma nodded at me. “So, we’re here.”
The pair had fought alongside me a few times now, but I’d never expected they’d be willing to help me retrieve the Sundered Heart Sword. I’d called them my friends before, but our bond was never clearer to me than it was in this moment.
“We need to distract the guards,” I said. I’d been watching them for almost half an hour now, and it was clear from the way they intermittently peered back at the cave mouth that they were afraid of the place. Vigorous zones were terrifying places for those without the ability to channel.
I decided to use their fear. I shot a burst of Stinging Palm thorns into the bushes on the other side of the clearing, and the guards glanced at each other. I couldn’t hear them, but I imagined that their frantic conversation concerned who would be given the task of investigating. Rather than a single guard, all four went to inspect the origin of the noise.
“Let’s go,” I said to my friends.
Together, we crept across the clearing and entered the Ember Cavern.
Chapter Thirteen
“So, this is the Ember Cavern.” Vesma peered around as we walked down the tunnel, her features illuminated by the red glow of the wall. The light that gave others a hellish appearance somehow accentuated the prettiness of Vesma’s heart-shaped face and brought out the rich red of her lips. With her usual cynicism replaced with an expression of curiosity, she looked better than I’d ever seen her.
Not that I would risk telling her that. It didn’t seem like the sort of compliment she would appreciate.
“I forgot that you guys hadn’t been in here before,” I said.
“Just you and Hamon.” She raised an eyebrow. “Some special male alone time.”
“Ugh,” I said. “If you didn’t want to think about him that way, what makes you think I would?”
“All that tension between you two; sometimes, that means something special, right Kegohr?” she asked as he nudged him with her elbow.
Kegohr didn’t respond but kept staring down the tunnel, his two-handed mace clutched tightly in front of him.
“Are you all right, Kegohr?” I asked. I’d never seen him like this before. Normally, he was the one keeping up the conversation, even when training left us breathless or unable to string together a coherent thought. But now, he strode along silently, looking grim even by the standards of the place.
“Oh, gods!” Vesma slapped a hand against her forehead. “I should have thought of this.”
“Thought of what?”
“Kegohr’s been into a Vigorous zone before. Several times, back home.”
“Did he get hurt there?”
“No, but…”
“But I haven’t been back,” Kegohr rumbled. “Not since my parents died.”
I didn’t know what to say. Assholes like Hamon were usually the ones to mention Kegohr’s parents, and then as a source of mockery. I hadn’t thought about how little Kegohr talked about them, or how it was all in the past tense.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You know what a tainted guild is?” Kegohr asked.
“No.”
“Imagine if everyone in a guild was an evil fucker, from the highest master to the lowliest initiate. People who would do anything, however cruel and wretched, to increase their power. That’s a tainted guild.
“I came back from the Vigorous zone one day. I’d been hunting for cores. It had left me full of power, feeling like I could take on the world. I was through my front door before I even realized that anything was wrong.
“My da was there, lying on the floor, dead. There’s this thing the tainted guilds do, where they find an Augmenter’s channels and they dig them out. Suck the power dry so they can empower themselves. To do it, they keep the victim alive, so the power still flows. Keep them alive as long as they can while the butchery goes on, and they eat what they’ve taken. Imagine what a body looks like after that. Imagine finding your dad that way.
“They were still there, eight of them, with their black knives and the fire glowing in their eyes. They had my mum, still alive, but cut, battered, bleeding, bent over the table. They’d made her watch while they killed Da, and now, they were… were… were…”
He took a deep breath. When he spoke again, his voice was still low, but there was an anger behind it, a burning fury I’d never heard from him before.
“I’d mastered the Spirit of the Wildfire technique. It was all I had, but it was enough. I let it flow through me, and the fire took over my body, filled me with strength and rage. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t control myself. I didn’t want to.
“I don’t even remember what techniques they used against me. It didn’t matter. The wildfire wasn’t just burning with the Vigor from the cores I’d absorbed. It was burning with the fury of my own soul. I tore into those fuckers with everything I had. I ripped them apart, tearing them to pieces, and it was the least that they deserved. When they realized that they couldn’t beat me, some of them ran. I chased after them, hunted them down through the forest, didn’t leave one of them standing. By the time it was over, I was standing in a clearing where there had never been one before, surrounded by fallen and fire-blasted trees. The last of those bastards was dead in front of me. I’d beaten his brains out with his own arm.
“From the moment I walked through the door to that moment in the clearing, I’d not had a thought of my own. I’d let my fury lead me, let the fire take charge. But now, I remembered my mum. I’d left her alone, battered and bleeding, surrounded by that horror.
“I ran back home, but it was too late. She’d bled to death there in our kitchen, right next to my dad.
“I buried my mum and dad together, where the hyacinths grow. I fed those tainted fuckers to the wolves, all except one piece of skin, with the tattoo of their guild. Because one day, I’ll find the rest of them, and I’ll make them pay.
“Thing is, if I’d kept control, if I’d stayed at the house instead of hunting them down, I might have saved my mum. That’s what I’ve got to look out for, any time I taste the fire. Not letting it take control. Because if I let it, who knows who I might hurt next time.”
“You didn’t hurt her,” Vesma said, laying a hand on his arm. “You know that.”
“But I didn’t save her. And that part; that’s my fault.”
I walked on in stunned silence, not knowing what to say. I’d heard awful stories from other operatives, people who’d been to African war zones or dealt with Mexican cartels. But this was the first time I’d heard anything so terrible firsthand. It made me want to find every tainted guild member in the Seven Realms and make them pay for their crimes. For now, I had a sword to retrieve, but I’d get my chance to cleanse this world one day.
We kept descending deeper into the ground and reached the cavern where I’d killed my first Scorched Salamander. The body was gone, perhaps carried off as food by some other creature. I looked around at the tunnel mouths and tried to determine which would take us deeper into the mountain.
“This way.” Kegohr growled and pointed with his mace.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“The fire,” he replied. “I can feel it. Can’t you?”
I closed my eye and tried to feel the magic flowing through me. But whatever Kegohr had sensed, I was missing it.
Kegohr led the way down a sloping tunnel that emerged into another large cave. Lava fell like a waterfall at the back of the cavern, from a hole close to the ceiling down into a broad, deep pit. In front of it, Scorched Salamanders lay basking on rocks, while Ember Sprites wandered back and forth. The sprites summoned fire with their hands, coated their bodies with it, and ran around in some sort of strange sport.
As we entered the chamber, the sprites stopped their games and the salamanders raised their heads. The great lizards slid off their rocks as fire flared between their teeth.
“Well, now, it’s a party,” I said.
“Right now,” Kegohr said, “this is just what I need.”
He hefted his mace and charged.
I drew my sword and ran after him, Vesma beside me.
We hit the Ember Sprites first as the mad little creatures leaped at us. They clung to my limbs as they clambered over each other to climb up me and attack. I flung one aside and
kicked another away, but the rest had a tight grip. I swung my sword down, cut one in half, and knocked another off my leg. One sank its teeth into my right arm, and a jolt of hot, intense pain lanced through me. I brought my left hand around, called forth the power of wood, and shot three large thorns into its face. It fell to the floor as smoke streamed from the holes in its head.
Kegohr was swinging wildly about with his mace and hammering at anything within reach. Ember Sprites turned to dusty smears as he crushed them between his weapon and the ground.
To my right, Vesma darted around the cave while her spear swung in long, smooth arcs. She moved so fast that the sprites couldn’t get a grip on her. They charged in, and she leapt over their heads as her blade sang through the air. The creatures became diced remnants of their former selves even before she landed. As a salamander charged Vesma with its jaws flashing, she held up her arm, and a Flame Shield appeared, just in time to protect her as the creature released a fireball.
Two of the salamanders lumbered toward me, and I leapt into the air as the first one spouted a sphere of flame. I landed on its back before it reared its legs and threw me off. The other charged straight at me, and its snout slammed into my side. I hit the rock hard, and the sword almost fell from my hand.
The lizard opened its mouth wide, seconds away from frying me or biting my head off. In desperation, I thrust up with my sword, straight between its jaws, through the roof of its mouth, and up into the brain. It let out one last hot breath before it collapsed. I only just managed to pull my sword out in time before its jaws closed around where my arm had been.
The other salamander approached, and fire shot from its mouth. I rolled clear, took momentary shelter behind the body, and looked around. Kegohr smashed in the head of his salamander before he sprinted over to help Vesma. But something else was coming up out of the pit at the rear of the cavern.
These new creatures looked a lot like foxes, but larger, almost the size of wolves. In place of fur, their bodies streamed with fire, from the tips of their noses to the ends of their tails. Where they walked, the ground was left scorched. Eyes black as coal stared out from above vicious fangs. I’d often thought of foxes as cute animals, but these were anything but cute.
