The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs)

by D. W. Hawkins

  Jureus stood before the fire, a darkened silhouette against the dim pool of light, one fist raised in a grasping gesture. He began to squeeze his fingers together slowly, and black spots appeared before Dormael’s vision as he felt his ribs starting to crack. His feet left the ground and he rose slowly into the air, as if some giant had hoisted him a few hands from the earth. He tried to suck in a breath, but every attempt only seemed to sandwich his lungs tighter.

  His head blossomed into a bright spot of pain as he reached deeper into his mind to summon his Kai once again. The Splintering had temporarily jarred his Kai from his mental grasp, and now it seemed he must reach even deeper into himself to summon the power once more. He battered at the doors in his own mind, trying desperately to wrench his magic into his body again. All the while, Jureus squeezed him like a ripened melon.

  Suddenly awareness flooded into him as his Kai opened like a breaking dam, and he could feel a dangerous torrent of power flowing into his body. He’d reached too far, beat at the door too hard, and now his mind was near to bursting with the power he’d clawed from it. If he didn’t release it, it would consume him, and he knew it. He focused on Jureus.

  He could see now with his enhanced senses that Jureus was straining to hold him, pushed to the limits of his magical strength. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and Dormael could see swollen veins standing out under the skin of his head and neck. Caught in the trance of the power coursing through him, Dormael watched Jureus’s lips peel back from his teeth in aching slowness to coalesce into a snarl of effort. His mind noted all of this in the amount of time it took to blink, and before he realized it he had already loosed the dam holding the torrent of power inside of him back.

  Oxygen slammed into his lungs as he was suddenly released, and the relief of it combined with the rush of releasing his power brought Dormael to the brink of a blackout. His feet slammed into the ground and betrayed him, crumpling underneath as he fell onto his knees. His connection to his Kai thrummed inside, and he’d drawn so much power that he was unable to cut off the connection. The magic spun out of control, guided only by the last thought that Dormael had brought to bear.

  Kill Jureus and his friends.

  Somewhere in the camp there was a horrible scream of pain and terror, an ululation that built into a frantic wail. Dormael heard it dimly around the rushing noise in his ears. He grasped at the magic as one would grasp at a bucking horse, fighting to keep it under control and only barely managing to avoid being trampled. Dormael held on.

  Rocks and dirt began to rise slowly from the ground, as if they had suddenly decided to sever the ties that kept them to the earth, and trees groaned on the outskirts of the camp as they bowed away from Dormael’s wild release of power. He wrenched his mind out into the mess of it, and desperately began to gather the magic into a single purpose before it went wild and was out of his control. Dormael’s eyes snapped to Jureus.

  The bandit chief stood with his arms outstretched as if he were trying to hold some great wall against crushing down on him. He made a dim silhouette against the orange firelight as he poured every ounce of his own power into keeping Dormael’s at bay. The debris floating in the air was softly repelled around him, hitting the invisible force of Jureus’s will that he was straining to keep in place. Jureus’s eyes met Dormael’s, and in that instant Dormael’s magic converged on the Necromancer. Both wizards knew it the instant that it happened, and for a split second Dormael thought he caught an expression of pleading in Jureus’s eyes.

  But the power had to go somewhere.

  Jureus didn’t even scream as the magic hit him, he didn’t have the time or the breath to utter even a sound. The rubble floating in midair suddenly rushed into him at the same instant that his feet left the ground. His body was jerked violently into the air and twisted, his torso folding around itself as his spine was soundly snapped. The campfire snaked up to meet him with an almost dismissive flick of an errant tendril, and Jureus was suddenly lit afire as the flames seemed to crawl around his limp body. He continued to rise.

  Dormael stood and grasped hold of his Kai more firmly, directing it more fully into the Necromancer so that it would not slip again from his control. He had to contain the damage as best he could. Dormael reached out into the air and focused on his hands, making them into grasping claws as if he were hefting a large rock. Jureus’s body turned sideways in midair, and the flames seemed to die down slightly now that Dormael pressed his will against the spell. With a loud clap, he brought his hands together.

  The thing that had been Jureus was just as quickly crushed, the charred body crumpling with wet cracking noises as bones and flesh were ground together like dough. Dormael pressed harder, compressing the dead man and at the same time he channeled corruption into the corpse. It blackened by degrees as if it had been dipped slowly in ink, and then the body of Jureus fell away into dust.

  Dormael’s Kai went silent. It took him just a few moments to realize that everything in the camp was silence. He looked up and found D’Jenn and Allen staring at him; Allen wide-eyed and D’Jenn with a quizzical eyebrow raised. The other bandits in the camp were all down, either from D’Jenn’s mace, Allen’s sword, or from Dormael’s wild storm of magic, he wasn’t sure. Shawna was conscious, gazing at him bleary-eyed and seeming to not completely realize what had happened. It was just as well, he didn’t feel much like explaining it. He’d hear about it from D’Jenn later as it was.

  “Well,” Allen suddenly piped, breaking the uncomfortable moment, “I’d say that was about like swatting flies with a sword.” No one laughed.

  “It was more like doing it with a catapult,” D’Jenn said, looking meaningfully at Dormael.

  Dormael opened his mouth to reply, but all that came out was a coughing, croaking noise. He knees gave way and he sank into the dirt, putting an arm down to steady himself. Spots ran across his vision in taunting rows, and pain shot through his head in tiny little stabs. He tasted blood in his mouth again. His fingers clutched at the earth, and he heard his brother cry out before the darkness swallowed him. The last thing he remembered was the cool ground against his face and the pairing of pain and sweet release as he sank into oblivion.

  ****

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hidden Unrest

  The darkness was cool and quiet, but filled with things stirring just out of sight. Dormael floated without reference to where he was, turning over and over in a pool of shadow so deep his eyes couldn’t pierce it. He could hear things in the dark, scurrying and scrapings and every now and then there was a strange wail from somewhere, first far away then close and now far again. It was maddening, and his mind couldn’t rest.

  There were periods of lucidity. He would wake to a gray sky and the scrapings of wood against metal, his body cold and painful. There was a pretty girl’s face hovering there sometimes, a wealth of red-golden hair falling around a concerned face whose mouth uttered soft words of reassurance. Dormael would drift back into the darkness, confused, only to wake again to the jouncing of some strange platform beneath his limp body. There were two faces there sometimes that he thought he should recognize, they seemed familiar to him, yet his mind couldn’t find the memory of having known them. The haze would take him down again.

  Sometimes he could feel something in the darkness, just beyond the reach of his consciousness. It would pulse within him, vibrating in his chest and slowly falling into time with his own heart until he felt like his heartbeat could vibrate the universe. It was strangely peaceful, but also frightening at the same time. He didn’t know this alien power that came from somewhere outside of him. Somehow his mind had gone to a place he’d never been before, perhaps not even within himself, and that thought would jar him away from the strange power. Later, piqued with curiosity, he’d quest out for the power again, but he found that when he looked for it or reached towards it, it would escape him. It seemed like the power was reaching for him, and not the other way around.

  Ther
e would be yet other times that he could feel a power shielding him from the rest of the black, something warm and comforting surrounding him and easing the pain that came from somewhere within. Those times were all too short, and Dormael drank them in as he could. Each time he felt a little more whole somehow, as if there was something he was supposed to be doing that he’d long since forgotten. His mind continued to drift.

  It was after one of these times with the comforting force shielding him from what lay beyond that he found himself floating again in the endless darkness. The wails were there, somewhere far away from him, and he’d grown accustomed to them, so that he no longer cringed or tried somehow to float away from them. He floated in peace.

  The dark presence found him. It slammed into his mind, breaking his mental walls like water breaking through a dam. Dormael gasped, but he didn’t have a body to breathe with. He was one with the power.

  He felt as if his mind were stretched, drawn tight over some indeterminate distance. He could feel the alien power inside of him, waxing and waning as if it were breathing, or something near to breathing. He felt a grasping within him, as if the power were sifting through his mind and searching for something specific. Dormael struggled against it, but the power slipped around his defenses like oil. Finally, the power must have found what it was looking for, and it calmed itself. Dormael floated once more at peace, one with this strange new sensation.

  Who are you? He thought, strangely unafraid and calm. The power did not reply with words, but images translated into something like words. His mind’s eye was flooded with sensations, the first he’d felt in what seemed like an eternity.

  Stars filling the darkness of the Void, strange clouds of colorful lights floating in eternity, a world – his world – as if it were viewed from the Void, and a presence, lonely and sad, flowing just outside but never touching it. I am here, in the black.

  You live in the Void?

  Quiet, an eternal quiet, and a feeling of peace and wholeness filled Dormael’s mind. Then there was a sundering, he was wrenched away from himself, and that piece of him was whisked away and made to become a piece of something else. A great loneliness filled him. I was once whole…but now I am…severed. Where I was one, now I am two but one.

  The images and the translation that filled Dormael’s mind were confusing and filled with sensations that almost flooded his conscience. He would have cried with sadness, but his body was somewhere else. The power spoke again.

  A great explosion the like of which Dormael could hardly imagine, and from it almost everything sprang. The Sundering! The pain of being torn in two, and having a part of yourself ripped always away from you, and the loneliness of being imprisoned forever in the black, never to know the touch of another being. I am severed, eternally.

  I…I’m sorry. The presence didn’t understand this word, and Dormael’s thought was met with confusion. Suddenly he could hear the wails in the distance growing louder, more insistent. His heart began to thump with anxiety and fear, and he realized that it was the presence that was afraid. Its feelings were merged with his own.

  They come! The power began to break contact with him, to escape back to wherever it was that it came from. Dormael clenched onto it with his mind, not wanting it to leave him alone in the darkness.

  Who comes? What’s happening?

  The Wardens! Pain filled his mind, the punishment for testing the limits of an imprisonment. Dormael realized that it was the power’s own memories, given as explanation. This is not your place. You must go.

  Wait! What will happen to you? Will you be alright?

  I am eternal. You must go. I will find you again. Dormael felt a sinking, spinning sensation. He could feel the power loosening the tendrils that held it to him, and suddenly he was alone again. There was a screaming wail, then a chorus of them, and Dormael felt the presence of many beings around him. He couldn’t see them; he could only hear and feel their presence. His heart sped up with fear, and suddenly he felt something push him. He screamed.

  ****

  “Dormael!” someone was screaming. His consciousness slammed into place.

  Shawna sat above him, both hands restraining his shoulders, her skin cool to the touch of his fevered chest. Dormael realized that he’d been struggling, and his head hurt like a thousand needles had been rammed into his eyes. His throat was sore and he relaxed hands that were clutching soft sheets in a death grip. He looked around.

  Wood paneled walls met his eyes, somber in dark shades of rosewood. There were many different things hanging from the walls, strange skulls and assorted trophies whose significance was lost on many people. It was just so, they were personal.

  A large fireplace dominated the room, constructed of large granite bricks and caged off with dark iron bars in flowing patterns. There was a roaring fire inside the fireplace, warming the room around him in waves of comfortable, cheerful heat. It was flanked by two tapestries, one depicting a man being brought down by a pack of howling, disfigured creatures. It was called Tirrin’s Fall. It was meant to demonstrate the folly of mankind. The other showed two men facing off across a sun-blasted desert, one a raving, bearded man dressed in a black robe and wielding a great scimitar, and the other was a young man, perhaps just past his adolescence, bearing a plain wooden staff. Power erupted between the two of them, arcing lightning and burning flames, and the battle seemed to be at an impasse. It was entitled Gimmael facing down Morvlund The Mad.

  It was a legend amongst the members of the Conclave, especially the younger trainees, in which a young Warlock named Gimmael tracked down and defeated the more powerful and experienced Morvlund, who had used his powers to subjugate merchants in Rashardia in an attempt to seize the throne by buying up a large mercenary force. Gimmael was a sort of folk hero among the Warlocks, being the most unlikely choice to bring down the Rashardian mystic. Morvlund had defeated three wizards before Gimmael in similar battles, and he’d been believed to be unstoppable. The tapestry was intended to demonstrate the nobility of the soul.

  This was Dormael’s own room, at the Conclave. It appeared they’d made it to Ishamael.

  Dormael’s chest hurt with teeth-gritting pain. He grasped Shawna’s slight wrists and made to move them from his shoulders, but as he began to break contact with her, she slipped her hands into his and clasped them together at the edge of his bed. Her eyes were worried and her expression was strained, as if she’d been awake for far too long.

  “You were screaming…” she said, her concerned eyes searching for some explanation.

  “A…a nightmare…I think,” Dormael replied, “I’m not too sure.” Shawna looked at him with a confused expression on her face, but Dormael let the matter lie. He was dizzy and tired, and he felt like lying back in his blankets instead of explaining himself.

  “You’ve been asleep for days,” Shawna explained as he rubbed his eyes, “D’Jenn thought that maybe you wouldn’t…wake up…anytime soon. We’ve all been worried. I didn’t understand everything that he was saying, but he sounded very afraid. Allen has been a mess, and Bethany has been even worse.”

  “The death sleep,” Dormael explained, a little surprised to say it, “D’Jenn meant the death sleep.”

  “Death sleep?”

  “He thought I’d drawn too much power,” Dormael coughed. He covered his mouth with his hand. It came away stained pink with blood. He clutched at the sheets once more to hide the blood from Shawna. “Magic can have…adverse effects on the people who use it. If you draw too much power, it can go wild, or even hurt you. Sometimes people who do it can fall into a deep sleep that they never wake from. He thought that I was…” Dormael trailed off, realizing the significance of what he was saying. He coughed again.

  “He thought you were going to die,” Shawna finished for him quietly. Dormael didn’t say anything for a few moments. He soaked it all in, trying to remember what had happened.

  “The necromancer…,” he began.

  “He’s dead, Dormael,�
� Shawna said, laying a small hand on his shoulder, “You killed him.”

  “I remember that much.”

  “Well, afterwards you just sort of passed out. We tried to wake you, but you were beyond our reach. You were breathing so shallow that I thought…well, I was worried,” Shawna said, an abashed look creeping onto her face. Dormael didn’t call her out for it. “We took a cart from the bandits’ camp and got you into the back of it. Bethany just sat there next to you and didn’t say anything to anyone. I tried to rouse her but she stayed by your side.”

  “Where is she?” Dormael asked, suddenly worried for the little girl.

  “She’s with D’Jenn. He’s getting her something to eat. It took some convincing.”

  Dormael only nodded, relieved.

  Shawna went on, “Once we got here, we came straight to your Conclave. Someone met us here…I think his name is Victon.”

  “Victus,” Dormael felt even more relieved, “He’s the Deacon of our discipline.”

  “The what?”

  “The head Warlock. He’s in charge of all the Warlocks. He answers to the Mekai.”

  “I see. We’ve only been here for a day so far, and no one has bothered us since we got here. I think they’re all waiting to see if you’ll come around,” Shawna finished.

  “Well,” Dormael began, pushing himself weakly to a sitting position and pulling the sheets up with him, “I did. There are things that need doing. Can you call out the door there? Find a child wearing a blue tunic and tell him to bring up two plates of food, unless you’re not hungry.”