The Sentient Fire (The Seven Signs)

by D. W. Hawkins

  He tried to use the momentum of his missed slash to his advantage, spinning in that direction and bringing his sword around to parry or slash whatever the thing was going to throw at him. He was swinging blind, though, and when his face turned back to the strange creature he saw that he’d made a mistake.

  Its claw lashed out toward Allen’s face, and though he reacted by slipping backward, he didn’t slip far enough. Its claws bit painfully, drawing hot lines of agony across his right cheek and his forehead. He screamed in pain, and whipped his sword up to bat the claw aside, but even though the sword did bite into the creature’s arm, it only caused Allen’s wounds to be slashed deeper.

  The creature drew back a little then, uttering that strange croaking laughter that Allen had heard from the other creature. It incensed him. First it clawed his face up, probably mangling his good looks for the next season at least, and then it laughed at him?

  “You know that got your brother killed, back in Ishamael,” Allen snarled at the thing, and he could swear that it understood him. Its burning eyes drew down to pinpoints, and it hissed menacingly at Allen. Allen took a step back, falling into a high guard with his saber, and yelled at the creature again, “Come on then, you ugly stinking bastard! Come get some of what your brother got! Come die!”

  It shrieked at him in rage, and bounded for him again, but Allen wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. The saber was too large and slow of a weapon to use against this graceful and agile creature. If he continued trying to hit it with the heavy slashes for which the weapon was made, the abominable thing would easily avoid them, and tear Allen to pieces. He needed to get rid of it.

  So he threw it directly at the rushing creature.

  The thing tried to reverse its momentum, but it was too late. The sword made a violent whooshing noise as it tumbled once through the air, then thudded heavily into the beast’s shoulder, the blade chopping deeply into it and breaking the collarbone with an audible snap. It stuck there, and the creature barked out in pain as it reached for the hilt in an attempt to pull it out.

  Allen had taken a cue from the creature itself, though, and pounced on the thing, pinning the arm and the sword between himself and the creature, knife reversed in his right hand. He bowled the thing over; its short rear legs not long enough to provide enough leverage to keep it upright. Allen rode it to the ground and landed atop it.

  It had been able to keep its left arm free, and it started raining hammer-like punches down on Allen’s back, denting his armor and jarring his teeth. Allen took the blows as a necessary sacrifice, and the wound to the thing’s shoulder caused the power of its punches to be mitigated somewhat by the damage to its muscles. It thrashed and struggled, and Allen had to hold on and growl in determination as he struggled to stay atop the thing in the slick grass. The rain was pouring down on the both of them, and it made the desperate wrestling match difficult to keep up.

  Allen was finally able to stabilize himself, and he started stabbing the thing in the crook of its neck over and over. It screamed out in pain and tried wriggle away, but Allen had managed to wrap his left arm around the back of the creature’s neck, and it was pinned fast to the ground. Blood welled up from the wounds that Allen inflicted, but did not spurt into his face or spray from the wound as he’d expected. It was obviously causing the thing pain, but its struggles didn’t seem to be growing any weaker, and being so close to the thing suddenly felt a foolish place to be. Allen needed a new target.

  Screaming in rage and battle lust, Allen rammed the dagger as hard as he could down into one of the creature’s glowing eyes. There was a flash of sullen light from the wound and it shrieked in agony. Allen felt the rear legs of the creature work their way to his hips and heave him upwards by main strength. He flipped over the thing’s head and into the grass, the impact driving the breath from his body.

  Rain poured into his eyes and his entire chest hurt like he’d fallen from a great height, but Allen forced himself to roll quickly aside and gain his feet again. He came up in a crouch and locked his eyes onto the strange creature, which had also rolled away and now stood glaring at him with its one glowing red eye. It reached up and yanked his saber from its shoulder, having to wrench it up and down once to free it from the bone that it had stuck into. Allen watched in fascinated horror as it ripped the blade from its shoulder and tossed it aside, then it grasped the hilt of Allen’s dagger – still planted to the hilt in its eye socket – and yanked it free as well.

  Allen was in trouble, and he knew it. The bastard had taken two blows that would have put any normal man down and one that would have killed instantly, and came back to its feet. In fact, it seemed that all Allen had done was make it angrier. His heart beat heavily in his chest, and his eyes searched frantically around for some kind of advantage.

  He spotted his short sword lying in the wet grass, not three hands from where he now crouched. The only weapons he carried now were the throwing knives strapped to his belly and the twin cestus gauntlets he wore on his fists, neither of which would do any good at killing this strange thing. The sword was his last hope.

  He whipped a throwing knife from the harness he wore and flicked it at the thing’s head, hoping to distract it. The creature bobbed its head out of the knife’s path, but as soon as the knife left Allen’s hands he was scrambling toward the short sword, reaching desperate fingers toward the hilt. His eyes were locked onto the sword, and his arm seemed to reach for it in slow motion. He could see the creature bounding toward him from the corner of his right eye, and he instinctively braced for the impact that he knew would be coming.

  His fingers closed around the hilt of his sword.

  He felt the creature rush by him, its momentum carrying it within bare inches of Allen’s hunched side as he pulled the sword from the ground and turned his scramble into a roll that would turn him around to face the creature once more. The world turned over in his eyes, and he felt the vibrations in the ground of the creature desperately trying to stop and reverse its direction in the wet, slippery grass, but then Allen’s feet met the ground, and he gripped the sword tight in his right hand as the creature came back into his field of view.

  He was barely in time to avoid another slash of the creature’s left hand that would have ripped the other side of his face to shreds. He leaned back, feeling his abdominal muscles strain with the effort, and the sharply tipped bone claws of the thing passed his field of view in a blur. It started throwing more slashes at him, and Allen regained his rhythm, ducking, parrying, and slipping aside just fast enough to avoid being flayed by the thing.

  During the flurry of blows, Allen noticed a weakness in the creature; its right shoulder, the one that he’d sunken his sword into, was moving slightly slower than its left. The slashes and punches it threw were slower, and it was slower to recover from them. It appeared that even though it could go on living through maiming injuries, it still needed the underlying muscles and bones in order to maintain its supernatural strength and speed.

  Allen sensed an opening and stepped to his left, into the creature’s weakened side. It could only throw so many slashes with its left arm, and the attacks it tried to send at him when we was moving toward its injured side were awkward and aimed haphazardly. Allen ducked under a slash aimed at his throat and swung his sword with every bit of strength he could, meeting the creature’s right arm with the blade.

  Allen’s sword rang with the impact, vibrating uncomfortably in his hands, and the creature’s right forearm went flying off into the rain, disintegrating into that gray salt-like substance. It shrieked in pain and rage, but the strong attack had put Allen off balance for a single instant. Claws struck his armor along his own right side, and he felt a hot explosion of agony along his ribcage as the blow lifted him from his feet and sent him sprawling in the grass.

  His breath was again knocked from him, but the heat of battle was raging in Allen’s veins, and he ignored the sudden spots that popped up in his vision. He saw the creatur
e flying toward him, ready to land atop him and sink its claws into his belly. He had no doubt that its distended fingers could sink right through his armor with enough force. He pushed his weight upward onto his shoulders desperately, and kicked upwards with both of his feet, knowing that it might be his last gamble.

  There was a great cracking noise as his feet connected with the thing’s head. He felt the impact through his boots, and he thought that he may have shattered something in his foot in the process, but he couldn’t worry about that now. The thing tumbled into him, entangling with his legs as it reached its long arm down toward his throat. Allen pushed against its chest with his legs, but he just couldn’t get enough distance. The creature’s hand wrapped around his neck with a grip like iron, and it started to squeeze. Allen’s breath cut off suddenly, and he felt the instinctive fear grip him that came along with being strangled.

  He knew that he was about to die.

  The creature tried to pull him from the ground, but Allen pushed desperately against it with his feet again, and it couldn’t get the leverage to lift him. It squeezed harder, and Allen felt the bones in his neck creak in protest. He looked into the thing’s one good eye, and the point of burning light dwindled down to a pinpoint that peered down at him. It tilted its head and uttered a low coughing noise, then sniffed him strangely. Allen’s eyes started to go dim.

  He stared down the thing’s skinny arm to its head and that burning eye. He didn’t want this ugly bastard to be the last thing he saw before he died. He supposed it was an honorable death, but he’d always envisioned dying against a horde of enemies, swords chopping and spears stabbing. Not pinned under some maimed and skinny demon that only had one arm.

  One arm.

  He looked to the thing’s arm, then. It was awfully skinny – too thin, in fact, to be as strong as it was. This thing seemed to have some sort of supernatural strength and speed, but it was contained within a frame that seemed stretched, somehow. Thin. If this body had once been a man – as Dormael had said it must have been, back in Ishamael – then it had to have the bones and muscles of a man, no matter how supercharged they were by what was inside of it.

  They had to be stretched to a breaking point by the deformation.

  Allen reacted as quickly as his strained body could allow, pushing off of the thing with his feet once again, causing it to lean into him. He gripped its wrist in both hands then, and wrapped his legs around the thing’s arm, right at the elbow. With the last bit of strength left in him, he simply sat up.

  The arm broke with a snap, coming loose from the elbow joint. The creature shrieked again in pain, and the grip on Allen’s throat slackened a bit, but not all the way. He pried against the weakened fingers with his own, but it was no good. He started to panic then as the creature tried to snake its arm out of Allen’s grip, but on some instinct Allen pulled against it.

  And with a wet tearing noise, it came right off at the elbow.

  Allen felt his weight drop to the grass again as the arm in his hands turned into handfuls of gritty salt. He sucked in a ragged breath, and the pain around his neck was pure agony, but he had to move. He felt more than saw the stomp that the creature aimed for his head, and rolled quickly to his right across the wet grass – right over the dagger that the creature had dropped earlier.

  Allen’s fingers closed weakly around the handle, and he rolled once again as another stomp whooshed through air followed by another enraged scream. This time, though, he reversed his roll and stabbed desperately at the thing’s knee, sinking his dagger through the back of the joint. The creature screamed in pain once again, and Allen was able to roll away and stumble to his feet.

  With no hands to grasp the dagger, the beast was unable to pull it out. Allen turned his gaze to the creature, chest heaving as he sucked in breath after delicious breath of air. It gazed back at him, and he thought that for an instant he saw resignation in the thing’s eyes, if such a thing was possible.

  Allen was well past caring.

  He saw his short sword lying next to his foot, and bent to pick up the weapon, keeping his eyes on the creature. It simply watched him, weight mostly on its good leg, waiting to see what he would do. Allen twirled the blade once in his hand and dashed at the thing.

  The creature attempted to scramble to the side, but when it tried to push off with its injured leg, it failed. The creature stumbled across the grass, and Allen chased it, sword held back for a powerful swing. With a scream of rage, Allen swung the blade two handed, feeling the strength leave his legs as he did.

  The thing’s head flew from its shoulders, the lights in its eyes dying out. Allen would have screamed out in triumph if his throat didn’t hurt like the Six Hells. For that matter, every hurt that his body had ignored during the fight seemed to blossom in Allen’s body as he came down from the battle high. He watched the thing’s body turn to salt and simply sat in the rain afterward, trying his best to breath easily and regain a bit of strength.

  Grimacing at last, he got determinably to his feet and went in search of D’Jenn. He hoped that his cousin was still alive.

  ****

  D’Jenn went down in a pile of grasping, cold hands. The first cadaver had tackled him to the earth before he could react as he’d torn his eyes back to the advancing group of dead bodies. The brigandine armor kept the impact from knocking the breath from him as his feet left the earth, but instinct took over and instead of doing something with his magic, he punched the corpse in the head with his gauntlets as they both tumbled to the ground. The corpse didn’t even notice the blows.

  He knew he’d just possibly made the last mistake of his life.

  The sudden fear whipped through his magic, and he punched out with it like he’d punched with his hands, and the corpse was ripped bodily off of him to be thrown backwards through the air. He saw the body tumble into the group of corpses that had been just at its heels, and it bought him precious seconds to roll to his feet.

  There was another cadaver struggling past its comrades to come within striking distance of D’Jenn, and D’Jenn responded more intelligently this time. He threw a left-handed punch at the thing’s face, imbued with the power from his magic. When his fist hit it, the face crunched completely inward with a wet thumping noise, and D’Jenn was suddenly struck with the thought of a rotten melon. That corpse fell.

  Another reached for him at almost the same instant, and D’Jenn crushed its head with his morningstar, sending it sprawling into the grass. The others had recovered, though, and they were right on its heels. D’Jenn screamed in fear and frustration, summoning his magic and reaching out to the only thing around him that he could use – the rain.

  The air around him was suddenly hissing violently as water was sucked into the vortex of a spinning shield moving so fast as to blur everything around him. He kept the spell going, pouring searing heat into the shield, and the rain suddenly started to put off a huge cloud of steam. D’Jenn squared himself and calmed his mind, readying himself for the coming fight.

  The steam obscured his vision, and he suddenly felt alone within the spinning vortex of scalding hot water. The constant noise of it created a silence all its own, and D’Jenn waited tensely for the first dead body to try its luck. He readied his weapon.

  A hand reached into the vortex and was thrown sideways almost instantly. The water scoured the flesh from the hand almost completely, and left a trail of red blood and liquefied flesh spinning around D’Jenn’s shield where its hand had passed into it. Stubbornly, the thing tried again, and once again was rebuffed. D’Jenn thought furiously. The shield was doing nothing but buying him time and he needed to figure out a way to kill these things quickly.

  But what could he do with water? It wasn’t his favorite destructive force. He preferred fire and entropy – a rapid acceleration of the decaying process. But the entropy spell needed time to get started, and it was a powerful working. Fire wouldn’t work; the rain would put it out before it got started, unless D’Jenn wanted to po
ur a great deal of power into that as well. He needed something with water.

  A cadaver came hurtling through the wall of water, losing a great deal of flesh in the process, but getting through, and D’Jenn had to step back hurriedly away from the thing, bashing its head in with a heavy handed blow from his morningstar. The water had scoured most of the flesh from its face, leaving a bloody, eyeless mess. It had been disoriented and thrashing when it came in, and had almost pushed D’Jenn backwards into his own spell.

  It had been disoriented? So these things did need their eyes. If he could blind the lot of them, it would make this entire fight go that much easier…but how?

  What can one do with water?

  D’Jenn altered his spell suddenly, pushing the water out in between him and the corpses in a flat pane, holding it completely still with the force of his Kai and sandwiching it between two thin sheets of air – creating a semi-effective mirror. The corpses suddenly stopped struggling toward him, and began searching for him. He could see them as blurs on the other side of his spell, suddenly standing still except for their turning heads.

  D’Jenn smiled. He split his consciousness.

  He sank his magic into the cadavers, deep into their bodies and brought his mind into sharp focus. He felt organs, lying dead and no longer pumping, bones that creaked and no longer grew, muscles that contracted dryly and tore without repair, and fluids lying stagnant in the dead things. He felt a smoky, oily power imbuing their bodies, emanating out from the dead brain and through the spine into a network of channels that pumped it ceaselessly into the muscles of the corpses. He sank his magic into that power and tried to filter it out somehow, to pry against it in the hopes of pulling it loose.

  Pulling at it didn’t work. It just slipped around his own magic like oil through his fingers, and Splintering it wouldn’t work for the same reason. D’Jenn gritted his teeth in frustration. He was right on the verge of understanding how this worked…but it was no matter. His only concern should be incapacitating the things.