Fire

by Rosie Scott

“Like you,” I said, after a moment.

  “Hmm?” She must've been lost in thought, and had forgotten what I might be referring to.

  “You made your own plans and escaped the underground. And now you live a relatively normal life.”

  Nyx chuckled. “Relatively normal,” she repeated, finding it amusing. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”

  “A compliment, coming from me. To you, probably an insult.”

  She huffed in amusement.

  “Seriously, Nyx...thanks for telling me about that. The whole story.”

  There was a short silence. Then, “I've always been afraid to. I've fought with self-hatred over the years for the way I handled it. Wondered what I could have done differently. I've even wondered if I'd just went ahead and gone through with it right away, if Jemia'h would still be alive. He'd be traumatized, but alive. But then I think...could I have lived with myself? It would have been me who assaulted him, which might have been worse because it wasn't me who ended up killing him.” She paused, before a long, frustrated exhale. “I don't know. I could go back and forth with myself all day over that. I just appreciate you listening.”

  “I appreciate you telling me. And as sex crazy as you are, it's nice to know you have limits and boundaries.”

  “I can't imagine anything worse than being intimate with someone who isn't into it. That's what makes it so fun, you know? Being wanted. Being attracted to someone and finding out that they have the hots for you, too.”

  “And then moving on to the next,” I teased.

  Nyx chuckled again. “Well, that's the best part. You don't know what you're missing.”

  Ten

  A fortnight had passed since we had left Thornwell. The forest to our right became thicker, and the Cel Mountains ahead loomed ever larger. We were still a few days from the base of the mountain range. When we reached that point, we would head into the forest, where the path leading up into the mountains would be a few days travel to our left.

  Meir had long ago completed its semi-annual trek across the sky, so the nights had been darker, and the bright blue skies of the days were missing its presence as well. We were now deep into the heat of High Star; the detour to Thornwell had cost us a few days of travel. If we had any further delays, it was possible we wouldn't make it to Whispermere until early Red Moon. If that were the case, that would mean I would arrive in Whispermere a full year after my mother had written her letter requesting me to visit.

  Travel had been relatively calm in terms of trouble from wildlife or enemies since our little run-in with the orcs back before Thornwell. It didn't mean the trek was easy. The days were hot, particularly while stinking and baking in leather armor, and water was hard to come by this far from the ocean. We would run across a small stream now and then, and I'd even created rain a few times for purposes of relief, but full on bathing was out of the question without a larger body of water. Theron had spoken of the existence of hot springs in the Cel Mountains, which was news to me. Right now, in the heat, the idea of a hot spring was awful. I was sure that once we were freezing in the mountains, however, it would be a lifesaver.

  It was mid-day, and the sun was relentless upon the earth below. Because we were following the forest anyway, we'd decided long ago to walk just within the line of the trees, allowing the shadow to give us relief. The group of us were quiet, in the midst of pleasant silence.

  That is when we heard it.

  It was an ongoing crackling, coming from to our right, deeper in the forest, getting closer. It reminded me of when mages would wield lightning, letting the bolts strike out directly from their palms...only this was different. It was magic, yes. But it wasn't air magic.

  Theron was in front of the group, as had been his place since the beginning of our journey. Since he was both a ranger and the only one of us who'd been to the Cel Mountains, it seemed only natural. But now, he stopped in his tracks, and we eased up behind him.

  The mercenary turned, made a gesture to lower ourselves to the ground. We did so, squatting amongst the brush, without a word.

  Seconds later, footsteps—lots of footsteps—followed, clomping down in the forest, overriding the crackling. Then, a roar. My heart began to race at its familiarity.

  Orcs.

  As the sounds got louder and closer, more became audible. Orcish war horns, the harsh warning echoing off the nearby thick tree trunks. Larger footsteps, though just one set, that sounded much larger than even the orcs. Then, the clash of metal, followed by the skidding of it as one blade was sliced down the length of another.

  By the gods. How many are there? As the noises came closer, my eyes darted through the thick foliage, looking for the sources of them. A moment later, a flash of black passed through the forest ahead, followed by a small army of orcs.

  There was one man. Hidden beneath a cloak of black, the man was not equipped to handle the entire orc army that was after him. He held a scythe in his right hand, but the weapon's long pole handle had been cut to half-length, giving the man the ability to wield it single-handedly. The man quickly backed away from the orcs, nearly tripping over the mess of foliage beneath him, but he didn't fall. It was almost as if he knew this forest inside and out.

  Before him were masses of orcs. At least three times the amount we'd had to fight weeks before. Surely, all these orcs weren't just after him. I figured the man was part of a larger group—army, even—and was the last one standing.

  The man finally broke through the edge of the forest up ahead and to our left, thick black boots backing up over the smoother ground. The orcs charging after him were still in the forest, rampaging over fallen trees and bushes. Somewhere farther into the forest, a frightening, deep roar sounded that shook me down to my core and ran a chill down my spine. Whatever it was, I couldn't see it yet.

  I felt such sympathy for that lone man, then. I knew my friends and I were ill equipped to help him, and that Theron was being smart in simply waiting out the man's death. It didn't mean I was going to like watching him die.

  Then, standing a small ways away from the edge of the forest, the man did something unexpected. His scythe was sheathed on his belt, the long curved blade arced downward to avoid accidents. With his hands free, he had both arms splayed downward toward the ground, his palms parallel to the earth. Beneath the shadow of each hand, I saw dark energy begin to form in swirling balls.

  My exhales blew out shallowly from my nostrils. The energy was so dark; it wasn't just black, but it was darker, like an abyss. I was a mage of the six elements. I found it absurd that I didn't recognize it.

  “Earth magic?” Nyx murmured, just behind my ear.

  I shook my head, distracted. There was no way. Was there?

  Then, the mage thrust his arms downward, directing the energy to the ground. The black, thick energy spread like fog over the patches of dirt and grass, before separating into vein-like tendrils, slithering across the ground in dozens of directions, before further splitting, and splitting again. Seconds after he'd released the spell, there were hundreds of tendrils, crawling over the land in all directions like it had free will.

  Concerned, my eyes followed the tendrils that came closest to us, though the magic seemed to stop a few meters ahead of us, the blackness sinking into the ground, as if the spell had fizzled out.

  And maybe it had. The orcs were preparing to break out into the open field, and so far, nothing had come of the spell. But then...

  The earth began to tremble. It started as just a vibration, and then it deepened all the way to where it felt like an earthquake would split the ground beneath us. In the forest ahead, some of the orcs tripped up, falling clumsily to the ground as they lost their footing. One of my hands held onto the bark of the tree beside me for balance.

  The mysterious man stood in the same place he'd been in, his head low beneath his black hood. His right hand reached for his scythe, pulling it back out of its sheathe as the ground nearby his feet broke.

  Crack! Dirt erupted
from the broken earth, before a single, bony hand rose from the earth, followed by a bony forearm, and then a humerus. A dark energy connected the bones in the place of muscle and tendon. The arm bent at its elbow, the hand falling to the ground to help push the rest of the skeleton out of the ground.

  It was only when I began to feel light-headed that I realized I'd stopped breathing. Before us, in dozens of places in the field and along the outer edge of the forest, the dead was rising. Skeletons of humans, orcs, and animals alike began to rise from their slumber. Partially decomposed corpses were gathering around their master, leaking a sludge of brownish-yellow fluids as they shambled into place. One particularly bloated zombie was missing its entire right leg, but was still determined to heed the request, and crawled slowly toward the man in black, leaving a trail of decomposition from the stump at its hip.

  My eyes were glued to the sight. This was the type of thing I'd been fascinated with reading about my entire life. Here it was, before me. Somehow even more intriguing and gruesome than I could have ever imagined. In seconds, this one man had managed to raise an army willing to blindly fight against all odds against a normally unstoppable force.

  The necromancer reached behind him, pulling a long, orcish sword from his belt, possibly looted from an earlier enemy. Moving his head to his left and away from us, he held the blade out to the nearby skeleton of an orc. As if the orc could read its master's thoughts, the skeleton reached out, taking the blade and readying itself for battle.

  Then, the horde of orcs broke through the border of the forest, spreading out over the field like a plague of green. The sickly hisses and gurgles of the undead rose as a collective battle cry to meet the roars of the orcs as the two small armies clashed.

  The necromancer fought among his minions, clashing his scythe with orcish metal, switching from one-handed to two-handed depending on his move. All around him, the dead fought with limitless energy and no fear. Though the dead were plentiful, they weren't nearly as strong as the heavily muscled orcs. The skeletons, in particular, could shatter in an explosion of bones with one heavy strike of a club, and it happened numerous times, leaving the grasses scattered with bones from various bodies. A few orcs were deceased, fresh blood staining the grasses below. The undead, however, were much fewer in number. Those that had lasted this long would loot weapons off of the dead orcs, equipping themselves with better weapons as they became available as if they'd had the brains to plan.

  The clang of metal called my attention back to the necromancer himself as he held his own against a hulking beast of an orc with a two handed ax. The hooded figure switched from using his scythe with both hands to just the right hand, before he thrust his left arm out. The crackling noise from earlier popped and sizzled in the air as a fog of black energy was siphoned through the air from the orc to the man.

  He's leeching. It was a sight to behold. The man had raised an army, was fighting alongside it, and now was regenerating the energy he'd lost with the enemy's own life. As the energy rapidly seeped from the orc's chest, the brute became slower, clumsier. Finally, with no wound on his body from an enemy weapon, the orc fell, dead, its life drained from its very soul.

  More orcs had fallen, and even more undead. It was now the necromancer and just a handful of undead against a dozen or so orcs, though more enemies were piling out from the forest. The shambling footsteps from earlier shook the ground until a huge, giant monstrosity of a creature exited the forest and let out a deafening roar.

  I stared at the creature, stiff from both fear and shock. The word ogre came to mind, but I wasn't sure why. Perhaps I had seen a drawing of the creature. Either way, it was one of the ugliest things I'd ever seen. Its head rivaled the trees at the edge of the forest, so the creature was at least thirty feet high. Its skin was also green, though it was a lighter, milkier color than its smaller orc allies. It was muscular and fat all at once, its eyes spread far apart on either sides of its bulky head and uneven in both shape and size. It suffered from such a hunchback that the ribbing of its spine stuck through the skin of its upper back, the bone brown with exposure. It wielded a club that was essentially three meters of an entire tree trunk, the bark still attached. Thick leather straps over its shoulders and around its waist led to a backpack of sorts built out of wood, where it carried war supplies and extra weapons. It also wore a pathetic excuse for a waist cloth, the short pieces of fur and leather not doing enough to hide the creature's dangling genitalia.

  The necromancer barely moved as the ogre roared again, so loud and brutally that it shook the trees nearby and sprayed the creature's brownish saliva in multiple directions. With barely a flinch, the man lowered both arms toward the ground. The same black energy from earlier was formed and released in tendrils, though this time, they stayed above ground, attracted to the fresh corpses on the ground. The fresh corpses of the orcs began to rise again. Orcs nearby were either enraged or afraid at witnessing brother and kin rise against them, and their battle cries became desperate and angry.

  The rattling of bones called my attention back to the ground, where the tendrils slowly pulled the bones of the original army back together over the distances that they'd been separated. All of the skeletons that had their bones scattered were put back together and rose for a second battle. The decomposed zombies, some of which had been splattered in multiple chunks of flesh and acid, were spliced back together via the dark magic.

  And just like that, the undead army was not only put back together again, it was doubled, and the intimidating act of using their own against them was working in the necromancer's favor. Orcs were distracted by having to fight their own, and made mistakes that quickly got them killed. The ogre, however, remained unfazed. He shambled forward, swiping his trunk-sized club across his path, scattering a handful of the dead, exploding boils of zombies and scattering bones. The giant's attention was on the man, and the undead minions knew this. As orc after orc was slaughtered, the dead moved in to protect their master, rushing the ogre in such a way that any creature with a brain would know was suicide. Skeletons hacked away at the ogre's shins with orc weapons, and even the zombie with no leg from earlier had a hold on the giant's foot, gnawing with gusto at his heel.

  The ogre paid no mind to this. With his eye on the collection of undead before him, he raised his club for another swipe. And then, the necromancer pulled another surprise out of his hat.

  He thrust his left hand toward the group of undead, just as the club was in its downward arc toward scattering them all. A glowing, clearish-white orb surrounded each of them, just before the impact of the club. This time, the club hit, but was met with such resistance that it might as well have hit a stone wall. The skeletons and zombies stumbled back a few feet from the impact, but were otherwise unharmed, and continued to fight.

  He's shielding them. I was outrageously confused. That was impossible. Wasn't it? Shielding was a life spell. The necromancer had clearly used death magic, and now he was using life magic.

  In all my studies at the Seran University, I'd never heard of such a thing. Life and death magics were the rarest of the elemental magics. It was rare enough for someone to have access to one of them, and I'd never heard of a mage who could wield both. Of course, I supposed that even if they could, they wouldn't. Given that necromancy was banned, if a healer could also wield death magic, he or she may never know it.

  Either way, now that I knew this mage was a dual caster capable of both life and death magic, I was both intrigued and terrified. He just may as well have been unstoppable. Now, I almost felt sorry for the ogre. It had no chance.

  The necromancer continued to shield his minions with an outstretched left hand, before holding his right out toward the ogre, and beginning to leech from the giant. The creature swiped at the undead again and again with its club, but became frustrated as it got nowhere. For each swipe was mostly negated by the shield, and its own life energy was being used against it, being sucked away from its body just to fuel its enemy's defens
e.

  The minutes dragged on as the giant refused to give into its fate, despite becoming fatigued. By this point, the fight had lasted the better part of an hour, and one would have never have figured it, given the energy of the man clad in black. He hadn't lost a thing. He'd regained everything he had lost through smart use of his magic.

  He would be an amazing ally. Despite knowing I shouldn't feel such a way given the law of the land, I did. And as the ogre began to sway, as if light-headed and weak, I stood in the forest, my legs screaming with aches from maintaining the same crouched position for so long.

  “Silas,” I said, watching the fight before me come to a close. “Loose an arrow.”

  Silas stood up just in front of me. “At which one?”

  The question amused me. I understood why he'd asked it. “The giant.”

  Silas took a step toward the edge of the forest, so his arrow would be free of any obstruction in the form of trees. He pulled an arrow from his quiver, raised his bow, and nocked his ammunition. Eyeing the ogre in the field ahead, he tilted the bow upward.

  The arrow flew, making barely a sound as it arced toward the giant. Silas's aim was true; the arrow pierced the skin between the ogre's spinal cord, instantly paralyzing him. The giant stiffened and began to fall. The necromancer and his army scattered around the corpse's trajectory. When the ogre hit the ground, dirt clouded upward from the edges of its body, coating the nearby skeletons in brown dust.

  The necromancer stared at the ogre's back, and took note of the pearl-white arrow that stuck out from it. He glanced toward us, his face cast in shadow. A wisp of pure black hair waved slightly from the bottom of his hood. The minions still nearby turned their attention to us, but they made no move to attack. None of them made any move at all.

  I walked forward on aching legs, emerging from the forest to show myself and try to establish trust. I heard the others behind me warning me and cursing me in hushed tones, but I paid no mind. I was taking a chance on this man not being as insane as some of the necromancers of legend. I was all too aware that despite being unable to see him, he was able to see me. He knew what I looked like, and if he didn't kill me here, he could find or follow me, and I wouldn't have been able to pick him out of a crowd.