Fire and Fury

by Adam Blade

  The first battle is over, I tell them. But the war is far from won.

  Tanner saw the other Beasts break away. Falkor slithered toward Rufus, and Nera padded over the carpet of dead bodies to Castor’s side. Gwen, kneeling to pull one of her throwing axes loose of a soldier’s neck, mounted Gulkien. Only pockets of the enemy remained, and many had laid down their weapons already as the odds turned against them. Here and there, brave Avantians cornered the remnants of the enemy or sank exhausted to the ground. Firepos tossed her head, and her eyes glinted like burning embers.

  Trust us, she said.

  “Let the Beasts guide you!” Tanner shouted to his friends.

  With the other three Beasts behind her, Firepos glided down toward the approach to the fortress. She sailed on the baking air, over the corpse of General Gor.

  “I hope you’re watching, Esme,” Tanner muttered.

  At the foot of the drawbridge, Firepos suddenly tipped her wings and angled her body upward, soaring like an arrow toward the dark gateway through which the soldiers had emerged. Tanner crouched close to her feathers, the hot wind blasting through his clothes. The pain in his face had almost faded away.

  It’s time to face our destiny, the flame bird said.

  They rushed through the gateway and darkness swallowed them. Though Tanner blinked he could see only shadows as they soared through a tunnel. He felt Firepos’s wings thumping up and down. Her muscles twitched, making tiny adjustments to her flight, and he realized they were flying upward at a slight gradient. The air pressed heavy and hot all around him like a smothering hand, and it was hard not to let panic take over in the blackness.

  From behind he heard the soft draft of Gulkien’s wings and Nera’s padding paws. Only Falkor could truly see, surely. He was used to a life in the darkness of caves. Were the rest of the Beasts charging blind?

  The ancient power of the Fates guides us, Firepos reassured Tanner.

  Tanner gripped her flanks tightly with his knees and picked out a faint orange glow ahead. As the light grew stronger he saw the rocks around them, just shadows flitting past. Gradually he could make out stone walls. Here and there he saw marks left by pickaxes and chisels.

  “I think this place is man-made,” he shouted to Gwen.

  “It’s getting warmer, too,” she answered. “It must be a passage to the heart of the volcano!”

  This fortress wasn’t here then, Firepos sent the message back to Tanner. He must have built this after he survived plunging down into the volcano’s depths.

  It was unbelievable. During all the years Tanner had been growing up, Derthsin had been within walking distance. Biding his time, watching, waiting, ensconced in a heart of fire.

  The tunnel suddenly opened up and a blast of heat nearly knocked Tanner from Firepos’s back. He gasped at the vista laid out before him. A huge cavern loomed over a pit of boiling lava. The molten rock seethed and bubbled with black and red swirls, and geysers of fire spouted from the surface, falling back again in hissing splashes. Purple smoke spiraled up through cracks in the domed roof, where stalactites reached down like withered fingers.

  Firepos hovered as the other Beasts broke into the cavern. Gulkien landed first on the banks of the lava pit, and the orange heat showed through his stretched wings, picking out the network of red capillaries within. Nera crouched, her head lowered between her jutting shoulders, ready to pounce at any danger, and Falkor, his scales reflecting the lava’s golden shimmer, edged forward, flickering his tongue nervously.

  “Look!” said Gwen, pointing. Her face glowed red in the fiery reflection of the lava.

  Tanner and the others turned to where she indicated. A rocky platform reached out over the side of the boiling lava pool, approached by two paths, one from each side of the cavern. At the opposite end of the platform, a strange stone podium jutted upward to head height. Tanner strained his eyes through the blurred heat and saw a figure limping slowly toward the podium, shrouded in a bloodred cloak and hood. He reached the end of the shelf, just a footstep away from falling into the lava, and stopped. Tanner’s skin suddenly felt cold, despite the heat. It was a figure he’d seen before in Gor’s enchanted fire. A figure who had haunted his dreams since the day he drove a sword through Tanner’s father.

  “Derthsin,” he whispered.

  The stooped figure pushed back his hood with a bone-white hand. Tanner made out long fingers ending in cracked yellow nails. The bare scalp beneath was white, too, as if Derthsin had never been out in the sunlight. Ridges of scarred flesh marked his head, puckering the skin of half his face. Deep-set eyes, blacker than coal, watched from beneath a heavy brow. Derthsin grinned, and his thin, bloodless lips parted.

  “Welcome, Beast Riders,” he hissed, darting a red tongue through his brown teeth. “I’ve been expecting you.” His eyes flickered over the wound on Tanner’s face. “I see you met Gor on your way over here.”

  “And killed him!” Castor spat back.

  Derthsin reached into his cloak and pulled free the final piece of the mask — the spiked section from the left side of the lower jaw. He positioned it on top of the podium facing Tanner and his friends.

  “The rest is near,” said Derthsin. “I sense it.”

  “You’ll never have it!” yelled Tanner. He urged Firepos forward, and the flame bird dove toward the platform. Derthsin lifted a hand, palm outward, and Tanner saw the mark of the flame bird’s feather burned into the skin. Firepos screeched and drew up her wings. A wave of vibration, like a wall of wind, shook Tanner’s body as the two of them were thrown backward.

  “You think you can attack me?” said Derthsin.

  Firepos managed to right herself and landed beside Gulkien.

  “Your Beasts are like helpless insects to me,” continued Derthsin, pointing at each of them. “Soon the mask will be mine, and Anoret will rise again! All the Beasts of Avantia will be under my thrall, and the people of this kingdom will cower at my feet.”

  “Never!” shouted Tanner. “Surround him!”

  The others guided their Beasts from the edge of the cavern, fanning out to face Derthsin in a semicircle.

  “Pathetic!” shouted the evil lord. He raised both hands, and a curtain of lava shot up from the pool. It surged toward them, then showered down. Firepos thrust upward with her wings, dodging the spatter of molten rock. The other Beasts swerved away, too, but Falkor wasn’t quick enough. Drips of lava rained over his scales, burning away patches in hissing columns of smoke. Rufus’s Beast squirmed in agony, then drew himself into a coil.

  “Your foolish Beast shouldn’t have dropped me down here,” said Derthsin to Tanner, spreading his arms wide to take in the cavern. “It took me years to master the flames, but I was patient.”

  Falkor’s eyes closed, as if he had fallen unconscious.

  “Rufus, can you heal him?” asked Gwen, nodding toward Falkor’s scorched coils.

  But Rufus didn’t answer, and seemed to smile. He slipped from Falkor’s back and edged along the cavern wall to one of the pathways leading to Derthsin’s platform. His eyes were black as coal, unreadable, and a smile spread across his face that sent shivers down Tanner’s spine. His hands hung at his sides, their magic useless now.

  “Rufus, no!” Castor shouted, failing to understand what Tanner had realized. “You can’t take him on alone.”

  Dread seeped through Tanner when Rufus didn’t even turn.

  “He’s enchanted,” he told the others.

  At his words, Rufus turned and glared at him, his eyes rimmed orange from the flames. He drew his lips back in a snarl and raised his staff in warning.

  I have to get to the pieces of the mask before he gives them to Derthsin! Tanner started to run toward Rufus, but an arc of lava rose from the pit and splattered across his path, blocking the way. He shrank back from the molten rock.

  “I wouldn’t interfere, if I were you,” cackled Derthsin. He watched Rufus make his way around the rim of the lava pool. “Don’t you see?” he said.
“The mask wants to be with me. Destiny brings the Face of Anoret together again.”

  “Come back, Rufus!” shouted Gwen, her voice choked with tears.

  Rufus turned to her, his eyes as dead as stones. “Leave me be!” Then he stepped onto the stone platform.

  “That’s right! Come to your master!” called Derthsin. “The power of the mask cannot be denied.”

  Rufus took the edges of his blue cloak and roughly tore it open. Tanner swallowed thickly and wanted to look away. The young wizard pulled out the three pieces of the mask they’d found so far.

  So many died to find those, Tanner thought. And for what?

  Derthsin held out his arms, and Rufus placed the leather sections into his arms.

  It’s over, Tanner thought.

  Derthsin’s eyes glittered as he gazed at the pieces of the mask, then positioned them on the podium alongside the other fragment. He reached out with pale fingers and stroked Rufus’s cheek with a grime-caked nail.

  “You’ve done well, my friend,” he said.

  His friend?

  Tanner didn’t understand. After all they’d been through! Rufus had stood by them, fighting side by side, blasting at the defenses while his Beast attacked the enemy soldiers….

  Cold fury swept over Tanner as he realized the truth. Rufus hadn’t been trying to destroy the defenses — he’d been trying to get in, to reach Derthsin.

  “How long?” he called out. “How long have you been working for him?”

  Rufus hunched his shoulders and gazed around at Tanner, his face pale despite the heat. His tongue darted out from between his lips, like a snake’s. “From the beginning,” Rufus said. “Since he lived back in the cave.”

  “But we trusted you,” gasped Gwen. “All that time you were an enemy in our midst?”

  Rufus smiled. “Don’t think of me as an enemy, Gwen,” he said. “More a … negotiator.”

  “You’re a filthy traitor!” shouted Castor. “You can be tossed in a pit of writhing snakes for all I care!”

  Rufus raised his eyebrows and lifted his staff. “Careful, Castor. I’ll turn you into a snake if you don’t hold your tongue.”

  First Geffen, now Rufus, thought Tanner desperately. Where the mask was concerned, no one could be trusted. Could he even trust himself to resist its power?

  “Enough!” bellowed Derthsin. “It is time to begin!”

  He thrust a hand out toward Tanner and a beam of fire shot from his fingertips like a whip. Tanner lifted his arms to protect his face and felt the tip slice through his sleeve. He looked at his arm and saw a red, raw burn mark on the skin. Derthsin flicked his wrist again and a trail of fire snaked around Tanner’s ankle, tugging him from Firepos’s back. His Beast screeched as he landed with a heavy thud on the ground. Through his breathlessness, Tanner felt searing pain climb his lower leg. Derthsin pulled, hand over hand, dragging Tanner forward. The stone floor tore at his clothes and scraped the skin on his back. However much he wriggled, he couldn’t free himself.

  Derthsin grinned, and his lips glistened. “Come to me, Tanner,” he hissed. “Soon you will taste real pain!”

  I cannot let this happen! My Chosen Rider and I have been through too much.

  Nera! I need you to distract our foe.

  The giant cat pricks her ears and snatches up a loose boulder in her teeth. With a flick of her head, she hurls it toward Derthsin. As the evil lord dodges aside, I take to the air. The ache under my wing feels like iron hooks tearing at my flesh, but I give three strong beats and dart at my enemy. With a slice of my beak, I cut a gash in his head.

  Derthsin’s rope of fire dissolves into ash as he stumbles back with a cry of pain. One hand staunches the flow of blood from his head while the other shoots a beam of fire toward me. I turn my feathers and soak up the heat.

  Fool! Fire is my friend, as it is yours. You cannot harm me that way!

  Tanner limps toward me, and I crouch beside him to let him take his place once more.

  “You’re too late!” shouted Derthsin, his pale skin smeared with blood. “Rufus, fulfill your destiny!”

  As Gulkien and Nera rushed toward Derthsin, carrying their riders, Rufus touched the tip of his staff to the mask with a trembling hand. Nera pounced, covering twenty paces in a single bound, and Castor lifted his sword to strike at the evil lord. A dazzling light, as bright as a bolt of lightning, shot out of Rufus’s staff and lit up the cave. Tanner squeezed his eyes shut, but even then he could see the silhouette of the mask, its pieces fusing together along jagged lines. It was much larger now.

  “Behold, the Face of Anoret!” bellowed Derthsin.

  The light faded and a huge boom rocked the cave, throwing Tanner from Firepos’s feathers and driving Gulkien and Nera onto the stone platform. The wolf skidded across the rocks, his wings tangling beneath him and Gwen clinging desperately to his back. Gulkien’s claws skittered across the ground, finally dragging him to a halt just short of the edge of the pit. Rufus lay beside the podium, unconscious or dead.

  Castor, low against Nera’s bristling fur, gazed at Tanner in shock. “What was that?”

  Derthsin seized the mask from the ground. He held it up to the wall behind him.

  “Come, Anoret! Your master calls you!”

  The wall shuddered and cracks opened in its surface, snaking up and down. Tanner stared. A huge section of the wall wasn’t formed from black rock like the rest of the cavern, but a deep blue stone, stained with dark red streaks. One section started to bulge out, and a three-pronged claw broke away, grasping at the air. An arm, thick as the trunk of an oak, jerked from the wall, and the outline of a torso pressed through.

  A massive, skeletal head, shaped like a lizard’s, shook free of the rock face. Three rows of jagged teeth lined gaping jaws. More of the Beast followed — a stumplike leg ending in scything black claws, and part of her back, lined with silver spikes. She pounded the cavern floor with a thump of her thrashing tail. Anoret stood at least three times as tall as Firepos, with dark blue scales and a red stripe spreading from the back of her head and down her back. The Beast filled the cavern with a roar that shook Tanner’s bones.

  My old friend, transformed. I recognize Anoret by her eyes, but her soul has nothing left to say to me. I remember when I, Nera, Falkor, and Gulkien blended our blood together to make her stronger, but now she is under the thrall of Derthsin. I beseech you, Anoret — free yourself. My time is drawing to an end, but there is hope left for you. Shake off your shackles and turn your back on this evil master.

  I listen for a response, but there is none. She doesn’t hear — or chooses not to. There is nothing left I can do.

  Tanner struggled not to retch when the glow from the lava pool illuminated Anoret’s face. It was nothing but a murky brown mass of rotten, featureless flesh that quivered and twitched with sinew and muscle. Red eyeballs rotated on stalks as the Beast roared in fury, bringing showers of rock debris from the roof of the cavern.

  The Beast’s face was torn away years ago, Tanner realized. Just like Firepos told me.

  Anoret struggled to free the left side of her body, moaning as she tried to emerge completely.

  Derthsin lifted the mask up toward his own face.

  “Come, my loyal creature!” said the evil lord. “Victory is ours!”

  If Derthsin puts the mask on, thought Tanner, it’s all over!

  He bent to his side and picked up a rock the size of his fist. Drawing back his arm, he hurled it at Derthsin. It caught his elbow and Derthsin lowered his arms with a snarl of anger. He shot a bolt of fire at Tanner, who dodged aside, then ran at his enemy.

  “Don’t let Derthsin put on the mask!” shouted Tanner.

  Gwen snatched an ax from her belt and sent it spinning toward Derthsin. The evil lord moved quickly, twisting away and drawing his own sword, a black-jeweled blade. He deflected the ax, which skittered off across the stone.

  Tanner ran from one side, taking the stone pathway to the platform, and Castor to
ok the other. Derthsin cast a beam of fire that exploded on the ground by Castor’s feet, making him stumble back. Next he threw one at Tanner. Lifting his sword, Tanner deflected it harmlessly against the cavern wall, and slashed downward at Derthsin. The evil lord tried to back away, but the sword tip nicked his shoulder.

  “There’s another scar for your collection!” said Tanner. He lunged, but Derthsin smashed his blade aside. Tanner drove a foot into Derthsin’s stomach, and the mask flew from his hand.

  “No!” roared the evil lord. Tanner watched the mask skid toward the edge of the platform, gleaming orange in the lava light. A hot surge pulsed through his veins.

  I can’t lose the power….

  He rushed to claim it, but something snagged his ankle and he fell face-first. Derthsin clawed his way over Tanner’s body.

  “It’s mine!” Derthsin hissed.

  Tanner rolled over dizzily and tasted blood on his lips. He saw Derthsin reach for the mask on all fours and bring it toward his face. Tanner jumped up, landing on Derthsin’s back. As Derthsin staggered to his feet, trying to pull the mask on, Tanner seized Derthsin’s wrists and pushed it away from his face with all his strength.

  “I won’t let you….” Tanner muttered.

  Finally, Derthsin twisted and threw Tanner over his shoulder. Tanner teetered on the edge of the fiery pit as the mask spun out of his hands toward the lava.

  “No!” Derthsin screamed, turning his wild eyes on Tanner. “Burn, you pathetic Avantian!” The evil lord’s foot lashed out and struck him in the chest.

  Tanner tumbled over the edge after the Mask of Death. He rushed down toward the bubbling pool, his arms and legs flailing. His fingers brushed a rock jutting from the wall of the fiery pit and he grabbed it, his arm screaming in its socket as it broke his fall. Heat blistered his fingertips as he clung desperately.