Order of the Fire Box Set

by P. E. Padilla

  Visimar turned his back to the attacker and took three steps up to the wall. He started inspecting the stone, completely ignoring the struggling man behind him.

  “Benedict,” Kate said, “calm down. That’s an order.”

  He did so, going limp in Aurel’s arms. After a few seconds, the big man released him.

  “Still at it,” Koren said. “After all these years.” He shook his head.

  “You need to resolve this,” Kate said to Benedict. “Soon. You do it or I will.”

  Benedict’s eyes flashed, and it seemed for a moment that he would argue, but then his shoulders slumped and he nodded.

  “How are we to get in?” Kate asked. “Did anyone bring rope and grapnels? Does anyone have a skill at scaling walls such as this?”

  “I think we will not need either of those,” Peiros said from a few feet away. The section of wall next to him looked different than the stone around it. Kate couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, though.

  Peiros reached out and put his fingers into a small crack in front of him, then pulled toward himself. A portion of the wall five feet wide and almost twice that tall swung out.

  “They left their sally port ajar,” the team’s spy said. “Careless of them.”

  “Either that, or they knew it would make a perfect invitation to a trap,” Koren said.

  “Or that,” Peiros agreed.

  Kate didn’t like it. It seemed too easy, too convenient. “Do you sense any demon thoughts, Peiros?”

  “No. I have sensed nothing at all in this place. It does not mean there are no demons here, however. It is a big place, and demons do not always talk.”

  “Any arguments against using the door we found?” Kate asked them. No one responded. “Very well, then. Let’s see what is within.”

  Peiros stepped through the door, ghosting ahead of them, always the consummate scout. Kate went next, glancing back to see Koren following her closely, Visimar, Aurel, Benedict, and finally Jurdan. The blond man was looking worse and worse, his skin becoming paler and the dark circles under his eyes increasing in size. Kate wished she could do something to help him, but for now, there was nothing except to try to make sure they got to Gateskeep as soon as possible.

  It took them half the day to go through the fortress. As it had appeared, the only way to get to the center of the spiral was to go through all the other towers. If there were secret doors that let someone bypass the arduous journey, they couldn’t find them.

  They encountered a few scattered demons, most of them less powerful even than the normal grunt demons they fought at the wall. They must have been some type of servant demon. In ones or twos, they were no match for the seasoned fighters. Peiros killed most of them as he scouted, long before the others arrived.

  So they weren’t ambushed on the way out, the group scaled every tower to the top, exploring to check for demons or items that might be useful. In these cases, Jurdan would stay at the bottom, usually with one or two others, to conserve his strength. Uselessly climbing six sets of spiraling stone stairs would not do him any good.

  When Kate, Peiros, Koren, and Aurel reached the top of the fifth tower, Koren’s eyes widened and he exclaimed, “I know this room.”

  “You know rooms like it, or this particular room?” Kate asked.

  “This room.” He moved quickly through the door to the room next to it, and then into the third. “I thought this was in Arkith’s tower, but it was here. I have been here. It was the start of my torture.”

  That sobered Kate’s excitement a bit, hearing the word torture. She followed his voice through the second room—some type of bed chamber—and into the third. Koren was standing over a table much like the one they found him strapped to.

  “I’m assuming that Arkith was granted rooms here in Thozrixith’s fortress to carry on some of his work. I got the sense that Arkith was the demon lord’s official mage or something. I think this proves it.”

  The others fanned out and started searching the room. It didn’t take long for Peiros to find treasure.

  “Here,” he said. “There are two firestones still on their cords.” He held two objects up for the others to see.

  They were shaped like firestones—though each firestone created was slightly different than any of the others—and the cords looked familiar, but the similarity ended there. The stones themselves were dark. They almost looked like they were burned. One had a large crack down the center.

  Kate accepted the one Peiros handed her and inspected it.

  “It is a firestone,” she said. “I didn’t think so at first because of its color and condition. What could do this to a magic gem?”

  “It was the experiments,” Koren said. “Arkith spoke with other demons and often muttered to himself. Plus, he told me directly—in my own language—that he only needed one more stone to complete his task. My stone. He said it as he used tongs to grab the cord and pluck it off my neck.

  “He must have drained these of magic to study them. I don’t know how. I was under the impression that demons couldn’t hold the stones. I guess I was wrong.”

  “Is your stone here, Koren?” Aurel asked.

  “No. I feel it, tugging me elsewhere. Let’s finish with this place and leave. We still may be able to stop the mage.”

  Though they searched the room thoroughly, Koren was right. His firestone was nowhere to be found.

  On the way out through the bedchamber, Kate stopped at a table. Several books were stacked there. She didn’t know why, but she hadn’t ever thought that demons used books, or that they could even read. It was ridiculous, of course. The Gate to Hell itself had runes on it. Weren’t runes just another way of writing? Still, it surprised her.

  “Peiros.” She beckoned him over. “Can you read demon script?”

  “No, Kate, I am sorry. My facility with their language does not stretch so far.”

  “Pity,” she said. She took three of the books closest to her and thrust them into her pack. Maybe Molara could figure something out with them. They would be heavy after she carried them for a while, but the potential gain in knowledge would be worth the inconvenience.

  She turned to find Koren staring at her with a quizzical look in his eyes and a small smirk on his face.

  “What?” she said.

  “You continue to surprise me, Kate Courtenay.” He picked up a bag lying on another table and put four more books into it. “Not enough people realize the value of knowledge, especially knowledge of their enemy. I’m glad your mind is in the right place.”

  The sixth tower was obviously where Thozrixith himself lived. Despite the dark, twisted style of the furniture and decorations, it seemed the tower furnishings were considered luxurious to the demon, so unlike any of the simple styles they had seen before. There were more books and scrolls—some of which the others took, taking a lead from Koren—and strange objects.

  Thozrixith was not there.

  From the top of the demon lord’s tower, Koren gazed out the window.

  “There,” he said. “I feel my firestone there.” He pointed.

  Kate stepped up next to him and saw another structure where Koren was pointing. She hadn’t seen it before.

  “It has to be Arkith’s,” Koren said. “Thozrixith would not suffer to allow anyone else to build a fortress so close to his own within his realm. There is where we’ll find our answer.”

  The four hurried back down to the ground floor only to find Visimar sitting on a bench with his head in his hands. When he looked up at the noise of their coming, his eyes were red. He pulled in a ragged breath and sniffed.

  31

  “What’s this?” Koren said, eyeing first Visimar and then Benedict.

  “Just some old truths and new revelations,” Jurdan answered, coughing slightly into his hand. Even sitting, the action made him totter.

  Visimar put his death mask on and trained his bloodshot eyes on Benedict. “I’m still not sure how to react, or if I should believe y
ou, but there is time for that later. We have a job now.”

  Benedict took his own mask from the hook on his belt and donned it. “I can accept that.”

  Kate breathed out, not even realizing she had been holding her breath. “We know where the mage’s fortress is. We can barely see it from here, from the top of the tower. It may not be too late. Jurdan—”

  “Leave me,” he said, his crystal blue eyes meeting Kate’s green. “This is too important for me to hold it up. Take care of the mission. I’ll follow as I can. Maybe I can catch up.”

  “Absolutely not,” Kate said. “Aurel has volunteered to carry you.”

  “I’ll help, too,” Benedict said.

  “And I,” Visimar added.

  “Of course, we will all help,” Peiros said. “We are not in the habit of leaving our comrades in a hostile land. The Black look after their own, or do you not remember this, Jurdan Vora?”

  “I’ll only slow you down, jeopardize the mission,” Jurdan pleaded.

  “As I did on our first assignment,” Aurel said.

  “And when I was struck with the violet flu during the battle where you saved my life,” Benedict said.

  “Listen, Jurdan,” Koren said, stepping up to the man. “You have helped others countless times, but even if you hadn’t, even if you were the newest recruit”—he didn’t look toward Kate, for which she was grateful—“we would not leave you. You know the code: the mission is all, but our lives are dedicated to our brothers…or sisters.” This time he nodded in Kate’s direction. “So stop being difficult and let us help you. You can throw a tantrum, but you are coming with us.”

  Jurdan’s face twisted as he battled with the emotions within him. He finally put on his own mask to cover it and nodded.

  “Good,” Kate said. “Now that that is out of the way, how about we find the mage that is the root of all this trouble and kill him?”

  Leaving the fortress was much faster than going in, since they didn’t bother going up each tower. In short order, they were on the rocky plain outside and heading toward the fortress they couldn’t yet see.

  Koren’s senses guided them, something Kate appreciated.

  “If your firestone is tugging you,” she said, “and it is doing so in the direction of the mage’s fortress, that means it’s there. If the stone is there, there’s a good chance the mage is as well.”

  “We can hope,” was all the man had to say about it.

  Half way through the day, Kate finally spotted the top part of a spire thrusting above the horizon. Given the hilly terrain, it was a good sign. She estimated it wouldn’t take much longer.

  “We’ll have to stop to rest and then go another half day,” Koren said, “but we’re getting closer with every step. I just hope we’re in time.”

  They traded off helping with Jurdan. He rode much of the time on Aurel’s back, piggyback style. The others would pair up and either carry him or let him support himself between them with his arm on their shoulders as he limped and skipped along the ground. Kate wished they could have constructed a litter to carry him, but there were no trees or plants in this part of Hell, so there were no materials for the construction.

  Soon enough, Koren said it was late in the night and they should rest.

  “No use getting to the fortress exhausted and unable to fight. I don’t think we’ll be as lucky as we were with the demon lord’s fortress. We’re going to have to fight.”

  Kate took the first watch, Peiros insisting he take the middle. She passed the time thinking about the mission and what it could mean to the world if they failed. If they didn’t stop Arkith and Thozrixith’s forces, it could mean the total extinction—or at least slavery—of all humans. She couldn’t let that happen.

  It still bothered her that the demon lord was not in his fortress. Where was he? Why would he leave it essentially unprotected? Had he really taken all his underlings and marched for the gate? It was too much to think about, and it made her head hurt. They would get answers the next day, one way or another. She hoped.

  She still couldn’t believe she was in this position. Not only was she carrying out an important mission with legends of the Black Command, she was actually leading it. When was she going to wake up and realize it was just a dream?

  No, not a dream. A nightmare. She looked over at Jurdan, sleeping fitfully. Definitely a nightmare.

  Peiros relieved her before she even realized she had served out her watch. The evening was no cooler than the daytime, here. Really, there was no way to distinguish the two. She lay there for long moments, staring straight up into the sky that probably wasn’t even a sky, and finally fell asleep to the rhythm of Aurel’s buzz-saw snoring.

  When she woke up however many hours later it was, the others were in various stages of preparing to leave. All except Jurdan, whose skin seemed to be taking on a green cast in addition to his drawn, pale complexion and sunken eyes.

  “There’s really nothing you can think of to give him to help?” she asked Peiros. “Something to help with the pain at least? His eyes make me hurt just thinking about what he might be feeling.”

  “No, I am sorry, Kate. We know little about the toxins within Hell. We have encountered some, and those we try to counteract, like the szitrith venom, but we know so little. I know nothing that will help but magic and the healers back at Gateskeep, and maybe not even them.”

  It broke Kate’s heart to see Jurdan, ever-happy and talkative Jurdan, drained not only of his joviality but even of his vitality. He seemed a fragile shell of the man she knew.

  She shook her head and averted her gaze to reduce the risk of tearing up. They would get him to safety and Molara would have some wondrous magic to heal him. Then Kate would buy him a drink and listen to him spin his yarns for a whole evening.

  But for now, they had work to do.

  Within three hours of rising from sleep, the team reached the fortress of the mage Arkith.

  Kate had thought Thozrixith’s fortress was the strangest structure she’d ever seen. The one before her was even more unrealistic than the other, as natural laws did not apply to its construction.

  Whereas the demon lord’s towers looked as if they had been carved whole from a high mountain whittled down to the spires, the fortress in front of her seemed evidence that at one time, the stone they were standing on had turned to liquid and spilled toward the sky, pulled upward by some massive force.

  If she had turned her head down so she was viewing the fortress upside down, the towers would have looked like long icicles melting in the early spring sun. They were sharp and soft at the same time, and they radiated something Kate could feel in her bones but not explain.

  This place scared her, and she wasn’t too proud to admit it.

  “The place reeks of magic,” Peiros said. “Can you feel it?”

  Kate nodded, as if speaking would break the spell protecting her from the place.

  Three of the upside down icicles were equal distances apart. Within them was a structure of flowing lines and sweeping curves that may have been a circle or an octagon. Walls of the same design surrounded the entire thing, no less than fifty feet tall.

  The material with which it was all made didn’t look like stone, but more like crystal. Slick, black crystal. Kate had seen obsidian cliffs once, and the dark stone almost looked like that, but somehow slicker and sharper. She had no doubt that running her hand down the wall would at the same time feel as smooth as any silk she had ever felt and also that it would cut her hand to shreds.

  How did one get past something like this?

  “We’ll find a way,” Koren said, confusing Kate for a moment.

  Oh, she must have said that out loud.

  In contrast with the demon lord’s fortress, there was movement within Arkith’s lair. Flashes of figures patrolling the walls warned them that they would not simply be walking into this place. They would have to earn entry.

  Fortunately, sharp rock formations and even a few twisted trees a
nd bushes dotted the landscape. With a little luck and some skill, they would be able to make it nearly to the wall before they were in danger of being spotted.

  Or so Kate hoped.

  The structure looked even more unreal closer up. In spite of its otherworldly shape, it looked about as impenetrable as anything Kate had ever seen. A sick feeling roiled in her stomach. Was this to be her end, killed trying to breach walls that she was not even ordered to assault? That would be a cruel joke, to die doing something not even required by her mission.

  “Any ideas?” she asked when they stopped no more than two hundred yards from the walls.

  Her team scanned the walls as she did, but no one seemed to have an idea of what to do.

  The nausea began to turn, to heat up, then to feel like a fire within her. She was tired of reacting to things that afflicted her. She was weary of all the obstacles. Thozrixith would manipulate her, hunt her? She wasn’t going to stand for it anymore. She would kill the demon lord and end any plans he had for her world. She would see him dead at her feet, if it cost her own life to do it.

  The flash of anger burned itself out quickly. She would do that after she tried to ensure the protection of humankind. They had to get inside Arkith’s fortress. There had to be a way.

  “I felt something before you found me,” Koren said. “A pulse of power. It felt like the same kind of magic as my firestone, but much stronger.”

  Why was the man nattering on about that, now of all times? Kate wondered to herself. What was the point?

  Koren seemed to read her thoughts in her body language. “I have a point. Did anything…strange happen when you were entering the prison?”

  “Anything strange?” Kate whispered back. It wouldn’t do to forget they were so close to the fortress and alert the demons on the walls that they were there.

  “Yes. Something, perhaps you did not expect or had never seen before?”

  “Why are you…?” Kate stopped mid-sentence when she recalled the trap they had somehow miraculously escaped in the entry tunnel. She sucked a breath in. “Yes, there was a trap, in the entry tunnel. There was a flash, but it didn’t seem to affect us.”