Richard Knaak - The Fire Rose

Her eyes growing both hopeful and determined, Idaria took hold of his arm. “Sir Stefan! We must help him. The Titan fights with him. But worse, there is the-”

She stopped in mid-breath, suddenly staring with cold eyes past him. At the same time, Chasm let out a warning cry.

Stefan whirled around to discover several shadowed forms converging on the trio. He had not even heard or sensed them, yet they were so near that Chasm had to leap back to avoid being grabbed. The gargoyle took to the air-

— and was tackled by a bony form. Two others quickly joined the tangle, the three monstrous creatures bringing Chasm down as quickly as he had risen.

They were gargoyles, but gargoyles long, long dead. Only scraps of hide still clung to their skeletal forms.

Stefan had his own predicament, for other figures surrounded Idaria and him. In the pale light of Kiri-Jolith’s medallion, their aspects were awful. Like the gargoyles who had just attacked Chasm, the figures were long dead. Scraps of clothing and rusting armor remained to mark what the horrors had once been.

They were all taller than Stefan, more the height of Golgren. As they stretched fleshless hands toward the knight, he noted some still wore adornments and had bits of long, flowing hair. Stefan would have taken them for elves, but they were not. They were something quite different.

Tugging Idaria behind him, the Solamnian slashed at the first corpse, severing its bony hands and chopping off its head. He hurled the still-standing figure into the one closest to it and tried to drive two others back.

“Sir Stefan! You cannot-”

The rest of what the elf was saying was lost as Chasm let out a terrible hiss of frustration. The gargoyle’s horrific counterparts had him pinned to the floor.

Chasm’s fate was up to him. Stefan was already hard pressed. More and more skeletal hands grasped for him and the elf, and it was all he could do to get away. They were suddenly everywhere. The cleric struck down two more before realizing from their garments that they were the first two he had faced.

The dead were rebuilding themselves.

Uttering a prayer to Kiri-Jolith, the cleric redoubled his efforts. The undead were thrown back slightly. Stefan saw an opening.

“My lady!” he shouted. “That-”

His sword arm was seized. Two undead ripped the blade from his grip. Three more brought the Solamnian to his knees.

He heard a cry from Idaria and another desperate hiss from Chasm. Looking for the elf, Stefan forced his head up.

A bony hand wielding the knight’s own sword thrust the weapon at Stefan’s chest. The armor should have stopped the point, but the monstrous figure shoved the sword with inhuman strength. The blade sank through not only metal, but flesh and bone. It plunged until it reached the Solamnian’s heart, though Stefan knew before that the wound was fatal.

Sir Stefan Rennert fell lifeless, his last thought only that he had failed his mission, and his companions.

It said much for the Fire Rose’s seductive powers that even though Golgren was sorely wounded, he still managed to stretch his shaking hand forward and seize hold of its stem. Nothing mattered more than keeping a grip on the artifact.

Safrag sought to stab him again, but the landscape went through yet another upheaval. Flames erupted around the duo, and where once the Titan had stood, a ravine formed.

The abrupt change caught Safrag so off guard he could not keep himself from falling. His hand slipped free of the artifact.

But as the sorcerer vanished from his sight, Golgren’s will failed. He tumbled over and, in doing so, sent the Fire Rose flying.

Sirrion’s creation went bouncing along the churning earth, fiery sparks marking each time it struck something solid. Yet its crystalline form was not marred in the least.

Golgren dragged himself after the artifact. The Fire Rose had come to rest against a fair sized rock, with the area stable once more.

His breathing ragged, the half-breed pulled himself toward the artifact one hand at time. The furious glitter of the Fire Rose ensnared his gaze much as Sirrion’s eyes had done earlier. All that mattered was to reach it, hold it, possess it.

It will put everything right , a voice in the Grand Khan’s head whispered enticingly. It will heal everything .

A shadow passed over him.

With a determined grunt, Golgren catapulted himself toward the Fire Rose. He sensed the gargoyle descending just as he grabbed the magical piece. Golgren rolled on his back, clutching the Fire Rose, and watched with disbelief as his winged attacker suddenly writhed in the air.

The gargoyle spun around, clawing at its own body. Fire burst from within it, breaking through the many cracks developing in the gray hide. The creature hissed as flames engulfed it.

But, as the last vestiges of the gargoyle became sheer fire, the fire in turn transformed into another figure.

Sirrion shook a few straggling flames away from his body and beheld the bleeding half-breed.

“I’m hungry. Do you have anything for me to eat?” the god blithely asked. When Golgren only stared, Sirrion reached down and plucked up a rock. As he held it up, the rock became an apple.

The lord of alchemy and fire did not bring the apple to his mouth, however. Instead, Sirrion ignited the apple in his palm, burning it away in a matter of two or three breaths.

“A small tidbit, but it’ll have to do,” Sirrion commented drily. He cocked his head as he surveyed the half-breed’s injuries and wounds. “You look to be dying. Why do you mortals always look to be dying? I barely speak to one of you, and you die. They were the same, you know, the ones who begged for my flower. They asked for it, were given it, and they died.”

He glided over to Golgren, a stream of fire beneath his booted feet. Golgren tried to talk, to say something, to plead, but the effort was too much for him.

“I was curious about something,” the god continued. “Something I hadn’t noticed before.” He raised a hand over the half-breed.

Golgren felt a hotness stir within him. He expected to die as the gargoyle had, but instead, the brief fire faded.

“There it is. I wondered. Good and ill, the balance had to be there.”

Steeling himself, the Grand Khan rasped, “Show me … Show me how it, it does everything.”

“But you know already. And the choice is yours, not mine. I’ve always left it up to those who most want my flower. Yet they die so quickly!”

Sirrion’s body burst into flames. He nodded to Golgren as he turned. Yet the god of fire did not even complete his turn before the flames appeared to consume him as they had the gargoyle.

By the time Golgren drew another ragged breath, Sirrion had vanished. Only a few lingering licks of extinguishing fire marked his departure.

Despite the agony coursing through him, Golgren wondered about the deity, who seemed to have returned for no reason other than to chide him. What reason could there have been for Sirrion’s short and puzzling visitation? What had he meant about not noticing something earlier about the half-breed?

New, sharp pain wracked Golgren. Despite the heat of the Fire Rose, he suddenly felt cold.

The ogre leader turned on his stomach again. He dragged himself farther from the site of the struggle despite each movement sending renewed jolts of agony through his body.

You have brought it to me at last , came a chilling voice in his head. It was the same voice he had heard but moments before.

Another shadow crossed Golgren, a shadow cast by nothing . There was no gargoyle; nor was it Safrag.

There was only the shadow. The moving shadow.

Sirrion’s Gift. Our Folly . The words ended in a deep chuckle.