Laura Resnick - The Purifying Fire

Only after the mage left the dungeon did Chandra risk dwelling on what the woman had told her.

They don’t know where the scroll is.

It had been in Chandra’s hand when she lost consciousness in the city streets, and she had woken up in captivity. She had assumed her captors had reclaimed possession of the scroll.

There was obviously more to Gideon than she thought. She’d seen for herself that he was fast, that he moved quickly. So he must have had time to conceal the scroll from the soldiers after incapacitating her.

Things were in chaos at the time, after all. Perhaps Gideon had claimed, when turning her unconscious carcass over to them, that she didn’t have the scroll on her, and had planted the notion that she had hidden it somewhere.

Was that why he had let them capture her? So he could make off with the scroll?

I will kill him for this.

The rage felt good. It woke her up, cleared her head, and refreshed her senses.

She focused on her anger, on the fury in her heart at being duped by that man. She berated herself for the way he had taken her by surprise and overpowered her. She imagined him enjoying himself somewhere now, with her scroll, having a good laugh over her predicament.

Because of him, she was chained to a wall in a dungeon and being drained of energy by these snakes! Get mad, this is good. Anger is accelerant. Rage is fuel. Fury is fire.

She had to escape. Death by slow torture was no way for a planeswalker to die. More to the point, she couldn’t hunt him, she couldn’t get revenge on Gideon, if she died here.

A big boom would go a long way toward solving her current problem. But even with the reassuring glow of rage coursing through her now, she knew there was no way she could summon that kind of power. Not until she recovered from the sapping sorcery of the Enervants. And she’d only start recovering once she got away from them.

She had to act now. Immediately. The longer she was in their custody, the weaker she would get.

Chandra closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, concentrating, centering herself on the rage. She embraced the anger, nurtured the hot thirst for retribution. With each steady inhalation, she felt her tenuous mana bond become a little stronger, a little more within her reach. With each inhalation, she felt power coil firmly within her.

She targeted her attention on the seventh Enervant. He had moved to the side of the room where he was reaching into a box. From it he pulled what seemed to be a black, wriggling string. It was about a foot long and thin. He held it out with one hand and came close enough that Chandra could see that it was actually a snake.

“What are you going to do with that?” she asked.

The Enervant’s eyes seemed to glitter in response.

“It’s going to take more than that to crack me.” Chandra was trying to put up a brave front, but, truthfully the snake was terrifying. Suspended by its tail, it moved purposefully, as though it was slithering toward the ground, its sharp head intent on reaching a target. The Enervant held the snake higher and pinched it again beneath his other hand. He slowly drew his hand down the snake, stretching it taut. When he got to the head and let go, it remained as straight and stiff as a splinter of wood.

The black wizard held it out again, showing Chandra what he had done, perhaps taunting her with it, the dim phosphorescent light reflecting sickly in his eyes.

“Now we begin,” he said with obvious pleasure.

Chandra steeled herself, not knowing what to expect. The Enervant went to her right hand and inspected it for a moment, his tongue flickering gently from his mouth. Chandra balled up a fist in response, but in retrospect it was the wrong thing to do. The creature leveled the straightened snake at her knuckles, placed its head directly between her index and forefinger, and pushed. The thing’s head cut into her flesh easily, burning with a pain more intense than anything she had ever known.

Chandra screamed as the entire snake went into her hand, its form bulging beneath her skin as it began to slither up her arm. The pain was like nothing she had ever known.

“Dirk!” she screamed as loudly as she could. “Get in here now!”

Without any further promting, the two guards entered the room. “Get this thing out of my arm,” she cried. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

The guard called Dirk gave the command to the Enervant to do as she said. He produced a knife and made a small inciscion just above the snake’s head, which emerged without prompting. The Enervant took hold of it with his withered nails and pulled it out, spilling blood and interstitial fluid heedlessly. Both guards’ faces went ashen. Chandra was sure the one behind Dirk was on the verge of fainting. For her own part, the only thing that kept Chandra conscious was a fury as pure the heart of the volcano. But she knew she could not let this show. Instead she let her head drop as though she’d fainted.

The guard called Dirk collected himself. “Well, out with it, then. Where’s the scroll?” When Chandra didn’t answer he nudged her, but she still gave no response. “Get some water,” he told the other.

Dirk unshackled her right wrist and let her wounded arm hang. Although it was throbbing, Chandra didn’t feel like there was lasting damage. She remained motionless with her head hanging until the guard came back with a pail and ladle. At that, Chandra raised her head weakly and looked at the guard. He held the full ladle out to her and she cupped the bowl in her hand, bending her head over it as though to drink, her hair falling around it to obscure the ladle from view.

Chandra focused her rage on the water and called on her power to heat it. Within seconds, the small amount of water had come to a boil, and she threw it into the guard’s face, blinding him and scalding his flesh. He stumbled back into the Enervant, who dropped his knife and fell back, disrupting the path of the other enervants. The effect was immediate. Chandra could feel her strength returning, her power blossoming like a flower at the base of her skull and racing out to her extremities.

When the fire came to her like this, it was as if time slowed for Chandra. Everything around her moved in slow motion, while she was able to think and move freely. Even as the others in the room were still trying to make sense of what was happening, Chandra grabbed the knife on the ground with her free hand and used it to pry the shackles on her left arm loose. Before the Enervant knew what was happening, she had released herself and was on top of it, driving the knife into his neck in the soft spot beneath its jaw. The snakeman went slack like a bag of grain.

She turned to deal with the other soldier, but he was was on his knees like a penitent, pleading for his life. Chandra ignored him and shifted her attention to the remaining six Enervants.

They were hissing noisily, their heads weaving and bobbing on necks that were much longer than they had originally seemed. They were moving to surround her, but Chandra noticed they were regulating their spacing and their movements were synchronizing again. She sensed they were trying to begin another ritual to drain her of her power. She had to act fast.

Chandra realized she was sweating and panting. The brief use of her power had already tired her far more than it should have, thanks to the Enervants’ work. Searching for one act that would affect six adversaries, Chandra called on her remaining power to produce a sheet of fire between herself and the hissing snakes. As she had hoped, it halted their advance toward her.

However, they were still between her and the door. Not only could they prevent her escape, they could also leave the room and summon help. Fortunately, they were wholly focused on her, and they were obviously unwilling to pass through her fire. She needed to move quickly, though, before they were able to act in concert again to sap her strength.