Richard Byers - The Captive Flame

He waved his massive, dirt-colored hand. A tremor ran through the ground and tossed her off her feet. Then suddenly he ran, and before she could even scramble up, he was looming over her. He bent down.

I’m sorry, Gaedynn, she thought. I tried. She imagined the archer fleeing and fighting in the dark.

And somehow that-or that combined with the urgings of the staff and all the things she’d already tried to tell herself-brought her to the tipping point.

She’d tried? And that was how it ended? That was all she had to offer one of the only true friends she’d ever had? Rage and hatred welled up in her like lava, burning her panic away, excoriating the elemental mage and herself in equal measure.

But the torrent of flame that leaped from the staff only targeted the giant. It caught him square in the face and hurled him backward.

When he caught his balance, she saw that the attack hadn’t seared his body exactly as it would char human flesh. But it had plainly hurt him. Parts of him looked hard, discolored, and cracked, like badly made pottery.

He bellowed and stamped his foot.

She disregarded the staff’s yearning for fire and reestablished her connection to the earth. When the shock reached her, it simply lifted her and set her back down. It didn’t even stagger her, let alone snap her neck or jolt her limbs out of their sockets.

The giant snarled, and bits of his contorted features broke loose. She laughed at him.

He pulled his sword from his scabbard and charged. She spoke to the wind, and it carried her upward, her magic in a race with his long legs and reach.

A close race-he leaped as high as he could, swung the sword in an overhand cut, and it whistled by just a finger length under her feet.

But after that, there was nothing more to fear. Hovering above him, she hurled down gout after gout of flame. While he staggered around and screamed, and his body broke and broke again.

By the Nine Dark Princes, it felt good! So good that when it was over, a part of her just wanted to keep raining fire on the shards of the corpse.

But she had a job to finish. So she struggled to control her ragged breathing and put her thoughts in order. Then she asked the wind to carry her to the prisoner.

Despite his shackles and extreme emaciation, he was still a colossal red dragon, and she floated down in front of him with a pang of trepidation. But all he did was study her with his smoldering golden eyes.

“Are you Tchazzar?” she asked.

“You see that I am,” he answered. His voice was more of a wheeze than either a rumble or a hiss, like it strained him just to talk.

“People say you were a great wizard.”

Despite his debility, his eyes burned brighter, and she found herself taking a step back. “I’m a god!” he said.

“I beg your pardon for misspeaking,” she said, holding her voice steady. “But my point is this. If I set you free and restore your strength, can you take my comrade and me back to the mortal world?”

“I’d do so gladly,” Tchazzar said, “if you could truly keep your end of the bargain.”

“I believe I can. You’ve seen I have an affinity for fire, and that’s the essence of life to you. I’m going to pour it into your blood and sinews.”

Tchazzar hesitated like she’d surprised him. “That might actually work, assuming you can channel a prodigious quantity without losing control. If you’re willing to try, you’d better get started.”

“Before the shadar-kai come back?”

“Before Sseelrigoth-the blight dragon-himself arrives. It’s our good fortune that he can’t actually live here, lest he drain the life from his subjects. But I’m sure that by now, he’s sensed all the commotion and is on his way.”

Pivoting constantly, alternately targeting the abishais at street level and those flying overhead, Aoth rattled off words of power and worked his way through his last remaining attack spells. He’d killed plenty of his foes and meant to kill more. But he suspected that when he finished casting his flares of fire and howls of bone-shattering vibration, there would still be enough left to swarm on him and tear him to pieces. He never did get that damn gate in the cellar to close.

Either way, it looked like he was going to die fighting for Chessenta. A place he decided he detested almost as much as it detested people like him.

Galloping hoof beats clattered behind him. He glanced over his shoulder.

Armored in a gilt helmet and breastplate, Cera charged in his direction. He realized she too must have been waiting for the assassin to make a move, and when Aoth had gone running through the temple, she’d tried to follow him. She couldn’t have kept on Jet’s track in any normal way, but maybe some trick of divine magic had made it possible. Or maybe all the thunderclaps and flashes had drawn her. Now that Aoth thought about it, it hadn’t been a particularly inconspicuous fight.

Her golden-colored mare balked well short of the action. The animal tried to turn around and run the other way, and Cera struggled to reassert control.

“Get out of here!” Aoth croaked. Then he heard the flap of leathery wings and whirled back around.

A green abishai leaped at him. Holding his breath and squinting against the stinging haze that surrounded it, he ducked a sweep of its tail, drove his spear into its midsection, pulled it free, and scrambled back out of the cloud.

When he glanced back again, Cera was picking herself up off the ground. She didn’t look hurt, but she didn’t even have a weapon. Her mace was still slung on the saddle of the mare now racing away as fast as she could go.

“Run!” said Aoth. “You can’t fight these things!”

“You don’t need a fighter!” Cera said. “You need an exorcist!” She started to chant.

Apparently recognizing the power in her words, the abishais charged or flew at her. Draining his power to the dregs, Aoth created walls of flame and hovering, spinning blades between the priestess and her assailants. Anything to hold them back.

Or at least he did so during the fleeting moments when one or more abishais weren’t trying to burn, blast, or stab him to death. The rest of the time he thrust the spear at what seemed an endless succession of snarling, clawing monstrosities. The weapon felt strangely heavy and dead in his hands, and not just because of his exhaustion. Because there was no magic left inside it anymore.

Then a glow flowered at his back and lit the street as bright as day. Some of the abishais charred away like dry leaves in a bonfire. The rest faltered, and when they came forward again, they appeared to struggle like swimmers fighting against a current. They seemed to grope and fumble too, as though they were half blind.

It helped. Aoth killed three more of them. But then he spotted a blue abishai that had gotten past him. Now it was soaring over Cera. Sparks jumped on its scaly hide as it prepared to hurl a lightningbolt.

Aoth rattled off words of power and hurled a ray of freezing cold from his outstretched hand. It was as powerful a ranged attack as he had left, and it wasn’t enough. The devil-kin jerked and wobbled in flight but survived. Its body lit up from the inside-

And then Jet swooped at it and drove his talons deep into its back. Its power discharged in a crackling flash that made Aoth wince, but when the griffon shook the lifeless body off its claws and flew onward, it was plain he’d survived the shock.

More griffons dived out of the night sky into Cera’s light. The sellswords on their backs loosed arrow after arrow, and the abishais fell. Aoth had fought so hard and for what had felt like such a long time that there was something dreamlike about how quickly the battle ended.