Michael Scott - The Necromancer

But all that had come later.

Much later.

After the Fall of Danu Talis.

After she had realized just how dangerous the skulls truly were.

“Sophie?” Perenelle leaned forward, eyes fixed on the girl’s face. “We need your aura. Put your hand on the skull.”

Sophie shook her head, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement.

The Sorceress blinked in surprise. “Do you-or rather, does the Witch-know anything about the crystal skull?”

Sophie looked into the Sorceress’s eyes and slowly and deliberately shook her head. Instinct-or was it the Witch’s knowledge?-made her lie: “No,” she said.

Even as she was speaking, there was a pop as the lightbulb shattered and the room plunged into darkness… except for the glowing skull.

The disc burned red-hot, then white-hot, in waves of shimmering heat. Each square pictograph throbbed and pulsed, red, orange and black, forming patterns, making shapes. The concentric rings turned left and right, the inner circle moving clockwise, the next ring counterclockwise, to create new designs. Josh realized to his horror that the etched designs were like snakes swallowing their own tails. And he hated snakes.

And then the face in the center of the stone moved.

The eyes opened, and they were fire red, flecked with glittering black cinders. The mouth moved, and it spoke in the voice of Prometheus.

“It is said that the Magic of Air or Water or even Earth is the most powerful of all. But that is wrong. The Magic of Fire far surpasses all others, for fire is both the life-giver and the death-bringer.”

Abruptly the fire vanished, leaving Josh in utter darkness. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or even where he was. He’d lost all sensation and was conscious only of the weight of the warm stone in his palm. He clutched it with both hands now, holding it tightly, concentrating on it. He realized that he wasn’t afraid, yet wasn’t excited, either… he was simply curious.

“In the beginning…”

A spot of light, a pinprick, appeared in the darkness.

“… there was fire.”

The tiny dot suddenly expanded, growing, growing, growing, amber, orange, red, before detonating into a brilliant white-hot globe. The left and right edges of the fireball peeled off into broad horizontal lines speckled with points and streaks of multicolored light. And as the light rolled toward him in a huge slow wave, Josh suddenly recognized it: he was looking at a galaxy… no, he was seeing the universe.

“Before air, there was fire…”

The wave of blazing light flowed over him-or had he fallen into it? Flames and curling threads of plasma washed around him, bathed him. He could see himself now. He was standing, floating, flying, and his skin was the same color as the golden flames. On one level he knew he should be terrified, but he still felt no fear, only a peculiar sense of sadness that his sister was not here to share this with him.

“Before water…”

His skin became translucent. Looking down, he could see the thin twisting veins and arteries, the knots and strands of muscles, the darker masses of organs and the lines and curves of bones beneath his flesh.

“Before earth…”

Fire was streaming off his skin in long ropes, thickening, hardening into a shell, trapping him inside a burning sphere.

“Fire is the creator of worlds…”

Suddenly Josh was back in darkness again, but this time the darkness was not complete. On all sides he could see the finest traces of light, wriggling hair-thin cracks of red fire. It was like looking at an eggshell, he realized. The cracks widened and broke apart, and then the fire cascaded downward. He realized then that he was in a cave, standing on the edge of a lava pool, while molten rock flowed past him.

“And at the center of every world is its fiery heart.”

Josh was unsure whether he was moving past the images or standing still while the images raced past him. He felt as if he was rising up through bubbling rock and blazing stones, glutinous boulders and dripping globules of fire. He rose faster, faster, faster, the burning walls streaking by him… and abruptly there was sky above, shockingly, spectacularly blue, though smudged with filthy smoke and boiling clouds.

“Fire created this world… shaped it…”

Josh soared high into the air, shot up in a plume of lava and smoke from the maw of an enormous volcano, one of a line that erupted in sequence, tearing away huge chunks of landscape, forming and re-forming the barren world, giving it shape before ripping it apart again.

“It was fire which ignited the spark of life on this primitive planet…”

Thick gritty clouds swirled around Josh, then suddenly cleared, and he discovered he was walking along the edge of a lake, though it was not a lake of water. The thick souplike substance steamed and boiled with enormous noxious popping bubbles. And floating on the surface of the boiling mud was a sludge of gray algae.

“Heat brings life…”

Even as Prometheus was speaking, the landscape before Josh’s eyes was changing impossibly quickly: vast swaths of grasslands appeared, and died away, replaced by trees that rose spectacularly high only to crumble and be replaced by smaller trees, ferns and bushes.

“… in all its myriad forms.”

And now the animals appeared. Small at first, then morphing into huge hideous beasts, pelycosaurs and archosaurs. Josh knew these were the creatures that had predated the dinosaurs. Fascinated, he tried to look around this primeval world, but the images flickered past, leaving little more than an impression of scales and fur, claws and teeth.

“And fire destroys…”

The sky darkened; lightning flashed, and then fire ravaged the forest, and in a single instant the world was blackened, the trees scarred with the evidence of a terrible conflagration.

“Fire destroys, but it also creates. A forest needs fire to thrive; certain seeds depend on it to germinate.”

And at the base of the trees, brilliant green shoots poked through the cinders, twisting and writhing up to the light…

“And it was fire which warmed the first of my people, the humani, allowing them to thrive in harsh climates.”

The forest died, and was replaced by a desolate ice-locked landscape, rocky and snow-covered. But on a cave-dotted cliff face, tiny fires burned brightly.

“Fire allowed the first humani to cook their kills, and made it easier for them to digest the nutrients from the meat they hunted. It kept them warm and safe in their caves, and the same fire hardened their tools and weapons, turned soft clay into pots, even sealed their wounds. Fire has driven every great civilization from the ancient world right up to the present day.”

A modern city grew before Josh’s eyes, glass and steel and concrete, highways and bridges, skyscrapers and suburbs, rail lines and airports.

“And the fire which created this planet can also destroy it.”

A huge mushroom cloud blossomed in the center of the city directly in front of Josh, the light at its heart brighter than any sun, burning everything in its path… and a heartbeat later, all that remained was an incinerated wasteland.

“This is the power of fire,” Prometheus said.

And suddenly Josh was back in the study, sitting in the lounger. He looked at the Elder and tried to speak, but his mouth was dry, his lips cracked, and his tongue felt thick and heavy.

“Every living thing on this planet-and in the Shadowrealms, too-exists because of fire,” Prometheus said quietly. In the gloom, his eyes were bright, burning red. “We carry its spark deep within.” Reaching over, he tapped Josh in the center of the chest with his index finger. The young man shuddered as a wash of heat tingled through his body. “Josh, the Magic of Fire is linked to your aura, and yours is one of the most powerful I have ever encountered. But you need to know that your aura is inextricably bound to your emotions. You must be careful, so very, very careful. Never call upon the Magic of Fire when you are angry. Fire is the one magic that must be called upon only when you are calm; otherwise, it can rage out of control and consume everything-including you.”