Fire Within: Book Two of Fire and Stone (Stories of Fire and Stone 2) (51 page)

Esset felt a flood of frustration wash through him. Toman was right—this battle was futile if they didn’t find Moloch. He’d been able to lose himself in the never-ending battle, and forget that fact, feeling good instead about each totem and creature he destroyed, but now he forced himself to face reality. To vent, he sent a flood of fire outside the shield, burning up a swath of swarm-creatures in the air. They couldn’t avoid his attack if the very air turned to fire. That brought a bit of satisfaction, despite the false feeling that he’d accomplished anything by doing it.

In that moment, the summoner knew what to do. He knew what had evaded him in his battle against the skeletons before. He knew how to destroy them all—the swarm of starvation, with its infinite mouths, the flood of plague-beasts, bringing death with a single touch, and slaughter’s many blades, which had annihilated those people before he could save them. His sight turned a hazy orange-red, as it had too often lately, and he didn’t notice as everyone suddenly stepped away from him as a wave of heat emanated from his body.

Light blazed from the gem in his chest, but it was a pale candle in the night compared to the blaze that lit the sky outside the shields. Moloch’s evil summons were immolated as Esset summoned the very landscape from the realm his summons dwelt in to their own plane of existence. The earth and sky weren’t just covered in fire—they
were
fire. Balls of fire fell from the sky, some the size of a man’s fist, some the size of a man’s head. Only those within the bubble shield on the scorpion’s back were safe. Earth and stone were scorched, plants incinerated, and animals reduced to ash.

Esset turned to Erizen and took a fistful of his shirt in his hand to make him meet his eyes. Erizen hissed at the heat rolling from him, and even the arrogant mage quailed slightly at those eyes. The orbs of Esset’s eyes were no longer mortal—instead there was an inferno trapped within.

“Give me your sight,” Esset said. Even his voice had changed to become more like the cries of his summons—there was something of fire in it, a distant echo of a fearsome blaze. Erizen actually hesitated.

“He cannot hide anywhere if the fire is everywhere. Share your sight and we can see Moloch,” Esset insisted. Erizen nodded and shared his mage-sight with the summoner. Esset took barely a moment to adjust, so used was he to looking through eyes other than his own. Erizen extended their view in an expanding radius around them, and Esset expanded the fiery landscape below as his scope of vision grew.

“There!” Esset called triumphantly, the distant roar of fire behind his voice. There was a small spot atop a hill that was untouched by fire—that was where Moloch had to be. All the invisibility in the world couldn’t hide the mage in a burning maelstrom. Moloch had to protect himself or die, but in protecting himself, he had given away his position.

Take us there.
Esset was going to issue the order to Erizen, but instead he found another incantation rolling off his tongue. It repeated four times, and then all at once, four large salamanders, seemingly made only of flames and no earth, materialized around each of them. Esset, Erizen, Tseka, and Toman vanished from the scorpion’s back and rematerialized on Moloch’s hilltop. Without them, the other mages and the soldiers would protect each other and mop up the few remaining creatures that Esset’s fire hadn’t completely destroyed.

Tseka used her shields to protect them until Esset’s all-consuming fire had dissipated. As the last flame evaporated, Moloch dropped his illusion spells and stood before them with a sneer upon his lips. The group stood motionless for a few long moments, each side staring at the other. They were each weighing their options, balancing their advantages against their disadvantages and preparing their next move. The last encounter had ended badly for all of them, with each underestimating the other; this time they were warier.

Esset studied Moloch—this was only the second time he’d seen the man up close. The mage was exactly as Esset remembered, with angular features and short black hair. Moloch was immaculately groomed and clean-shaven. Even the mage’s deep red mage robes were perfectly clean, without so much as a speck of dust upon them. His green eyes missed nothing.

Time seemed to slow down, but he knew that wouldn’t last. In a moment everything would be moving too quickly, with no time for thinking, just instinct and reaction. Esset felt fear—no, he felt terror—but he pushed it away as best he could and didn’t let it distract him. This time, he had to protect his brother.

Toman went very still, knowing he was the most vulnerable of the group. His army was too far away to help, busy fighting Moloch’s summons of plague, famine, and slaughter, and his ability to create new animations was too slow to be helpful now. The animator was calling some of his creatures to them, but he doubted they’d make it in time. Even so, he was far from useless. He had a collection of poisoned needles on his person that he intended to use on Moloch if the opportunity presented itself; he unobtrusively dropped half of them on the ground and let them slither as close as they could get to the mage.

Toman stared at this man whom he hated and feared. Part of his mind gibbered senselessly, but like Esset, he shoved it away so it could deal with Moloch once and for all. He focused instead on his hatred for the man; he fanned that intense black flame in his heart and let it sharpen his senses and push the memories of his two years of imprisonment and torture out of the forefront of his mind. Moloch had so much to answer for—for the deaths of his birth parents and Animator Eldan, for his own imprisonment and torture, and for innumerable atrocities committed against innumerable people in his pursuit of power, influence, and even pleasure. Moloch was no man—he was a monster, a creature, a
thing.
And he needed to be destroyed.

Esset moved first. He flipped his hands out in front of him and sent a blast of fire towards Moloch; the attack was split ineffectively by Moloch’s shields, but it bought the summoner a second to start his incantations. In quick succession, four panthers materialized outside Moloch’s shields; a moment later, a tortoise exploded next to the magical barrier between them and their enemy.

Moloch didn’t stay on the defensive. Toman could hear him chanting as well, and black skeletons wielding swords and scythes materialized atop the panthers to fight back. Even as the beasts of slaughter appeared, Moloch sent other spells towards them—bolts of pure magical energy pounded against Tseka and Erizen’s shields and black lightning crackled all around them, seeking a weakness in the shields to exploit. Erizen kept a full dome shield up while Tseka blocked particular attacks outside it to minimize Erizen’s burden.

Erizen wasn’t the type to stay on the defensive either. Tendrils of silver light bloomed from the sides of his shield and reached out towards Moloch. They wrapped around his smaller shield and squeezed. They pulsed, and for a moment it looked like the shield would collapse beneath them, but then the shield pulsed too, blasting the silver tendrils into nothingness.

Through the haze of magic, smoke, fire, and mage-shields, Toman thought he saw Moloch smiling as his lips moved. The animator narrowed his eyes and looked around, casting a glance behind them just in case—nothing. Then Tseka screamed. Skeletal hands thrust up from the ground beneath them, and one had driven a sword blade into her coils. The rest of the skeleton was emerging when Toman reached it—taking a chance, he grabbed the other sword it held and animated it. He wasn’t certain it would work, since it was, in a sense, part of the summon, but it did. The sword came to life and wrapped around the skeleton’s neck, neatly beheading it. The skeleton vanished, but other hands were coming up through the earth. Then, all at once, the extended limbs were severed as Erizen sliced through them with a new layer of shield to protect the ground beneath their feet. The battle still waged on outside the shields, but Toman kept his attention close to home.

Toman didn’t even need to reach into his pocket for the roll of bandages he kept there; he simply animated it to go to Tseka and wrap around the wound. The sword that had wounded her had vanished with the black skeleton, so the injury was open and bleeding. Toman concentrated on stopping the bleeding as quickly as possible. Tseka hissed but held still. Toman looked up at her, but her eyes weren’t even on him—she still kept her gaze up, fighting her pain in favor of succumbing and giving Moloch an opening. She still blocked incoming attacks to help Erizen.

Toman turned his attention back to the battle. He still waited for his opening, if an opening was to come. Moloch’s stunt had given him an idea. He sent a few of his poisoned needles burrowing into the ground, risking the poison being rubbed off to see if they could come up from underneath. He waited, but they couldn’t get through—still, he left them there, to wait. He didn’t think Moloch had noticed the attempt, and surprise would give him his best chance.

They continued to exchange blows—summons fought summons, and when they could, they attacked the shields of either side. They were evenly matched; shields held strong and attacks kept flying, but neither side could get the upper hand. Moloch was holding his own against them. Toman had hoped that he’d been more weakened by the injury the phoenix had given him, by the reversal of his Greymaker, and by his failure to slaughter large numbers of people in Symria and Namara. But apparently he’d garnered enough blood and death magic anyways—enough to bolster his power for this. Toman began to fear that he’d underestimated the evil mage again.

Meanwhile, Esset knew he’d reached the extent of his power. There were summons he had never called on before, but they weren’t the summons he needed. Summoning the land of fire itself had been his most potent weapon, but Moloch had stood against it. It had served to uncover him, but they still had to defeat him. The summoner was throwing everything he had against Moloch, but the mage’s skin was still unburnt; Esset’s fire couldn’t reach him. Esset had traded his ability to summon the phoenix herself for the other powers she’d granted him. It was a cruel irony; without her aid, he wouldn’t have made it this far, but without being able to summon her now, he couldn’t defeat Moloch. He found himself praying to Hyrishal inside his own mind even as his lips uttered endless incantations to summon his creatures of fire.

Molten panthers tore through every black skeleton, plague beast, and swarm creature that appeared before it and tore at Moloch’s mage-shield, forcing him to keep expending magical energy. Explosive tortoises would appear and then detonate next to his shields, until a good portion of the hillside was blown away or left blackened and twisted. Fire burned the very air around Moloch’s shields. Massive birds of prey with wings of flame dropped on the shield from above, adding to the endless pressure. Atop Erizen’s attacks, Esset wanted to believe that they were slowly wearing the mage down, but Moloch stood there, perfectly poised, with a sneer upon his lips, untouched. His hands moved sometimes, with small flicks and gestures, but his expression lent the impression that he fought them only to amuse himself, or perhaps to humor them.