Dancing Flames

A finely dressed man seemingly in his twilight years sat at a table carved of a brilliantly white material, cutting into a masterfully seasoned steak with platinum utensils. He savoured the flavour, letting its richness drive thoughts of the grey consuming his once golden hair and the myopia overtaking his cerulean eyes from his mind, if only for a moment.

He knew he would need to perform the ritual again soon, but he preferred to not let such unpleasant matters sour his evening.

"Jarvel," he called, his voice lacking the rumbling quality of his youth he so cherished. "Be a dear and fetch me the Szbrakian wine, would you?"

A tall, thin humanoid in a dark orange suit gave him a shallow bow, its wide and unblinking sulphurous yellow eyes never leaving the elderly man as it did. Its expression didn't so much as twitch, the wide smile filled with metallic teeth remaining fixed to its face.

As the entity turned to leave the man shifted slightly, his silken indigo robes fluttering about. "Oh, and while you're at it why don't you send someone to investigate whatever set so much of my city on fire; it wouldn't do to have the peasants rioting or some savages invading at this hour."

The creature bowed again, sending a bark of garbled and grating noise at its employer that would cause lesser men's ears to bleed. The elderly man simply gave the creature a genial smile, "Thank you dear, your delightful humour always brightens my day."

With another burst of eye watering noise, the creature straightened up and walked away, each step carrying it further than its already quite long legs should be able to reach.

Smile still in place, the old man ran a withered hand through his thinning hair before taking a sip from a golden, jewel encrusted chalice. "Hmm, not quite up to Szbrakian standard. Such a shame what happened to them, but needs must after all."

Humming a tune that darkened the air around him, the man returned to his meal.

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I gave my surroundings a thorough glancing at, seeing nothing worrying beyond the burning buildings, their inhabitants having long since fled or been trapped inside.

A nearby scream illustrated my point quite eloquently, drawing my gaze to a building that was relatively intact despite the flames gushing out every window and door. I could vaguely make out a humanoid silhouette in one of the slightly less on fire windows, desperately flailing and waving their arms while screaming for help.

The fact said window was on the first floor seemed entirely lost on them.

I watched them flail for a moment, their screams becoming all the more agonized and panicked as flames engulfed them. In their panic, they seemed to be incapable of realizing the ground is less than three feet down from the open window they’re sticking their torso out of. A more noble man than I may have been tempted to try and save this hapless stranger.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

I am not such a noble man.

All I felt was mild and derisive amusement watching them burn so close to safety. Rather than put my life at risk trying to save someone I don’t know, my mind immediately jumped from snickering to pondering if I could conceivably kill them myself before they choked to death on the smoke pouring around them.

No point letting all that Experience go to waste, after all.

There was absolutely no way I was going to rush into a burning building while I’m still vulnerable to burning to death, choking to death, being crushed to death, so on and so forth. Even so, I’ve never been good at resisting temptation; I want to evolve, I want to grow stronger, and to do that, I need to kill and kill and kill some more.

But I also have to be smart about it because anything else with two brain cells to rub together is going to be thinking the same thing. There may be a perception of nobility in dying for someone else, but there is no way in any flavour of Hell I’m going to be a path to someone else’s power!

And even that thin veneer of purpose doesn’t apply to fire anyway.

With actually running in crossed off the list of potential options, that left me looking for external means. There were plenty of scattered stones and bricks about, though most were partially melted or slowly sinking into slowly cooling pools of magma. Even without the risk of the intense heat I doubted I could lift many of them properly; my strength may be quite high but my limbs are still tiny, leverage is often far more important than strength, as any practitioner of a martial art would be ever so happy to tell you.

Luckily, my former shelter had the solution in the form of being made up of crumbling, mostly shattered stone. It took me only a few seconds searching to find a chunk of stone I could lift and maneuver easily enough to be a viable weapon. Giving the rock a few experimental tosses, I eyeballed the person in the that burning ruin that had transitioned from desperate screams to half-sobbed choking coughs in the time it took me to find a suitable tool of murder.

Observe told me they were a human woman remarkably close to death and Range Finder told me they were approximately twenty feet away. I awkwardly stood up, held the small stone in one paw, and reeled back in a way that made my joints grind uncomfortably. Wobbling unsteadily on my back legs, I jerkily hurled the stone forth...

And watched it clatter to the ground barely four feet from me as I toppled over from the attempt.

My body was not at all designed for throwing things, let alone doing so how my memories want me to; I was hardly surprised when my first attempt at putting humanity's second greatest advantage over beasts to work failed me.

I’m not human anymore, after all.

By the time I scrambled to my feet and located another stone, my intended target had slumped over the windowsill and a quick Observe informed me they had succumbed to the flames. I suppressed a surge of irrational rage with practised ease; there will be more opportunities to gain experience in the future, no use crying over spilled blood.

For a long moment I simply sat there and watched the corpse burn alongside this segment of the city, allowing the mesmerizing flames to dance away my anger. Ashes drifting down from on high settled around me like grey snow. A single ember amongst however many thousand fell around me stung my nose and brought me from the relaxing near trance the familiar glory of the swaying flames had granted.

I shook off my revelry with a frown, turning away from the fire and heading deeper into the ruins. The safe choice would be to run away from the burning wreckage, but the odds of a disaster like this coming along anytime soon without my direct action is dubious at best; I can’t just let an opportunity like this pass me by.

Fear has its place, but if I let fear alone guide me I’ll never rid myself of the shackles of mortality. I have no idea how long a “Ninja Plague Rat” lives, but considering it’s still a relatively standard rat, I’m assuming not particularly long. I do not have time to play it safe, at least not completely; not with the never ending ticking of that damnably ethereal clock, not with that bone white sand ever trickling down.

If I had a few decades or centuries, perhaps then I could afford to let a risky opportunity like this pass me by from safety, but as far as I’m aware I don’t even have a single decade.

That sends a shiver crawling up and down my spine, the illusory and oh so uncomfortably real chill of the grave driving my every step to be a touch faster than the last. I'm almost at a dead sprint before I stop myself, taking deep breaths and forcing myself to calm down.

Even acknowledging I'm feeling anything at all can be a challenge, but long experience has taught me how to read my reactions to know what I'm feeling and how to deal with it. For as important as it is to take advantage of the chaos around me, I can't allow my fear to drive me straight into the very grave I'm so hell bent on avoiding.

Taking another deep breath, and thanking my small stature for being beneath the choking clouds of smoke shifting amorphously above my head, I steadied myself. I could feel the flames reflected in my eyes as I gazed into the catastrophe with fear tinged hunger.

Time to take advantage of some chaos.