Chapter 52

I opened the door to the next level, pushing it upward and open at the top of the stairs. As it slid open, I recoiled in pain, dazzling sunlight blasting through the darkness behind me. The smell of green and growing things struck me like a wave, nature positively bursting with life all around me. I drew in deep breaths of clean air, and relished the sensation of breeze on my skin after being underground for what felt like forever. I smiled as I looked around, sweeping my gaze across the massive open clearing that surrounded me, taking in the ring of trees around it that must’ve been a mile or more away. I didn’t see the tower, or the mountainous form of the Greenwarden; the horizon was clear of any kind of landmark that I recognized, and the sun stood directly overhead, depriving me of a sense of direction.

I turned slowly in place, looking around, until I abruptly felt a presence behind me. The Greenwarden sat there, upon a simple-looking wooden chair that had no visible joins or seams, as if grown as one piece. “But the path to power is always laden with strife. I had thought my fellow Sect Initiates would welcome me back… or at least respect me.” A small, self-deprecating laugh. “But the only thing they respect is power. They could not hear the world whisper as I could. They could not see as I could. Instead, I was met with… contempt. To crawl up out of the depths, crusted in filth, and claim that I had seen into the heart of the world and heard its’ voice? But not all of them turned their back on me. I gained my first disciple, that day. My… friend.” His voice trailed off, and then he seemed to look directly at me, his tone changing from wistful to lecturing.

“You are inside of me, young disciple. Within my Soul Realm. All of this,” he gestured around, encompassing land and sky in a single, immense circular movement. “All of this is my creation. If you wish to become my Disciple… Then you must ascend. To ascend, you must understand. You must come to see the world as I have. If you do not… You will fail, and you will fall, and your soul will be as fertilizer in the fields of my ascension. That is the trade that was offered to me. Risk my very soul… in exchange for greater power.” He smiled, and it was a cold, hungry look; the eyes of a predator stared back at me. “Such is the way of the Merciless Stars. Such is the will of the Ruthless Scribe.”

“Now,” he finished, standing up. The chair behind him dissolved back into roots and vines, retreating into the soil. “Show me you have the strength to survive.”

He vanished as if he’d never stood before me at all, and the edges of the forest began to rattle and shake with movement, branches swaying violently as if in a gale. At first a handful of creatures emerged; the usual beasts of the forest, though their bodies were decayed, patches of fur and flesh missing, replaced by thick branches and brambles. More followed behind, emerging from the forest in an endless tide. Dozens, then hundreds, more every moment as they swarmed toward me from every direction. I drew in a deep, steadying breath as I regarded them, the ragged leading edge closing into a ring around me as the beasts drew closer.

I could hear the whisper of the Shepherdess, her eyes alight with flame and cold as winter. “Are we going to stand here all day, or are you going to embrace this new world?”

I opened my stance wider, feet in line with my shoulders, and splayed my hands out to my sides. There was only grass here, little more than ankle high, and I could sense that there was little fuel within it; it would only burn for seconds before crumbling to ash, the barest motes of energy hardly worth more than the effort it would take to bake the moisture from them to ignite them at all. Lush, green, verdant, and nearly useless for me. Instead, I reached out farther, feeling toward the encroaching beasts. Less then half the distance remained, and I could hear rasping howls and baying from every direction, the endless beat of hoof and claw rising like thunder, rattling in my bones and the hollow spaces of my chest as if trying to beat me down by sound alone. The bodies were desiccated, little more than bones and skin and leathery sinew bound together by that same black-green energy as the Leviathan. I steadied my breathing as I focused my senses on them, taking in their speed and rhythm of movements, waiting until they crossed an invisible threshold in my mind.

I focused inward on where the strings of intention and energy met, pushing it outward until I could feel it surrounding me, the two entwined threads practically humming with energy. I focused back to my training with the Shepherdess, trying to remember how it felt that first time I breached the barrier between worlds, that instant I’d glimpsed through it as I tore the air asunder and pulled fire into my hands for the first time. Then it was time.

The air split around me in a ring, an infinitely thin slice of reddish line that spilled from nothing, crackling at the edges as if trying to ignite reality itself, fighting to escape the thin slit I’d cut into the Cindervault. I fished into the edges of it with my mind, grabbing mental fistfuls of power and ripping them out of the primordial furnace, dragging them out into the world.

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I released my grip on the power, hurling a dozen firebolts in the first instant. A dozen more followed a second later, the next round a little shorter than that. I could feel the way the Cindervault pulled at me, the wound I’d torn in the air pulling inward, trying to close around me and drag me into its’ depths, turning me into fuel for its’ endless holocaust. I grit my teeth against its’ pull, focusing on the Greenwarden himself.

The condescension in his features. The ugly arrogance in his eyes. His utter disregard for life even as he claimed to embrace it. All I could see was Jake’s grinning face, and the moment it faltered as my hands reached out toward him.

Dozens of creatures fell as they were struck, their bodies tumbling with the impacts until they became so many obstacles littering the field. I spread out my attacks to buy myself time, searching inwardly for a solution. There were so many, I would surely be overwhelmed if they could all gather against me. No room to move, no room to dodge, no space-

But I didn’t need to run, nor hide. I am the inferno. It is nature who flees from me, the creatures of the wild wide-eyed with terror as the flames pursued them like relentless hounds, consuming everything in their path.

Instead, I reached out to the closing circle around me, almost near enough to touch, and dragged the flames inward, forcing them downward. The fires spewed out, tongues of red and blue mingling as they burned away the grass in an instant, clearing an area around me of perhaps ten feet on every side. I clenched my fists and pulled the flames into solid barriers, forming bulwarks of glossy [Crystalflame] around me, embedding their bases in the soil and yanking upward until they loomed over me, closing into a dome above my head. I drew in a deep breath, pulling until my lungs hurt. I clamped my lips shut, setting my jaw as I cranked up the heat, pouring as much fire into the heart of the dome as I could. I pulled into the dirt itself began to smolder, until the moisture trapped within it bubbled and flashed to steam, driving the temperature higher and higher in the confined space until it began to strain my [Heat Adaptation], and I could feel all of the oxygen within being rapidly consumed, the fires only continuing to exist because of their connection to the Cindervault itself, the closing circle around me looming like an executioner’s blade, greedy to reclaim the flames it had lost.

The dome around me shivered under the relentless attacks from the outside, so little air within that I couldn’t even hear the sound it made, only the vibrations from the dirt beneath me betraying the landslide of attacks pounding against the barriers. I could feel them weakening, shivering as they began to splinter. I could feel the ragged edge of their endurance, the exact moment when they would fall. I forced shut the connection to the Cindervault, my own body instantly taxed to breaking by the energy required to sustain the flames without oxygen, but an instant was all I required.

I spoke, and the heat pulled the air from my lungs, the whisper barely formed before the roar of the inferno drowned it out, the crystalflame walls consumed all at once to open the path. “Backdraft!”

Uncontained by the dome, the air seemed to shake apart as the greedy fires escaped, the burst of heat flashing to white heat and exploding outward, consuming everything around me in a swelling fireball, claws and fangs of heat and flame tearing at the wall of creatures that had clumped up around the barrier, throwing their bodies backward dozens of feet from the shockwave. The explosion was like standing next to an entire battery of artillery as they all fired in sequence, my world constantly rocked by the endless roar of fire and rage that encompassed me, burning at my flesh. I gripped the edge of the cloak and clutched my other hand around the [Calamitous Ruby] at my throat, drawing as deeply from both items as I could. I felt the cloak shivering and fraying as I ripped power from it, the ruby igniting in my hand like the heart of a star.

I seized the torrent of energy from both items, pouring it into controlling the tide of flame that swept out from me, immense amounts of heat poured into individual creatures like a plasma cutter, igniting and consuming them to fuel the growth of the blaze. Their bodies hissed and screamed as desiccated plant matter tried to shield rotted hide and fetid bones, corpses bursting apart into short-lived fountains amongst the sea of flames around me, their heat rejoining the tide that swept along at waist height, destroying everything in their path. I shuddered, and sank to my knees, eyes fighting to stay open against the baking heat around me, my body feeling as though it was submerged in acid, the flames hot enough to injure even me.

When finally the flames faded, the entire clearing was barren of grass, the trees a mile away ablaze like a ring of torches all around me.

I felt the ground beneath me shudder violently, the very bones of the world heaving with rage. I could sense the cold rage of the Greenwarden’s attention focused on me once again, but it felt as if his gaze came from every direction at once, his presence pushing in on me as if trying to crush me down to coal.

“There,” I growled up at the air. “How’s that understanding for you?” I could barely speak past my baked vocal chords and the rasping pain in my lungs from the searing heat pulling the air out of them. Nonetheless, I felt a tremor of rage spill through the world in response, and I couldn’t help but smile.

He’d told me what I needed to hear: This wasn’t Earth. This wasn’t my home. This was somewhere ‘inside’ of him, somehow; that meant I didn’t have to hold back.

I could burn the whole damn world if I wanted to.