Yesugei took the sword in two hands, pointing the notched and rusted blade towards the demon as he advanced. All around him the wolves howled, eager for their lord to spill the princeling’s blood, watching from behind the curtain of fire with glowing yellow eyes. The flaming wolf came to a stop three paces away and growled, then opened its jaws once more where now Yesugei saw many rows of teeth - some were pointed as those of a wolf, but others were flat, like those of men. The wolf’s jaws snapped shut with a thunderclap, and then it leapt for his throat.

The Qarakesek prince fell to the side at the last moment, raking the longsword across the wolf’s burning hide. He saw no blood spill from the wolf’s flesh as it landed on its feet, and saw the tip of his blade had come away red-hot and deformed from the hellish blaze shrouding the beast. The wolf was in no rush to kill him, and as it crept towards him Yesugei walked about it in a slow circle, his breath heavy from the rising heat and smoke. The wolf’s dribbling saliva fell in red-orange drops, and hissed as it fell to the ground.

Then the monster came at him again, and its snapping jaws missed by a hair’s breadth as he stumbled away. Yesugei felt the blaze cast a dark burn across his robe, and saw his sleeve briefly come alight. He feigned a cut to the wolf’s leg, hoping it would ward it off, but the beast did not fear his blade and charged again as soon as it had missed - and he was off-balance.

No…no…too far…too far…

“BACK.”

The word came to him as a whisper, but when it left his lips it sounded like rolling thunder, booming over the roar of the flames and sending a blast of fiery leaves into the face of the wolf. The monster fell as if hit by a mallet, and sprawled on the ground it bared its many rows of teeth as its flaming eye narrowed.

“What magic is this?” The wolf growled, and all around them came terrified whimpers from the rest of the pack. Tuyaara watched him with horror written plain across her face. “How? How do you speak with the voice of the Star-Eater?”

The name echoed in Yesugei’s mind - a vision of mauve and violet clouds, streaks of lightning across an endless expanse of a heaven beyond his knowing. But within the memory and the vision, he felt a new, strange feeling - one of power and of sorrow, electrifying and numbing at once. The feeling rose from his dead heart, and it spread through his body like water rushing from a broken dam - he felt it surge to his fingertips, and a feeling of power, of domination, coalesced into the palm of his hand.

Memories flowed to him, ancient and foreign, flashes of a life lived long ago, and words whispered in love and despair. Visions of an arcane glyph dripping with life essence flashed and faded before his eyes, and he reached out his hand to trace it through the air as the wolf staggered to its feet. He felt his eyes light up with a terrible golden glow, and a roar of command escaped from his clenched teeth. The shadows of the waving branches twisted and flowed to his will, and with a wave of his hand he pulled the shadows from the ground, giving them solid form. The darkness sprang up like grasping tendrils, and wrapped around the burning wolf in a crushing vice. Where the shaped darkness gripped the monster, the flames that were its shroud and shield sputtered out with puffs of smoke.

The wolf let out a snarl, but Yesugei sensed- no, he tasted the fear in its snarl, and in its trembling as it struggled against the binding darkness. Fear rose up everywhere, the earth was soaked in it - and from none was it sweeter than the terror of the girl-shaman, who had fallen to her knees in awe and fright. The wolf snarled again, and suddenly Yesugei felt a terrible pain like an iron spike driven through his skull - the binds of darkness were beginning to fail, his magic straining and fading as the wolf’s fire flared with renewed life. There was a press of two forces in his mind like two giant stones, crushing, grinding; he was cast between them, and losing.

“You cannot bind me forever, lesser son,” the wolf hissed as it shrugged off the darkness. One by one, the bindings pooled back to the ground, and became only flickering shadows once more as Yesugei's strength wavered. “Slave of a slave of a slave…that is all you are, and that is all your power.”

The pain was blinding - stars swam before Yesugei’s eyes, and when they cleared he saw the wolf was already free. With a great leap it fell upon him, its jaws aimed for his throat, and he could bring neither sword nor divine word to bear in time - only a scream.

Blood erupted from his neck in a great spurt, and it turned to steam from the surging heat that engulfed him. He did not even feel the pain of the wolf’s teeth closing around his throat over the blaze that sent a wave of blistering agony through every fiber of his being. Yesugei was vaguely aware he had collapsed to the ground beneath the monster's weight, and that the wolf was ripping him apart with sharp teeth of man and beast, but all he could feel was the primal anguish of flame. It was everywhere, and all-consuming - his whole world was engulfed in fire, and millions of lashing orange tongues.

The wolf’s mouth tore free, full of blood and flesh. It spat, grinned as if it were a man, and sank its many rows of teeth into his flesh again. Yesugei thrashed wildly beneath the great bulk of the beast, and in desperation flung one hand against its great maw, trying to push it away as it leaned in for another bite. He saw the flesh of his left hand come alight and begin to slough off from his bones, steaming blood and dripping viscera.

His other hand grasped for the longsword which had fallen to the ground, and with a gurgle he buried the chipped sword into the wolf’s side - only for the blade to turn red and shatter in twain from the heat.

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The great red eye pulsed with delight and hunger. It seemed to burn brighter with every shearing tear of flesh - the glow drew him in, closer, deeper, until he was sinking into an ocean of cruel red. But Yesugei noticed the fire that engulfed the wolf's form was faintest around its eye, elsewise it would have been blinded by the glare of its own flames. With his last fading strength, he tightened his grip around the broken hilt of the longsword, and then he made his final strike.

The shattered iron blade plunged deep into the great, glistening eye.

Then there came a deafening, world-shattering howl.

The beating flames rose away from him as the wolf fell off of him, screaming in blind agony from the sword plunged into its eye. A great geyser of fire erupted from the wound - flaming blood sprayed across the ashen ground in all directions as the wolf stumbled about, howling and shrieking, its voice equal parts wolf and man.

Eventually the wolf’s strength came to an end - the beast crumpled to the ground with a resounding crash, and did not rise. And there, just a few paces from its quarry, the Flame-Kissed of Gandroth died. A great pool of fiery blood seeped out from underneath the wolf’s form, and the hungry flames began to consume the carcass - fur curled and blackened, bones cracked and popped, and flesh and fat sizzled with a choking, acrid smell. For a brief moment, the sloughing flesh revealed the form of a man from within the wolf's corpse. It was a Khormchak - a noyan, thin and frail, but even as he burned by his own flames Yesugei could make out his face. Ardager, noyan of the Quanli, stared up at him with hate and terror in his eyes.

"How...how?" muttered Ardager as he collapsed on all fours, his robes and hair alight. "Fire cannot harm one who is kissed by it...how? Why have you forsaken me, o Lord of Fire and Lash...why?"

The noyan's mutterings turned into a faint gurgle as he sank into the pool of fiery blood, and saw swallowed without a sound. A faint shadow rose up from the burning carcass, and it fled into the dark night sky.

Slowly around them, all fires died till nothing was left but falling ash and sparks. Dark smoke curled from the blackened willow branches and blew away with the breeze. The shadowy forms of the wolves Yesugei saw were retreating, following after the darkness that itself was fleeing before the morning light. The wet grayness of the early morning flooded the open plain, but Yesugei could not rise.

He unfastened his rope with his unburnt hand, and slid his hand over his heart, which still pulsed defiantly. He curled his hand into a fist, smiled, and then felt himself slipping away into a dark void. The last thing he remembered was a strange sensation of silky coolness coiling around his burnt arm - the scales of a serpent he could not see, for his eyes were fixed upon the stars which faded into the morning sky.

They had never looked so beautiful before, in all his years beneath the heavens.

***

When he opened his eyes, he was standing in a great hall he did not know.

The wooden walls around him were washed and faded by time, and beams lay broken and splintered about the carpeted floor with streamers trampled and tangled among them.

Chipped stone pillars running the length of the hall towered over his head, rising high towards a shattered roof through which shafts of moonlight shone with cold light. The silver beams played across the rafters, and as they twisted about the domed ceiling Yesugei saw there swayed a great bell, shrouded in writhing darkness that turned it almost invisible in the shadows of night.

The doors at one end of the hall were wrought of black iron and inlaid with silver, but even as he beheld them he saw the doors begin to swing open silently. Footsteps echoed down the great hall; a figure emerged from the night, and approached slowly towards him. Through some stirring of his heart, Yesugei felt himself drawn towards the figure. He strode down the hall to greet it, but as he stepped forth he saw the hall waver, and then the carpeted floors began to stretch out, growing longer and longer as the hall lengthened. Every step he took made the hall grow ever longer - every step closer, sending him further.

He tried to call out for the figure only to feel blood - black and thick with corruption - come spurting from his mouth. He choked and gurgled on his words, and then spat a glob of pitch-black essence onto the ground. Before his eyes he saw the dark stain suddenly begin to expand, and then from the blackness there yawned a great hole whose depths his eyes could not fathom.

The hole grew larger, ever larger, and Yesugei thought to scramble back only when it was too late.

He slipped into the darkness without a cry, and the yawning hole closed above him, swallowing the light of the moon and stars overhead.

Yesugei awoke with a start, gasping for breath.

In the waking world as in the dream, he did not know where he was, at least for a while. Then he saw swaying dark branches above his head, and a chill breeze caused a shiver to run through him. Yesugei realized his robe was undone, and his chest was covered with bandages - he was lying on a sheepskin blanket, and morning had come.

His neck felt stiff and hard to turn to one side - he felt a damp poultice covering his neck from jaw to shoulder, but it had grown swollen and smelled foul. He sat up and removed the poultice with a hiss just as he heard someone trudging up from below the slope of the willow tree hill.

Tuyaara gave a shout to the others when she saw him, and then with a cheer he was suddenly being crowded by the shaman and the two Klyazmites as they looked over his wounds. Their voices sounded muffled, indistinct save for their differences in tone, and he felt strong hands gently prop him up against the ashen trunk of the willow. The Klyazmites spoke quickly and with fear to the shaman, who herself was afraid - he sensed their fear on the tip of his tongue, sweeter than any wine or honey.

The three of them were crowding him too closely. Yesugei brought up his injured hand to wave them away, to give him some space to breathe, when suddenly Kargasha and Bykov jerked away. The nomad prince looked at them with bleary confusion, but then he realized what had become of his left hand - the hand that gripped the faithful bowstring.

He flexed his fingers, then clenched them into a fist. His flesh was charred and black below the elbow, with deep vein-like fissures running to and fro reminding Yesugei of cracked, barren earth. Within the cracks, a white light shone dimly, and wisps of dark smoke rose from his fingertips as he unclenched his fist.

A stolen kiss dwelled in his hand. A kiss of fire.