Dead Drop Violet was a difficult poison to make, and an even more difficult poison to maintain. For it required maintaining, unlike most poisons which could be administered and then forgotten about. It was so difficult in fact that Freyan had gotten it wrong the first few times she’d tried. Most of the people she’d poisoned hadn’t died at all while one had died rather violently and unexpectedly despite her best attempts to save him. Luckily he’d been a serial killer so she didn’t feel particularly guilty about it.
Naya didn’t know that Freyan had perfected it of course. She wasn’t allowed to dabble in the higher poisons, the ones so dangerous you only handled them with gloves and masks. The ones that required ingredients from far off places imported by smugglers at ridiculous expense. But Freyan worked with them anyway.
She’d stolen one of the exotic violets and grown her own garden of them down in the Undercity. They were difficult to grow but she’d managed. She knew that if Naya had really been on the top of her game she would have known about it but she was getting old these days. Older than she liked to admit. So Freyan worked her garden in secret. Stealing off into the night to tend to it.
And what a garden it was. Spreading out through some of the most secretive parts of the Undercity. Hidden away from prying eyes by locks and doors and most importantly, by fear. That part of the Undercity was thought to belong to the gang they called the Black Spider. In reality that gang was just her and her flowers.
She distributed contracts, marked with the poison, and people would sign them in blood. Blood that then became infused with Dead Drop Violet. People would break the contracts of course. They were all thieves and beggars and liars so some of them broke the contracts. Then she would mix their blood in with the water she gave the flowers. Then the pollen of the violets would bond to that person and only that person. Then, of course, that person would die.
It didn’t matter where they hid or what security they locked themselves behind. The drafty networks of the Undercity spread the pollen all across it and then it drifted up into the city above. No one could escape it unless they left the city entirely and it was difficult to do that these days.
Few people broke her contracts anymore.
She perched atop a building, looking down at Jencer, the Man of a Thousand Shadows. He’d signed one of her contracts. He was in her little web and she could kill him if she wanted to. But he hadn’t broken the contract yet. He hadn’t done anything against her and hers and so she was reluctant to arbitrarily kill him.
Yet he was the most powerful person in the city. Wreathed in the powerful magic of gods and demons. Of course there was a sorceress here now as well, maybe she was more powerful, Freyan didn’t know. What she did know was that this man had caused enormous amounts of suffering in her city and could very well cause much more. But he hadn’t yet broken her contract. Could she really just kill him even though he hadn’t broken her contract? Would that not lead to people no longer trusting her contracts? Would that not lead to nobody buying the contracts anymore and no longer giving her the money she needed to conduct her whole operation?
She left the rooftop and flitted her way back through the city, back to her garden. She looked down at her flowers and at the tiny vial of Jencer’s blood she’d scraped from the contract. Above her, out by the docks, the Phoenix of Fort Sundrick burst into flame.
The Phoenix climbed slowly to his feet, the water around him hissing and bubbling and shrouding him in a cloud of steam. Half his face was ruined and melted which warped his mouth into an angry grimace, which left one of his eyes dead and drooping. But the other burned with the rage of a thousand infernos, staring out of the steam. It stared out at the little shadows of heat that were people screaming and running away. It stared out at the archer who was standing on a rooftop, paralysed with shock, his heat shadow pulsing much too fast as his heartbeat sped up. It stared out at the pair of golden eyes that stared right back at him. Golden eyes belonging to a creature almost as powerful as him. Filled with rage and newfound fear the Phoenix attacked those golden eyes.
Bara staggered back as the cloud of steam with the burning eye in the middle lunged toward her but she wasn’t nearly fast enough. Hands that burned into her flesh grabbed onto her and she screamed. The water of the ocean rolled off in clouds and clouds of roiling vapour, the only thing keeping the blistering inferno at bay.
She reached for that and drew the ocean forward in a huge wave that crashed over them both. Smothering the steam, smothering the monster, smothering the heat. The hands let go of her and the Phoenix staggered away, fighting through the roiling water which evaporated around it. She sat up, her wounds still stinging fiercely in the cold water. She couldn’t see much through the mist. Only the glow of that eye as the monster ran away from her, as it ran away from the ocean, from the water. She wasn’t going to be allowing that.
Bara reached out her magic and felt her ocean around her. The ocean she’d lived in her whole life. The ocean that listened to her and only her. She pulled it forward in a titanic wave that towered above her and crashed down toward the docks as the Phoenix staggered up them. It was out of the water now, and it was starting to glow a worrying shade of orange.
It met her wave with a wave of its own. A wave of hellfire and ruin and debris that tore the docks to pieces before it. The two forces of the elements met and exploded into steam and vapour and a roaring hiss, but water is heavier than fire and the momentum of Bara’s wave carried it over and onto the docks where it settled with a crash beneath the new clouds of roiling steam that were billowing about.
She pulled herself out of the water, standing in the waves and looked into the blank whiteness before her, now silent after the rage of that explosion. The raging glowing eye of the Phoenix was nowhere to be seen. It was gone, hiding somewhere. Fleeing before her. She picked her way through the lapping waves to go and find it.
Rogo stared in shock at the monster as it exploded into fire and ash and steam. A chunk of burning lava landed on the rooftop beside him but he didn’t flinch. He was too in shock to flinch. Luckily for him when everything exploded for a second time from the waves of the ocean and the rooftop he was standing on fell apart he was shaken from his horror and started to run.
He should have known the game wouldn’t be that easy. He should have known that Jencer wouldn’t set him a task like that. A task that he could actually do. He staggered through the steam and mist that was now pouring from the sea and filling up the city. He didn’t know where he was going. He vaguely remembered he’d had an escape plan at some point but he didn’t know what it was anymore. What did plans matter in the face of whatever that thing had been? What did anything matter? He just needed to get away, to-
He didn’t get very far.
Karnell was not an angry man at the best of times. He liked to think of himself as calm, patient, serene even. But when the goal he’d been working toward for months, the goal he’d sold his soul to a demon to achieve, was interrupted by some archer on a roof. Then he became angry.
There was a lot of mist and steam filling the streets and docks and lots of explosions and fire. But, sadly, he was well used to that sort of chaos. He mounted Ashwyn, the Phoenix’s horse, who seemed only too happy to chase down the archer, just as he was. In the steam and mist he couldn’t see much but Ashwyn could, and she found the fleeing archer in seconds.
She slammed into him and he crashed to the ground with a crunch that pleased Karnell more than it possibly should have. Then she loomed over him and Karnell looked down at the man who was rolling slowly over, blood trickling from his face.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?!” Karnell shouted down at him, he had a sword drawn somehow and he was pointing it down at the archer. Ashwyn snorted angrily.
“I... I...” The man’s eyes slowly refocused. Behind them there was another big explosion. “I... I failed... to kill him...”
“Yes! Yes you failed and now the whole city will likely burn for it!”
“Who... who is he...?”
Karnell’s eyes bulged with rage. “You don’t even know who he is? Why were you trying to kill him then?!”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The man smiled and almost seemed to be trying to laugh but he thought better of it. “It was just a game... just a silly game...”
Karnell had heard enough, he rammed the sword through the man’s throat and then Ashwyn galloped away with him. As much as she wanted to help her phoenix, she wanted to live more, and a sorceress might actually be able to kill her. Behind them the ocean started exploding.
Jencer, the Man of a Thousand Shadows, Fell Scarred Magi, Binder of Auriomauch, Master of Death Itself, had graciously given his opponent in the three games an hour-long head start in his hunt for the Phoenix. That had been for two reasons. First, just in case Rogo had somehow managed to actually pull it off, he would get the Eye of a Phoenix, attain immortality once again, and then be able to kill Rogo at his leisure, without having to actually do any work. But second, and much more importantly, he had to hunt down that insolent little pirate boy who had failed to lose all his matches. He figured an hour should about do it. How many places could the boy go where his spirits couldn’t find him?
It had been about half an hour and the boy had clearly gone somewhere where the spirits couldn’t find him. They’d seen him go into the Undercity, since apparently that was an open highway these days, but then they’d lost him.
Jencer, the Man of a Thousand Shadows, so long denied entry into the Undercity. Burst in with a flourish, driving off anyone who tried to stop him with his army of spectral spirits. Unfortunately he ran into Wegrel who was sitting in the corridor looking up at him sadly.
“What are you here for?” Wegrel asked and Jencer very nearly considered killing him just for daring to speak to him again. But he didn’t, with a herculean effort he managed to restrain himself and interrogate him instead.
“I’m here for a pirate boy. Tall and gangly, frightened of most anything, especially me. I’m in a bit of a rush so if you tell me where he is I might not kill you.”
Wegrel smiled. “Oh yes him. He went somewhere no one will dare follow him. Rather brave actually in my opinion. Stupid. But brave.”
“Where did he go?” Jencer asked, completely unafraid of course, as always, but still letting a healthy amount of caution creep into his thoughts.
“Black Spider territory,” Wegrel replied and pointed down another corridor. “Ran right through there he did, straight past the sign of the spider.” He grinned up at Jencer who’s ingenious mind had already decided on the best course of action but was just taking it’s time to mull things over. Wegrel turned and left. “Follow him, if you dare, Man of a Thousand Shadows,” he said as he disappeared down another corridor.
Jencer took a long time mulling things over but then again he wasn’t in a rush and was really just pausing for dramatic effect. Then he turned and walked down the corridor into the territory of the Black Spider.
Freyan watched him enter from one of her secret spy holes and rushed off to add his blood to her garden. Everyone knew you didn’t enter the territory of the Black Spider.
Bara walked through the city looking for the glowing red eye. She bought with her her ocean, lapping around her feet and slowly swelling up over the docks and into the city with her, extinguishing some of the fires that had been started up. She didn’t bother to hide much, she was cloaked in the mist and fog from her battle, no one could see anything in that. No one, except the Phoenix.
It reached out from its hiding place behind a building as she walked by and grabbed her wrist in its burning hand. She cried out and tried to bring up the sea against it but it was too fast and too strong. Bara had never fought anyone as strong as her before so she was completely unprepared and completely off balance when the Phoenix threw her. It yanked her from her safe cool ocean and tossed her into the harsh burning air. She flew down the street and then crashed through a building. Fragments of wood and brick and iron rending through her flesh as the building collapsed around her. Then she heard the Phoenix’s footsteps as it ran down the street toward her.
She was apart from her ocean now, but she still had the mist, and she still had the rain. She darted from the building, ignoring the many wounds that riddled her body and cloaked herself in mist. Then she conjured a storm, the biggest storm she’d ever conjured. She would need it to fight this monster.
The rain hissing from its skin the Phoenix didn’t seem fazed by the mist. Zoning in on her as she ran. She darted behind another house for cover but that house burst into flame and the Phoenix emerged from it. It lunged for her and she caught it, pushing those deadly sizzling hands away from her face. They struggled in the rain. The heat from the Phoenix burning and blistering her skin away while her storm withered its skin and body. And all around them steam and mist roared into being. Her storm’s attempt to keep the raging inferno of the Phoenix from building. The fire grew hotter and hotter but the rain only poured down more and more. Behind them she slowly pulled on her ocean, begging it to come closer, to reach all the way out here to her aid. Raindrops fell in droves, the rain turned into a torrent, then a flood, that cascaded down upon them. But still the Phoenix burned, it’s eye boring into her with rage as all around her the rain burned away. She struggled to hold onto it but her hands burned away and it slipped free. She couldn’t heal nearly as fast as it could and she tried to stagger back but it kicked her in the chest and she flew backward through the rain into another building.
Once more it ran toward her but this time she already had her storm. She struck the running monster with a bolt of lightning. That was possibly not one of her best ideas.
Engulfed in heat that finally repelled the rain for a brief second the Phoenix exploded, instantly regenerating all the wounds it had suffered from the rain. The ensuing inferno engulfed it and the entire street. Bara’s eyes burned away as she tried to shield herself from the white hot explosion that walked toward her. She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, but her blistering body still felt the heat of the inferno, now gone far beyond the point where mere rain could stop it, and she felt the heat of that eye, somehow hotter still than the cataclysm that surrounded it.
Her body was so shrivelled and burned that she barely felt the hands that grabbed her and slammed her into the ground. She barely registered when they did it again, and again and again. The ground was mercifully soft the second time, and even softer the third time. But the soft ground stuck to her and only burned her more. She would have cried out but her mouth wasn’t working, most of her wasn’t working.
The Phoenix slammed its foe again and again into the melting cobblestones. Its rage and fury pouring off it in a bigger inferno than it had ever conjured before. This sorceress had thought to challenge it. This sorceress had thought to fight it and win. Never again! It was the Phoenix! It could not be beaten!
So great was its rage and so absorbed was it in its task of crushing the sorceress into ash that it didn’t notice the ocean creeping up around it. It didn’t notice the surging sweeps of a tide that was far from natural. It didn’t even notice the first wave that crashed down upon it breaking its inferno. But it noticed the second.
Jencer heard the explosions and ran. Unfortunately for him he ran back to the only exit from the Undercity he knew and that was by the docks. This meant that by the time he got there the battle at the docks had blasted open the Undercity completely and it was now filling with water. He staggered out and tried to make sense of what was going on. There were explosions but there wasn’t a whole lot of fire, that was strange. For some reason there were enormous torrents of rain. He sent his spirits out to investigate when a huge wave slammed into the docks, and him. The Master of Death Itself, tumbled through the city, elegantly of course, and crashed into a heap in a back alley. He staggered to his feet and then he saw it, down a street the Phoenix was fighting someone in hand to hand combat. How was that possible?
Despite the rain the waves of heat coming off the Phoenix were incredible and he staggered back behind a house. One of his spirits shouted in his ear over the rain and wind of the storm.
“It’s a sorceress! He’s fighting a sorceress!”
“Is he winning?” Jencer asked back. Or he would have if the wind didn’t snatch his words away rather rudely. He didn’t know who would win in the battle between a Phoenix and a sorceress. But he’d rather not stick around to find out despite the possibility of snagging a Phoenix’s eye to attain immortality again.
He made it one step of his hasty retreat before he choked on something and sagged to his knees. He coughed a few times and narrowed his eyes in confusion, it felt like something was swelling up inside his brain, something painful and sick and ugly. He vomited all across the street, food and drink and blood. It was swept up in the rain but he knew he’d tasted blood. He felt the swelling in his head again and he knew he didn’t have long.
“Get me his eye!!!” he shouted at his spirits and then collapsed to the ground, coughing and spluttering in his own blood.
Bara’s skin was gone as were much of her hands and head along with parts of the rest of her body. She didn’t heal like the Phoenix, it could heal by exploding in its inferno or with its eye and both of those worked much better than her healing. But she could still heal, and that was what she did as she pulled her ocean around her.
The Phoenix cowered before the waves, its ferocious inferno dying down further and further with each surge, and the surges came in rapid succession, each building atop the last. Bara pulled herself away through the waters and then sat herself up. With wind and water and storm howling around her she slowly lifted into the air.
The Phoenix looked up through its cowering hands and through all the waves and ocean and storm around it. It fixed that dread eye upon her, full of rage and pain and anger. But then, admitting defeat at last, the eye winked out.
Bara of the Deep, Sorceress of Storms, Queen of Oceans, Third in the Council of Ten, surged forward and carried the Phoenix with her to the bottom of the ocean. It didn’t make it that far, it didn’t even make it out of the city. It turned to ash in her hands and her waves carried it away. She sank down to the bottom of the ocean without it. Returning to her home, to where she was safe and healthy to heal. It took her a long time to heal from all the wounds she’d suffered in that battle.
Karnell and Ashwyn stood atop a hill and looked down at another ruined city. It was difficult to see anything with the storm still raging but there were still clearly great fires yet to die down. People were screaming and crying and all manner of other sounds drifted up to them on the hill.
Karnell watched for a few seconds longer but he knew what he’d seen. The great raging fire had died away, the Phoenix was dead, he’d failed. Ashwyn didn’t have reins so he tried to tug gently on her mane to turn her away to leave. But she didn’t leave, there was still more yet to happen.