Morgan Mackenzie was burning. So too was everything around her. Faintly, as though from a distance, she could hear pained screams and high-pitched whimpers that barely cut through the roaring wind and flame that swirled around her and inside her. She had always been afraid of her fire, in a small way. For the first few weeks after she landed in the Tree, her magic had burned its way out of her body every time she worked any spellcraft that used fire or lightning. Those memories had never truly faded, but the biggest reason, the one she always tried to ignore despite the tickling sense of warning from her instincts, was because of her very first night on Anfealt. Now, however, she was too angry to be afraid.
The sickening magic thing the strange rude man in the blue robes had tried to put around her neck felt wrong on a fundamental level. Morgan did not know how she had not sensed it before, but in the face of the fire such questions could wait. The touch of the metal against her skin, the man’s pompous attitude, the cavalier way he had ordered the other woman to destroy the bow -- all of it was an assault of wrongness against everything she believed was good in the world.
This was to say nothing of the soul housed in the bow’s gem. She felt that break before she realized what it was, and her realization only added to the fury. The woman raised her staff, stepping between the sorceress and her enemy. Morgan’s fire raged through the staff, battering away the defensive enchantments layered into the other mage’s robes. When the illusion snapped, the golden collar became visible: a sharp new target, standing out raw and repulsive to her sight.
Nessara fell to her knees when the collar melted under Morgan’s power and its own magical hold broke. The relief on her face and the tears that boiled away were almost enough to halt Morgan’s fire, the heat retreating for a moment as the woman whimpered a choking ‘Thank you.’ And then the light left her eyes as she crumpled, and the sorceress felt her rage reignite.
The target of her ire sent bolts of water and ice at her as he backed away. His own defensive magics were much more powerful than what Nessara had mustered, several rings and dozens of bracelets augmenting the passive protections woven into his robes. Morgan launched bolt after bolt of lightning his way as the sky burned above. She saw Dana scuttle under the flames, low to the ground, to shield a weeping Terisa as the Huntress frantically gathered what fragments of the shattered gem she could find into a bag. A distant part of her mind regretted the damage her fire had caused the woman, but making up for it would have to wait for another time. Chadwick had produced a small black rod gilded in silver, and the shadowy bolt of darkness was enough to leave her fingers tingling and numb after blocking it with [Spell Parry].
“Take her down!” screamed the man, his cowardice plain on his face. The other members of the expedition had turned on each other in a grand melee, and now the instigators of the chaos left the fight to aid their master. A woman with a crossbow fell, one of many cleaved in two as Morgan’s [Plasma Glaive] scythed through the charging group. The others dove to the ground, seeking to evade their fate. The [Skyclad Sorceress] allowed them no succor, however, and the earth churned and heaved like a living thing. Only bones and grisly viscera remained as evidence of their fate.
“I thought I understood what it meant,” she said as she stalked towards the panicking guild representative. Her voice wasn’t loud, yet it sliced through the roaring fire like a knife. “When the other me explained what the deal was. To not do nothing.”
Morgan’s voice rasped through the flames, resonating with the magic that coursed through her blood and the fire she breathed in and out of her lungs. Her resistances and affinities had kept the sensations of heat to a distant thing, something she was aware of but nothing that made her uncomfortable. Now she felt it running deep in her bones. White-hot and indiscriminate, her inner flame raged as brightly as it had that fateful night she ate the Fruit of the Tree. She poured it out towards her enemy, and one of his bracelets shattered into fragments. Another layer of his shields went with it. Her [Mana Sight] revealed dozens more, magic inscribed on items around his arms, pinpoints of magic at his belt, and the delicate filigree of enchantment in his clothing. Temporary obstacles, she thought in that small part of her mind that was still calm.
“I made a lot of mistakes when I got here. So many mistakes. But the worst was the fruit.”
Foz’s roar broke through the gloom, the booming sound competing even with the rumble of burning thunderheads forming overhead as the enraged cook charged forward, with only his massive clawed hands for weapons. Morgan shot a [Mana Pulse] to intercept the first shadowy bolt the slaver sent towards the half-Ursaran, but missed the second. Tendrils of darkness entangled the berserker, but the barbs were unable to penetrate his thick hide and so Morgan ignored him to turn back to her quarry.
“I burned that first night.” Morgan’s fire -- not her magic, but the terrible, primal force that had burned within her bones ever since that moment -- raged in her and through her as she continued her approach. “I think...it broke me; the fruit healing me as I burned, over and over and over again.” For so long, she had tried to keep her fire contained; now, she finally gave it free rein to burn. And burn it did. She knew she had lost control, but she no longer cared. She had done so only twice before; first when the [Shadowlynx] had bitten off her arm, and once again after defeating Solana at the Eye of Madness. This time was different than the others. This time, she did not black out. This time, she stayed fully aware of herself and her surroundings. Before, her fire had dominated her; now, the [Skyclad Sorceress] embraced it.
Thunderous explosions of fire and lightning burst from her hands, and one after another, more of Chadwick’s shield charms and defensive enchantments failed as he staggered backwards under the ruinous assault. Several small seashells inset with intricate runes woven into his robes began to glow a brilliant blue. “Waters deep, heed my call!” he cried, and suddenly a torrent of foaming green sea water poured out of the enchanted stones. The streams of water gathered themselves in a vortex, sheathing the representative in a wall of liquid and distorting his leering features. Morgan’s fire hammered into the flowing water, giving off great hissing clouds of steam, but it held fast.
Morgan took a step. “And that fire?” she hissed, violet lightning flashing and thunder rumbling overhead. Jagged teeth of ice came into existence around her, and shot forward into the watery shield.
“It never went out.”
The [Skyclad Sorceress] vented her towering fury in a single, piercing shriek, leaned into her fire, and gave it free rein.
===========================================
Terisa Aras curled up around the leather bag containing the fragments of Althenea’s Soul Gem. Dana’s shields flickered and the engineer shuddered under the forces brought to bear against it, but the barrier around the women held. Distantly, she heard Foz roar. The familiar sound buoyed her spirit, for she knew the longer he fought, the stronger he would become. Few things could compete with an enraged Berserker, and his Ursaran blood only made his rage all the more potent. Biggles skirted around the burning woman’s flames, joining the huntress and the engineer and adding his own layer of magic to the shields projected by the suit.
“Something else is coming!” shouted the necromancer, his voice almost drowned out by the twisting inferno and the rushing winds that sprang up to feed it. “Pure Life magic, and Earth! I can feel it even through her Fire!”
Terisa could hear the Burning Woman speaking, but couldn’t make out the words at first. She dug into one of her remaining pockets to fish out another healing potion. Not as powerful -- or as expensive -- as the one she had used to repair her eyes, but still of exemplary quality that proved its worth as her burns began to heal. While lacking the immediate intensity of Dana’s Annihilator warhead, Morgan’s fire more than made up for it with its persistence: it was like unto a living thing that swirled around the woman and filled the space around her.
“The Wanderer?” asked Dana, her voice tinny and distorted through the faceplate of her suit. “I thought he was at least a couple days away!”
Terisa clutched the bag of shards as she responded. “He can move more quickly than you would think, even with his size!”
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“-never went out.”
The words came just as the rushing winds stilled for a moment, and lightning ripped through the sky above the flames. The sorceress glowed even more brightly, her burning bones visible through the laced patterns of runes etched into her skin. The winds returned, whipping her hair into a wildly twisting mass of purple and black. And then the heat intensified once again.
“She’s lost control of her mana!” shouted Biggles as he backpedaled, trying to pull Terisa and Dana back with him. “And I can’t find Wuffle anywhere!”
Spheres of solid purple lightning formed around the sorceress, dripping liquid light that seared the eyes before the dozens of balls of energy rocketed away from their mistress to slam into the guild representative’s shields. His layered barriers flared and the watery wall he had summoned flashed into steam. The woman screamed incoherently, pouring more and more power into her effort. Chadwick’s enchanted bracelets and charms blackened one by one, shattering and falling away as Morgan brought her towering will to bear against them. As the last of the steam from his waters faded, he reached into his robes and produced one final artifact.
Icy fingers of dread wormed their way through Terisa’s gut as Guild Representative Chadwick used an item almost as infamous as the Golden Collars, more evidence of how deeply the man belonged to the Deskren Empire: after all, the Emperor did not hand out such artifacts lightly. With a twisting motion, a dark, gilded cage sprang into existence around the man with a pulse of shadowy power. The huntress flinched, as did Dana and Biggles; the magic felt wrong, and sent a twist through their guts. Mere possession of a Soul Shield, recharged as it was through terrible human sacrifice, was grounds for summary execution in every nation north of the Elemental Desert.
The man turned grey, his outline growing hazy as if seen through a wave of heat as his physical being was partly shifted elsewhere, rendering him immune to Morgan’s magic as it slammed into a spherical lattice of dark energy. “Your fire will burn out long before the Soul Shield fades,” he remarked grimly. “I probably still won’t escape. But…” A grin flickered onto his face. “The rest of you will be trapped here, in the Wilds, while Expedition burns. The siege should be well underway by now.”
A distant rumble of thunder caught Chadwick’s attention, and he glanced off towards the west. “That’s Pontem Praetor. You’ll never cross the gorge in time now.”
“No--!” blurted the Huntress as Morgan screamed again, mindlessly flinging magic at the man. The effort was futile, the flames and lightning seeming to fizzle out within an arm’s length of the greyed-out figure. Earth mana, having actual mass behind it, was slightly more effective, the gout of stone and dirt from underneath flinging the man back into the enchanted stone wall of Castra Pristis. Frustrated once more, the sorceress screamed again.
As if in answer, a deafening roar issued from beyond the fort’s walls, the sound almost a physical thing. Mana hung thick and heavy in the air, dense enough that Terisa could feel it; Biggles turned a peculiar shade of green as his more receptive senses were nearly overloaded. Dark green tendrils sprouted from between the cracks in the stone walls, and harsh grating sounds rippled through the air. A cool wind blew through the flames as a thirty-pace section of wall fell outward, ripped free by the colossal form of what might once have been called a man.
Crystal gauntlets wrapped in vines protected its hands and arms, glittering spikes protruding from shoulder and elbow. Its brow was crowned in uneven nubs of the same greyish quartz, set above a face Terisa could never have forgotten, burned indelibly into her memory.
Misshapen and twisted, covered in crystal, it approached. Even hunched over as it was, and using its fists to walk, he stood over ten paces tall. The massive, ogre-like form opened its maw to reveal jagged crystal tusks and inhaled. The magic hanging heavy over the field evaporated, drawn into that inexorable sucking well of walking power that was the Crystal Titan.
The sorceress, her flames banked and only faintly flickering, turned her glowing form to face the beast.
“Oh, Daddy…?” she asked, her suddenly child-like voice clearly audible in the deafening silence. “I...I think I killed people…”
As if that effort drained the rest of her energy, she fell forward, the brilliant light of her runes fading into quiescence. Vines erupted from the ground, gently catching her unconscious form as the Titan lumbered forward through the gap in the wall.
It approached Chadwick on feet and fists, planting itself in the ground and staring at the man, its ancient eyes full of primal hatred.
“You...die.”
The words shook out of the air, not from the creature’s maw, but from the humming crystals protruding from its head. They came slowly, as if the very act of speech had to be dredged up from somewhere nearly forgotten. The sound resonated through the air and the earth and the stone, simultaneously a screech and a rumbling bass, and for a moment, Terisa thought her eardrums had ruptured. Chadwick watched nervously as a massive crystal fist rose into the air, and unconsciously raised his arm in a gesture of warding as it descended with meteoric force. A sphere of space around the representative was smashed into the cobblestone pavement, but the shield held around the terrified, trembling mage.
“Wait!” screamed Terisa, stumbling back to her feet. “We need him alive! We don’t know who else is working with him!”
“Where’s Wuffle?” Biggles was looking around in near panic, searching for any sign of his friend.
“He dies.”
“He definitely does, after he tells us what we need to know!” shouted Terisa at the gigantic man-like beast. Dimly, in the back of her mind, she registered surprise that the Wanderer was talking -- none of the Expedition’s records ever mentioned it. The knowledge was welcome, however, for if the Titan could speak, then it could understand and, just possibly, be reasoned with. “There could be a hundred or more traitors in the expedition!”
“Dies. All. Die.”
The vines had carried Morgan’s unconscious form closer to the Wanderer, and a massive hand scooped the woman up with a gentleness at odds with its terrifying presence.
“Hurt Morgan. Dies.”
“I think we’re in total agreement there, big guy,” said Dana. Her helmet had retracted after the flames died down, and her suit had returned to bipedal form. She brought her hand to her brow in a gesture Terisa was sure was a salute, though not one she was familiar with. “Thanks for the save, Devil Dog. I know she didn’t mean to, but the girl almost killed us too.”
“Long time." The yellowed eyes of the creature flicked over Dana's form. Its grotesque head bobbed slightly in recognition. "Soldier.”
The Titan swung its attention back to the frightened representative. It grinned, showing a terrifying array of jagged teeth, bone, and razor-edged mana crystals.
"Tick. Tock."
It waited. It watched as Chadwick’s shield began to flicker, but it was not idle. As Terisa watched in wonder, vines snaked across the ground with a rapidity bordering on the surreal. The creeping vegetation spread faster than any plant, visibly working its way throughout the fort. Screams and cursing rose up from all around as people were forcibly dragged from wagons and tents, far more than the huntress would have anticipated. Fully a third of the Expedition’s manpower was compromised by the Deskren -- if the Wanderer’s senses could be relied on.
Not that I could stop him even if he’s wrong about any of them… she thought grimly.
“How do you know these ones are the bad guys?” Dana inquired of the giant.
“Bad magics. Same as other one. And hungry.”
“The magic is hungry, or you are hungry?” the Worldwalker replied.
“Yes.”
The guild representative kept trying to scramble out of the hole in the ground where his shield had formed an indentation, but each time he reached the edge, a length of vine would casually slam into the barrier to send him tumbling back down. The Titan seemed to find this amusing, a deep rumble emanating from within its chest as it sat cross-legged, waiting for the man’s defenses to expire. Biggles continued to frantically search the grounds for his scrubby assistant, and Lulu had hopped onto its mistress’ chest with a concerned wurble.
“I don’t see Wuffle! He’s not in my wagon!” he exclaimed, reappearing from within the structure.
“That’s the green one, innit?” asked a soot-encrusted dwarf while brushing himself off. Kojeg had rolled away from the flames, but seemed to have traversed the ashes of the cookfire on his flight away from the heat. He grinned, barely able to contain some sudden mirth.
“Yes, he’s pale green.”
“Methinks he’s about to have a word with the Guild Representative,” said the dwarf, leveling his hammer at the man.
Chadwick had finally noticed the lacy puffball stuck fast to his shoulder. He slapped at the scrubby, twisting around in a mad attempt to dislodge it. It remained doggedly attached, however; the Soul Shield’s effect apparently extended to the scrubby as well.
“What is--!” the man exclaimed, trying to pry Wuffle away from his robes. The scrubby had a surprisingly tight hold, however, and all he managed to do was transfer the puffball from his shoulder to his bare hand.
“Wuffle! What are you doing?” the necromancer demanded.
The only reply Biggles received was angry wurbling.
Suddenly, the man’s shield finally flickered and died.
Chadwick began to scream.
The Titan began to laugh.
And as Wuffle set about his duty, the Swiftwaters Guild representative learned the horrible truth about exfoliation.