Behind Zorvilon’s unnaturally stretched lips that rocked back and forth in a face twisted beyond years stood something much more grotesque. The face appeared less a man’s and more a twisted and writing mass of worms and fire mixed together in one wretched facsimile of paint thrown at a canvas which happened to resemble a man. The lapping flames made his face shift and features deform second-by-second, and the skin beneath writhed as though not immune to the flames ravaging them. The only anchor to the man’s face which held it together in something resembling humanity were the eyes, two unmoving and piercing rays of orange fire that shone brightly through the day.
Regulus had not spoken, nor in this moment did he. No, the seven or eight-foot tall behemoth of a man simply donned his faceless helmet and drew his iron-slab of a sword. It was nearly as tall as him, and yet the man’s arms did not tremble. If it wasn’t such a cliche, Henry may have remarked at the physical specimen of what it meant to be a roided-out monster. Instead, the gravity of the situation held his tongue silent as Regulus and the Scourgeborne’s legs began to travel across the earth.
As the soldiers’ feet carried them forward smoke began to erupt from the bottom of Zorvilon’s cloak. His face melted completely into a black static as his cloak began to flap violently in the wind forming as his body began to rise atop a black and gray pillar of smoke tinged with the markings of a fire somewhere amidst its growing mass and volume. He rose into the air as laughs mixed with the sounds of crackling flame.
“Your swords carry no meaning to me, drop them and I may grant you a quick death.”
There was no response from the Scourgeborne, but their legs did become planted firmly in the earth. Amanda began to summon pillars of red clouds from the river behind them, and two large and gaseous arms formed to attempt a clapping motion to crush the flying mage.
He allowed it to happen, but the laughter did not stop. If anything it resounded from all directions in the moment, exuded from all the smoke billowing out of hands that wished nothing more than for it to cease.
“You have the right idea! I’m going to play with your corpse!” Zorvilon shouted maniacally from the sky.
Amanda grimaced slightly, but quickly suppressed the faint signs of emotion and returned to the perfect image of a stoic archon in combat. No response came from her lips, but a chant began to softly come from them as she stood perfectly still, hands clasped in front of the brilliant blue robe that clung tightly to her waist.
Suddenly, a beam of fire no larger than a nickel came from the sky.
“No no no, we can’t have that,” Zorvilon’s voice echoed from above.
Amanda cursed and broke her chant to instead summon a small red dinner-platter that blocked the shot taken to break her concentration. Regulus shouted at her,
“Maintain concentration, we will defend you,” raising his girthy mass of iron that just barely qualified as a sword above her head to act as a shield while speaking.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Zorvilon seemed to know exactly what was happening in this moment as though he had seen it ten-thousand times. Instead of continuing to attack Amanda, his gaseous form spread out to the size of a dark thundercloud of fire in the sky and blotted out the sun’s light in the process. Though sunlight had ceased in this place, the reddish-orange glow that came from above mixed with ambient light from aside provided all the visibility necessary to see.
Then bolts of fire began to rain down like lightning to illuminate a picture of perfect dread. One by one the Scourgeborne were pierced and charred to a crisp. A smell of burning flesh began to take hold on the battlefield, pungent and overpowering. These men had been cooked alive not just by the rays of fire which had pierced them, but also by the retained heat of their armor that oven-baked them to perfection afterward. The joints of armor did not buckle in absence of a standing body to keep them rigid, instead melting and fusing solid. Statues of charred meat visible faintly through quartz-like armor began to dot the semi-circle that was slowly closing into a full one around the mage at its center.
In this moment that called desperately for action Henry could sumon none. He knew the correct move would be to protect Amanda with his immortal flesh, and yet could not. No words erupted from his chest in this moment past the point where words carried any meaning. No attempt to flee came from his feet. There was no room for escape with a river behind and a flying god to the fore, not to mention the soldiers closing around him. In the absence of words came no action, only a growing and all-consuming panic. There was no room for him here, no possibility of resistance. It was futile. It was all futile. He would be burned to ash a second time in all the agony that would entail. It could come as a ray of fire to pierce him and instantly end this torment of waiting for an end, or it could come slowly, only after all the rest had been killed. Either would grant him no reprieve, and this only heightened the agony of the situation. Raising his hand to protect Amanda would not grant him a swift death from above, merely make him a more possible target, merely increase the chance his own flesh would be given the gift of burning agony.
The thought of this pain and of the situation was almost overwhelming, and yet of all the things racing through Henry’s mind, one took over from all the others. The smell and thought of burning flesh reminded him too much of what he most wished to forget. Though he had no intent to harm those who had died in his arrival to this world, he also wished never to remember them ever again. It was simply too painful for him to bear. Their deaths weighed heavily at his conscience, and so he had wished simply to forget. It was convenient for him to have been able to think of other things all this time, but now once again in the midst of charred and cooking bodies, Henry could no longer suppress this memory of the consequences of his isekai fantasy.
“It wasn’t my fault…” he thought to himself, but it meant nothing. What good are empty words to a guilty conscience? He knew the answer all too well. It was all too much for him. Sweat dripped down his cheeks as his shirt began to saturate and pants to sag in the weight of salty fluid now dripping from his every open pore. His heart pounded like a jackhammer in his chest. His vision became blurry and balance impossible. Eyelids closed to attempt to quell the overwhelming mass of sensations, but the effort was futile. Closing his eyes did little for the smell, and what good was masking the body’s facts anyway? In place of blurred vision came flashing dots of color and together with lacking balance came pain of the ears, or at least, pain which started there. Soon it pounded in his skull and became intolerable. Though every movement seemed an impossibility, Henry was nonetheless able to raise hands to ears and press down as hard as he could.
It did not mitigate the pain from outside his skull as it smashed into the ground, and none moved to help him either not fall or to stand once more. It was a hot day amidst the flames, and though he was sweating a feeling of cold pressed in as though winter itself had come through the heat to seek him out and punish him for crimes against nature. This was the time of reckoning, and Henry understood he would soon come to understand the price the world could exact in exchange for upsetting its balance.