The streetlamps flared brighter. “Stay away!”

“Please, you're going to be alright,” Nicolas crept closer. With each step the air grew dramatically hotter, until his throat was dry and his skin felt like parchment.

“Y-you don’t understand. There’s a fire inside me.” Her pupils trembled.

Nicolas wiped a bead of sweat off his brow and took another step. Best to keep her grounded. “What church do you belong to?” Hopefully it was a church; he thought he already purged the last traces of cult activity from Port Stephen.

She gave a broken laugh. “Please, for your own good, just stay away from me.”

His skin was reddening, now, against the burning air. “I can help you. I’ve seen this before.” Nicolas tried not to think of how many he’d seen succumb to spiritual corruption. A Mantle was a heavy burden to bear.

The temperature suddenly dropped to a bearable level. “You have?”

Nicolas dipped into his aura of authority. “Of course; I’m Mantled, just as you are. Can you tell me which church you belong to?”

The shadows sharpened in the harsh flare of the streetlamp. “Mantled? What the hell is that?”

Well fuck. He filed that away for later, and his voice turned gentle. “It’s what’s causing all this. Listen to me. It’s not your fault.”

She squeezed out a tear, and it immediately started sizzling.

He reached into one of his coat pockets. “Drinking this will help calm your Mantle, and then we can talk about how to solve this, alright?” He held out the blue vial, suppressing any thought of how much he had paid his Alchemist for it.

Her face untwisted and hope dawned in her eyes. “You’re sure?”

Nicolas smiled. “I’m certain.” His fingers blistered as she took the potion, and he absentmindedly siphoned the pain into an Infliction spell.

For luck, he made a sign at the Moon and mouthed a quick prayer. Lady of the Heavens, the sky is your throne and your shape is mercury. Your light falls far; I invite your intervention.

The potion was already sizzling when she unstoppered the vial. It boiled as she poured, and it evaporated against her tongue.

Intuition screaming at him, Nicolas leapt back.

A shriek of frustration erupted as the woman’s hope turned to vapor before her eyes and she finally lost control. Her flesh turned to fire, her eyes into burning torches, and her heart into a furnace. The cobblestones blackened around her and the heat rolled off in waves.

She—no, it—roared and staggered and shook as if casting loose the last blackened remnants of humanity.

The creature took one look at Nicolas and the flames intensified.

He spoke. “Inflict.” All the pain he had gathered in the past week—from bludgeoning fists, hungry knives, rabid kicks, bar stools, bottle shards, shivs, nails, fangs—hell, even a stubbed toe—lashed out at the creature.

It very conspicuously did not fall to the ground writhing in pain.

Nicolas turned and ran.

His blood pounded in his ears as tore down the street. The burning beast’s reflection glowed at him from the dark glass storefronts and windows of parked carriages. He felt the heat on his back as he dashed through the back-alleys, leading the blazing monster farther from the heart of the city.

A Magistrate was linked inextricably with their territory, and Nicolas had spent ten damned months in Port Stephen hunting down every wretched smuggler, thief, and cultist he could find. By now the sense of surroundings granted by his Mantle had developed to where he could tell where every citizen was in an area of four blocks.

Right now, it warned him that a group of revelers were exiting a pub ahead. Nicolas skidded to a stop and rattled a doorknob. Locked. He took a breath, and: “Open.”

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The door slammed open. So did every other door on the street, along with the windows, and the cabinets, and pantries and dressers and… Nicolas winced. He felt the citizens rousing from their sleep—both from the sudden noise and from their eyelids snapping open.

Best to finish quickly. He didn’t want the actual, legitimate authorities after him.

Inside was a wax museum. Ignoring the rising temperature, Nicolas sprinted past a line of drooping Dalkan monarchs and chanced a look behind. The shifting mass of fire still followed. One moment it looked like a lion, the next a blazing wheel. Tongues of flame lashed out angrily.

The Great Philosopher Marcellus already looked like a man-sized candle, and the rest of the wax figures were likewise melting past all recognition. Nicolas dashed away into a corridor, navigating by way of his area-sense.

He burst through the exit and slammed the door behind him. “Seal,” he commanded. It wouldn’t last for long against the living inferno, but it would buy him precious seconds.

Ahead lay the river that snaked through Port Stephen from the sea. He ran for the bridge, heedless of the sudden crash and roar of flames behind. His breath came fast and shallow, and as soon as he set foot on the other side he gasped out: “Crossing the bridge is Prohibited.”

He spun to see the writhing bonfire slam into an invisible barrier. He paused to see if his decree would hold, and let out the manic laugh of a man who cannot believe he is alive. The creature paced angrily from side to side, but seemed incapable or unwilling to cross the water.

Hands trembling from adrenaline, Nicolas breathed in relief and made a sign of thanks to the Moon.

Closing his eyes to compose himself, Nicolas drew upon his full power. “You are guilty of arson. Disturbing the peace. Trespassing.” With each crime he named, his Mantle, the Magistrate, grew more insistent even as it filled him with power. “Destruction of property.” The urge to pronounce justice, to judge, pressed against his soul.

Not yet. He needed more if he hoped to sentence a spirit such as this.

A sudden absence bloomed in his area-sense. Nicolas snapped his gaze to the bridge, but there lay only darkness.

His shadow sharpened in the flare of the streetlamp, and Nicolas dove out of the way just in time for the living inferno to burst out of the streetlamp and consume the air where he’d been standing a moment before. Glass shards tinkled against the cobblestone street.

“Resisting arrest!” he barked, and ducked under a whip of fire.

His Mantle’s whispering grew louder, but Nicolas knew he needed a fraction more.

The creature wheeled into the shape of a bull, and Nicolas flung himself to the left just a fraction too slow to avoid its charge.

His right side felt as if he had been dipped in the surface of the sun. Nicolas lurched and gathered the pain as best he could. If only he could Inflict it on a purely spiritual monster.

“Assaulting an officer of the law,” he hissed out, and that tipped him over the edge. “Sentence: Confinement.”

Silver shackles materialized from the moonlight clasped around the flaming beast. Gleaming chains sprang out and wrapped around and around until the monster fell to the ground with an almost anticlimactic clank, its fires dimmed to embers.

Nicolas heaved. “Fuck.” It was just his luck that an arson investigation ended up like this. Most of the time he dealt with mortals or Low-Mantled; a substantially powerful Mantled like this one succumbing to spiritual corruption was the business of the Churches. He’d leave it to them, next time.

With a start, Nicholas noticed the spirit monster straining against its chains. The silver shackles held, but they buckled dangerously. It wouldn’t hold for long.

He cursed and grabbed a chain, the metal branding his skin black where he grasped it. With the help of his Mantle Nicolas ignored the pain and staggered toward the river, dragging the bound spirit behind him. It flared fiercely, almost melting its chains, but he heaved with all his might.

They toppled over the edge.

In an instant Nicolas was plunged in the icy cold. Through the shock he kept his eyes open just long enough to see the spirit extinguish in a hiss of steam that sounded almost like a scream. He let out a sigh in a stream of bubbles. It was over.

With the threat vanquished, his body relaxed for the first time since confronting the suspected arsonist. With monumental effort, Nicolas shook off the lethargy and swam up to the surface.

He gasped as he broke into the cold night air. His hands found a ladder and laboriously pulled his body out of the waters. He lay there on his back, heaving, for a while, and pulled himself back together. He was burnt, he was bloody, he was exhausted—but above it all, he was alive.

When he stood, the final remnant of the woman and her Mantle floated lazily in the air, a lick of flame. Nicolas drew a vial out his sodden coat and bottled the soul fragment—he was no expert, but it would likely fetch a pretty price.

At his whistle, a bat fluttered down from the night and clung to his finger. Nicolas unrolled the strip of parchment fastened to its leg and pulled out a fortunately waterproof pen. He paused to remember the correct cipher, and wrote the good news. His Mantle, exhausted as it was, hung greater than ever on his soul. He was at the peak of Magistrate; ready for his fourth step of ascension.

He hesitated, but made sure to mention the wake of destruction the chase had wrought. Obviously supernatural disasters were investigated and mitigated by the Churches, and the more his superiors knew, the better they could shield him from the consequences. Nicolas let out a soft chuckle at how sinister that sounded.

Through his area-sense, Nicolas felt the citizens wake one by one. Best to escape while he still could. He staggered away as the morning melted away the darkness.