by Aaron Bunce
She watched the cloaked figure twitch, and she wanted to call out to them, to beg for help, but there was something wedged in her mouth. Dennah watched the cloaked figure tear at their clothing through blurring tears, and then the massive fur-lined cloak fell away.
She wanted to scream out to her friend, to tell Roman to run from the barn and never look back. She couldn’t stand to see him hurt, and he already looked weak. His eyes were sunken and his face ghostly. He teetered on trembling legs but wouldn’t back down.
She knew that he was no match for them. She had to break free and help him, or they would both die. She turned her head for a moment and fought the restraints. The coarse rope cut deeper with every twist and pull, but she refused to stop.
The pain and fear swirled inside her once again. She tried to fight it, to stay in control this time, but it was no use. Banus was moving between them, floating like a phantom.
Time distorted and Dennah slipped back into the fog. She felt violent urges surge through her body as bits and pieces slipped through the cracks. None of it made sense, however. A man cried out in surprise, an animal’s angry retort that turned to squeals of pain. She couldn’t piece it all together.
Dennah flitted back and forth between anger and desperation. Banus was close, his words pelting the side of her face like a hot acid rain, and then he was far away again. There was the flash of a silver blade and the gaunt, pale face of someone she cared about. Dennah started to scream.
She didn’t know how or when the gag was removed, but she welcomed the small amount of freedom. The words flowed from her mouth as the blade pierced pale flesh, she pleaded with the tormentor to stop. The fog took her again. She vaguely registered something stuffed forcefully back into her mouth, but like before, it felt so very far away.
Everything came at her in a disorienting flash. She felt the sting and heard the sharp crack of leather. The pain was fragmented, just like time. She could feel someone standing above her, and she felt the brush of a cold sword point on her back. Then there was a bright flash and the sword buried itself in the straw next to her head.
Fire and chaos took over. A horrible smelling smoke married the darkness. She wiggled her hands and feet, which felt slick with something thick and warm. A single, pervading thought kept her from slipping further inside.
I have to be free…I have to be free.
She could hear a horrible struggle somewhere in the darkness. Her single-minded focus helped to clarify thoughts that would otherwise break apart and scatter. She rocked from side to side, thrashing against her bindings and managed to roll to the ground. She used the momentum of the fall to try and break free from the ropes and in the process almost rolled right into a smoldering fire.
She recoiled and rolled away. Out of the fire, pointing at her like the woeful branch of a dead tree was an arm, burned and bleached clean of its flesh. Tarkus’ skeletal remains sat upright, the pile of burning hay propping him up like a smoldering throne.
Dennah inched forward, nervous that Tarkus would move and attack her from the flames, her frayed nerves incapable of taking much more. She took a deep breath and carefully inched forward, holding her hands out towards the fire.
The flames licked and burned her hands and arms. The pain felt real again. She trembled and sobbed quietly, unwilling to pull away as the fire consumed the rope, fiber by fiber.
Angry red splotches marred her skin, blisters formed, yet she held true, desperate to be free from the helplessness of rope and gag. Finally, when she thought that she couldn’t take the heat any longer the rope broke apart, and her hands came free.
It took her only a few moments to defeat the clumsy knot around her ankles. Dennah straightened in the darkness, ducking along and searching the ground for her clothes. She turned around several times before her hands bunched up around cloth.
She dressed frantically, her heart pounding riotously as she fumbled her feet into her trousers, and harder yet when she pulled her cold shirt over her head.
She found one boot and then the other before diving to the ground and working her numb fingers through the dirt. She held her breath, spinning in circles, searching desperately for her sword belt.
Voices in the dark froze her in place, and all thoughts of her sword flew away. She padded forward on her hands and knees, trying to put the voices to her back. Her hands found only dirt and straw, but then they fell upon something else, something soft.
Dennah froze for a moment as she tried to identify exactly what she stumbled across, but then it shifted and groaned quietly. Dennah’s jumped into her throat as crawled up alongside Tusk, the rise and fall of his chest barely perceptible in the dark. She rested her hand on his side. The fur was wet and sticky with blood. Dennah stroked his fur, smoothing back the unruly tufts on his head and ears.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry bud. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry,” she whispered over and over in the dog’s ear.
He wheezed quietly, a weak growl barely escaping his throat. The darkness around her was broken suddenly. Light and flame flared up in a shower of burning embers like fiery snowflakes. Dennah was drawn to the light and pushed off of the ground. Tusk whined weakly and shifted.
The fire erupted again and grew brighter, filling the barn with yet more light. Dennah felt compelled to look, to lift her head above the safety of the straw bales. She stretched up towards the light. The fire popped, erupting in a flash of light.
Dennah couldn’t resist. She pulled her hand away from Tusk and lifted her head over the lip of the straw bales. The smoke moved like a thick blanket, sucked towards the ground and into a massive, crude bonfire someone had constructed in the middle of the cavernous barn.
Bales of hay, smashed crates, and shattered barrels were heaped together and set on fire. She watched a hulking figure, stooped and burdened, walk out of the smoke. Dennah rubbed eyes. The glow permeating the smoke and the pulsing light of the fire were horribly confusing.
The large man bent over and hoisted something off the ground, and as he did, the smoke parted. Dennah’s blood turned to ice. The light danced over a body, battered and bloodied.
Roman was dead. His lifeless body hung there for a moment before Blain tossed it into the hungry flames. Dennah shrunk back to the ground, her heart a shriveling lump in her chest.
“No!” she screamed silently.
The words were bitter, too bitter to find voice. The image of Roman’s body, lifeless and covered in blood, consumed by flames stole the fight from her heart. It crushed down upon her, driving her into the dirt.
She bent low, tears flooding over her cheeks. Tusk lifted up his head with a pained grunt and licked her face affectionately. Dennah crushed her face into Tusk’s fur.
The large brown dog, Roman’s sole confidant, friend, and protector, nuzzled Dennah’s face with his cold, wet nose. Then with a great sigh, his head went heavy in her arms, and he closed his eyes for the last time. The air around Dennah became unbearably heavy. It was a burden on her body, but her soul as well. She didn’t think she could handle the grief flooding through her. A large part of her didn’t want to.
She couldn’t feel her hands or her arms, only the weight of Tusk’s head upon them as she gently laid it on the ground. Her hands trembled as she ran them along his back. The muscles and soft fur felt hollow and empty, so horribly empty.
Burdened by loss and emptied of fight, Dennah sat back. She flinched when a figure appeared above her, his face lost in shadow, the blade stained with Roman’s blood still in hand. She crawled back as he came towards her. The fire at his back threw Banus completely into shadow.
Fitting, she thought bitterly. A visage as putrid and black as the heart beating in his chest.
Dennah didn’t fight back as he fell over her and pulled her roughly to her feet. Her knees trembled under her weight, not out of fear anymore, but instead from anger and helplessness. The tip of the sword came to rest against her breast, directly over her heart.
“Do it!” s
he hissed, willing him to end her pain.
Banus didn’t move. His face was an unreadable, darkened mask.
“Do it you bastard! Go on, do it! You’ve taken everything else from me!” she screamed in his face, her tears flowing.
“Oh, not everything. Not yet,” Banus hissed, wrapping his hand around her throat.
Dennah balled up her hands into fists as he shoved her back towards the light of the fire. She stumbled forward, avoiding Tusk’s body. She did an awkward pirouette and tripped over the hay bales, landing face first in the dirt.
Banus stepped over her and drove the sword down into the dirt next to her head. He dropped onto her, choking and ripping. She felt everything going fuzzy again. The black spots popped in and out of focus before her eyes, but before the dreamlike trance could take over, a strange noise filled the air.
Banus froze, his hands locked in position. As he looked up, the bonfire exploded. Dennah was on her feet before she realized what was happening. Ash and scorching debris rained down on them, burning and choking the air in a shower of sparks and embers.
Banus yelled, his voice ringing unimaginable threats over her shoulder. He pulled her around, using her as a shield as someone screamed. The fire erupted again, and something large shot through the air. It streaked across the gloomy barn like a bright smudge on the darkness, before exploding against the wall behind them.
Dennah turned as Banus wrenched her around. The flaming projectile was Blain, skewered by a flaming piece of timber that had pinned him to the wall of the barn. Dennah felt her heart skip a beat as Banus tugged her closer, the crusted blade of the sword settling below her jaw.
Flaming embers splattered out of the bonfire as the fire shifted, and with a strange moan, it collapsed. Fire spread out over the ground, flowing and dancing into the barn.
Dennah couldn’t pull her eyes away from the violent jet of fire, and for a fleeting moment she thought she saw something moving inside it. She felt Banus tense behind her as the flame moved towards them, the fear growing within her as the fire crawled over the cold, straw-covered dirt.
Banus tensed, cutting the flesh under her jaw as he jabbed the sword out towards the fire. Dennah growled and tried to twist free, but his arms were firmly locked around her.
The strange pillar of fire roiled and twisted on itself, moving like a thousand coiling snakes. It hovered closer, until finally stopping a pace away from the tip of Banus’ blood-coated sword.
“What…what in the hell is this? You’re…you’re doing this,” Banus stammered and shook Dennah hard.
The pillar of flame surged up into the air, responding to his voice. It grew so hot and bright that it singed Dennah’s eyebrows and forced her to turn away.
Banus muttered incoherently, and in a fit drove Dennah down, buckling her knees into the dirt. She cursed as he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back, and then dropped the sword to her throat.
“Stop whatever it is you is doing! Stop it…make it stop, or I’ll cut your blasted throat!” Banus yelled threateningly.
The twisting column of flames surged in response to Banus’ voice. Dennah peeled her eyes open just as the flames started to die. They surged and sputtered, throwing off waves of sparks and ash as they shrunk. A dark shape appeared suddenly in their midst, and the next moment, all of the light and heat was gone.
Dennah couldn’t believe her eyes. She thought it had to be another trick. She didn’t know if she could trust her eyes anymore. Banus saw him too, standing before them, thick trails of steam and heat rolling off of his skin.
“No! It can’t be. You’re dead. I killed you!” he screamed.
* * * *
Roman lost track of time once the fire spirit claimed him. It ripped him away from death’s grasp, but he found that he was anything but free. He became wrapped up in its swirling currents of intoxicating power. It was ravenous hunger, passion, and destruction all at once.
He moved like a leaf adrift on a flowing river, shifting with the raging torrents of flame, twisting, and bending to their singular arcing purpose.
The fire split apart before him, and for a moment the darkness yawned. He became aware of his body, if only for a heartbeat. It felt different somehow, as if he was split between two places at the same time.
A face broke through the flames and somewhere deep down inside Roman felt a flicker of recognition. His thoughts coalesced, and a single, painful memory galvanized him. He felt his purpose return, if only separated from the torrid desires of the fire spirit by a thin veil.
The face reappeared, and as it clarified, Roman’s memories solidified as a smoky barn, one filled with pain, fear, and death. His rage washed up inside, and before he could deny it, the fire lashed out before him. He felt it wrap around the burning piece of wood, his fingers now melded as one with flame. The timber shot forward and Blain disappeared. He felt the fire burn the man inside and out, consuming him as he hurtled through the air.
Roman saw Dennah then, and the image of his friend, battered and abused, broiled like toxic smoke inside him. He pushed away from the fire, intent to help her, but his form was denied from him. The act of moving his limbs felt like a distant, foreign thing. Part of him knew only the flickering movements of a flame. That part of him sought to overtake Roman, to pull him fully into a different purpose altogether, but he resisted.
He pushed forward, and he finally slid free of the comforting heat and enveloping flames, moving out into the cold unknown of the dark ground.
He could feel his fiery half swelling inside him, imposing its singular, combustive purpose. It filled him with pure chaos, its only true desire to consume. Roman’s world was a place it did not belong. Desperate to cross over, the spirit of fire, the Ifrit, continued to push and batter itself against his resolve as it sought to make Roman’s flesh its own.
Roman’s thoughts twirled around, branching and splitting at a dizzying speed. He pushed through the chaos and tried to focus. He concentrated on a singular image, one that provided him with determination and hope. He focused on Dennah’s face, his only friend, and pushed forward.
Roman caught a flash of silver, and through the flames he saw Banus push Dennah to the ground. He felt a twinge of pain in his throat as he recognized the blood-crusted blade that came to rest under his friend’s jaw. Roman forced his hands up and reached for Dennah, but the fire resisted.
Banus’ mouth was moving, and his face scrunched up in an ugly mask, a mask that Roman had seen once before, when he was flat on his back with the blade of sword cutting into him. The anger and chaos swirled, but Roman denied them. In a single, powerful thought, he pushed everything else away. He felt the Ifrit struggle against him, fighting to maintain control, but he would not let it, his body was his own.
The fire flickered and broke. It swirled just a moment longer but then started to die away. The light faded, and his world became cold and dark. He could feel the heat being pulled back into his body, where it swirled and lashed out, but he was in control now.
“I killed you!” Banus screamed, and Roman threw his hands up before him. They were indeed his hands once again, solid and heavy, but his own.
“Let her go,” Roman said softly, watching the fear, confusion, and pain on his friend’s face as the blade of the sword danced against her throat.
“Please, just let her go. We just want to walk away,” Roman pleaded softly, and as he spoke, slowly moved sideways.
Roman looked down as a cold breeze blew over him and realized that he was naked. All of his clothing had burned away.
“There ain’t no walking away from this, boy…I saw him throw you into the fire, you’re supposed to be dead,” Banus wavered for a moment, but then recovered. “You killed em. You killed my mates! I’ll strip the hide off your back for that!”
Roman took a small step forward, keeping his hands held up before him. His foot came down, bunching up in the heavy fabric of Frenin’s cloak. He bent down and picked up the garment, Banus whipped th
e blade away from Dennah’s neck, cutting her in the process, and leveled it towards him.
“I’ll cut your heart out of your chest this time, you…you ain’t gonna survive that, you freak!” Banus cried out.
Dennah moved suddenly, snapping her head back hard into Banus’ face. His head whipped back from the impact, blood splattering from his broken nose. She twisted against his motion and swung her elbow back, catching him in the ribs.
Banus whipped the sword out as he fell, catching Dennah across the arm. She cried out, tumbling and turning, trying to clear the range of the foul man’s short sword.
Roman came forward and caught Dennah before she fell, the cloak now haphazardly covering his body. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back, willingly putting his body between her and relentless Banus.
Roman pushed her behind him, and as he turned, the point of a sword came to rest against his chest. He looked up into Banus’ eyes. Blood covered the lower half of his face and a primeval flicker haunted his eyes.
He pulled her behind him and circled around Banus, trying to get to the door, but Banus side-stepped and cut them off.
“Uh uh,” Banus shook his head mockingly, “I’m gonna…”
“No!” Roman growled back defiantly, cutting him off.
The weakness and fear that held him back before were gone. A shiver ran through his body as he spoke, and he felt Dennah press in tighter against him. Banus lifted the sword up over his shoulder.
Roman felt the heat and angst surge up within him, ready and willing to be set free, only now there was nothing to hold it back. The angry knot that had festered within him was gone.
The images of Dennah, gagged and beaten, rose like bile inside of him, and as it did, his anger flashed. He felt his body shifting and changing, bending to an entirely new potential.
Banus wiped his bloody face with a sleeve and took a step forward, the sword poised to cut him down. Roman felt the heat build even as the smaller man started to move. He felt his palms tingle, and his muscles twitch.