by Adam Blade
The mask splashed into the lava, glowing red-hot, then white-hot. Thick lava bubbled up through the eye sockets as it sank from sight.
Tanner felt as if he had been whipped all over his body. The heat was unbearable.
He closed his eyes as his fingers slid from the rock.
Something closed around his waist, and his body jarred to a halt. He tried to open his eyes, but the heat seared his eyeballs. The bitter stench of singed hair filled his nostrils, and he realized it was his own. Then Tanner felt himself being lifted away from the lava. His hands found Firepos’s talons, and he managed to look up and see the feathered belly of his Beast.
Firepos turned in the air, and Tanner saw Derthsin crouched at the edge of the platform, his head in his hands as he looked at where the mask had fallen. Castor and Gwen waited on their Beasts, watching with their weapons brandished as Anoret peeled her second leg loose from the rock face.
“The mask is gone!” shouted Tanner from Firepos’s claws. “It’s over, Derthsin!”
The evil lord stood up and gathered his scarlet cape around him. The scars on his face glowed livid pink as rage pulsed through him.
“It’s not over until you die!” he roared, casting a bolt of black flame toward Tanner. Firepos shifted in the air, dropping a fraction, and the beam slammed into her wing. She shrieked and threw Tanner clear. He landed in a heap on a rocky ledge and watched in horror as the flame bird fluttered erratically, fighting to stay aloft with her damaged wing half extended. She managed to reach the ledge and sank down beside him, her eyes wild with pain.
“Firepos!” said Tanner, trying to see the wound.
It’s nothing, she said.
Tanner knew from the way her body sagged on one side that she was lying. “Let me see,” he said.
But when he tried to reach toward her, she moved away.
My wing is broken, replied his Beast. There’s nothing to be done.
“But there must be something …” Tanner began, trailing off as he realized the flame bird spoke the truth. A feeling of grief, hard as a punch, landed in the pit of his stomach.
Tanner’s voice caught in his throat. “It’s because I drank your blood, isn’t it?” he said hoarsely. “You can’t heal yourself anymore.”
Firepos’s eyes were soft, and she stroked his cheek with the side of her beak.
Tears welled up into Tanner’s eyes. If the flame bird couldn’t fight, she had no chance of surviving at all.
“I won’t let this happen!” he shouted.
The Fates decide, said Firepos.
With a draft of his leathered wings, Gulkien dropped onto the ledge beside them, sniffing at Firepos’s feathers. Nera pounced up, too, nudging the flame bird with her muzzle.
“Thought you might need this,” said Castor, handing Tanner his sword.
“Firepos is injured,” said Tanner, stroking the downy feathers above her beak. “She can’t fly.”
Across the cavern, Anoret roared, smashing the ground with her tail in an effort to pull free her arm.
“We don’t have long,” said Gwen. “We have to fight, Tanner.”
The flame bird cawed softly and pushed Tanner away with a gentle shove of her beak.
“What are you doing?” asked Tanner, as she raised herself up weakly.
What I must, she replied, turning to face Derthsin.
“No!” shouted Tanner. “You can’t!”
But Firepos pushed herself off the ledge, keeping herself aloft with her one good wing. Derthsin grinned and raised his arms as she angled her talons forward.
“It’s time to finish what we started, all those years ago,” said Derthsin. “Time you suffered as I did.”
Firepos’s eyes glinted with newfound determination, but Tanner could hardly bear to watch. She sent him a final message:
Farewell, my Chosen Rider. You will always be with me.
She dove at Derthsin as he fired a black beam. It caught her in the middle of her gleaming breast feathers, blasting her across the cavern. Tanner saw the light fade from the flame bird’s eyes as she fell into the lava. Her body sank beneath the surface.
Tanner rushed forward, arms outstretched and mouth gaping wordlessly. He felt Gwen and Castor grip his shoulders to pull him back, and struggled against them.
“No! No! Please!” he choked.
“She’s gone,” Castor muttered.
Tanner’s knees buckled and he collapsed, his chest racked with sobs. This can’t be happening, he thought. Firepos can’t be dead.
Derthsin’s cackle made him wipe his eyes. “We have visitors!” said the evil lord.
At the entrance to the cavern Varlot stamped into view, his chest heaving, his armor gouged and stained with dried blood. At his back stood a clutch of soldiers, escaped from the battlefield outside. Two rode snarling varkules.
The evil Beast’s eyes fell on Derthsin. In his low growl, he said, “My master … General Gor is …”
“I felt his spirit perish,” sneered Derthsin. “He has let me down for the last time.”
With a crunching sound, Anoret finally tore free from the rock face. Her eyes swiveled onto Derthsin, and for a moment, Tanner saw fear in the sorcerer’s eyes. The men behind Varlot cowered in terror.
Anoret lumbered across the cavern in giant strides until she towered over Derthsin. Her thick tail swayed menacingly back and forth and her dark blue skin gave out an eerie glow.
The giant Beast looked first at Derthsin, then at Varlot, and finally at Tanner and his friends.
“Now the mask is destroyed, whose side will she take?” whispered Castor.
“We can’t wait to find out,” said Gwen, gripping Tanner’s shoulder to pull him up. “We have to fight!”
Tanner shook his head. “Fight who? What’s the point? Firepos is dead.”
Gwen’s hand caught his face in a slap, jolting him to his senses. “Firepos is dead, but you still have us. Don’t let her death be in vain.”
Tanner was glad the flickering light of the lava concealed his deep flush of shame. “You’re right,” he said. “Let’s finish this!”
Tanner gripped his sword and jumped down from the rocky ledge. He ran at Varlot, screaming a war cry. Varlot lifted his own blade and slashed sideways. Tanner dropped into a roll and came up beneath him, slicing through the tendons of one stocky ankle. Varlot tipped back his head in a snort of pain and toppled sideways.
A shadow fell over Tanner, and his eyes climbed the massive shape of Anoret. Tanner ducked as a hand swooped down. He darted between the giant Beast’s legs and turned to see her clutching a varkule in one hand, its rider hanging from the stirrups. As if they weighed nothing, Anoret threw them the width of the cavern. They crunched against the far wall and slid to the ground, leaving a bloody smear. Tanner’s stomach felt hollow with fear. This Beast is crazy with grief…. He’d sensed Firepos appealing to her, and Anoret had ignored the flame bird.
A hiss made Tanner’s head snap around, and a shape darted from the wall.
Falkor!
The serpent Beast slithered quickly across the ground and wrapped himself around Anoret’s leg, closing his coils tightly. The mighty Beast clawed at his scales, pulling herself free with one claw. Falkor raised his body upward, darting his fangs at Anoret’s face, but the larger Beast hurled him casually aside.
Nera stalked forward bravely, growling at Anoret. She crouched on her haunches, ready to spring, but the giant Beast swung her massive tail and swept her legs away.
“Nera!” shouted Castor, breaking off from where he clashed with three soldiers, sword on sword, near the entrance to the cavern. Blood seeped from a wound high on his arm.
Tanner twisted to see Gulkien rake his claws into the remaining varkule, but an enemy soldier drove a pike deep into the wolf’s hindquarters. Gulkien snarled and kicked the soldier away, but the pike remained, jutting from his side.
This is getting desperate, thought Tanner, plunging his sword into a soldier. As he did so, he saw D
erthsin aim a bolt of fire toward him. With the blade still lodged in his enemy’s torso, he twisted around, shielding himself with the dying soldier. Flames exploded over the body and Tanner backed away, yanking his blade free. We’re all going to die down here unless we get out soon.
Two more soldiers approached him, eyes gleaming with bloodlust. The first lunged in, and Tanner smashed his blade away, then swung wildly at the other. Tanner was panting, his sword arm like lead. The soldiers smiled, moving in as one.
Suddenly, the lava in the crater hissed. All faces turned as a shower of fiery sparks burst from the surface. The soldiers in front of Tanner seemed to forget about him and cowered in fear. Even Derthsin lowered his arms and peered into the flames. Tanner saw a shape forming beneath the lava. Two wings …
“What is it?” gasped Gwen.
Firepos’s golden beak shot from the molten rock, followed by her body, plumage afire. Flames flickered and dripped off her feathers as she climbed majestically from the lava. Her sparkling talons clutched the Mask of Death. She flew in tight circles, climbing higher and higher, sending down a shower of sparks from her feathers.
Tanner watched, his jaw hanging open. She swooped toward him and with a cry of triumph scooped him up in a claw and flung him onto her back so that he nestled between her feathers. Immediately she soared higher again. Tanner had thought he’d lost his companion forever; now he watched over the crown of her head as they flew together. He could feel his heartbeat settling into the same pattern as hers. Reaching down her side, he felt beneath her wing. The old scar had gone.
“That’s why you needed to come here!” Tanner called out to her. “You had the power to be reborn!”
So the phoenix emerges from the flames, her voice boomed, strong inside his head. So life begins again. Justice will find the Mighty.
With a screech of triumph, Firepos flew down and Tanner scrambled off her back. She dropped the mask from her beak. Instinctively, he held out his hands to catch it, only realizing too late that it would be red-hot.
But it wasn’t! The mask felt oddly cool in his grasp and seemed to quiver beneath his fingers. Delicious power crept up his arms, seeped across his chest, and wrapped itself around his heart.
Gwen rushed to his side. “Tanner, put it on!”
He turned the mask over in his hands. The skin across his face tingled, and all the aches and pains across his body seemed to fade away, leaving only a sense of raw energy, almost too much to take. “I don’t know if I should.”
“Put it on now!” yelled Castor.
Tanner tore his eyes from the mask and saw his friends’ anxious faces. Beyond them, Anoret had turned her red gaze on him. The Beast’s eyes settled on the mask, and with a growl, the huge Beast stepped toward them. Tanner and his friends retreated until their backs met the wall of the cavern.
“She looks angry….” said Gwen.
Derthsin strode toward Tanner, his arms outstretched and his cloak whipping behind him. “The mask is mine!” he roared. “Give it to me!”
Tanner made his choice. He lifted the mask to his face.
The fiery cavern faded to gray at the edges, and Tanner’s vision blurred. But as he turned his head, everything directly in front of his eyes sharpened to almost painful clarity. He saw details normally invisible to him: the tiniest flecks of saliva around a dead varkule’s muzzle; the individual hairs bristling between Gulkien’s claws; the beads of sweat rolling down Derthsin’s scarred cheek.
“It’s incredible!” Tanner gasped.
Anoret stopped ten paces from Tanner and his friends, her chest heaving and her claws relaxed. The fury that had shrouded her seemed to slip away, and a voice penetrated Tanner’s mind, as though he were hearing it underwater.
What is your bidding?
Tanner looked into the pitiful face of the ancient Beast, at the flesh empty of features.
You’re not evil, are you?
Anoret sighed through the slashes of her nostrils. I am cursed, she said. I obey the one who wears the face torn from me. Derthsin tricked me and took it many years ago, and I have been under his command ever since. Now it is the Mask of Death, and the wearer controls me until I am released.
I have only one task for you, said Tanner. He raised a hand and pointed to Derthsin.
Very well, Master, Anoret replied, and turned to face the evil lord of Avantia.
Derthsin backed away along the ledge. “No,” he muttered. “You’re my Beast, remember?”
Anoret strode toward him, her huge feet shaking the ground. With two arm thrusts, Derthsin fired black beams toward the Beast, but they bounced off her chest harmlessly.
“Stop her!” shouted Derthsin, tripping over his cloak and landing on his back. Anoret stooped down and seized him in her claws. Derthsin squirmed as he was lifted high over the lava pit. His eyes locked with Tanner’s over the Beast’s shoulder. He grinned. “Fire is my home, Avantian! Or have you forgotten?”
“I know that,” Tanner muttered. “You’re not going in the fire.”
Anoret tipped back her head and opened her jaws, lifting Derthsin slowly toward the rows of jagged teeth.
“No!” screamed the evil lord. “No! Please! No!”
The Beast’s teeth crunched through Derthsin’s chest. Tearing the lower half of his body away, Anoret dropped it into the lava. Her jaws worked rhythmically over the rest.
Beside the Beast, Rufus sat up, rubbing his head. He looked around and shuffled backward in alarm when he saw Anoret. “What? What’s happening?”
Through the mask, Tanner saw every detail of his confused face. There was no malice there any longer.
“The enchantment’s ended,” he told the others. “Rufus! Join us!”
Falkor hissed with joy, his scales taking on all the rippling colors of the rainbow. But as Rufus tried to step from the platform, the ground shook more violently, knocking him over again. Tanner had to clutch Gwen to steady himself. Varlot struggled to his feet, and the remaining soldiers looked to the roof anxiously. Only Anoret didn’t seem concerned and stood with her feet firmly planted over the rocky shelf.
“What now?” said Castor.
From the center of the lava pool exploded a burst of molten rock. More columns of lava shot up toward the crater, and the cavern’s ceiling began to collapse. Boulders the size of Tanner’s head broke away and smashed on the ground. He covered his face against the flying shards.
“The volcano’s erupting!” said Gwen. “We have to get out!”
Falkor slithered toward Rufus and plucked him up gently in his jaws, then placed him over his back. Castor jumped onto Nera and the Beast purred from deep in her throat. Firepos lowered a wing for Tanner. He’d never been more grateful to take his place astride the burnished, deep brown feathers of her neck. Flames rippled all the way along the feathers of her tail, and she seemed to swell to a size even greater than before. Her eyes reflected the red glow of the lava, as the molten rock in the pit bubbled and burst, filling the air with a bitter smoke that made Tanner’s own eyes water.
The wall from which Anoret had emerged cracked and crumbled into it, sending a wave of molten rock lapping up the edge of the crater.
Cracks opened up throughout the floor of the cavern, snaking close to Gulkien’s paws. The wolf took flight as lava seeped through the splits. One chasm opened up in front of the tunnel entrance, widening until it was five, then ten paces across. The enemy soldiers, realizing they’d soon be trapped on an island of rock, rushed this way and that, getting in one another’s way. The varkule leaped up at the cavern wall as the ground broke beneath it. For a moment it scrabbled with its claws, then slipped back into the lava with a terrible yowling cry.
“To the tunnel!” shouted Tanner, guiding Firepos toward the cavern entrance. A spatter of lava burst to one side, but the flame bird lifted a wing to stop it landing on him and sprang off the ground. Below, Nera pounced from rock to rock, and Falkor slithered around the edge of the cavern, gripping the stone with his
powerful scales.
As Tanner reached the tunnel, Varlot leaped over a crack and landed across the entrance, standing defiantly in the way with his sword raised.
“If I die, we all die!” he bellowed.
Gwen soared past Tanner, kneeling on Gulkien’s back. In a single move she grasped an ax and sent it spinning through the air. It slammed into the center of Varlot’s forehead, embedding deep in the Beast’s skull.
“Good shot!” called Castor.
For a moment, the Horse Beast’s eyes rolled and he swayed on his feet.
“You know what to do!” Tanner said to Firepos.
With a screech, she shot a trailing fireball, enveloping Varlot’s head in flames. Gor’s Beast fell backward to the ground.
“You go first!” Tanner called to Rufus.
Falkor slithered over Varlot’s smoldering corpse, followed by Nera, her golden fur slicked with sweat. Gulkien hovered for a moment, then plunged after them.
Tanner and Firepos flew over to Gor’s creature — the horse that could morph into a warrior of frightening size. Tanner’s first glimpse of Varlot had been terrifying, hooves that turned into massive fists, armor sliding over the horse’s face as he reared up to stand. This creature could kill dozens of people with a few well-aimed punches or the vicious slice of a blade. Now he lay on his back, the weight of his own body pinning him to the ground as blood pooled around him. Fire flickered around the edges of his face as the armor melted to his flesh. His eyes gazed upward, unseeing.
“I wasn’t sure we’d ever defeat you,” Tanner called down. There was no response. Then he gave a start as the roof of the cavern collapsed in huge chunks of stone, and lava exploded in great fountains through the crater. Molten rock leaked across the floor from the hundreds of cracks. In the center Anoret stood proudly, watching the destruction and unmoved by the boulders that rained down on her.
“Come here, quick!” Tanner called. “I have something for you! Firepos, let me down.” His Beast landed on a shallow ledge, and he scrabbled off her feathers.