“So who’s the Challenger?” asked Billy, nodding to the armored man who was still waving to the crowd. It was hard to tell at this distance, but Billy rather thought the red-suited man looked much, much larger than the diminutive Fulgora.
“That’s Napalm,” answered Vester. “That’s what he calls himself, anyway. Thinks it makes him sound tough. His real name is Clarence Underweather, if you can believe it.” Vester snorted. “He’s a twit.” Then, reluctantly, he added, “Good magicker, though.” He cupped his hands around his eyes like a three year old looking through “binoculars,” clearly trying to focus better on what was going on below, then the young fireman bolted to his feet. “Hey, foul!” he called out. A roar went up from the crowd, as though in agreement.
“What happened?” asked Billy.
“You didn’t see?” said Vester incredulously. “How could you not see what just happened?”
“It’s around a million feet away,” answered Billy, a bit perturbed. Maybe it was just the talking hot dogs, but he felt on edge, and not in the mood to be reprimanded for his lack of knowledge of this world. “I can barely even see that there are people down there, let alone seeing some foul that I probably wouldn’t recognize even if I could see it.”
“What?” said Vester. Then, sheepishly, he said, “Oh, I forgot. You don’t know about Close-Ups in the Stadium. Do this.” Vester again put his cupped hands to his eyes, motioning for Billy to do the same.
“No way,” said Billy. That just looked too stupid.
“Okay,” shrugged Vester. “You’re missing out, though.” He swung his cup-handed gaze back to the arena, sitting forward on the edge of his seat. “They’re starting.”
Billy looked around, embarrassed, then reluctantly put his hands to his face. As soon as he did, he almost jumped out of his skin. Suddenly he could see the arena as closely as if he was standing right next to it.
The pillars stood about five feet above the level of the water that covered the arena floor. Each pillar was a few feet from the next, so that you could get from one to the other if you jumped, but a miss would mean the jumper would fall to an immediate soaking.
Billy realized, too, that there were shapes moving through the water. Long, dark shadows moved sinuously among the pedestals, like thick underwater snakes. Billy didn’t know what they were, but he suspected that finding out would be a deeply unpleasant experience.
Vester’s voice came from beside him, and Billy was surprised to see that when he turned toward his friend, he could see the Stadium in its regular size, with his friend still sitting right next to him. Apparently the Close-Up spell only worked when you were watching the central arena. “Here we go,” said Vester.
As he said this, a spark shot up in the middle of the Stadium, like a miniature firework or a flare. As soon as it did, both Fulgora and Napalm moved. Each jumped quickly to the nearest podium with a flame on it. Napalm, moving more heavily than the lithe Fulgora, nevertheless reached one of the open flames first. He put one hand in the open fire and lifted, pulling the fire away from the sticks as though it were a solid mass. The flame danced in his hands, and a moment later it solidified into several bright balls.
Napalm held out his other hand, large and heavy in a red gauntlet, and pointed at Fulgora, who was still trying to jump to one of the fires. The spheres of flame belched from his hand, roaring toward Fulgora at a tremendous speed. Billy gasped as the first ball struck the Red Lady on the chest, knocking into her in mid-jump.
Fulgora fell backward with the force of the blow, and Billy gasped, thinking she was surely going to fall into the sea of water below her. Apparently whatever the creatures under the water were, they were thinking the same thing, because they immediately began closing in on her.
Fulgora didn’t fall into the water, though. She managed somehow to fall back onto a nearby podium, arms wind milling as she struggled to keep her balance. The next ball of flame struck her then, actually helping her as it shoved her backward onto more solid footing.
“Stupid,” murmured Vester. “Napalm might have had her if he had only thrown one flame at a time.”
More balls of flame were speeding toward Fulgora, however. She barely had a moment to throw up her arms in front of her. The next fireball ricocheted off her, and she sent it hurtling back at Napalm, its speed even greater than it had been. Napalm had to dive aside at the last second as the trajectory of the ball curved in mid-air, coming not at the armored man, but instead hitting the podium on which he stood.
A roar went up from the crowd as Napalm’s pillar blew into tiny pieces, destroyed by Fulgora’s return attack. Vester smacked his hand into his palm. “Attagirl,” he said.
But Napalm was far from finished. He had managed to retain control over his fire when he jumped, and now hurled a new barrage of fireballs at Fulgora. This time she was prepared, however, and deflected them harmlessly skyward, where they exploded into a display of fireworks. She also managed to reach some flame on a podium nearby her, and sent one huge fireball hurtling directly at Napalm, who barely managed to get his arms up in time to shield himself from the blast.
“How long can this last?” asked Billy.
“As long as it takes,” said Vester, not taking his eyes off Fulgora. “Each time you do magic, it saps a little bit of strength out of you, so sooner or later you’re going to just collapse or fall dead asleep on the spot. The bigger the spell, the harder it is to sustain.”
“And how big are the spells they’re doing?” asked Billy.
“Medium,” said Vester. “Stuff that even I could do. This is just the warm-up.”
Sure enough, Napalm threw one last fireball at Fulgora, then switched tactics. His supply of flame depleted, he jumped to another podium of fire, quickly snatching up the bright living flame. But instead of using it, he instead hopped to another podium, then another and another, gathering up a large mass of flame each time, until almost half the fires in the arena were circling above him in an eerie orbit of light.
“What’s he doing?” asked Billy. “Why does he need all that fire?”
“He’s getting his ammo ready,” answered Vester distractedly. “It’s much harder to make your Element into more Element, so making the available fire bigger would take a lot out of him. He’s grabbing all he can for one huge blow.”
Sure enough, Napalm had stopped moving now. He raised his hands in the air, and the circling flames above him arced down in lacey lattices of fire, rimming his body with a deep orange and red aura.
Fulgora, meanwhile, had not been idle. She, too, had been moving as quickly as possible, gathering up flame of her own. Instead of it circling above her, as it had with Napalm, however, hers was flowing sinuously around her: a deadly serpent of auburn and gold. But Billy was dismayed to see that it seemed she had much less fire at her disposal than did Napalm.
Napalm, too, seemed to sense this, as his body language took on a taller, more victorious posture. He raised his arms again, and the flames that enveloped him rose and then arced in a solid bridge toward Fulgora. The Red Lady held up her arms for a moment, and the movement of Napalm’s fire began to slow.
“Wow,” breathed Vester.
“What? What’s happening?” Billy asked, vaguely aware that he was gripping the edges of his seat with sweaty palms and white knuckles.
“She’s trying to take control of his flame,” said Vester. “It’s terrifically tough to take control of an Element that’s under the influence of another Power. If she can do it, though, Napalm’s finished. He won’t have enough fire left over to put up any kind of serious challenge.”
But Fulgora, Billy could see, was weakening. Slowly Napalm’s fire crept toward her, at first an inch at a time, then a foot at a time, then moving quickly across the arena. Fulgora bent down, her body being forced into kneeling by the intensity of her energy as she fought the onrushing flame. At last, however, her concentration must have broken, for the bridge reached her. It rapidly encircled the Red Lady, a solid ri
ng of fire that rose high enough it almost shielded her from view of the audience in Powers Stadium.
“What’s he doing? Is he nuts?” Vester murmured to himself. “That fire’s almost close enough for her to touch. If she does manage to touch it, she can steal it for sure, and then he’s got nothing.”
But the ring of fire was not close enough for Fulgora to touch. She reached for it, but could not quite manage to lay a finger into the swirling halo of flame around her.
Then, suddenly, the fire ring jumped higher. It thinned out as it grew, becoming almost transparent, but it went higher and higher, taller and taller. It began spinning more rapidly. Billy glanced at Napalm. The Red Power was clearly giving this all he had: rivulets of sweat were running down beneath his helmeted head, and his arms shook with the physical exertion of his mental attack.
Fulgora could now be seen quite clearly through the tall, thin wall of rapidly spinning fire that Napalm had cast around her. She was turning around on her confined podium, clearly unsure what to do. The fire cylinder sped its rotation, the revolutions it made going faster and faster, until it was a veritable tornado of fire. The water below Fulgora’s pedestal began to boil, water steaming upwards.
Billy couldn’t hear her, but he suddenly saw Fulgora lurch, apparently off balance. She crumpled to her knees, appearing to cough and choke.
“Great Powers,” said Vester. “He’s suffocating her.” And instantly Billy understood. Just like a firestorm in a huge forest fire, the flame ring that Napalm had created was sucking all the oxygen from the area in which Fulgora stood. And that didn’t only mean that Fulgora could not breath: it also meant that the meager flame she had managed to wreathe herself with was dying out, deprived of the air it, too, needed to survive. To make matters worse, the steam rising from the boiling water below the Red Lady was now thick and wet. The flames around her flickered, puffing up wreathes of steam as they slowly waned. She touched them with one shaking hand, clearly trying to add her power to them, to keep them alive so she could continue the fight. But she couldn’t do it. The flames wavered, spat several desperate sparks around her, then flickered out in dismal defeat.
“No, no, no,” Vester was whispering. He clutched at Billy’s arm. Billy could only imagine what his friend was going through right now. How would he feel, if it was Blythe down there, in the middle of that deadly cylinder? He shuddered at the thought.
“It’s okay,” he said to Vester. He knew it must sound lame to the older man: Billy wasn’t even a Determined Power. He didn’t know what he was talking about. But he still had to try to give some comfort. “I’m sure she can.…”
But before he could finish the thought, the crowd gasped as Fulgora, with one last effort, fell to the podium, her arms and legs hanging limply over the sides. Billy could see the beasts in the water below—who were apparently impervious to the great heat that was all around them—lunge upward to snap at her dangling limbs. They looked like huge, grotesque eels, their gaping jaws lined with razor teeth. Their mouths snapped shut with audible clicks, missing the unconscious Fulgora’s fingers and toes by scant centimeters.
“Let it be! It’s over!” shouted someone from the crowd of onlookers. “She’s done, you’ve won the Challenge, Napalm!” The rest of the crowd quickly took up the cry, pleading with the armored warrior below to show mercy. Napalm showed no inclination to do so, however. His heavy, muscled arms raised even higher, their trembling matched only by the Red Power’s apparent determination to not only win the Challenge, but destroy his rival.
Billy looked at his friend, expecting Vester to join in the shouts. But clearly the young fireman was clinging desperately to hope. “She’s not gone, she’s not gone, she can’t be. She’s not gone.” It sounded almost like a chant, a prayer that if Vester said enough times would turn out to be true. Billy felt tears springing unbidden from his eyes. Somewhat they were for the lovely lady below them, who was being crushed so unmercifully below the angry power of Napalm’s fire. But mostly they were for Vester, his new friend who already felt like he was as close to Billy as anyone outside his own family had ever been.
He touched Vester’s shoulder, feebly patting it. He felt like he was patting a dog, knew it wasn’t helping anything, but couldn’t help but continue. It was something, at least, and he couldn’t stand to do nothing. He wished he could help Fulgora more directly, but this gesture to his friend was all he knew how to do.
Then, abruptly, a gasp went through the crowd. Billy felt rather than saw Vester tense, and he quickly turned his attention back to the arena.
Fulgora was rising. She stood slowly, clearly crippled by pain and lack of breath, but just as clearly determined that this Challenge not yet come to an end.
The Red Lady reached out her gauntleted hand, grasping for the fire that had drawn so close. Napalm, seeing this, rapidly moved his hands. The loop of fire drew away from Fulgora, but at the same time increased the speed of its turning, sucking the air out of the circle now so fast that the air could be heard rushing from the top of the cyclone.
Fulgora faltered again, and it seemed to Billy that this time it must end; that this time it had to be over. Next to him, Vester was rocking back and forth in his seat, now almost rising up, now hunching far down, his body clearly incapable of expressing the depth of the fireman’s emotions.
Then, with one last great gasp, Fulgora stood. She tottered to the end of her podium, almost falling into the writhing water below. She stopped herself, though, blinking rapidly, her head shaking as though she was trying to wake from a particularly vivid nightmare.
Then, she jumped.
“No!” shouted Vester, lunging to his feet.
Billy saw at once that Fulgora was not going to make it to the nearest pedestal; that her jump was going to fall dreadfully short of the safety of that marble podium. Her doom was certain, and a great wave of pained noises racked the arena as the onlookers suffered with her in anticipation of the end.
But then the gasps of pain turned to gasps of astonishment as everyone, including Billy, realized that Fulgora had not been trying to make it to the next pedestal in the first place.
She had been trying to make it to Napalm’s circle of fire.
Billy didn’t know what was happening, or what the Red Lady could be thinking. Even if she managed to touch Napalm’s fire and wrest control of it from him, she would still fall inevitably to her doom in the watery sea of death below.
And sure enough, Fulgora was falling. But she stretched as far as she could as she dropped. Reaching forward, apparently pulling herself by force of will.
One finger. One single, solitary finger. It touched Napalm’s ring of fire, and suddenly Fulgora was no more.
There was a flash of light, a glare so bright that the sun itself would have been embarrassed to be compared to it. Billy blinked his eyes, blinded for a moment, looking away to save his eyesight.
And when he managed to look back, he—along with a hundred thousand others—gasped in awe.
Fulgora was still falling. But slowly. Because she had sprouted wings.
“Great Powers,” Vester whispered again.
The wings flapped once, and as they did, Fulgora changed. Her armor elongated, becoming great red scales, overlapping and tight as brass bullet casings. Napalm’s ring of fire disappeared, being pulled into Fulgora’s changing form.
She grew, and her armored face metamorphosed into something animalistic and fierce, with gleaming red eyes above a ridge of stony spires that ran the length of a long, sinuous snout. Her body elongated, a tail sprouting from her hindquarters. The wings pounded, taking on a deep red hue, carrying her instantly above the range of the sea monsters below.
Her form solidified, hardening to something like burnished metal. It was a shape Billy knew. A shape he had seen before.
Fulgora had become a dragon. Not a blue one, not like the one he had seen with Mrs. Russet, the dragon Billy’s history teacher had called Serba. No, this was a gleaming red dragon.<
br />
Someone in the audience screamed as the dragon that was Fulgora beat its wings again, ascending to a new height so that it could look down upon Powers Stadium. The dragon screamed, and the roar permeated Billy’s body, making his heart stutter in his chest, his eardrums almost bursting in his head.
He could see that Napalm had fallen to his knees atop his podium. The challenger’s fire spent, the remaining pyres nothing but cold piles of charred coal, the armored man cowered, utterly powerless under the terrifying gaze of the red dragon.
Napalm screamed as Fulgora licked her lips. The dragon opened its mouth, and a gout of fire spewed forth, a white-hot blaze that scorched Billy from hundreds of feet away. The tip of the fire undulated forward like a long tongue, licking at the quivering shape of Napalm.
Billy, like almost everyone else in the stadium, was on his feet. He glanced at Vester. The fireman appeared stunned, his face utterly drained of blood.
“No one has ever become a dragon before,” he murmured in a dazed voice. “At least, no one who’s ever become human again.”
The dragon opened its mouth once more, and Billy was sure this was it: the dragon was sure to broil Napalm in his own armor.
A ferocious roar came again, that terrifying sound even worse this time. And with it, the dragon spoke, its voice still recognizably Fulgora’s, but with a deep and alien timbre that chilled Billy’s insides.
“Do…you…YIELD?!” screamed the red dragon.
“Yes!” shouted Napalm, his voice cracking with hysteria and terror. “Yes, yes, by the Elements, I swear it, I swear it!”
Billy: Messenger of Powers Page 18