He left it at that. It impressed Kate even more that Jurdan would cease his tireless speech out of respect for their brother-in-arms. She dipped her head again as they walked.
Which was why she was the first to see the bones.
Kate stopped abruptly and stared at the items on the ground in front of her. She was confused at first, trying to figure out what they were. Jurdan nearly ran into her, but skidded to a halt behind her.
“Kate?” he said.
She simply pointed to the grey-white items on the ground. They looked like a jumble of sticks with other objects that were more rounded. The ends looked like they had been melted off.
“Ah, yes,” Peiros said, kneeling over a pile of them. “These appear to be from regular grunt demons. Strange that they should be accumulated here. Be wary of a predator demon. We may have stumbled into its lair.”
At his words, Kate scanned the immediate area. There had to be hundreds of demon bones there. She could identify some of them, based on human bones, but others didn’t fit what she knew about humans, or even what she had seen in the demon anatomy books she had read in the library.
“What kind of predator?” she asked. “What could kill all these demons?”
“I do not know,” Peiros said. “There is much we do not know about Hell. I am thinking, though, that it has to be something big and mean.” He drew his crescents and looked around. At his action, the rest of the team also readied their weapons.
A flicker of movement in the corner of Kate’s eye caught her attention. She snapped her head toward it and saw a shimmer. It was a distortion, like one would see over a cooking fire or a kettle of boiling water. She had seen similar things since they entered Hell. It was so hot, and with the flames that erupted from random places in the landscape, they didn’t seem too out of the ordinary.
But this one was moving. Toward her.
Kate cocked her head and stared at it. What was it? The air rippled and shimmered in a pleasing, almost hypnotic way. She reached her hand out to touch it.
“Pretty Kate. No!” Aurel’s booming voice crashed into her ears. She pulled her arm back just as he bodily pushed her away. He was probably trying to be gentle, but his sheer size and strength cast her off like she weighed nothing. She landed hard on the ground.
Before she even got back to her feet, Aurel screamed a much higher pitched scream than she would have thought him capable of with his deep voice. He turned to her and she saw the reason. His right arm was smoking and it looked like it was melting.
Kate was up in an instant, sword drawn and shield at the ready. The only problem was, she didn’t know what she needed to fight.
“Back,” Peiros yelled, pulling on Aurel’s good arm. “Stay away from it.”
Benedict disregarded the words and swung his sword at the distortion in the air. As his blade passed through it, it sizzled and lines of tarnish appeared on the blade. Something was etching the steel itself.
“Get away, you fool,” Jurdan said, barely loud enough to be heard over Aurel’s bellows. “We can’t fight it.”
“Run,” Peiros said, doing just that.
Each one of them took off running like it had been a command from the captain himself. Even Benedict took off, though he threw one last longing look at the cloud that had burned Aurel’s arm.
Whatever the thing was, it moved more slowly than they. They soon outpaced it and lost sight of it completely. When it seemed safe to do so, they stopped to assess things.
“I believe we are beyond its range,” Jurdan said. “I don’t know exactly what that thing was, but most of the wild creatures—as opposed to the organized demons here—are territorial. The good news is that I no longer see any evidence of those melted bones, so we’re most likely out of danger from that thing.”
“And the bad news?” Visimar asked.
“We may be in the territory of something worse.”
“A big, flaming ray of sunshine,” Benedict said. “That’s you, Jurdan.”
Jurden flashed a smile and bowed to the other man. Benedict sniffed.
Kate hardly paid attention. She went to Aurel, whose dark skin seemed ashen with the pain. His eyes were set in concentration and slightly glazed. His arm looked as if he had been caught in a fire.
Jurdan started using some of their precious water to flush the limb, gently rubbing. Skin sloughed off, and Aurel sucked in air but didn’t scream again.
“Can you feel the arm, Aurel?” Jurdan asked.
“Yessss,” he said, drawing out the sound with clenched teeth.
“That’s good.”
Aurel glared at Jurdan, as did Visimar, but the loquacious man didn’t seem fazed.
“It means that the damage didn’t go so deep that it deadened the nerves. Or destroyed them. If it had, we would most likely have to take the whole arm. Instead, you may regain use of it, though it will be an ugly thing.”
“I…am too pretty anyway,” Aurel said in a gasp. His smile was more of a grimace.
Jurdan laughed and continued treating the wound. Once he had cleaned it, applied a salve he produced from his pack, and bound it up, he pulled out a small flask.
“I was saving this for our victory toast, but I think you may need it now.” Jurdan handed the flask over to Aurel. “Just a little, mind you. You’re not that injured.” He winked at the big man.
Kate had never seen Aurel drink anything stronger than weak ale, but he put the flask to his lips and pulled a swig from it. His eyes widened and his body shook for a moment. Then he coughed as if all the breath came out of him in one second.
Jurdan laughed again as he accepted the flask back. “It’s the strongest stuff I could find. Good?”
Aurel took a moment to get a breath then nodded. “The pain is less now. At least on the outside. My inside seems on fire.”
“That’ll pass,” Jurdan told him.
Peiros had been off to the side, glancing occasionally at Aurel and Jurdan, but giving most of his attention to the little book he had pulled from his pack. He was scratching furiously with a bit of wood.
Kate went over and saw that what he had was actually some dark material sandwiched in between two thin pieces of wood, no doubt to give it rigidity. It was tied together in several places to keep whatever it was within the wood.
“What is that, Peiros?” she asked.
“Ah, it is a scribing stick. I can mark on the paper without needing an inkwell or quill. I find it more convenient for missions. I knew a man in Salornum who made such things, and I have copied him. Mine are more crude, but they are functional.”
“But what are you writing?”
He held the book up to her so she could see. He had drawn a very good likeness of the cloud they had encountered, complete with the piles of bones surrounding the monster. Below it, he described the thing and what it did.
“I have not heard of such a thing before,” he continued. “Perhaps if I record it and we add it to the library, it will prevent our brothers from being injured as Brother Aurel was.”
Kate wondered at the man. She had been thinking only of surviving and maybe completing their mission. He was thinking of the benefits of their misfortune for future missions. Not for the first time, she was grateful she was surrounded by such experienced, competent people.
“Will you be okay to continue soon, Aurel?” Kate asked.
“I am ready now.” He grinned at her, though it still seemed strained. “Such a small thing will not keep me from the mission.”
“Very well,” she said. “Peiros, do you still know what direction the thoughts are coming from?”
Peiros pointed as if he had no doubt. Kate figured he didn’t have a doubt. So self-assured. Would she ever become so confident? She already was when it came to combat. Maybe experience would make her so in other things. If she lived long enough to gain the experience to get there.
“Let’s go, then,” Kate said. “We have a demon lord to kill.”
19
Ka
te kept an eye on Aurel during their travels that day. He never complained, but every little movement made him wince and his eyes had a sort of glazed look to them all the time, the type of look Kate had seen before in someone using most of his concentration to fight off pain.
Visimar passed by Kate as she was watching Aurel. He very nearly pushed her out of the way. She didn’t need to look to know what was happening, but she did anyway.
Benedict was glaring at Visimar, and Visimar returned the scowl as he moved up toward the front of the group, up to where Peiros was picking a path for them through the sharp terrain. The surrounding rocks were jagged and rough, obviously of volcanic origin. If they had such things as volcanoes in this place.
Kate reminded herself to ask the others exactly where here was. There was a sky, so they weren’t simply underground. At least, she thought the sparks of light above were stars and the blackness was sky. She would have to ask.
“Visimar,” Kate called to him, and he turned his pockmarked face to her. “Will you talk with me for a moment?”
The man gave one last look at Benedict and nodded his head. Instead of waiting for him to join her, she sped up and kept pace with him.
“What is going on between you and Benedict?” she asked.
“He’s an asshole.”
“Thank you for the information, but that is not what I asked. Why do you two act like two strange cats in a small room? I swear sometimes that you would draw your weapons on each other if the rest of us weren’t around.”
Visimar blew out a breath. “It’s personal.”
Kate continued walking, picking her way around a large, sharp boulder. She kept her eyes on him, navigating with her peripheral vision. She didn’t say anything.
“It’s not anyone else’s concern,” Visimar tried again.
“It is most definitely everyone’s concern. If we have to go into combat—and we will—we have to count on both of you. What if your refusal to cooperate with each other causes the rest of us to be killed?”
“We know our jobs. We won’t let personal differences stand in the way of doing what we need to do.”
“Your feud is already causing problems,” Kate said. “If it causes one of you to hesitate for a second, it could be too much. Now tell me what the problem is. Even if I can’t do anything about it, at least I’ll know what is going on.”
“Is that an order?” he said, but his face twisted, almost as in pain, when he said it. “I’m sorry. That was out of line. You are the leader of this team. Anything you say should be considered an order. Fine, I’ll tell you, but it won’t make a difference.”
“We’ll see,” Kate said.
“Fair enough,” Visimar said. “The first thing you need to know is that Ben and I grew up together. We lived in the same town, Dimgrove, to the southwest of Kalytras. We spent our childhood together. We were the best of friends, doing everything together. Both of us knew we wanted to be in the Order and we used to play games, acting out stories of our favorite heroes, especially heroes of the Black.
“It came time to take the trials, but just before they occurred, Ben came down sick. He was laid up for more than two weeks. The town healer wasn’t sure he was going to make it. I told him I’d wait until the next trial so we could take them together. He made me promise I would not wait.
“Now, as we were growing up, sometimes my younger sister Aleria would tag along with us. She was only two years younger, so it wasn’t too much of an imposition. She was my favorite sibling, so the three of us—Ben, me, and her—spent a lot of time together.
“As you would expect, Ben fell for Aleria and, to my surprise, she felt likewise about him. Before the trials, they even talked about getting married, though he insisted on waiting until he got into the Order so he could provide for her.
“I took the trials and passed. Ben was still sick, but I said goodbye to him, and he promised to see me in three years, when he took the trials and got into the Order himself. I knew he’d make it. We had trained together all throughout our youth, and he was as good a fighter as I was. The Order would have to be mad not to accept him.
“Only a week after I got to Gateskeep, having passed my basic training at Faerdham Fortress, the message my family sent finally caught up to me. My sister was dead. She had been murdered a month earlier, but the message didn’t find me until too late. I had missed the death ceremony.
“I got a few letters from home, but didn’t go back. It was too painful. My mother wrote how Ben and Aleria had fought and how she had run from him. No one was really sure what happened, but she ended up in a bad location where someone had killed her. The local magistrate thought he knew who had done it, but the man had disappeared. There was nothing to be done.”
Kate sighed. She thought about Jonathan. He was irritating, but she loved him. He was her brother. How would she feel if someone took him from her? How much more so if the two of them were close?
“I’m sorry, Visimar,” she said.
“No. Don’t be sorry. Death happens. It is part of life. But what I cannot accept is that the man who was supposed to be my friend, was supposed to be my brother, pushed her away and caused her death.
“He got into the Order in the next trials, as planned. I saw him the first day he came to Gateskeep. He looked me up and found me. I nearly killed him that day. I told him exactly what I thought about him and what he had let happen. We fought and I slashed the side of his face. We haven’t had a civil word since.
“I got into the Black five years after I joined the Order. A few years later, he also made the Black. We can work together, though it is better not to be on the same team or mission. The captain has been accommodating. We volunteered at the same time for this mission, and both of us were too proud to step down.
“Know this, Kate. We will both fight and die for you and for the team. I can’t say for a certainty that I will risk my life for Ben or that he will for me, but neither will we hinder the other. The mission is all, and the Black is the most important thing in both our lives. If the pain and hatred oozes out in the form of a glare or a harsh word now and then, I apologize, but you don’t have to worry about us doing our jobs. He’ll tell you the same.”
Kate accepted his words with a nod, but wasn’t sure he had the truth of it. All she could do was to wait and observe. She hoped she didn’t have to do anything drastic. She let Visimar speed up to stride with Peiros and she continued by herself, considering what she’d heard.
“I think we may be getting closer,” Peiros said later that day.
Day? Maybe it was night. Maybe it was even the next night, or day. It was so hard for Kate to remember how long it had been and what time it might be back in their home. Hell was gradually draining the life from her, taking her sanity and replacing it with something like a longing to see bright light again. If she had to stay in this forsaken place for much longer, she might drop dead.
Oh, Peiros was talking.
“The thoughts of the demons are stronger than before,” he continued. “Perhaps they have stopped or slowed down.”
The terrain had changed again. The area they were going through seemed like piles of ash, great cones of fine, grey dust that Kate thought might be made by giant insects gnawing on enormous trees, turning them to dust and excreting them. Or maybe enormous logs were being burned so completely they turned to ash instantly and settled down to the ground as a long funnel of the material fell from the sky. Except there were no trees.
The cone hills were solid enough, however, so Kate threw out all she was thinking about their origin.
She really needed to get out of this place.
“Kate,” Jurdan said. “Talk to us, Kate. I can see it in your eyes. The mania is on you. You have to interact with other humans or it will get worse. Talking will ground you. It’s why we always go on missions with at least two of the Black. One alone could succumb to the spell of the place. Well, other than Koren. He went out alone a lot. Kate!”
Kate’s e
yes snapped open and she looked around groggily. “What was I saying?”
“You weren’t saying nothin’,” Benedict said. “You were going down deep into your own mind. Just like I did a few hours ago. You have to talk or you’ll go crazy.”
“Yes,” she said. “Crazy. I was having the strangest thoughts.”
“Tell us about them, Pretty Kate,” Aurel said. It was clear they were all taking turns speaking to help her out.
“Yes, please do,” Visimar said. “It helps. We really should have said something to you about it before we came to this place, but we’re telling you now. Talk about anything that reminds you of home, of our own world.”
“Will we ever see it again?” she asked. It was the first thing that came to her mind.
“Yes,” Peiros said.
“Absolutely,” Jurdan said.
“We will,” Aurel said.
“Yeah,” Visimar said.
“Probably not,” Benedict answered.
Four out of five wasn’t bad.
“What is it about this place that does this to us?” Kate asked.
“No one knows for sure,” Jurdan said, scraping his fingers through his hair and applying a tie to it to hold it back out of his face. They all had their masks on their belts, making it easier to breathe in the oppressive heat. And making it easier to communicate and fix their attention on a human face. “The best explanation I have ever heard was that we humans are not meant to be in this place. We’re not…compatible. Eventually, even with conversation and great strength of will, some believe any human will go insane. I think I might believe them. Just the smell alone could make me go mad.”
“That is not a heartening thing to think about,” Kate quipped.
Peiros looked into her eyes as if he was testing her sanity. “No, it is not. But thinking on it does cause us to recognize dangers and keeps us alert. It’ll do until we can engage in combat. Ironically, that is the best way to shake the effects of the mind fog.”
Mind fog. That was an apt name, Kate thought. She continued putting one foot in front of the other and tried to think of home. As Peiros said, it would have to do until she could kill something. One step at a time, one minute at a time, and she would survive this. She hoped.
Order of the Fire Box Set Page 30