by K. F. Breene
Revealed in Fire
K.F. Breene
Copyright © 2021 by K.F. Breene
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
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One
The sky was a light, fluffy shade of purple, and a lone vulture sailed through it lazily. The scavenger looked down on the scene below, a twisted wooded path leading nowhere, flanked by manic clowns, their pointed teeth dripping with blood and their mouths curled up into horrible sneers. Up ahead, an elephant perched near the path, a large bullet hole in its neck and its chest awash with deep, flowing crimson. It was about ten minutes from bleeding out. I’d make sure it died right next to Cahal, whose favorite animal was the Brink elephant.
All of this was for Cahal, the incredibly tough warrior druid who was duty-bound to his lethal skill set until he found his perfect mate, something that would release him from his curse and allow him to settle down with his mate and produce plump children, or whatever he planned to get up to. Maybe he didn’t want kids. Maybe he just wanted an elephant. It was hard to say with him.
The best assassin in the world, and he thought the duty was a curse. What a tragedy.
I’d offered to trade his lot in life for mine.
No dice.
I cracked my knuckles and patted my thigh, looking for one of my daggers, only to remember I didn’t have them. Dang it, that was right—no weapons allowed for this training. It was magic only.
Taking a deep breath, I fashioned another vulture and waved it to life above us, sending it toward Cahal. He was waiting along the path somewhere, underneath his least favorite color, surrounded by one of the only things that made his bowels watery, near his favorite animal in the stages of bleeding out.
Some might call me a real asshole for shoving the guy’s worst nightmares in his face. Those people would be right. It was great fun watching him squirm. Just as fun, probably, as kicking my ass was for him. At least, I assumed that was why he always did it with such gusto.
“Here we go.” Magic pumping through me, I started to run along the path, speeding up the gestures and jeering of the clowns. Maybe that would distract Cahal a little, and I could get a few more punches in before he threw me against a tree.
All of this had been fashioned with my magic, of course. The clowns weren’t real. I would never shoot an elephant—I liked those big sons of bitches. Purple sky? Weird. But my father could construct worlds, and I needed to learn how to do it too. I’d gotten pretty good at it, much to Cahal’s unwavering delight.
He didn’t love my sarcasm, though.
A pasty-white swamp monster jumped out from behind a clown, its mouth open and saliva dripping from the wicked fangs in its black gums. It—or he, in this case—spread his clawed hands and prepared to get his ass handed to him.
I flung air like it was knives, opening slashes in the sides of his chest, my aim now a work of art. Which was good. I didn’t want to kill my boyfriend, after all. He was great in bed, so it was worth being cautious.
A block of air punched him in the kisser, and then I was on him, sweeping his legs out from under him before fashioning a sword made of air. I hacked down, but he rolled at the last moment, hopping up and stabbing his claws forward. I arched, barely missing a few puncture holes before I slapped him with air and sent him flying. He scraped the solid air with his claws, but my power was pulsing at a demonic mid-five level, edging closer to hitting level six, which was where my father sat, at the top of the hierarchy. It would take Darius a while to get through that air, and by then I’d be facing a god-touched druid, the likes of whom the world had never seen.
At least, I liked to think of him that way. It made me feel better when he bested me.
A clown jumped on a pogo stick to my right, somehow staying on while waving her arms in the air and squealing. What a freak show. I might be laying it on a little thick.
Around a reaching bush covered in lollipops—Cahal was trying to ditch the sugar, worried about his boyish figure—the path opened up, and there he stood, a blindfold over his eyes, holding a wicked black sword with a curved blade. Light gleamed off the point, the moonlight bright enough to paint that nightmare.
I sent a small whip of magic, snapping the blindfold off him. The cloth fell away as he turned slightly to face me. Another blindfold waited under the first, secured tightly to his head. He could always sense the direction of my magic. It was really annoying for sneak attacks.
“Really hate those clowns, huh?” I said, because it wasn’t his first encounter with them.
“You have an uncanny ability to unsettle your opponent and gain the advantage,” he said, bending his knees just a little in preparation for my attack. “I needed a way to protect my eyes from witnessing your horrors.”
“My horrors? You mean my face? I haven’t lost my eyebrows in weeks…”
He launched forward, not giving me an opportunity to peel off that second blindfold. He moved so fast that he basically blurred. He wrapped his magic around his body, shadows clinging to him, moving and changing and tricking my eyes. I pushed forward to meet him while calling up daggers of air. I was just preparing to throw them when they dissolved into nothing.
Swearing under my breath, I called up fire. Still nothing happened.
“When did Penny get here?” I ground out, because only Penny knew the spell for deadening my magic. “This just became an incredibly unfair fight.”
Cahal’s wicked sword cut through the air, and I bent backward to miss it. The blade caught a piece of my hair and sliced it right off. I was just glad it hadn’t gotten close enough to shave my whiskers. Also that I didn’t have any whiskers.
Turning the arch into a slide, I scraped the dirt and punched upward as I moved under him. My fist connected with his package hard enough to lift him into the air.
“Eeeiiii.”
The sound he made didn’t seem quite human.
I popped up on the other side of him and worked Penny’s spell, which hovered around the clearing like a fart. If I burned it from the outside in, I could usually get rid of the th
ing.
Cahal staggered, the very first time I’d ever seen him do so. Not wasting my advantage, still working Penny’s spell, I sprinted forward and considered a one-two punch to his melon. That would get him back in the game, though. He had an amazing ability to ignore injuries in order to keep busting heads. Right now he was wallowing in his bruised manhood. I wanted to make the most of his distraction.
So I ripped his blindfold off.
Clowns danced into the clearing, blood oozing down their chins and dripping onto the ground. The fluffy purple sky rained candy canes, bouncing around us on the gumdrop-studded ground. The wounded elephant laboriously limped down the path, pathetic in its dying, its gaze pleading.
Cahal’s eyes rounded and then darted around, horror slacking his jaw.
Bingo.
I’d gotten today’s world-building perfectly right. It had taken a couple of months for me to suss out all his hates, fears, and dislikes, but this payoff was worth it.
Penny’s spell dissolved away, and I commenced a full-scale attack, kicking Cahal while he was down. It was the only way to take on this freaking druid. It was intensely hard to make him say uncle.
Air-throwing stars ripped into his flesh. Fire burst to life under his feet and grew quickly, the heat sweltering. I was one of very few magical creatures who possessed the ability to use hellfire, but that would actually kill him. No go.
I created a spear with air, instead, and threw it at his stomach. He could heal like a vampire. Like me. He’d live if it skewered him.
His sword swished in an arc, though, cutting through my magic and actually deflecting the spear.
“I still don’t understand how you can do that,” I said, tossing more air-throwing stars and then two more spears, keeping him occupied while I tried to burn him at the imaginary stake.
He did a hot-footed dance, his sword whirling like a tornado, flinging away all my efforts. I smashed air down on top of him, but before I could flatten him to the ground, he punched upward. His fist connected with the solid air, and the sheer strength of his will stopped its downward trajectory.
“You are losing power because you’re using too many magical elements at once,” he said, his voice quavering with the effort. He gave a mighty heave and shoved the magic off, still dancing gracefully within my flames as he moved across the squishy gumdrops, the fire trailing him. “Reduce the various elements of your magic and focus on the kill strike.”
“Any hint on which I should reduce?”
“This horrible world you’ve created would be nice.”
Good hint.
I cut out the fire, not hot enough to do lasting damage (on purpose), and stopped the air assault. He paused for a moment, and a gleam lit his eyes. He nodded slightly. I’d read him correctly. He was too good for half-baked assaults. They would never beat him, something I hadn’t properly learned in the past. He’d always fight me until I ran out of steam, and then he’d pummel me.
Messing with his mind, though…
The elephant gave a mighty wail as it shrank down to a baby elephant, crying for him, stumbling his way. On the other side of the clearing, I created its mournful mother, the building of even this small world taxing but fun. I called it a win every time Cahal reacted, even slightly. If he flinched, it was the equivalent of a normal person screaming and curling up into a ball.
The fluffy purple sky shifted down, enveloping us, and chocolate welled up and flowed in little eddies and streams around us, carrying marshmallows on top.
He licked his plush lips, his eyes darting again. Then…he smirked. It was the first I’d ever seen him do it.
“You’re pretty hot when you grin. Has anyone ever told you that?” I built up my power, circling him slowly.
He stalked toward me, wariness in his eyes, his grin fading. Then his gaze darted to the wounded baby elephant. He had a few heartstrings hidden deep down inside of him, it seemed.
“Don’t like when someone mentions your appearance, huh?” I badgered. “Have you gotten a complex from women treating you like a side of beef all your life?”
His gaze bored into mine. “You are world class at sensing and exploiting weaknesses.”
“I’ve had to be. Working in a magical community while hiding my magic… It helped me develop a sort of”—I flung an air spear at him that erupted in fire at the last moment; he swung his sword in a graceful circle, deflecting it—“penchant for survival.” I grinned. “People don’t focus on you so much when they’re battling their own demons.”
“You should not actually throw the air with your hand. You don’t need to, and it alerts me to your plans.”
“Riiight… Put that on the list of items to practice.”
“Yes.” And then he burst into movement, zipping across the clearing like a phantom, shadows draping around him, making it hard to track his movements.
I threw up an air shield, and then made copies of the baby elephant. Yeah, I could do that. I stamped those suckers all around us as Cahal tried to bash through my shield with his expert sword moves.
“Help them,” I pleaded. “Don’t let them die.”
He crashed into my air shield as I readied another elephant calf behind him. His eyes darted, and he jerked away from the one nearly at his side. It made him bump into the apparition behind him, but his back pushed through the image. They weren’t solid, and I didn’t know how to infuse enough air into them to make it so. Not yet. It was a work in progress.
I backed it away.
“They’re dying,” I hollered, putting as much drama into it as I could. Blood gushed, the little babies faltering, and his body tightened.
And then I crashed a second wall forward, smashing him in between them.
He flattened against the wall in front of me. His sword sliced into his forearm, and his cheek smeared against the hard air. Red-tinged spit dribbled out of his smooshed lips and leaked around his chin.
“Say uncle,” I yelled, using all my power to keep him put, shaking with the effort as he tried to buck and create some room for himself to escape. “Say uncle!”
He tried to buck again, and I dumped all I had into my magic, no longer focusing on keeping the world intact around us. The fluffy sky started to dissolve like cotton candy in the rain. A leg fell off an elephant, and it hobbled before bending to breaking knees.
“Yield!” he mumbled through still-smooshed lips.
“I said say uncle, not yield. You have to say uncle or I won’t let you out.”
Another elephant crashed to the ground, and the illusion of blood spread across the ground. My faltering magic couldn’t hold the original design. This was so much more gruesome than what I’d created.
Cahal jolted, his eyes wide as he caught sight of it. He bucked wildly, the wall pushing back.
“No you don’t.” I gritted my teeth and balled my fists, needing to visualize the air pressing against him. “Not this time. I will not lose at the final moment and get beaten up for my efforts. I will win this time. Say uncle!”
Another elephant crashed to the ground. I gave a fourth a little push to do the same, since Cahal was obviously reacting to the sight of them hitting the dirt, lifelike or not.
“Uncle,” he finally said, going limp. “Uncle.”
I tore the air away, panting. Working quickly, I tore the rest of the scene down, letting my magic dissolve back into the world, raining down through the moon-soaked night like acid across a painting. Darkened grass took the place of the gumdrops. Just over a berm, the liquid-black ocean shimmered as it lapped against the flat sands. The twisted wood cleared to a landscaped and carefully tended front yard, little potholes dug into it from my boots or my scuffle with Darius. A large mansion wavered into view behind us, the pool in front of it lit from within with eerie blue light. When Darius had organized a retreat to hide me away from the world, he’d done it like he did everything else—in style.
Cahal wiped his lip with the back of his hand, his eyes burning into mine.
“The rules of uncle are clear and finite.” I held up my hands and took a step back. “Once you say it, you are declaring yourself the loser of the fight, and you cannot resume the attack after you’re freed. That would be cheating.”
“You always cheat.”
“Only when you’re not looking.”
He paused for a moment. “How’d you know about the elephants?”
“Yeah, bud. What’s the deal with that? You really don’t like to see elephants suffering, huh?”
His stare raised my small hairs, something very few people could do.
I jerked my head toward the house, seeing Darius hadn’t just recovered but was already dressed and pristine and waiting for us behind the bar. Emery sat in a chair with his ankle resting on his knee, watching as Penny lazily swam through the water. They’d laid the power-siphoning spell for me and then gone about their leisure time. How nice for them.
“You mentioned that elephants were your favorite animal,” I said, “and you tensed for a fraction of a second, so I thought I might play off that. I had no idea you’d go full-scale soupy about it.”
“Soupy?”
“Yeah, you know…” I sagged my shoulders, slumped forward, and pouted.
“No. It is not clear.”
“It affected you, basically.”
“Would’ve been easier just to say that at the get-go.”
“And miss out on a colorful explanation?” I grinned at him as we climbed the steps leading up to the pool area. I stopped there and turned toward the ocean, breathing in the warm, salty air and taking in the lovely view, knowing it looked even better in the day, the clear turquoise waters sitting beneath the royal-blue sky. “I literally want for nothing right now. Through Darius, I have all the money I could ever possibly need. I have a life of luxury. I have love and support. Most people would find this a dream come true.”