Calling On Fire (Book 1) (2 page)

Toman stopped at another statue, drawing the sergeant's attention back to the graveyard. They'd actually lost Esset a few headstones back—he was reading the inscription, a lengthy one, by the looks of it—and Toman had already noticed his brother was too immersed in reading to notice anything else.

Both young men had magical abilities that Sergeant Warthog had never encountered personally before meeting them. In fact, she'd never even heard of an animator at all, and while summoners like Esset were far from unheard of, they weren't common. She'd also rarely seen two people as comfortable with their abilities as these two. Especially to use those abilities so casually.

Unable to resist his brother's complete inattention, Toman's eyes flicked to one of the statues he'd touched earlier. Slowly and silently, the statue bent down and picked up a very small pebble. Sergeant Warthog watched in amusement as the statue gently flicked the pebble and straightened. The rock bounced off Esset's back, eliciting a startled and amusingly high-pitched yelp. Esset looked back, and Toman had the statue wave mockingly at him. Esset immediately leveled a dirty look at Toman, the true culprit. Toman smirked and deliberately turned his back and continued on. Moments later, a different projectile thudded softly against Toman's back and bounced off again.

A tiny, supernatural bat fluttered in the air for a moment, then dive-bombed Toman from a different angle. Toman was laughing so hard he could barely shield his head. He flailed a bit, but the bat bounced off him twice more before zipping back to Esset, who had caught up. Esset held out his hand and the bat landed in it. Esset patted it on the head.

It was far from an ordinary bat. It was black and ashy, leaving sooty smudges on everything it touched. Close inspection would reveal that there were fine lines of molten red in its coal-like body, and its eyes were pinpricks of fiery light, small though they were. Too far away to hear, Esset had uttered a short incantation to summon it, but it took less than that to banish it, leaving nothing behind but air and the smudge on his hand.

They didn't even bother to banter after that, although plenty of smirks and grins were traded between them—they had evened out the score. Sergeant Warthog could only shake her head at the whole display. The potential lack of maturity might have bothered her, but she'd seen the other side to these two, and their track record spoke for itself.

Still, she was cautious. It remained to be seen what nightfall would bring.

Several hours later, the dark sky held only the barest sliver of a moon. Esset squinted up at it, then looked around, trying to decide if there was enough light to read by. Finally he pulled the book out—it was an ancient-looking thing, for it was ancient. At the same time, it was in far better condition than it should have been, given its age, the frequency with which it was read, and how it was stored and treated in general. Thank Hyrishal for magic books.

Esset opened the tome and tilted it towards the moonlight, trying to catch enough light on the pages to make out the runes. Unfortunately, although the book was magic, that fact didn't make it readable in the dark. With a sigh, Esset stuffed it away again. His actions elicited a comment, but in a quiet murmur—they were far enough from the graveyard, but it was a reasonable precaution nonetheless.

"Really? Reading in the dark?" Sergeant Warthog asked. "I actually feel inclined to agree with your brother and all his teasing about how much reading you do."

"See?" Toman whispered.

Esset's glare at his brother was unmistakable, even in the dark.

"It's how I learn more summons," Esset said defensively, nonetheless keeping his voice low. "The more I read, the more likely I'll learn a new one. I mean, yeah, sometimes summons come to me at other times—like the horses. They came to me way back when I was thinking about how Toman and I had to travel—but that still wouldn't have happened unless I'd been reading my tome, and—"

"Torch!" Toman interrupted with a loud whisper; sure enough, a freshly-lit torch flickered in the distant cemetery. Rebuttal forgotten, the next words out of Esset's mouth were inhuman as he chanted three incantations to summon their mounts.

Three fiery horses materialized into existence before them with a brief roar of flames and the powerful smell of fresh-lit tinder. Nothing could run like these summoned horses, and Toman, Esset, and Sergeant Warthog wanted to be in the cemetery now. They swung up on the horses' warm backs of cracked coal, each barely mounted before the steeds took off, flickering tails of flame streaming behind them and leaving a faint scent of ash in their wake. In a flash, they were past the outer bounds of the cemetery and streaking towards the elaborate tomb where the torch had been lit.

An even quicker flash intercepted them before they reached the torchlight. Esset barely caught a glimpse of his attacker before he was hit like a battering ram from one side. As his mount streaked away, uncontrolled, his head cracked painfully against the ground, stunning him and making his vision spin. Toman and the sergeant were carried swiftly past, their mounts flaring with excess heat as Esset lost control of them.

Something was atop of Esset; even as his vision spun, he could feel a weight on his torso. Cold hands closed around his neck, cutting off his ability to speak, but he struggled against his assailant. He struggled on two fronts to break free: first to physically dislodge his attacker, and second to clearly think a summoning incantation to call supernatural aid. He stumbled over the strange syllables in his head, making it a little further each time, but each time he made a mental mistake he had to start anew.

A moment later, he felt a rush of air as his assailant was bashed away from him. There was an inhuman screech and crunches of stone while Esset gasped for air, reflexively curling in on himself to try to recover as quickly as possible.

There. There was the incantation, the thoughts in his head as clear and precise as they would have been spoken. There was a flash of flames, then heat and the glow of embers next to him. At once eerie and fierce in the darkness, a creature of fire stood next to him.

The lupine beast had a hide like cracked coals, blackened and ashy, but crimson light glowed in the small cracks and crevices upon its body. Its claws were red-hot, and when it opened its maw, there was a flare of light; its insides were molten, its teeth white-hot. Its eyes too were ablaze, the light trailing slightly as the creature moved. And it wasn’t still for long. A bare moment after appearing, it lunged away to find Esset's attacker.

"Esset!" With a shout, Toman was next to his brother and hauling him up to his feet. Esset glanced at his brother—the dirt all over his coat betrayed that he'd bailed off the fire horse as soon as Esset had lost control.

"Esset, the horses," Toman said.

"Already got them," Esset said hoarsely. What was summoned sometimes had to be unsummoned; even the relatively tame fire horses could cause a lot of mayhem if left to their own devices.

"The sergeant?" Esset asked, and the sergeant herself answered, only a few paces behind.

"Here." She held her sword loosely in one hand, ready.

"Well, Mr. Johnson was right. There's something here, but there's no way that was a necromancer or anything that had been raised. Too fast. Too strong." Esset said. He summoned another wolf, making it sound more like a curse than an incantation. The wolf streaked after the first, and in seconds they converged on their target. Toman, Esset, and Sergeant Warthog sprinted to catch up, curious to see what they were fighting.

Once they arrived, it was difficult to determine what exactly the wolves had engaged, for the only light in the graveyard came from the wolves themselves. The clearest illumination came just before their jaws opened and the light within was cast upon their target: humanoid, pale skin, fast, strong—

"Vampire," Esset finally identified the figure before them. No wonder the statue that had saved Esset hadn't been able to get a hold on it—stone was persistent, but not particularly quick. Vampires were quick.

The wolves were equally quick. Using numbers to their advantage, one of the wolves lunged and got a solid grip on the vampire’s arm, creating a momentary lapse in defense that allowed the other to latch its jaws around the vampire’s neck. There was an inhuman screech as the wolves’ internal fire scorched through arm and throat. The vampire didn’t die, however, until its neck was burned entirely through: decapitation by fire.

Esset banished one of his two wolves, and Toman called over the statue that had the torch as the three of them walked the remaining distance to the fallen vampire. The remaining wolf dashed off into the darkness, circling them, hunting for any other opponents.

"So, undead. Just not the undead we thought," Toman observed. At least they could kill with a clear conscience. Vampires were purely evil; anything good or even human in them wiped out when they turned.

Esset twitched at the inaccuracy of his brother’s statement. "Actually, there's a controversy over whether vampires actually die when they transform, so 'undead' isn't really an accurate term," Esset said, unable to resist the correction. He knew Toman already knew that, but he didn't know if the sergeant did. Sergeant Warthog, however, didn't react, and Toman just rolled his eyes and otherwise ignored the comment.

"I've got that packhorse I animated earlier headed this way. The village will want proof that this is what Mr. Johnson saw—and that it's dead," Toman said.

"We had better make sure there aren’t more," Esset said grimly, examining the corpse of the vampire.

"Well my sentries certainly aren’t picking them up, or there’d be a lot more movement in this cemetery," Toman replied. Esset nodded.

"That being said, stone soldiers aren't particularly smart, and their senses aren't all that keen, so it's possible they missed something, especially with vampires." His explanation was for Sergeant Warthog's benefit; Toman already knew intimately the limitations of his animations.

"So it's up to me," Esset said. "I'm going to look through my wolf's eyes. I'll need you two keeping an eye out for me, since I'll be totally oblivious to my own body." Had it just been him and Toman, he wouldn't have said anything—they'd worked together more than long enough for it to go unsaid—but Esset assumed Sergeant Warthog would want to know what was going on.

Esset sat down on the ground and crossed his legs, settling into a meditative pose. It was important that his core was balanced and that he would be able to maintain the position without conscious effort. Meanwhile, Toman was calling up the statues in the immediate vicinity to come and form a protective guard around the two of them.

Every time Esset looked through the eyes of one of his summons, he was soundly reminded how unearthly they actually were. Simply inhuman didn’t cover it; their perception was more than simply altered. It bordered on indescribable. Everything was afire to their eyes; there was constant motion and flickering, and everything was cast in the colors of flame, from white-hot, to blue and yellow, to red. The senses mixed; scents were not just smelled but seen and heard and felt, and every other sensation was experienced in every other combination. And further, Esset knew that “looking through his wolf’s eyes" really wasn’t an accurate description, for he experienced everything that the wolf physically did. There were no shared thoughts or emotions though, thank Hyrishal. It was difficult enough to learn and adjust to the altered perceptions as it was, even after the innumerable times he’d experienced this before. To share thought and emotion with the summon would have been utterly unbearable. Madness would ensue.

Esset took a few moments, as he always did, to accustom himself to the change. The wolf’s head swung back and forth, taking in every little sight, sound, smell, and sensation. Esset filtered the inputs and then set the wolf in motion towards the mausoleum where Mr. Johnson had first reported seeing movement. Esset had the beast move at a lope—fast enough to cover ground but slow enough to take everything in. Even so, Esset felt like the wolf was flying, for the altered, flickering perception made their movement seem faster. The wolf paused at the entrance to the mausoleum before carefully stepping inside.

A rank smell washed over the summon’s senses: the scent was an ugly brown and as discordant as nails on slate. So overwhelming was the sensation that Esset almost missed the movement inside.

Esset's consciousness fled back to his body, and he surged to his feet.

"We have to get to the mausoleum. Now." He was moving before he was finished speaking, and Toman and Sergeant Warthog were right there with him.

"More?" Toman asked as they ran; it was a relatively obvious conclusion.

"At least nine," Esset replied, not wasting much breath to answer. "Get your statues there. We can’t afford to let any past us. They’re still in coffins now, but they won’t be for long."

"Nine is bad news," Sergeant Warthog said grimly. Toman was already calling on his animated soldiers.

"Nine
is
bad news, but if we can trap some in their coffins, even temporarily, we can even the odds enough to get them all. They're strong enough to smash their way out of their coffins, even stone ones, but they're usually loathe to do so, since revisiting and sleeping in their original burial place allows them accelerated healing. The destruction of a coffin is the destruction of a great future advantage for a vampire," Esset explained as they ran. He wished the mausoleum were slightly closer. At least Toman had some statues ahead—they would get there first and hold them off until the three of them could arrive.