Calling On Fire (Book 1) (5 page)

"Ugh, I have to admit, Esset, your birds are a lot warmer to ride, especially at those high altitudes," Toman said as he stretched.

"It's not too bad this time of year," Esset said. "And besides, I can only summon two of mine at a time, and mine are so much faster that one person would end up being left behind."

"I know, I know," Toman said.

Sergeant Warthog had dismounted and stretched without comment and was already at the water's edge, refilling her waterskin. The two brothers joined her, filling their skins and drinking their fill before refilling them again. Toman strode back towards their mounts and stowed his away in one of the bags strapped to the stone birds. Sergeant Warthog had already stowed hers and was mounting up again. Toman was on his own bird's back before he realized that Esset hadn't joined them.

"Oi! Slowpoke!" he yelled. Esset didn't respond, so Toman had his bird tromp awkwardly over. The animator was about to poke fun at Esset again—or maybe just get the bird to poke him—when Esset spoke, eyes fixed on the horizon.

"Do you see that? At first I thought it was clouds, but now I think that it's smoke." Esset pointed into the distance, where sure enough, a faint halo nestled on the far side of the base of a small mountain.

"Hey, what's the hold up? I want to get home," Sergeant Warthog called over. Toman steered his bird back over to her, with Esset trotting close behind.

"Do you mind a small detour? Esset might've spotted something," Toman replied as Esset mounted up.

"As loathe as I am to extend this trip…" Sergeant Warthog said, glancing between them.

"It might be important," Esset said, and his stone mount burst into flight.

The closer they got, the more apparent it became that it was smoke. Only the mountain in the way had facilitated that illusion. The wind shifted to blow the air towards them, and it brought the scent of death.

Devastation stretched out before them. Where once a small village had stood, there was now ashes and destruction. Surveying the scene from above, Toman, Esset, and Sergeant Warthog hovered, clustered together.

Fire still consumed the village's structures, slowly spreading from one house to the next across grass and hedges between the homes. Some structures were already ash, some nearly so, and only a few were untouched. But fire was the least of it. The earth was scorched or broken in places. Jagged holes and clean slices had demolished many of the buildings before the fires even reached them. And the people…everyone was dead, and no one had gone quietly or swiftly. Toman closed his eyes against a flood of memories.

"Moloch," Toman said. No one gainsaid him. Everyone knew the dark mage was behind this.

"It couldn't have been long before dawn that he’d…finished," Toman said, his voice tight. They hadn't missed him by much.

"There's nothing we could have done anyways," Esset said, but quietly, so quietly he wasn't sure his words even reached his companion's ears before being snatched away by the winds.

"Look for survivors," the sergeant ordered.

"I doubt we'll find any," Toman said bitterly.

"You survived," Esset said. Toman stared at the rubble before answering.

"Sometimes I think he left me alive on purpose," Toman said. Abruptly, his bird dove and began flying at a low altitude to survey the ruin. Esset and Sergeant Warthog joined him, searching and calling out for survivors, but there was only death.

Finally Toman landed his bird and placed his hands on the earth; it was time to bury the dead. The earth slowly began to shift beneath his fingers as Sergeant Warthog landed beside him.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Making something to bury the dead. I don't just animate; I can also create. It just takes longer," Toman replied. The earth swelled, promising to take shape but still amorphous. Sergeant Warthog watched for a time before speaking again.

"What happened here is terrible, but can we be sure this was Moloch?" she asked.

"Yes," Toman said. The silence waxed long and the earth shaped in accordance with Toman's will, rising up and beginning to form four legs and the bulk of a body.

"How can we be sure?" Sergeant Warthog finally asked.

"Have you forgotten? I've seen his aftermath before," Toman replied, his voice emotionless.

"You were just a child then. A very small child, if memory serves," the sergeant said.

"Yes," Toman agreed. "But you don't forget something like that." The earthen form lengthened to include a head-like protrusion, and the legs narrowed. Toman concentrated on the figure for a few moments before continuing. The shaping of earth paused as he pointed.

"Do you see that scorch mark?" he asked.

The sergeant nodded. It was a couple paces from a prone, bloody body.

"I can tell you how that scorch mark came to be. I can tell you exactly what happened. Moloch was here,” Toman said, pointing, “and black lightning arced from his fingers to that spot. He was aiming at that woman, the woman now dead on the ground. She thought he'd missed, and she'd felt an irrational, futile surge of hope as she fled. But, you see, the black lightning entered the ground and shot through it, arcing back up with fingers—claws—of glass to impale her in two dozen places at least. Her own weight snapped the glass tendrils, and she fell back, but she didn't die right away. No, she laid there for some time until she bled to death in agony." Toman could see it happening as he spoke, for he'd seen it before. The face of the newly dead simply painted over the blurred faces of distant memory.

"And that man?" Toman pointed now at a red, mangled corpse that even the sergeant had paled upon witnessing. Even had they known the man in life, there was no recognizing him now. There were no features left to recognize.

"That man was skinned alive. One strip at a time, as he was held immobile by magic. He could only move enough to scream as his flesh was stripped away. The two bodies by that nearby structure would have been his family, and Moloch would have forced them to watch before he burned the child to death in its mother's arms and then killed her with a stroke that laid her open from pelvis to throat.

"I know what happened because I survived the horrors that befell this village. I may have been young, but I'll never forget. I can't."

The sergeant stared at him, her face only neutral from long practice. Toman turned away and resumed shaping his new animation. It slowly took shape as a massive dog; Toman didn't bother putting any details or finishing touches on it—he just sent it to start digging in a field next to the town. They would need many graves.

The sergeant left to do another sweep for survivors as he started on another.

Toman stood back and watched wearily as a roughly human earthen-animation picked up a corpse. The golem tucked in the brutalized body's limbs before sliding its "hands" underneath it and lifting gently. Toman wanted to ensure that at least in death, everyone would be treated with the utmost dignity. The golem plodded to the field where one massive grave waited.

Esset descended on a fiery bird to land beside Toman. Once his own feet were on the ground, the summoned creature vanished in a small spray of sparks and ash. Esset looked at the sun, now high in the sky, marking how much time had passed. He had a dead rabbit in his hand, dangling by the ears.

"No survivors. Nothing at all alive for quite a ways. Even the wildlife is dead. I figured being harvested for death magic wouldn't impact its edibility, so I picked this guy for dinner." Esset waved the rabbit in front of Toman, who just stared at it blankly.

Esset looked away. "Or we could just leave it, if no one's hungry. It was dead anyways."

"Esset…" Toman said.

"Yeah?" Esset had to wait a bit before Toman could articulate his question.

"How does blood magic work? I mean, I know it comes from death and pain and blood, but how does it
work
?" Toman asked. "You're the scholar, you've studied this, right?"

"A bit," Esset admitted. "Honestly, we don't know a ton about magic in general, just
that
it works, and sometimes a bit of how. Blood magic… Well, it seems to be based in life energy. Whenever blood is spilled, energy is released. The amount of magic that's produced is related to the amount of blood spilled and the amount of pain generated.

"Death magic is just a kind of blood magic. The strongest kind. There's a predictable burst of magic that's released in the moment when someone dies. Even people who can't sense magic can still find ways to capture and use that energy." Esset paused before adding, "It's an
easy
kind of magic to do." He sounded sick and disgusted when he said "easy."

"Do you think that's why he does it?" Toman asked.

"Moloch?"

Toman nodded.

"I dunno. Evil is just…evil, sometimes." Esset shrugged.

Toman waited.

"Well, I mean, the Book of Bright Hyrishal says that all men can be redeemed, and it's not like Moloch's a vampire or something, so technically he shouldn't be one hundred percent evil." Esset paused briefly. "Although with everything he's done with blood magic and everything else… It is possible he's sold his soul to the Darkfires. Why, what are you thinking?"

"I don't know," Toman confessed. "I just… I guess I don't understand how someone gets from being human to being…whatever Moloch is. I get wanting to be stronger, I do, and I can even imagine desperation driving someone to use blood magic. And I guess things could snowball from there."

Esset studied Toman for a few moments.

"But that's not what's bothering you," Esset said.

"No. It's something I heard once. I heard he was the son of a nobleman, rich and comfortable, and that they cast him out because they caught him torturing a child. He didn't need power, he had it. He just…wanted to. He enjoyed it," Toman said.

"Moloch's blood magic has kept him young, so he's too old for anyone living to have been around when he came into his power. We can't know if that's true." Esset shifted his weight from foot to foot.

"But that concept bothers you too," Toman said.

Esset shrugged, but his face betrayed his discomfort.

Sergeant Warthog strode up, interrupting their conversation.

"Well, I think we've done all we can here," she said. "As soon as your animations are done burying the dead, we should leave. We'll have to stop and spread word of this on our way, so we’ll want to use as much daylight as we can." The two young men just nodded. All three stared at the destruction of the village, disinclined to move despite their agreement with the sergeant's sentiment. Finally the sergeant broke the silence.

"Do you really think you can take
this
on?" Sergeant Warthog waved an arm towards the annihilated town.

Toman looked at the sergeant, her words galvanizing him with energy. "You think we can witness this and
not try
? We're strong in our own right, Sergeant. With your help and resources, and a good plan, we can take him," Toman said.

Sergeant Warthog shook her head and stared grimly at the dying fires.

Toman waited, but when it became clear she wasn't going to say anything more, he stood in front of her and met her eyes. "First Moloch killed my parents, and then Animator Eldan Atrix, after he took me in. Moloch is the reason why I was all alone before Esset's family took me in. Moloch has been destroying lives, destroying entire
villages,
for a couple centuries at least, and he will keep doing it until he's stopped. Someone has to stop him."

Sergeant Warthog met his gaze and didn't flinch.

"Sergeant, you've seen us fight and you know what we're capable of," Esset said, stepping in, trying to be reasonable. "We're not suggesting that we rush off and challenge him to battle. You know that too. We're strong enough to take him, but not like that. We need a plan, and we need resources.
We need your help
. You know Moloch needs to be stopped—just look around. And you know we can do this."

"No, I don't know that," Sergeant Warthog said, her gaze shifting to Esset. "You boys have amazing gifts, I'll grant you that, but
this
? I don't know."

Toman gritted his teeth and held his tongue.

"Let's not make any decisions right now. We're exhausted and I, for one, am soul-weary," Esset said, voicing Toman's thoughts, albeit more politely. "You're right, Sergeant, let's be on our way."

Toman and the sergeant stared at one another for a few moments, tension present but soon giving way to exhaustion.

"Let's go," Toman finally said. Their mounts came to them, and they departed.

The loft of a barn was sufficient for sleeping quarters, especially given that the sun had set a while ago now.

"At least we notified the surrounding area. It might be pointless as a warning, but at least they'll know what happened," Toman said, sitting leaning against a bale of hay.

"Mhm," Esset agreed, but he said nothing more.

Toman looked over at his brother, who was staring at the ceiling. "I'm surprised you're not trying to jot down everything that's happened in a journal. Normally you don't wait this long."