Fire Within: Book Two of Fire and Stone (Stories of Fire and Stone 2) (52 page)

Toman kept himself mostly detached from the battle, trying to watch everything at once, waiting for his opening to strike. That was when he noticed Tseka suddenly sag. She’d been holding strong against the relentless onslaught, but then she’d swayed slightly, catching his attention before she began to collapse. Toman made it to her side in time to keep her from falling. He glanced at the bandages—they were soaked through. She needed a healer, but Erizen certainly couldn’t be spared from the battle long enough to help her. She just had to hold on, and he whispered that in her ear as he draped her arm over his shoulders to support her.

The battle waged longer yet, until Moloch lifted his hands. A pure white light flashed outwards, making them all blink, and when they looked again, every one of Esset’s summons and spells from Erizen’s attacks had vanished. Only their shields stood.

“Do you see now?” Moloch asked them in the brief silence. His summons stood motionless for the moment.

“Do you see?” Moloch asked again. “Do you see how futile this is? How
puny
you are? How
weak
.” He spat the last word.

“He’s bluffing. He has to be near the end of his rope,” Erizen murmured to them. Esset glanced at the mage, but he was not terribly reassured. Erizen was sweating and breathing heavily; his normally neat ponytail had succumbed to a few fly-aways. The cocky mage looked far from being as all-powerful as he liked to claim. Moloch didn’t even look tired.

“Your games are pitiful, and they grow boring. I will admit that you have inconvenienced me, but you have done no more than that. I even played your game. Look at these
quaint
creatures I have called to fight you.” Moloch gestured at the incarnations of famine, plague, and slaughter where they stood and hovered, waiting for his order.

“You were ever the one for games,” Toman replied. He wasn’t sure what Moloch was playing at; perhaps he was buying time for something, but Toman knew his own group needed the breather this delay was giving them.

“What can I say? I get bored,” Moloch said cavalierly.

“Too bad you only wish this were a game,” Toman said then—he knew the mage, so perhaps he could play him. Anger made one do foolish things, and if Erizen was right, maybe they could end this.

“Once before, you deluded yourself into thinking you could beat me. Don’t you remember?” Moloch prodded back. “Perhaps you missed me. Don’t worry, there is always space in my dungeon for you. I enjoyed our time together too. For the trouble you caused me—and that Animator before you—I will never tire of torturing you.”

“I will kill you,” Toman promised, his tone dark and his gaze bleak.

Moloch laughed, but then the sky over him darkened and a mass of stone dropped from the sky. A great stone dragon had broken free of Moloch’s distant army of summons and come to join the battle. Toman didn’t hesitate or pull any blows; the dragon pounded on the shield with great echoing booms as Esset’s summons rematerialized and rejoined the battle.

“Stop!” Moloch screamed in rage. “You miserable nothings can’t hope to win against me! I am all-powerful! I am immortal!” They could barely hear him over the din of the battle. Toman had never heard the mage scream like that before, and for a moment, a fierce hope blossomed in his chest. That hope was paralyzed a moment later when a tense pressure permeated the air.

Moloch stood with his arms stretched out from his sides, palms to the air. Everyone’s shields vanished, and the summons were rent apart in an instant. Toman felt Tseka shudder against him even as his own knees threatened to buckle. He didn’t feel it when he did collapse; nor did he see Erizen beside him slump to his knees and then over onto his side. He was away: apart: detached. His soul was separated from his body; he somehow felt nothing and everything at once. He floated above the battlefield, deprived of his senses yet in full knowledge of where and how everything laid.

Only Moloch stood, arms outstretched, head cast back, eyes closed. Esset shuddered and fell to one knee, but then a searing fire lit through his body. He felt a colossal power grab hold of his soul and begin to tear it from him; then he felt talons of fire grasp it back and burn away the offending power. When he was able to look up again, he saw the phoenix manifested next to him. He didn’t remember summoning her, but he must have, for her to be here. Tseka, Toman, and Erizen were unconscious—dead?—on the ground. Even Toman’s animations had gone still.

A cry rose up but was strangled in his throat. Moloch didn’t see him, didn’t see that Esset wasn’t prone on the ground as the others were, and the mage had no shields up. Moloch was vulnerable; all Esset had to do was call a single summon down on him, and the mage was dead.

No.

The voice spoke in his mind, and it took Esset a second to realize it was the phoenix’s voice. Esset opened his mouth to disobey, but his throat had dried to a point where no sound could come out.

No,
the phoenix repeated.
Do not interfere. His end comes by his own hand.

Esset opened his mouth to ask her how—how Moloch’s end was coming, and how his companions might be saved, but she spoke with the question unasked. She didn’t need to hear the question aloud.

He has raised the Ghostmaker. The souls of the entire kingdom are his; their power, his.

Esset tried to speak again and failed again. As he watched, pale clouds whipped towards him from over the hills. Some he caught more than a glimpse of, and he saw faces and rough forms—they were like people: ghosts. They were the souls reaped by the Ghostmaker. He wanted to scream; he wanted to summon. But he didn’t need to speak to summon; clarity of thought was all that mattered in the end. Esset focused his will, but the phoenix cut into his thoughts again.

No,
she said for the third time.

No!
Esset thought back.
I have to save them!

Then wait,
the phoenix counseled.

The pale souls swirled around Moloch, and Esset saw the Dark Mage grin and his eyes open. Still the mage didn’t see Esset watching, but the summoner knew it was only a matter of time. Esset didn’t understand why the phoenix kept stopping him—surely his chance to strike was passing, the window closing.

Kill him now and their souls are lost,
she whispered in his mind. Esset was forced to trust that there was another alternative. He felt rather than saw the phoenix flutter behind him. Her dainty talons gripped the collar of his coat and the soft, warm feathers on her belly pressed against his hair. Then her wings wrapped around his head and he found himself looking at the world through her transparent wing-feathers. That was when he saw the truth.

Esset looked at Moloch and saw the web of power stretching out from him across the kingdom. The lines of power burned black and their power was undeniable. Every soul, in comparison, was a beautiful white light, a candescent orb that flowed into the mage to become a tiny pinprick within him. But inside the mage himself there was a wound, a great, jagged black fissure in his soul. Instinctively, Esset knew it was the wound the phoenix had inflicted when Esset had first summoned her, the one that had left him howling in agony every time he tried to use magic, and every time magic touched him.

Moloch has brought about his own undoing,
the phoenix whispered. Esset’s vision refocused, and for a moment, he saw a pale orb in the center of the crack. It seemed to press against the crack, to drive it open further.

Your brother’s soul is as impervious as stone. Moloch himself helped forge him thus.

If that was true—and Esset prayed that it was—then Esset owed his brother an apology. He was ashamed that he had doubted Toman. But even his faith in the phoenix and his god couldn’t shake the fear that, even still, he would lose his brother.

Esset watched as the pale light worked at the wound of the soul, like a dull but persistent blade working to reopen the stitches of a partially-healed wound of flesh. Esset was watching his brother’s soul so closely that he almost didn’t notice when Moloch physically shuddered. Esset refocused his vision to watch the mage; Moloch’s eyes widened and stared straight ahead, but he still didn’t see Esset. His hands came in to grasp at his chest, as if his heart gave him pain. He paled, then began clawing at his own chest. His mouth opened in a wordless scream, and he fell to his knees; Esset could only watch, entranced. Pale lights still came, swirling around him and absorbing into him, faster now than before.

“No.” Moloch’s whimper was barely audible. He jerked back, then rocked forward again. The pale clouds swarmed around him in a continuous stream. Moloch flailed his arms, as if trying to swat them away. Then he screamed.

Part of Esset had thought that he’d like to see Moloch in pain, but he didn’t. Maybe that was a good thing, that he didn’t even like seeing pure evil suffer to this degree, but he found himself wishing that he could end it. He steeled himself against it; he wouldn’t risk the souls of these people, of his friends and of his brother, to save a monster like Moloch. So the screaming continued.

Moloch collapsed backwards onto the scorched earth and writhed in agony. Esset tried to turn his head away, but the phoenix held him fast. Even so, she wasn’t heartless either; she shifted his vision so he could see inside the mage once more.

The black, twisted crack within the mage was twice as wide as it had been, and Toman’s wasn’t the only soul pushing it wider now. Other pale lights crowded at the edges of the crevices, pushing or pulling it open, splitting him further open a hairsbreadth at a time. Their progress was painstaking but undeniable. Then, all at once, their hard work paid off.

Esset found his vision banished in a white light. The phoenix unfolded her wings from before his eyes as white light spilled from Moloch in the visual spectrum as well. The light grew in intensity until it was blinding, forcing Esset to shield his eyes with his arm. All at once, the light vanished, and just as Esset lowered his arm, every one of the souls Moloch had absorbed exploded away from him at once.

It was glorious; their brilliant lights rushed high into the sky and then fanned out to rush back to each body that lay soulless where it had been left. Esset had never seen anything so beautiful. White lights entered Toman, Tseka, and Erizen’s bodies on the ground next to him and they stirred. Esset rushed to his brother’s side and rested a hand on his shoulder, but movement on the hill made him look towards Moloch again.

The Dark Mage Lord—the all-powerful, wholly evil, immortal man—staggered to his feet. He stared at Esset in disbelief even as Esset stared back.

“No,” Moloch gasped once, and Esset saw glowing white veins begin to trace across Moloch’s skin. As the summoner looked on, the veins glowed even brighter and split into cracks, then spread across every surface of the mage’s body. The light devoured the mage; when it vanished, the mage’s robes collapsed to the ground, leaving no trace of the monster himself behind.

Esset stared at the empty mound of clothes until he felt his brother’s hand clasp his arm.

“Moloch,” Toman gasped, looking around, unable to see their enemy. Esset felt his face split into an unstable grin, and by his brother’s answering expression, knew his sanity was feared for.

“Dead,” Esset said. Toman’s expression went vacant, and Esset took both his shoulders in his hands.

“
Dead,
” Esset repeated. “Moloch is
dead
.” Toman stared at him a moment longer before his expression changed and he bowed his head. The animator’s shoulders shook; Esset didn’t know if his brother was laughing, or crying, or both—it didn’t matter. On either side of them, Erizen and Tseka roused as well.