12-14-2021, 01:36 AM
The heat flared from the grate of fire. It cast all their shapes into flickering shadows while power poured across Nikolai’s senses. It was like standing in the heart of a volcano while it shook the earth. It spoke to him: the fire, rock, power and death. Together, they flared his eyes and pound his heart into another man’s body. Nikolai had never felt anything like it before. Not at the Arch. Not with the Ijiraq. Not amid the most remote mountains of the Himalayas. This was home. This was his kingdom. His world. And he was one with it. He was it.
His feet carried him forward unaware he was moving. The grate of fire slashed bloody screams into a sizzling grinder of death. Yet he walked straight to it, fire reaching closer. He pulled the fire toward himself. It didn’t change the structure of Nox’s weave, but it ignited something of Nikolai’s like pouring gasoline on a candle. The fire snaked along threads, ten, then twenty then more than he could count, like a net, Nikolai pulled the fire closer. Yet the smoke, flame and danger danced away from his skin and clothes and hair. He was inside the volcano. Inside it and completely protected.
The next thing he knew, he stood on the other side of Nox’s grate. The horde of animals large and small pressing up, piling like rats spilling from a drowning ship. Yet those that came close to the man-shape cocoon of fire caught alight themselves. They split around Nikolai, climbing and slashing around him on both sides, pressing onward toward the gate and their doom.
From behind, all that could be seen was this man of fire delving into the scrambling darkness until a jet of white-blue fire streaked outward in the blink of an eye as far as could be seen into the distance. Nik’s power raged hot as the flame, incinerating anything it touched. Howls of pain filled the air that was quickly choked with ashfall.
And so it continued, dwindling the numbers reaching the gate.
His feet carried him forward unaware he was moving. The grate of fire slashed bloody screams into a sizzling grinder of death. Yet he walked straight to it, fire reaching closer. He pulled the fire toward himself. It didn’t change the structure of Nox’s weave, but it ignited something of Nikolai’s like pouring gasoline on a candle. The fire snaked along threads, ten, then twenty then more than he could count, like a net, Nikolai pulled the fire closer. Yet the smoke, flame and danger danced away from his skin and clothes and hair. He was inside the volcano. Inside it and completely protected.
The next thing he knew, he stood on the other side of Nox’s grate. The horde of animals large and small pressing up, piling like rats spilling from a drowning ship. Yet those that came close to the man-shape cocoon of fire caught alight themselves. They split around Nikolai, climbing and slashing around him on both sides, pressing onward toward the gate and their doom.
From behind, all that could be seen was this man of fire delving into the scrambling darkness until a jet of white-blue fire streaked outward in the blink of an eye as far as could be seen into the distance. Nik’s power raged hot as the flame, incinerating anything it touched. Howls of pain filled the air that was quickly choked with ashfall.
And so it continued, dwindling the numbers reaching the gate.