"Oliver!" Claudia urged. "There's divinity swirling off that fire! We can't leave him to do whatever he wishes!"
Oliver didn't need telling twice. He dashed up the steps even faster, forcing the druid around the other side of the fire to escape. Oliver chased after him again. The druid gave a deep and manic laugh as he danced away.
His escaping was quickly coming to an end, though, the distance between them gradually closed and within the span of a short few seconds, Oliver's sword was just a hair's breadth away.
The man yelped his dismay in that manic manner that he had. He seed to be building up the courage to do sothing, for he would continually reach his hand towards the fire, only to pull it back in a nervousness.
Just as Oliver's sword ca for his back, he finally made the commitnt.
"MISTRESS PANDORA, EMPOWER !" He shouted, diving straight into the heart of the blue flas.
They enveloped him instantly. He scread, unlike those before him. It seed as though he could feel every ounce of pain that the fire dealt to him.
The fur of the bullhead erupted in fla, haloing the man in its light, as he staggered amidst the fire, his flesh burning away as he howled at the top of his lungs his dismay.
He was forced to take a knee and stagger, falling out of the fire, but the flas ca with him, rcilessly savaging him even as he struggled. It was a horrific sight. Those before hadn't given up an ounce of struggle. They'd gone to the flas willingly at his beck and call. It was as though he was forced to feel the pain in their place.
One would think that, away from the fire as he was, the flas around him would lessen. That was true only at first. They started to peter out, once the most flammable parts of him had burned away, but as soon as they did, the blue fire itself seed to reach towards him, as though sentint, bathing him in light of its own.
He scread even more loudly then. The scream of a man whose brain was tearing itself in half. The line between him and the bull-head was continually blurred, as the fire lted them.
In fact, the line between all of him was blurred. It was hard to make out his shape anymore, amidst those blue flas. They had seed so clear before, but now a darkness settled in their centre. An inky darkness at that. The sort of thing that Oliver recognized. Those tendrils of blackness that had reached up out of the earth to make monsters.
Was this not the sa sensation?
He shivered, and Ingolsol confird what he was seeing.
"Now there's a wench of a woman. The Old Gods should stay dead, if you ask . What I wouldn't give to cast them all down again. The world has been considerably less exciting since then," Ingolsol said.
"What are you talking about?" Oliver murmured, his voice tensed, as he was forced to watch a man burn alive, unable to get any closer for the heat of the fire.
"…" Ingolsol paused, seeming to consider his question. "I… I don't think I know. Damnation. What sort of wenches do I need to burn to have access to the whole of my being?"
He'd complained about such things before. Though fragnts of divinity, neither Ingolsol nor Claudia had full access to the wealth of knowledge that the Gods themselves knew. They would occasionally slip down a line of thought as they reached for it, presenting sothing profound, only to have no idea where it had co from.
"You owe a burnt village for this, boy," Ingolsol said. "I've been far too cooperative for my own good. You promised Gargon. You promised justice. You haven't even swung a sword at any of those nobles that ca your way yet – and still, you force to sit in the presence of the likes of Pandora."
Oliver let him ramble. He could sense a nervousness to Ingolsol that was atypical. The fragnt of the Dark God was usually aloof in his conniving. It was rare to see him rattle by anything.
The darkness at the centre of the blue expanded, as the body began to contort and tremble. The movents that had stopped a short few monts before as the last of the man's flesh had burned away, they now started up again with renewed vigour as spasms. Spasms so violent that they cast the body off the floor occasionally.
Now the aura was building. An aura not too dissimilar to that of a Hobgoblin in its overwhelming, though Oliver doubted that it would be a re Hobgoblin that they were confronted with.
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"Send the soldiers back!" He shouted down to Northman. "It's coming!"
"RETREAT!" Northman ordered without hesitation. He knew nothing of the magical or the mystical, and hardly anything of the monstrous. He was only too happy to follow an order from soone that had a higher understanding of it than is.
The soldiers beat a hasty retreat away from the steps and Oliver began to do the sa. It was not a mont too soon for either of them, it seed, for the flas swelled, and then contracted, before exploding in a massive off-shoot of energy.
The wave of it hit Oliver from the back, casting him forward several feet. He hit the ground and rolled swiftly back up. The soldiers were further away from him, but even they felt a lesser version of it, enough to nearly cast a few of them off their feet.
Then they were turning, to see what such a blast had co from, looking towards the heart of it all.
The flas had disappeared, or so it seed, for there was far less blue than before. The only glimr of it that remained had gone back towards the centre of the platform, burning where the bonfire had, though this fla was barely as big as a candle.
Everything that it had been – whatever it was – had been given away, to that druid who'd begged for. Or what even was he now? It was impossible to say. He certainly wasn't dead – it seed easier to say what he wasn't. That maddening dance with the flas that he'd endured, that act that should have killed him… it hadn't.
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