"Get to the Cellar. Theres too much smoke. Ill be right behind you," I commanded. The infernal pulled herself up, leaning heavily on her stave. I watched Barion closely, preparing to intervene if he pursued her. He didnt seem interested. He simply waited, content to let the forest burn down around us.
"I thought you were iron, boy. I planned to mold you into steel," Barion said, a strange sadness in his voice. "But I was wrong. You were already steel. And I was a fool to not see it."
"I owe much to your teachings, Sir Barion." I held my sword upward in a mock salute, covering one eye. "But I am no longer yours to mold." I summoned the spark and set the rose oil on my sword afla.
"Even to the end, you intrigue ."
He circled . I was expecting another surprise attack from his rapier, my nerves balanced on the edge of a knife. What erged from over his shoulder looked more like a scorpions stinger, angry and red, the tip dripping with dark ichor. It moved almost too quickly for to track. A single blink and I would have missed it.
The stinger plunged forward.
Sohow, I managed to sidestep, batting it away with my flaming sword. It caught fire for a mont, but Barion quickly smothered it in darkness, leaving it unmolested.
He hissed in pain. The fire did hurt him, then. But Barion was much smarter than the demon. He pushed backwards, strike after strike, each intended to kill. I dodged, throwing myself to the side, only to co up to another, swinging over my head. I back-pedaled, the heat of the burning forest growing hotter and hotter.
Barion leapt forward, his stinger plunging directly at my forehead. I ducked under it only to find myself face to face with him, his arm pulled back. There was no ti. His rapier plunged through my gut. He cackled in triumph.
But this was hardly the first ti Id been stabbed. My wounded arm scread as I grabbed his sword hand, trapping his arm. With a burst of strength, I swung my sword into the dark mass where his face should have been. The shadows retreated and Barions head was exposed. He screeched, throwing backwards. His jaw hung off on the left side by a grueso thread, fire scorching his face before the shadows rushed in to quash it.
He growled inhumanly, and his attacks grew much faster. But he didnt try the rapier again, content to pick away at from a distance.
Finally, I was pushed back to the forests edge. The flas licked at my back, setting my robes on fire.
Barion didnt gloat. His stinger pulled back, preparing the killing blow.
"I yield!" I yelled, dropping my sword to the side.
Barion paused mid-strike, confused.
That was all the ti I needed. The bright purple light around us suddenly died as I pulled in the fla. All of the fla. The fire I hated so much. I breathed it in and pulled and pulled until the fire was more of than anything else. It leaked out the pores of my hands, my eyes, my very soul. If only for that mont, I did not hate the fla. It was capable of great cruelty, yes.
But it was more than that.
The fire was a part of , and without it, I would have been lost long ago. So I accepted the fla, and the fla accepted . Sothing rumbled, like a giant stone shifting deep within my soul.
I held my hand out, first, second, and third finger extended, then spoke the word that was now etched in the darkest depths of my being.
"Burn."
The fire rushed out of in a great wave. The shadows fled. Once the robe was eaten away, Barions body was a strange eldritch mass of limbs and flesh. His many hands grabbed at , spasming. He howled as the fire consud him, skin sloughing off white bones into pink-black piles of limbs and charred, desiccated flesh.
Within the ss, a single golden amulet shined up at .
I stared at the ruin of flesh beneath and fell to my knees. Relief surged within , a lifetis worth of tension and fear expunged.
We actually did it.
It was over.
It took less effort than I expected to stop the forest from burning. While the trees burned wildly, at so point, the fire seed to stop. Given the otherworldly aspect of the forest, to so degree, this made sense. Itd be a little strange if a single spell were capable of destroying such an old and magical entity as malevolent as the Everwood. Surely, I wasnt the first demon-fire user to let loose within its confines over thousands of years.
Still, the damage was significant, and a massive ring of trees around the clearing spanning a half-mile radius had burned, lending the cottage a suitably creepy air. The corpse of the demon remained. I eyed it warily before entering the cellar. Now that the mont was over, all adrenaline left , taking my strength with it. I could barely lift the iron doors. Sothing tugged painfully in my gut, beyond the simple pain of where Barion stabbed . Perhaps this isn't the best example, but all I could think of to compare it to were those lonely nights after Lillian, where I drank far into the morning light and woke up in the late evening, quivering and in pain, knowing I had taken on too much but unable to do anything about it after the fact. Only instead of a physical ailnt, I felt it within my very essenceas if I had been on the verge of being torn apart.
From within the cellar, a spear pointed up at . Maya stood firm. Her white, pupil-less eyes brimd with rage. She hadnt expected to co back. That was okay. I hadnt expected to co back. Not this ti at least, not really.
"Going to finish off?" I asked.
The spear clattered onto the floor, then rolled down the stairs with a resounding series of wooden bumps. "I... cannot believe it," she said, her mouth working as if the words wouldnt quite co out. "You really killed him?"
My legs gave out on on the second step. Just decided to stop working. My arms pinwheeled. Maya caught gods she was strong for her sizeher hands grabbing beneath my shoulders. My chewed on arm ached. She grunted, leaning against the wall and kneeling before .
"Hes dead. If that fire didnt get him, nothing will." I handed her the golden amulet. She took it, staring at it in disbelief, then held it to her chest, starting to cry. "Its an anchor. For the demon. Iheia above. You saved us." She touched her forehead to mine tenderly. "This is my vow. I will never forget this, my friend."
"We saved us. Its nothing," I said guiltily. My actions might seem like altruism in her eyes, but it had not co nearly so freely. I saved her. But I also let her die. If anything, my actions this final ti had balanced the scales. Maya caught my discomfort, and seed to misplace it, realizing for the first ti the extent of my wounds.
"Nilend you are a ss!"
I snorted. "Prone to injuries, Im afraid." Mayas hands glowed green. She focused on the gut wound, a strange crackling sensation radiating from the wound into my spine, then focused on my arm. I flexed it experintally, painlessly, then smiled. "Youre a miracle worker."
"Maya?" We both jumped at the voice. It was the boy I saw so long ago down in the cellar, missing the eye. Only, now he wasnt. Twin blue eyes studied , alert. He held her spear to the side and it towered comically above him. Five other children hid behind him. A weight lifted off , seeing that they were more or less intact. Barion really had laid off them after I took his assistant out of play.
"Co et my children," Maya smiled joyfully, tugging up and pulling after her. She introduced to them, one after the other, and they crowded around us. There was Eliza and Fiona, two little girls who looked so similar they could have been twins. Victor was a large boy, taller than by an inch though he was two years younger. Oscar was the smallest of the bunch, only coming up to my waist. Finally, there was Lucius, the brown-haired boy who held the spear. There was sothing about his bearing that I recognized.
It was a hunch, but I took a shot anyway. "Whats your house na, Lucius?"
"Timbermour," He replied automatically, then grimaced, realizing hed been baited. "Whats your house na?" He eyed defiantly.
Valen. But of course, I couldnt say that.
"Lucius," Maya scolded. "Dont be rude. Cairn isnt a noble, hes an apothecarys apprentice. He doesnt have a house na."
"With posture like that and shoes like those?" Lucius looked up and down skeptically. "Royal apothecary, more like."
Little bastard was going to out . Before Maya could think too long on that, I clapped my hands together. "Whos hungry?"
There was a chorus of cheers in response. As we erged from the cellar, there was a gust of smoke that sent so of the children to coughing. Maya instructed them to put their shirts over their mouths, and we escorted them to the house. Maya paused at the door, looking at the corpse of the demon still lying in the center of the clearing. I rembered what she said about regeneration.
"Should we take care of it now?" I asked, hoping she would say no. As Id been too nervous to eat this morning, my stomach rumbled with every thought of food. But the discomfort of going hungry for a little while longer paled in comparison to the idea of having to fight that nightmare again.
"We should." Maya walked towards it slowly, lost in thought. "Cairn?"
"Yes?"
"If you think what you did in the cellar went unnoticed, it did not."
"Would it hurt you to miss a thing or two every once in a while, Maya?" I asked, grimacing.
"It would, actually." Maya said. "During my ti with master-" she stopped, correcting herself. "With Barion. You knew him for little more than a week and probably already noticed he was prone to mood swings."
"Thats putting it mildly."
"Indeed. I had to be attuned to his every whim and emotion, or things would go poorly for ." Maya indicated the house. "And worse for them. So I beca adept at reading human emotions."
"Whatever he was, Barion wasnt human." I said testily. We had just won a great victory. Why couldnt she let it go?
"Perhaps. My point is, I wonder what it is you hide. Especially now, after everything. If it is that you are not truly an apothecary, I do not carethough that would make wonder how you learned the trade so thoroughly. If it is that you are a noble, that might even make respect you more." Maya smiled. "A human noble, treating an infernal like a personeven an equal. It is the stuff of fae tales."
I ached at that because I knew that she wasnt lying. But the one thing she couldnt imagine was the truth: that my father was the king, and the sole engineer of so much pain and suffering for her peopleher entire race. Still, I needed to tell her. I had faced down a demon and a monster, but sohow the prospect of speaking those words seed so much more daunting in comparison.
I readied myself. "Maya, I-"
She grabbed my arm suddenly.
"Cairn."
"What?" I asked, off-balance.
Her eyes narrowed, staring at the body of the demon "It is still alive."
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