Water Kanin: Chapter 44 - Inferno

Fire sears around us as we hit the ground and roll. Beneath the flames is something solid and physical, and that’s what we grapple with, shredding our glass flail to form more limbs in an attempt to pin our foe down. Determination courses through us. We have to beat this creature. We need to. And then—

Our mind skips. Then what? Kill it? No, that doesn’t feel right. Yet that magnetic pull is stronger than ever, and we feel like that should mean something. But what? Even as we fight it, attempting to throw the fiery creature into the ground, we equally don’t want to let it escape our grasp. We can’t let it get away, because… because…

Amidst the inferno, a different kind of light flickers at its core. The flickering of a soul. There. That’s the source of the pull. That’s where the sense of recognition had come from. Now we understand.

We need to consume it.

Unfortunately, it seems to have come to the same conclusion about us.

A flaming limb kicks out, catching us in our torso and launching us at a wall. We crash into it, half buried in the rubble, but before we have a chance to extricate ourself, it’s leaping at us once more. We slash two of our limbs before us, forming each into a Void Scythe just as the fire being reaches us, lacerating itself across our blades. Bracing against the wall, we push back, slashing the Scythes forward. The creature howls in pain as it crashes to the warehouse floor.

Someone is yelling. Portions of the warehouse have caught fire. At least two of the walls are peppered with holes and crumbling. The building groans.

The living fire surges from its crater in the floor, dismissively lashing out at a nearby figure. The person ragdolls across the room.

Alarm spikes through us. In a moment of clarity, we rip our attention away from the fire being, frantically looking about the building.

Vorigan was the one flung away. Yedzaquib is nowhere to be seen. But we don’t care about them. Where—

There’s movement outside one of the crumbling walls. Dawn light is spilling through the streets, half illuminating a pair of struggling figures.

We launch ourself across the room. The fire monster tenses and springs to meet our attack. But we dash by them instead, skidding out into the street.

Zyneth has one hand clamped on the spider construct, stopped at his lower back, its legs pinwheeling wildly in an attempt to climb higher. In his other hand is the obsidian knife, flickering with summoned fire, which he’s using to fend off a mind-controlled Pogra.

We grab the spider construct first, yanking it off Zyneth and smashing it against the ground. Then turn to—

Living flames crashes into Pogra, and the orc vanishes beneath a twisting wall of fire. We can feel its anger as clearly as the heat of its inferno. It’s mad that we ignored it. Frustrated that we ran away. We both understand that by the end of this conflict, only one of us will emerge.

“What in the heavens is going on?” Zyneth cries, retreating from the heat.

We think we understand. But there’s no time to explain.

The creature bolts forward again, so we pivot to the side, drawing it away from Zyneth. A claw of fire grabs one of our limbs and pulls. We break the Chains in the limb, and instead of it slamming us to the ground, it stumbles, finding itself only grasping a handful of glass shards. We stab each of them into its palm. It screeches in anger.

Confidence surges within us. We are stronger than this creature. We are unbothered by its flames. It lacks our dexterity. And most importantly, it is younger than us, which means it understands very little.

But it could still kill Zyneth without even trying, and it won’t stop its rampage until it has consumed us—or until we consume it. We need to put an end to this battle quickly.

We yank all of our loose glass back from the creature, reforming the pieces into a limb. Blood splatters to the ground, hissing and steaming like magma. The creature doesn’t seem to notice. It heedlessly flings itself back toward us, extending shimmering white claws.

Having given up on grabbing us, it’s now slashing with condensed jets of flame. We counter, and the heat bites into our glass. Pain radiates through our limb where the creature presses down on us, digging its burning claws into our glass. We jerk back, unChaining the bits of glass that the creature has sunk its claws into, while launching more Void Scythes of our own. It’s learning how to damage us. Maybe we underestimated it.

From a safer distance, we send spears of glass into its body, stabbing into the solid mass that’s there. It howls at our attack, but in the next instant we’re the one hissing in pain as all the glass embedded in its form goes white-hot. We have to turn our sense of touch off in those pieces, abandoning them.

The creature stalks after us with renewed confidence.

With all its focus on us, it doesn’t notice when Zyneth dashes toward it from behind.

Fear lurches through us. “No!”

Zyneth plunges his blade into its back.

The creature screams, spinning around to slash a whip of flame at Zyneth. He raises his arms before him, and the blow strikes him across his forearms, sending him careening back. We roar, leaping on the creature before it can pursue him. We hit the hilt in its back—the hilt of a blade we can sense, we belatedly realize. It’s the Attuned obsidian dagger we made for him. But it isn’t melting like the rest of our glass.

The monster screeches as the knife is plunged deeper, and it thrashes, trying to throw us off. When that fails, its flames flare higher, whiter, hotter—

We let go, leaping off to land by Zyneth. His shirt sleeves are charred and melted where the creature struck, and our soul squeezes in panic as we look for the state of his flesh underneath. We raise a fearful claw toward him. “Hurt?”

Zyneth dismissively bats our monstrous void claw away. “I’m fine! You’re not the only one with fire resistance.”

Our relief is short lived as the creature limps to its feet, its blood hissing and popping on the ground as it trickles from the wound.

We start to step in front of Zyneth, but he scoffs at this as well. “Oh please, Kanin, I am not some helpless bystander in need of protection. Now treat me with some respect and let’s finish this together.”

He’s right. If we spend the whole fight worrying about him, we’ll only be distracted—more likely to get hurt. We’re partners. He trusts us: we should trust him in kind.

We jerk the obsidian blade out of the fire creature’s back, and it screams, staggering to the side. The knife flies back over to Zyneth, who snatches it out of the air. He glances at us with a faint smile. “Handy, that.”

We jump back into the fight once more.

We slash at it with claws and spear-tipped limbs. Zyneth stabs and throws. Between the two of us, the beast begins to retreat, driven back toward the half-destroyed warehouse.

We can feel its confidence giving way to uncertainty—we can read it in its soul. That desire is still there, though. The magnetic pull hasn’t lessened. Now it’s only a matter of time.

As the creature dodges one of our Void Scythes, it backs into the warehouse—and runs into a purple line of magic. The creature swipes at it, but another spider construct launches a second line, wrapping around a leg. Its fire flares, and the lines of magic disintegrate in the inferno. A third spider joins in, each of them launching new magical tethers at the monster as it swats and cuts through each of them.

Then Yedzaquib drops from a nearby wall, splaying his hands. Threads of magic spread between his fingers, and when he flings his hands outward, the spell balloons in size. It continues to grow as it flies toward the living fire, and when it collides with the creature, a portion of the wall, and the warehouse floor, it sticks to all of them. The fire howls, straining against the net it appears to be magically adhered to. As it thrashes, fire flaring blindingly bright, one of the threads snaps.

“Do you two intend to stand there uselessly much longer?” Yedzaquib casually asks. “It will not remain restrained for long.”

He’s… helping us? It’s too bizarre to wrap our head around. He could have used this time to escape. So why stick around? Why lay a trap and activate it on the creature when he could have used it on us instead? Maybe he deemed this was the best way to ensure his own safety.

Two more threads burn away in the creature’s inferno. Zyneth swears, then charges a ball of lightning into his hand.

We don’t like it either, but we also won’t let this opportunity go to waste.

Zyneth dives forward, and we jump to keep pace. The creature swings a whip of fire toward Zyneth, and we catch it with our limbs, ripping it out of the way. Zyneth slams his palm into the creature’s core and activates his spell. We let go just as the burst of electricity rips through the fire.

Half of Yedzaquib’s threads evaporate. The creature convulses, and then its flames flicker down to a fraction of its previous size. We pounce on it, ripping the rest of the threads free as it crashes to the ground. We pin each of its limbs to the floor with one of our own.

It’s like the creature has been doused by a bucket of water. Small, candle-sized flames ripple over its body. Beneath is a cracked and blackened shell, like a field of cooling lava.

We aren’t sure what sort of creature this is—or what it might have been. It is roughly human sized and shaped, apart from being made of fire and stone, but that tells us very little.

It’s stunned, not dead. We can still feel its desire to fight back, though. It wants to win, overpower us, consume our soul. But it has lost. It just hasn’t accepted it.

Where Zyneth’s strike hand landed, the stone is cracked, exposing the shimmering magma beneath its skin. And only a few inches beneath, its soul glimmers invitingly. Our glass burns where we’re touching it; it will destroy whatever glass we might use to dig out its core. But this is an acceptable loss for obtaining the prize within. We need to take it. We need to make it part of us.

Yet the intensity with which we want to eat the creature’s soul also troubles us. This is different from before. We don’t want this soul because it is a soul—we don’t need it for its source of magic. This desire goes much deeper. Something primordial.

Our claws hover over the wound in its chest as we look at Zyneth. He isn’t stopping us, because he thinks we’re slaying a monster. We look at Yedzaquib. He isn’t stopping us, because he knows we’re not.

It takes more mental effort than we’ve ever had to use before, but we pull back. Its soul is still drawing us in like gravity, but we force ourself to wait. To think. We ask Echo for a Check.

There’s a faint mental crackle, and nothing more.

“What are you waiting for?” Yedzaquib asks. “Aren’t you going to absorb it?”

We press through the mental static and try again. Broken words reach us.

“What is it?” Zyneth asks, keeping away from both the stunned creature and Yedzaquib. “Was this part of your plan?”

“It most certainly was not,” Yedzaquib says. “Though this is a welcome twist of fate. Beneficial to both of us, likely.”

“Forgive me for remaining skeptical.”

We try once more, focusing on Echo. On the System. On our Interface. It’s never been this hard before. It’s like something is interfering. Finally, painfully, her words flicker through our vision and mind.

[Name: Anika]

[Species: Human]

[Class: Ranger]

[Level: 19]

[HP: 37/125]

[Mana: 11/95]

[Role: Explorer]

[Inferno: 100%]

We flinch back in horror.

Name. It has a name. It’s a person, not a creature.

But as terrible as this revelation is, it’s the last stats that makes our soul go cold. It has a role.

On this entire planet, we’ve yet to encounter anyone besides us who has a role. No person, no animal, no monster. Until now. The implications are immediately apparent to us.

We found one of the lost souls.