Volume 2, Chapter 13: The Devouring Flames

{266 Days Remaining}

From the center of the chamber, I slowly proceeded toward the door and opened it, a metallic creaking sound accompanying the door's motion.

Naked, but not feeling vulnerable at all, I entered the passageway, which was wide enough for three people. The passageway went on for perhaps ten feet or so before branching into two directions, left and right. It was dimly lit by low-burning torches, but there was not one human to be seen.

Arriving at the end of the corridor, I turned to the right, not particularly caring about the direction. At the end of the corridor was a large iron door with a circular shaped handle affixed to it for pushing and pulling the door.

I pushed opened the door and found myself inside a large square room. Inside the room were rectangular cages numbering more than twenty at first glance. Inside these cages were children with dark eyes of despair. Their ages, if I had to guess, ranged from six to fourteen years old.

A few of the nearby children in the iron cages turned their heads toward me, their eyes showing even more despair upon seeing a strange, naked man with long white hair. There was not a shred of hope in their eyes. And no doubt, they were thinking the worst of me.

“Please help me,” the small girl closest to me said in a weak voice. It was a voice that could only result from lack of food and water. “You do not look like one of them.” The girl's small lips trembled as if she was about to burst into tears at any moment. Though she was fearful and devoid of any hope, there was still intelligence in her eyes. “Please. I will do anything. Just get me out from this place.”

I looked into the girl's small eyes of soft brown. She looked around thirteen years old. “Why? What would I gain from helping you?” I was feeling a tiny bit intrigued by my first interaction with a human, and a child no less.

“Help me and I will obey your every word. Just get me out of here,” the small girl said softly, her hands tightly gripping the iron bars of the cage.

Selfishness, I understood. Self-preservation, I also understood. The girl was brave and selfish for asking help only for herself. The other children, she must have known, would have only weighed her down.

It was a shame though.

Unlike my counterpart, I held no human sentiments. Neither did I held any sort of pity for her or any of the other caged children. I only felt indifferent to their suffering.

I left the room without even looking back once, a weak scream of despair accompanying my leave.

I retraced my steps back to where the passageway branched off into two directions, and chose the right path this time, the memory of the small girl in dirty rags already far from my mind.

There were two guards patrolling the right passageway, but before they could even shout out a warning, both of them were dead; their unspoken screams silenced forever, devoured by the black Flames of Interitum. I had shot the jet of flames toward their faces so that their heads would be devoured first. So that neither of them would have time to scream—they no longer had any faces, or even a head, to shout out any warnings.

Then, nothing was left of them. Not even ashes.

I entered the first door to my left, which led me to a large room, its floor made entirely out of marbled stone. Multiple wooden tables, benches, and chairs were interspersed evenly. The plates of half-eaten food on the tables reminded me of my hunger.

A reminder that it was another thing that I would have to add to my growing list of offenses.

Veena's father stood at one end, speaking to a group of hooded assassins, some of whom were standing and others sitting. There were also small figures mixed among the group, most likely the Novices, if Veena had been telling the truth about it.

Lady luck was smiling down on me. I had found Veena's father only on my second try. And I thought I would have had to search through all of those rooms, not that it would have been that hard anyway.

I waved a small greeting toward Veena's father, an ugly smile formed on my face.

“You! How did you get free!” he shouted, his voice reaching across the room. The surprise in his eyes were obvious.

I strode calmly toward the group of black-clothed assassins, while at the same time spreading my magic to set up a circle of perimeter.

The assassins drew their weapons free. Most of them held swords, while only a few held daggers. There were also a few other strange weapons mixed in. They had not been expecting an attack, else they would have come up with range weapons.

Their stances and features were familiar to me. They were the features of trained men, killers forged by harsh training. The subtle tension of their bodies—they were like coiled snakes about to strike at its prey.

Once I had drawn the circular perimeter of magic, pillars of red-orange flames shot upward, all of them reaching up to the same height—twelve feet. They just about touched the ceiling of the room. The circle of fire I had made was huge, having a diameter of sixty feet, just enough to encompass the group of assassins in the room.

The magic was a constant drain on my supply, but it was negligible. I could maintain it—it was incomparable to the drainage even a small amount of what the Flames of Interitum cost. And had it been my counterpart working the magic, the assassins would have already sensed it; Veena, if she could be believed, had told me that the assassins could sense magic through a secret training they underwent.

But I was not my weaker counterpart and was proficient at hiding my black-colored magic, so expressions of surprise were seen, though they were hidden by the shadows the dimly lit room cast. Most of the assassins were also wearing hoods, so it would have been hard to see their faces even with my dragon eyes.

I could have killed them all very easily with magic, but that would have been boring. It was unmatched to the feeling I would have from killing them with my own hands.

Just as expected, a few of the assassins already broke free from their surprise at being surrounded by the pillars of flames. They were cautiously making their way through, spreading out to surround me. They were trained killers, elite assassins, so naturally, encountering a few unexpected surprises would not stop them from remaining calm and collected.

They also paid no attention to the fact that I was naked.

The first assassin to come running at me was an unhooded woman with short black hair. She held twin daggers in her hands, and took the frontal charge, while four other assassins flanked at my sides, two to each side.

I let them all attack me, their weapons bouncing harmlessly off of me like steel against steel. Had they aimed at my eyes though, I would have blocked.

“Was that suppose to hurt?” I said, laughing a little at their faces, which were still calm despite their hopeless situation.

The retreating woman growled at me. “I will cut your cock off, monster. Let's see how tough you are there.”

Her words were the signal for the start of my attack.

Before the female assassin even knew what happened, I had gotten close to her, my right hand clutching at her slim throat. Then I lifted her off the ground as far as my right arm could extend, which put her off the ground a little more than two feet.

Using her as a human shield, I blocked the sword thrust of the incoming assassin. More than half of the short sword became lodged inside the woman's stomach, due to the upward thrust of the sword as I dodged a little to the side. The attacker, however, still had not let go of the hilt of the weapon.

I reacted immediately to what had happened, and pushed forward the woman. The slickness of the woman's blood on the weapon made the process smoother. I pushed forth until the short sword became fully lodged through the woman's stomach, until more than two-thirds of the weapon's length protruded out of her stomach.

My pushing eventually caused the screaming woman to collide with the attacker. Then I slammed the two of them down onto the ground with a hard thud. They collided with the cold, stone floor in a heap. I heard the audible sound of their bones breaking and they spurted blood from their mouths. I could also see a few jagged, cracked lines on the stone floor.

The impact of the sword's hilt against the ground had caused the weapon to dislodge from the woman's stomach. With the weapon no longer stuck in her, I could see a gaping red hole where the center of her stomach was, her entrails poking out a little.

I took the short sword which had clattered noisily onto the ground and cut short the two downed assassins' final breath. I had thrust the sword downward into the woman's right eye, and out through the bottom man's face. Then I left the sword stuck inside them, a grave-marker for the two corpses.

It was two birds with one stone or rather two humans with one sword, to say the least.

A small spray of blood had splattered onto my hands and arms, but it was not really an important matter to note. I had an affinity with blood magic after all. To be precise, dragon blood magic. But even then, the blood of other creatures did not bothered me.

I looked around at the silent assassins watching the spectacle that was me. Some of them, the younger ones mostly, had involuntarily taken a step back, fearful of the monster in front of their eyes.

“Why just watch me kill two of your fellows? You should have helped them instead.”

“Most impressive, Verath,” Veena's father said, walking toward the middle of the group of assassins, until he was standing at the front. “Most impressive indeed, monster.” He continued speaking in a slow manner, “I confess...never in my imagination would I think that you could break free of the white prism. And to think it had been an ancient artifact too.”

He spread both his hands in an easy manner. “So what will you do next. Kill us all?”

I stared into the unflinching eyes of Veena's father. “Yes,” I said.

Veena's father gave out a short bark of laughter. “You should know by now that I am not an easy man to kill.”

I could suddenly sense strong magic coming from the folds of his robe. Then I saw Veena's father take out a small ring made into a necklace with a thin loop of chain. The magic grew stronger, and it suddenly occurred to me what was happening. He was teleporting!

Before I could shoot out a blast of fire, he had already disappeared, only leaving a sentence—

“We shall meet again, Verath.”

“No matter, you will die soon enough,” I replied to his farewell, even knowing that Veena's father was no longer in this chamber. I was only talking to myself.

I looked at the assassins who had been abandoned. “I suppose your deaths will make up for his escape.”

Instead of waiting for them to come at me, this time, I charged at them, deftly dodging the wooden tables and chairs. The first three to die were the ones who had first attacked me—they were the closest targets. Two of the three were males, and they both died after I had punched both their throats, their necks bending backward at an oblique angle, as if trying to reach for their spines. The third one to die was a female, whom I killed with my transformed dragon talons by piercing her chest.

In a matter of seconds, three had died. Twenty more remained, all of them spread out in a circle around me, and all of them using the tables and chairs as obstacles. Not that it would really help them.

By now, I was half transformed, all of the dragon parts proportionate to my human form. A spiked tail of perhaps five feet length dragged itself heavily against the ground as I walked, and sharp talons along with scales replaced my human hands. Unlike human hands, dragon hands only have four digits, but they are as flexible and useful as any human ones. My feet became reptilian, three main, thick-pronged toes and a smaller fourth toe replacing them. My dragon wings, I had forgo, since they were more vulnerable to attacks.

To the assassins in front of me, no doubt, I must have looked like a black, scaly humanoid beast with a human head. Except this human head had two black dragon horns protruding from the sides, curving upward into sharp points which could act as small impaling lances. A pair of steady, glowing red eyes were also seen. They were eyes which could have easily matched the cold, dark eyes of the twenty assassins.

“Very brave of you to remain calm even at this point,” I said softly, knowing that they would be straining to hear my words. My voice had turned deeper and more bestial. Only the barest traces of my human voice remained.

A male that looked to be the oldest, perhaps a little less than thirty years of age, came forward from the circle of assassins surrounding me; they had taken as much distance from me as the circular perimeter of the pillar of flames I had created would allow.

He came closer until he firmly stood a few feet away from me. Then he opened his mouth to speak, “I kno—

Before the human male, whom I assumed to be the senior assassin, could even speak, I shot forth black flames which ate at his body, devouring his existence. It took only a few seconds of screaming before not even a small trace of his body or his weapons remained. Not even ashes.

The Flames of Interitum were unique, its fire devouring everything in its specified path until the caster chose to stop feeding it magic. The flames were one of the unique essences of fire and perhaps only I could use it.

My body centered firmly on the ground, and my talons gripped tightly against the floor, I shot forward like an arrow. I closed the distance almost instantly with my target; a young Novice assassin girl to my front.

I pummeled into the girl using mostly my shoulder, and she flew backward. Her sternum, including many of her other bones, cracked audibly. The distance she had been blown backward made her seem as if she was a small rag-doll that had been thrown. Her arching fall carried her past the twelve feet tall pillar of flames, and further past that, until she finally slammed against the stone wall, crumpling like a broken toy. A bloody, burning broken toy that had just turned part of the stone wall into a gory, stone wall.

I felt a thrown chair smash into five pieces behind my back, but the impact did not even give me pause. It felt like, to say the least, a small love tap. Two more thrown wooden chairs smashed into pieces against the sides of my body. Likewise, I was still unfazed.

Rather than being unfazed though, I felt doubtful of their intelligence. The assassins should have learned from the first throw that wooden chairs were ineffective against me.

A few of them tried to escape by covering their face and body with their cloaks, only to find themselves burning and screaming in agony as they dove past the pillars of fire. The flames, after all, were hot enough to melt through the stone floor, though they could not really see that since I had made the pillars wide enough so that nothing could pass through. All they could really see was a sea of fire surrounding them.

Still, it had been idiocy for the magic-less and unprotected assassins to even try to go through the flames. I was sure that they could feel the uncomfortable heat of the fire, even if they were standing far away.

I counted the ones still alive. Thirteen remained.

The next assassin to die was a young male with red hair. He threw small throwing daggers at me, but all of them missed. I was a blur to his human eyes, though I had to agree that he was at least trying—the arcs his daggers traced were high enough that they were aimed at my face, most likely my eyes.

Nearing him, I landed a sharp knee toward his groin, the force of it sending his body flailing more than seven feet into the air. The assassin landed back onto the ground, and I could have almost winced in sympathy had I pretended to care. He landed bad. Poorly. One of his arms had a white bone protruding near the elbow.

The assassin screamed in pain, but I ignored it, calmly walking toward his prone body while at the same time, daggers bounced off of my scaled skin harmlessly, only to clatter onto the floor.

The assassin clutched at his broken arm protectively, and though he saw me walking toward him, he could do nothing but watch. His poor fall against the floor had disoriented and injured him enough to crack bones.

I watched his prone body beneath me with indifferent eyes. Then I gave a stomping kick at the protruding bone near his elbow, breaking it off with a clean, sharp snap. His scream became high pitched, even louder than when he had first fell against the floor.

I created a dense, circular fan of fire in my right hand and pressed it against the assassin's face. His screaming became even louder, and even more high-pitched if that was even possible. The smell of burning human flesh reached my nose, and his pleads and screams became weaker. It took only a few more seconds before the assassin fell silent. Dead as the dead.

You cannot say that I do not have a flair for killing my enemies in a variety of ways. It was just plain boring to kill them with a quick burst of fire magic, or even piercing them with earth spikes from down below.

From my periphery, I saw three assassins come sprinting toward me, their weapons drawn and held tightly in their hands. I let the three come closer until they were within reach of my spiked, black tail. Then I whipped at them in a half-circular arc using my tail, the three inch spikes piercing into them. The force of the swipe of my tail carried the body of the first assassin, causing it to collide with another, before sending them both away like thrown pebbles. They collided with a few wooden chairs, and caused the table to fall down together with them in a heap.

As for the remaining one, a black hooded female, I batted her sword aside with a scaled hand, and pierced through her throat with three of my talons. Then I used the talon of the smaller, fourth digit, similar to the thumb of a human, and grabbed at her neck before sending her flying at the next incoming wave of assassins.

I gave them a feral grin, showing off the sharp points of my teeth. Then I picked up the fallen sword of the woman I had thrown.

I met the standing ones' charge—the ones who had not collided with the thrown woman. All of them swore at me profusely.

Like my counterpart, I had memories of the swordplay he had learned from that human grandmaster called Kizam Vulcram. We were different though. Unlike my counterpart, I had extra memories, some of which were sealed, out of reach even for me. I also had red eyes, quite unlike his green eyes.

I deflected two of their sword strokes with an arm, and at the same time, cut off the head of an assassin, which went rolling down the floor. Before long, four more heads rolled down the stone ground, keeping the one head company. There were also a few separated limbs, so there was various company for the detached heads. The scarlet blood flowing from the various body parts dyed the floor into a gory mess.

The next assassin came at me with a longsword, screaming at the top of his lungs, anger most likely clouding his mind at the hopelessness of his situation. I backhanded him while easily blocking his longsword with my own sword.

I had held back my strength, but he still lost his balance, slipping on the gore the dead bodies provided. The assassin landed on his rump in a small puddle of blood with a small, wet noise.

Three assassins remained, the initial group of more than twenty assassins having been reduced into this lowly number. Two of the three were female assassins who looked to be around their middle twenties or so, while the other one was the male that had fallen onto his ass. He looked to be near twenty.

I did not trust the words of Veena, so I had kept three of the older assassins alive, so that I could ask them the locations of the branches of Malice. I already knew where a few of them were located at due to gathering information from my past human life, so if they were lying to me, I could easily torture the information out of them for doing so.

I turned to face the fallen male assassin and the two female assassins who were a few feet away at his sides. The two women had their weapons drawn and held ready, a short, curved sword, and gauntlets which had three knives attached at the end of their fists.

“If you wish to remain alive, I suggest you sit down on the floor,” I said softly in my deep, rumbling inhuman voice—a male dragon's voice.

The two females immediately sat down, not even caring that the floor which they sat upon was dyed with the blood of their compatriots. The male though...he did not really count, since he was already on his ass.

The expressions on their faces were unreadable. Well, perhaps I could notice a sort of nervous curiosity. They were like docile lambs awaiting slaughter.

“Very good. Now just sit there while I satisfy my hunger,” I said, picking up the closest human arm on the ground. It was the bloody, slim arm of a female assassin I had recently killed.

Then I took a bite out of the arm, my sharp fangs gouging out a chunk of still-warm flesh. The smell of blood coming from the arm, and the smell of blood from the general atmosphere had wet my appetite. It was similar to the pungent smell of raw iron and earth. The smell of a smithy.

“Hmm...not very tasty, but better than nothing, I suppose. Hunger is the best spice anyway,” I said to myself, knowing that the three remaining assassins were intently listening in on my words.

I looked around at the multitude of human body parts on the floor. I said, “You know, I have always wondered what happens after you die.” I left the last part of my thoughts unspoken.

I had a connection with death, after all.

Volume 2 (Chapter 14)