Page 14 of The Incendiary

The terrain wasn’t too different from southwest Warrich, but it was greener and lush. Nothing like the barren, gray, and rocky cliffs of eastern Wymara we’d traversed on our way to Brinnea months before. If I hadn’t learned how to find my direction based on the sun’s position in the sky, I’d be lost. The forests were beautiful, fresh, and intoxicating, but they were miles of homogenous woodland. Fresh air scented with pine and damp soil filled my lungs. I found myself reaching into my wheel for Floris’s power just to draw vines and branches closer to my fingertips, to feel connected to the foliage around me and the life it freely shared.

Damond had been adamant about Molochai’s abominable creatures farther south, but we hadn’t come across one. I knew it was sheer luck but basked in it regardless.

“I don’t see any vile creatures, do you?” I asked Shera, plopping down between some blueberry bushes. She stretched out lazily beside me, only to tense moments later when a tawny brown rabbit hopped in front of us. “Just small, cute ones.” Shera’s claws flexed, talons protracting. “Oh, gods, do you have to?” I flinched and tore my eyes away when she pounced and had it down her gullet in a matter of seconds.

I knew some cats liked to play with their food. At least she spared me by skipping that part.

My appetite was sparse, shrouded by growing anxiety, but I couldn’t afford to be hungry, so I forced down some bread, berries, and cheese until my belly was full. The sun had set just over an hour before, so the clearing we rested in would soon be completely dark. I gathered some twigs, sticks, and dry leaves of various sizes in a pile.

I was about to summon the power of Helios to light a fire—and hopefully not burn down the surrounding foliage—when something dark and large shifted in my periphery. Shera saw it too. She rose to all fours and brushed against my hip. My hand shifted to my dagger.

The head of a snake emerged from the trees. It was a monstrous, hideous thing at least fifty or sixty feet long with a body at least three feet thick. Black scales encased its body in impenetrable armor. A shimmering hood framed a voracious, bloodred face and slitted yellow eyes. It slithered closer, its pink tongue darting from its mouth as it released a low, menacing hiss.

The size of its undulating body was terrifying and unnatural. It had to be one of Molochai’s beasts. No snake was naturally this big. It could swallow me whole.

And it was coming right toward us.

Growling beside me, Shera crouched low and ready to pounce, her silver tail twitching back and forth.

“Shera,” I warned, lifting my hands to wield. I hadn’t decided which power yet. The fur on my umbra’s spine puffed up in warning. She leaned back, teeth bared, ready to⁠—

“Shera, no!”

She didn’t listen. Beside me one moment, gone like a flash of lightning the next. She launched herself to triple my height, landed on the snake’s back, protracted her lethal claws, and scratched and tore across its armored scales until they caught and struck through.

Its furious hiss of pain lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. An ominous chill rushed down my spine when it rose, spun, and turned, its tail whipping and stirring debris off the forest floor. I nearly dodged a jagged rock roughly the size of my palm, but its sharp edge sliced across my forehead.

Hot blood streamed over my brow and down my cheeks, but I didn’t care. Molochai’s raging beast and my beloved umbra—his gift to me—kept my full attention.

I reached for power and grasped the spoke of Helios’s fire, poised and ready to strike. I should have set it aflame and ended this before Shera had a chance to pounce, but fear had taken hold, and now she was in the way. If I wielded the flames, I’d burn them both.

The serpent swooped down to her eye level, hissing in warning. Shera flexed her claws into sensitive flesh between the snake’s scales and bared her teeth. Its forked tongue darted out before its gaping maw opened and revealed two monstrously long fangs.

“Shera, enough!” I cried out, my hands hot with growing fire. Shera didn’t hear me, or she didn’t listen. I reached for Floris’s vines or Rainar’s water to strangle or drown it, but the snake reared back with lethal speed.

“Shera!”

It struck downward and sank its fangs into my umbra’s ribcage. She yowled and a wail ripped free from my own throat. The snake sank its bite deeper, and Shera went limp.

Pulled back to my wheel by an otherworldly force, I grasped for Soltum’s spoke.

“Cease!” I shrieked in a voice that didn’t feel like my own.

The eyes of Molochai’s slithering beast snapped in my direction, paralyzing me. When Shera’s body dropped from the snake’s mouth and crumpled to the forest floor in a heap of silver and blood, something black seeped from its fangs. Venom.

Tail cracking like a whip, the snake uncoiled to face me and rose up, up, up at least twenty feet high. I craned my neck to meet its yellow eyes, held out my hand, and screamed in warning. I waited for the monster to strike so I could blast its face off with a surge of fire at the very last second.

Instead of striking, the snake bobbed its head back and forth in a beguiling rhythm. It heeded my command and was waiting for another. I looked at Shera’s silver form stained in her blood. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing. If she wasn’t gone already, then she was running out of time.

I told myself to order it away but let it live. It was a beast following its instincts. I wanted to be a merciful queen, but then I glanced again at my umbra. My shadow. My companion.

Icy resolve steeled my spine.

I didn’t want to be merciful tonight.

I lifted and curled my finger, commanding the snake to draw closer. It bent to my will and lowered its head. I smelled wet dirt and rotting fish. The snake came so close that its forked tongue grazed my cheek.

I met its slitted, yellow stare and turned my palm outward.