Vassal by Sterling D'Este (ebook reader computer TXT) 📕

the sun towards Etienne. He was staring at her, and she smiled. “I’m glad I’m here with you,” she murmured as the wind picked up, the whispering of the trees becoming louder and louder.

There was something not quite… right with Alphonse’s smile. She looked too peaceful, too at ease to be running from people she’d come to care about. She should be more worried. Only moments ago, she had even seemed exhausted.

With growing apprehension, Etienne nodded. He started to open his mouth to say something reassuring, but Alphonse was turning away, looking further along the ascending path.

There was a mephitic scent on the breeze, the sound of branches cracking.

With panic growing in his chest, Etienne let his gaze follow Alphonse’s just in time to see the first leaping flames erupt from the forest ahead.

She made no move to stand, to run. She didn’t react at all. Her tone had morphed into something amused. “Oh, look. It’s your just rewards.”

When Alphonse looked back, those flames were reflected in her eyes, and she was smiling broadly. An expression of joy. Of euphoria.

“Do you have a spell to protect you now, boy?”

⥣          ⥣           ⥣

When Tristan and Delyth had finally decided on a path to take, it had still been morning, bright and early.

When he woke, it was late afternoon.

Beside him, the warrior slumbered, her position awkward and uncomfortable-looking. Tristan rolled his neck. They’d both been out before they’d hit the ground.

In the space of a long breath, the rogue directed every curse in every language he knew at the mage-boy and his tricks. Damn them all to the Cursed Realms. The boy and the mouse and the halfbreed too, for trusting them so easily.

He turned away, leaving the halfbreed where she lay. She could figure it out herself when she woke up in who-knew-how-long. He was going to wring a skinny human neck. The fool. Had the boy really thought himself mage enough to contain her? He was nothing to those who had last tried, and not one of them could have managed the feat alone.

With a growl, Tristan sprinted in the direction of the tracks leading up the high pass.

His anger didn’t wane through the night. It boiled through his dreams, a flickering landscape of desolate, flame-scarred lands, and more recent betrayals. When he woke, it propelled him onwards, eating the miles between him and his quarry little by little. He could not let them stop Enyo’s return. Would not. The Goddess meant too much.

The stinging scents of distant smoke finally reached him near the end of the second day, spurring his earth-bound body on faster, nearly at a run now. Enyo was not the type to take disobedience lightly.

When he finally broke through the trees, she was smiling, her face something like pure joy. Rapturous.

“Enyo!” he called, his face twisting into a grin only to fall with sudden horror.

The fire was too hot, the wind too wild. Already, it turned towards them, ravenous and fed by Enyo’s malice.

Her head jerked around at the sound of her name, and in a fluid motion, she stood. Beaming at Tristan, though somehow, a smile had never seemed so virulent before.

The winds were tugging at her hair and her skirts, flinging the humans from their feet. Enyo laughed gleefully and looked up at the sun, hand reaching out as if she could draw power. More heat. From its very rays.

Of course. She could.

Fire skipped across the road, nearly flickering and dying, but finding fuel on the other side, burst into life.

Tears were running down Alphonse’s cheeks, the smoke burning and stinging her eyes as she turned to glare at Etienne, splayed across the ground like a cowering animal.

“You think you can steal me away?!” she snarled, flames all around them doubling in height and intensity. “You think you can yank me from this vassal and stuff me into that wretched darkness once more?!” Embers were flying through the air, landing on unburnt ground and growing into their own proper fires. Life blooming. Thriving.

“Mages far stronger and cleverer than you have stood in my way, and now  no one remembers their names!” She lifted her hands, gesturing towards Etienne and the flames nearest him reacted, reaching for him longingly at Enyo’s command. “Enyo remains! Enyo is worshiped and divine! You are nothing, boy! I. Am. Everything!” She screamed and launched towards Etienne only to stumble over her own feet.

✶

Etienne fell back, his vision filled with Enyo standing above him, beautiful and terrible and wielding power that he could not imagine. In the firelight, her hair seemed almost to be alight with flame itself, and malice twisted her features into something so removed from Alphonse that she no longer quite appeared human.

He was panting. Smoke stripped the insides of his lungs, burnt his throat, coated his tongue. He could see nothing but fire, Enyo growling at its center.

And it was so hot. So hot that the hairs on his arms and head seemed likely to catch at any moment.

Etienne had never been so frightened. He was hollow with it, his heart a hare fleeing through empty moor. When Enyo lurched for him, he didn’t move, frozen with panic. He closed his eyes, breath coming in gasps.

And then she didn’t reach him.

Alphonse must have made her stumble, kept her at bay. Saved him.

Etienne leaped up and ran, the rhythm of his feet matching that of his heartbeat. He passed Tristan, the man half horrified, half enraptured by the sight of Enyo let loose. Etienne didn’t pause for him but kept running.

It was only after he had put yards between himself and the fire that Etienne realized that Tristan had fled as well, leaving Enyo and Alphonse both in the center of it all. One body amid a vortex of leaping flame.

Like the enraged Goddess she was, Enyo stood at the center of the forest fire, laughing and even dancing as the flames grew higher and higher. Hotter. They