Fires in the Forest
Several hundred feet above the forest canopy the floating pagoda sped at a leisurely forty miles an hour. In the large, front room Darken Gray neatly drew elaborate diagrams on a chalkboard as she explained the social structure of the Varangia City States.
Ivory sat at a small table, an open notebook in front of her, its pages covered in neat writing.
Darken Gray reached for an eraser and was about to start cleaning the slate board when the entire pagoda shook, tilting so sharply that the chalk slid from the board's tray, and they heard crashes throughout the house as other things likely fell from shelves.
The cause of the disturbance became evident when a serpent's head appeared in the window.
Skin like bark, the size of a cow, eyes like bright, green leaves, it looked in at them through the window.
"What do you think it wants?" Ivory asked as she looked back at it.
"It's not quite a dragon," Darken Gray told Ivory, "but it is a powerful spirit. Take care."
The almost a dragon drew its head back, then snaked it forward.
Darken Gray was in front of Ivory before the almost dragon thrust its head forward, shattering the glass. Her hand moved about her, knocking the glass aside.
"I am Darken Gray, god of punishment, vassal of the Lady Hikari Ex and you will not harm this child."
"You will not tell me what I will do little god," the not dragon said.
"Little god?" Darken Gray's voice was so soft only Ivory heard it.
"I am O, the Flying Wood, and you will follow me to my kingdom where I may decide how to handle your trespass."
"Then O the Flying Wood, consider carefully before you continue this. Are you ready for an audit from Heaven? Are you willing to deal with the displeasure the goddess of Children?"
The almost dragon growled, a deep rumbling sound, like trees scraping against each other, but that was O's only response.
Ivory stepped out from behind Darken Gray, the danger of flying glass over. Hu had entered the room and was answering the almost dragon's growl with one of his own.
"Be aware," Ivory said.
O interrupted. "Silence child. I am not interested in hearing the wailing of mortal babes."
A part of Ivory saw the bluster for what it was. Darken Gray had worried O, and now it snapped out at Ivory in response.
She supposed she understood that.
But that was only a small part of Ivory.
A much larger part decided she was tired of being talked down to in such a way.
It had become tiresome.
She heard Darken Gray yell out her name, telling to stop.
Ivory cast a spell.
She saw the look of what she took for surprise appear on the almost dragon's face.
Then she had leapt forward, her now not inconsiderable weight slamming against its head. She drove a bronze fist into its eye.
It screamed and thrashed, but she held tight as it pulled away from the pagoda.
She cast a second spell. Where the first had turned her skin to bronze, the second gave her long claws. With those claws, she raked the side of its head.
Cursing Darken Gray made to run to the window, to pull Ivory free of the almost dragon, or to leap out and fight with her. She was not sure which.
Then the dragon thrashed and pulled away. The pagoda pitched to the side, and she lost her footing for a moment.
A blur of golden orange and black as Hu ran past her, sure footed even on the canted floor. The tiger leapt through the window, sailing through open space before landing upon O's back.
Then the pagoda dropped, for several seconds, before coming to a jerking halt.
Darken Gray took off at a run towards the pilot house. She would trust Hu to keep Ivory safe for the moment.
She would see to saving their home and means of transport.
And then she would have a long talk with Ivory.
Teeth, like petrified wood, bit down on Ivory, but while they deeply scored her bronze skin, they did not break it.
She responded by driving her claws into O's throat, tearing away wood. Her caste mark was blazing on her forehead, motes of golden light gathering around her.
"What? What are you doing?" O demanded.
Ivory thought that she heard a hint of fear, of uncertainty in that voice.
Which was good.
It was what Ivory wanted.
"Ivory," Hu called, and she felt his teeth close on the collar of the jacket she had been wearing, and he pulled her away from O's head, onto the almost dragon's back. "Hold tight."
O twisted and turned, trying to shake the two from its back, but Hu was clever footed and never lost his perch.
Ivory drove her claws deep through the wood flesh, and as her anima shone brightly, she drank deeply of O's very essence.
"No," O screamed. "Stop, what are you doing."
As the elemental's life spirit flowed into her Ivory used that power to shape another spell. Flaring out her golden essence jetted above her, becoming a barbed chain that then dropped, spinning at more than three hundred miles an hour, to wrap around O's long neck. There is spun around, the barbs cutting deeply into hardwood flesh, sawing deep through the neck.
O screamed as the wood was sliced away, and sap like blood spilt from the wound and from O's mouth.
The chain faded away, the spell over.
"How dare you," O choked out, and its body writhed and twisted, growing as vines rose up to try to wrap around Ivory and Hu. "Your blood and flesh shall feed me."
Hu adroitly avoided them, but one wrapped around Ivory's ankle and yanked her within the wooden body of O. There more vines wrapped around her and the wooden flesh began to press in on her, attempting to crush her.
Ivory trusted her bronze skin to protect her for a moment and formed another spell as her anima became iconic, vast circles of old realm writing surrounding and turning about her.
Around O's body flashed red and grey bands of essence that immediately sank into the wood of the not dragon's form.
O screamed again as within its bones of wood formed a core of molten iron which began to burn its way out. Ivory herself, surrounded by O's body, felt the molten iron pour over her, but between her anima and bronze skin, she was not harmed.
Sinking her claws into the wood that had started burning, she pulled herself out of the almost dragon's body.
It was falling, twisting through the air, screaming in mindless pain.
Hu dashed in, paws placed carefully, avoiding the burning wood and molten metal, snatched Ivory up by her clothing, and leapt from the plummeting elemental. O crashed into the woods, a tumbling, out of control mass of wood that destroyed trees as it came down. The tiger, on the other hand, landed smoothly on branches, leaping from one to another, slowing down rapidly but safely.
He dropped down close to the twisted form of the almost dragon, among the cleaning its fall had torn. For a moment Ivory thought that the fight was over, but then O shuddered up to its feet. "I am O the Flying Wood," it snarled, taking a step forward. "I will be named a Lesser Dragon soon and will grow in power to become a greater dragon. I will not let a Solar Exalted stop me."
O slammed a massive claw into the ground. Just in front of where the talons had hit the earth humped up, twice as tall as a man, twisted with jagged roots and whipping vines. Like a wave, the mound rolled across the ground towards Ivory.
Ivory ran to the side, but the wave of roots altered its course, following her.
Hu leapt atop the mound, shredding it, maintaining his perch and footing even as he tore it apart.
Ivory spun to face it, watching as it bore down on her.
It hit her, hard, slamming her back, hard enough that she shattered the trunk of a small tree. Rolling across the ground, bronze skin and her anima protecting her somewhat, she came to a stop in a small ravine.
Nearby she could hear the roar of O, and above her the trees twisted, the call of the wood elemental quickening them.
Hu stepped from the shadow, grabbed her up in his jaws, and dragged her into another shadow. The next shadow he stepped out of was on a thick branch of one of the trees, above and behind O.
Ivory raised a hand, and her golden essence gathered above her, taking on the shape of a bird of prey made of diamond and flame.
She made a sweeping gesture with her hand, and the raptor sped towards O. It loosed the shrill victory cry of a Garda bird, then plunged straight into the body of O.
Wooden bones and flesh turned to ash where the bird hit.
O howled in pain and was sent rolling across the ground as Ivory had only a short time before.
The bird, still deep within O's form, exploded in a blast of fire. O cried out even louder as the explosion set it burning. It rolled and thrashed among the trees and underbrush, setting more to flame.
Ivory jumped down from limb she was on, dropping to a lower one, and then another, making her way rapidly to the ground as the branches bent under her weight.
O lay on the burnt forest floor, seeming almost to pant in pain. The fires that had burnt within it looked as if they had been smothered; however Ivory could see the deep scars the spell had left.
"You are a monster," O said in a voice rich with pain.
The almost dragon tried to get up.
Ivory stepped close, slashing it with her claws.
O screamed again, but likely more from the essence that Ivory drew from it than the pain of the wound itself.
"No more," it cried, and then disappeared from sight, slipping into the spirit world.
Ivory did not stop her attack.
She could see into the spirit world.
She could strike the spirits within.
And she could still devour their essence.
It looked like Ivory was merely striking empty air, but her claws drew out wood aspected essence from the spirit world, and it looked like rents in nothing were bleeding green blood. And sometimes it seemed as if the empty air struck back, for something shredded her clothing, and deeply scored her bronze flesh, but that did not slow her.
She chased after the spirit, among the shattered burning wood, at one moment evading and at another attacking.
The green essence flowed into her anima, changing to gold and Ivory's attacks grew faster, more confident, every strike drawing out more and more elemental essence.
Finally, from within the spirit world, O cried out, "Mercy, Prince of the Earth. Mercy."
Ivory did not pause.
Her claw strikes fell heavily on the spirit, with each blow she breathed in deeply, absorbing the very life force of the elemental.
The fourth strike and the almost dragon was no more, just a spark of feeble essence, a spark that Ivory inhaled.
She stood among the still burning forest, staring into the spirit world where the last wisps of O dissipated away.
The elder Lunar Rakshi, called the Queen of Fangs, looked out over her city from where she stood on the balcony of one of the library's high towers. It was there that she felt O die. No mere defeat that an immortal spirit could come back from, eventually, but a true death.
A frown crossed her beautiful face, eyes narrowed as she stared off into the distance.
Had a child sorcerer ended the elemental? A spirit that had grown in power that it was near a lesser elemental dragon? She needed to know.
The child sorcerer had been curiosity at first, perhaps a perverse diversion. An exciting toy to play with, to corrupt, and to eventually be a meal.
However the child had gone from an object of curiosity and a possible toy to something more.
If she had killed O.
If she were a Solar.
The Solars had returned, Rakshi had heard. So far none had come so far east as to encroach on her city.
A Solar sorceress.
One who perhaps, even though a child, had mastered Solar Sorcery, the golden level of sorcery that had eluded Rakshi even though she had centuries and centuries of study and experience.
She wanted to go, right then, seek out the child.
But she would not leave her city.
Not now, with things so uncertain in the world.
She would have to send out agents.
That would take time.
She snarled and slammed six fingered hands against the stone balustrade.
It cracked under her blow.
Had some child Solar, recently exalted, mastered a level of Sorcery that Rakshi had chased almost all her life?
Surely she had not.
But Rakshi had to know.
Turning on her heel, she walked from the balcony, down the tower stairs.
Rakshi was not the only person to realise that O had died. She was not the only person to place importance on that death.
In heaven the shuttle of the Loom of Fate jumped for a moment, the weave becoming tangled, the thread of a spirit, once bright and vibrant, was ended, leaving uncertainty in the design.
Gods and Sidereals saw it.
Several left the room.
The ending of a spirit echoed in Oblivion, and the Neverborn were restless in their vast tombs.
In the Noss Fens Shoat of the Mire, only recently returned to Creation, knew of that death. Such a thing might not have interested her at all, for things died all the time, but a whisper touched her mind, uncertain, perhaps even unattended, and she wondered if Ivory had really been the one that had killed the spirit.
She, of course, must find out.
Missing Ivory in Malfeas had been heartbreaking.
If she was close, then Shoat of the Mire must find her.
She stood in a stone corridor where moment before she had been skipping, bouncing a ball made of demon flesh (a gift from Donner Trods, horrible man that he was). She held the ball in her hands, turned in a slow circle.
Could Ivory be coming towards her?
No.
Not towards her.
But where?
And she knew.
The Pole of Wood.
Where else would a Solar go?
Which meant Ivory would be coming towards her, kind of, would at least pass close.
She very nearly danced in place with excitement.
Then she turned and ran, deeper into the tunnels.
She must prepare.
The Death of O made some angry, others curious, some frightened and some excited.
For Darken Gray the death of O brought only consternation.
She looked in on the Sleeping Ivory.
With the setting of the sun, the spell that had turned her flesh to bronze had faded, and she lay on her bed, bandaged where the claws of O had wounded her. The injuries were surprisingly light for someone who had fought such a powerful spirit.
Stepping back she softly closed the door of Ivory's bedroom.
The Floating Pagoda was drifting a few hundred feet over the woods, Ivory having repaired most the damage O had done. Darken Gray crossed to the new window in the classroom and looked down at the trees.
The fires had mostly burnt themselves out, but here and there she could see small patches of flickering light.
Was there some spirit that needed to be apologised to?
Likely any such spirit would want nothing to do with Ivory or those around her.
"You can't just kill a spirit and expect nothing to happen," Darken Gray said softly.
An answering growl sounded nearby.
Hu sat, half in and half out of shadow, nearly invisible.
She looked at the tiger. "I can't punish her. As far as she is concerned, she has done nothing wrong."
Hu looked at her, his posture suggesting neither agreement or disagreement.
"I knew Solars could be passionate. I have seen it, but, she's still a child."
The tiger gave her a look that said more than words.
"Yes, I suppose I should have known better."
She turned away from the window. "I'll see if I can at least have her agree to apologise to O's superiors for the inconvenience that her death may have caused."
Perhaps that would at least make Ivory consider things a little more before she ended any more spirits.