Heir of the Fog

CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT

A Kiss for the Dead

"The flame pup is going to die. Aren't you going to help her, master?" Ciren asked. His trembling voice fractured the stillness, and for a moment the silver threads of our mind-link quivered with his dread. He had never met Rogara in the flesh, yet he knew her through the visions I shared with him and mistook my watchful silence for abandonment.

Miran slid his cold gaze toward his brother and snorted. "Fool. She should have foreseen this. She is merely paying the price for ignoring the master's warning." The words rang like iron on stone—firm, dismissive, yet the clipped edge of his tone betrayed a pulse of uncertainty he refused to name.

Indeed, it was the cost of her own choice, the real toll of blind trust. But Miran deceived himself by pretending he felt nothing. My poor creations, I thought. They still had a long road ahead before they could lie convincingly, even to themselves.

I liked to think of Ciren as the embodiment of life and Miran of destruction. Ciren focuses on the internal structure, crafting the intricate systems that allow life to thrive within the vessels of frost. Miran, by contrast, sculpts the outer shells, shaping forms made to kill, endure, and dominate.

He specializes in the aggressive aspects of my designs, to forge the fiercest of creatures. Yet Ciren is the one who ensures those designs can exist at all, adapting the vessel so Miran's weapons of war can take form and function without collapsing from within.

This time however, as I looked upon the vessel the three of us were sculpting, I watched a tilt in the spine propagate hairline fractures through the rib vault until the chest cavity sagged like damp parchment.

I stepped back from the half-finished titan and exhaled. Frost pearl-crystallized around the breath, descending as a glittering veil that settled over fractured ice like mourning cloth.

There was little I could offer Rogara from this distance. I had watched many Frostkin die, deaths I could have forestalled, yet I withheld my hand once it became clear a soul was unfit for the Abyss. Mercy would only delay the inevitable. What confronted Rogara now was no different.

She had bled for that group of orcs, fought beside them, shielded their backs, shared spoils they scarcely deserved. Their chance to rise had been real. But pride choked saplings faster than frost. None wished to grow in the shadow of the one who had once been weakest.

Agnash's sideways glances, Katra's muttered slights—little fractures that widened each time white flame solved a fight. Envy sharpened to greed; greed to betrayal.

Agnash was no different, being friend to someone much weaker than him only fueled his confidence further. Now with roles inverted, he didn't see her as kin anymore.

They had planned this, waited for the moment she would be more open to a duel, and now, broken, without being capable even to stand on her own feet was the perfect moment for it.

Opportunism—another face of guile.

Yet I watched, curious, as Rogara braced against stone and forced herself upright. Through her eyes the cavern lurched; vision pulsed with every ragged heartbeat. Blood trickled past split lips. The shattered splints of her legs grated like mortar as she levered her weight forward.

Each shift sounded like brittle canes snapping, a hollow pop chased by the wet slide of marrow.

Her whole equipment was tattered, her weapons gone, but her will was still present.

I watched her pain, both physical and emotional and the understanding of guile settling for her. Rule Two writing itself across torn nerves, letter by agonizing letter.

Agnash felt it too. Despite her ruin, he hesitated, just as he had during the trial where Rogara alone succeeded. Fear pried at his resolve.

"Don't just stand there, do something before she recovers!" Katra shouted, the shrillness of his voice betraying his own dread.

Driven, Agnash called stone to him. Earth-mana surged; jagged plates sprouted, encasing his torso, limbing him in coffin-thick granite. Every movement became sluggish, but he prized safety above edge.

Granite plates rasped against one another; each step tolled like a tomb door grinding shut.

Rogara did not blink. Blood sheeted over her. Legs bent grotesquely backward, she somehow stayed upright—a butchered effigy defying collapse. No fear shone in her gaze, only regret.

Regret—for trust misplaced, for warnings misread, glimmered in eyes as bright as embers buried under snow.

"Careful, you fool," Miran muttered, and swung his focus back to the vessel at hand. His next carving stroke slipped as Ciren's tremor ran through the vessel; a forearm-long spar snapped at the wrist-joint.

Ice splintered; the hollow limb clanged to the floor, the echo ringing like a distant gong across empty corridors of frost.

Miran's anger recoiled onto his brother. Ciren shrank, claws retreating from the ruined torso. Finally he lifted his face of ice-smooth features and looked to me. There, on that unmoving face, I saw a plea.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Then, at last, I chose. Rogara had already drawn upon my reservoir three times, each loan stretching her onyx core past any sane limit. One more draught might rupture vessels beyond repair and might murder her outright. Yet if I withheld, death waited anyway. The calculus was simple.

I opened the conduit. There was no artful trickle, no measured ladle; mana moved in absolutes. Either the channel stayed shut or it poured like a breached dam. I felt only a faint tug, a few minutes worth for me, yet on her end the wave slammed into flesh and core with tidal force.

Through the link I watched her double over and vomit a rope of dark blood onto the cavern floor. Veins spider-webbed across her throat, swelling purple before they burst; her skin leeched to a corpse-white; numbness fogged her sight. Her heart hammered so violently the beat ricocheted up my own spine. But the surge also called the white flames—her gift, her curse. They bloomed around her like petals of living light, cloaking her until she stood a silhouette cut from fire.

"What? I thought she was out of mana!" Agnash shouted, voice cracking on the final word.

"She… was supposed to be," Katra answered, awe and fear wrestling for space on his tongue.

Life-mana flooded Rogara's torn muscles while the fire knit flesh from the outside in. Bones screeched as they realigned; splinters slid back beneath skin and fused. Each repair cost her something: capillaries popped anew, bruises flowered under fresh tissue, but the flames devoured the damage almost as quickly, leaving only heat-quivering air in their wake.

Agnash's bravado buckled. "You all should help me," he hissed, dragging granite boots a step backward.

"No law allows that," muttered one of the onlookers, but uncertainty wavered in his stance.

Katra's lips peeled into a razor grin. "It's… it's fine, alright? No one's watching. Just… just kill her before she finishes healing. We've got the numbers. We can still end this."

Greed proved louder than tradition. The six orcs circled, weapons raised: axes, spears, a rust-notched cleaver. Rogara said nothing. Inside, she remained cracked and aching; outside, the white conflagration rendered her whole—an idol of fire given breath.

The largest charged first, an axe arcing for her skull. Rogara caught the haft bare-handed. Flame pulsed along her arm, raced into the iron, then into flesh. The orc erupted in white bloom, scream throttled as heat cored him from within. He fell in pieces, fat popping like sap in a kiln.

Panic flickered but did not break formation. Rogara extended one palm; the flame congealed into a length of searing light—a whip, bright as forged moonstone. For the first time she wielded the white flames without restraint. No allies were near to burn. No reason remained to hold back.

Another attacker lunged; she cracked the whip. It kissed the blade of his axe; fire leapt metal to muscle, racing the grain of bone. He became a torch staggering three steps before crumpling, charred limbs snapping like dry sticks.

A third tried to flee, but the whip curled around his calves. In the instant white touched skin, his greaves glowed cherry, then ran liquid. Legs sloughed away in a hiss of vaporized marrow, and he collapsed, shrieking, scraping pointless furrows in the stone with his fingers.

Katra's composure shattered first.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck. Kill the flame bitch!" he shrieked, shoving their last breathing ally toward the ring of embers that marked Rogara's stance. The orc lurched forward, slipped on brains already cooling on the stone, and spun on his heel to flee, presenting the back of his neck to her.

Rogara's whip snapped. White fire coiled around the fool's head, cinching in a single fluid loop. For an instant the blaze formed a perfect collar just above the jawline; then it tightened, sliding upward like wire through cheese. Skull split down the crown. Molten bone hissed, halves yawning apart to disgorge ribbons of tissue that steamed on contact with the air. The severed crescents toppled with a wet thud at Katra's boots.

"Aghr, stop her, Agnash, do something!" Katra barked, voice breaking.

Agnash did nothing. His granite boots had already rooted to the cave floor. Instead of advancing, he funneled all remaining earth-mana into himself, layer upon layer of plates sliding up to enclose him until he resembled a squat fortress more than a warrior. When the last slab locked, only a visor-thin slit remained for his eyes.

Katra saw he now stood alone. Panic reconfigured her face: a sneer trying to impersonate courage.

Rogara dismissed the whip with a flick, embers scattering like frightened sparks. She strode forward. Katra backpedalled, loose stones skittering. Rogara's eyes held neither pity nor rage.

"They made me do it. It wasn't me," Katra babbled, lifting his axe in both trembling hands. "I just followed…"

Rogara punched, bare-fisted. Knuckles detonated across Katra's jaw; fire rode the impact. White tongues poured through flesh, incinerating voice before it could shape another word. Heat burrowed inward, hollowing her torso faster than an oil lamp eats its wick. By the time the body hit ground, nothing remained but a bubbling rind clinging to scorched spine.

None now but Agnash—sealed, silent, hoping stone would protect him. Rogara faced him. I felt the quiver of old affection, brief as a moth's wingbeat, ripple through her spirit and brush the edges of my own thoughts. She tamped it down.

She laid a gentle kiss against the granite, a whisper of lips on cooling rock, a funeral for what might have been. Then she stepped back and inhaled. White fire flooded outward, not as a lash this time but as a tide. It pooled at her ankles, rose to her waist, climbed the walls until every stalactite cast a ghost-bright shadow. The cavern became a crucible.

Granite darkened to iron gray, then ruddy maroon. Hairline fissures snapped across Agnash's fortification, glowing like magma-veins. He tried to shrink within the shell, but there was nowhere to retreat; the armor had fused to floor and ceiling both. Rogara fed more power. Life-mana shored up her arteries even as they threatened to split; I felt each rupture pop across her skin, felt the white flames solder tissue shut an eyeblink later.

Inside the oven, moisture evaporated first. A muffled scream leaked through the visor slit. Rogara answered with silence, flame pouring from her palms in two thin jets that licked across the stone until it dripped glassy tears. Agnash howled again, a sound half steam-whistle, half wounded animal. Fat rendered; the sizzling stench drifted to where Miran and Ciren stood beside me, claws poised mid-stroke above the ruined sculpt. Miran's featureless face betrayed nothing, but Ciren's aura cramped with wordless sorrow.

Minutes dragged. The fortress bled incandescent orange, then white. Rogara's own flesh blistered along forearms where fire rebounded, yet the gift within her—white flame married to life-mana—stitched every blister into fresh skin before the next breath. She endured. Agnash did not. When his cries dwindled to a single rattling moan, the stone finally collapsed inward, brittle as kiln-fired clay. What tumbled free was scarcely recognizable: a shriveled husk, skin baking-paper thin, eyes charred pits.

She let the flames gutter out. Darkness rushed back, carrying the copper reek of cooked blood. Only then did Rogara sway. Across the connection I felt grief, relief, and the cool edge of new understanding solder together.

Guile was no longer theory etched by my hand; it lived inside her now, scored into spirit the way heat had scrawled scorch lines across that cavern. And the Abyss, ever watchful, would take note.