“Fire and flame now?” Sebastian said through his manic, hideous chuckles. “Your choice of weapons to stop the Bleed are a joke. Don’t you understand, orphans? Don’t you think with minds that work? I will get what I want, and the Bleed will suck your husks dry. Now, GIVE ME THISTLE!”
Still on fire, Sebastian leapt back across the street with insectoid strength. A soaring ball of flame, wiry, ropey limbs, and claws, he landed in the arc of Kalandar’s blade without a care, and went to backhand the still standing body of Arridon. He would strike before Kalandar could cut him in half.
“No,” Derrick said from his place on the ground just a few yards away.
Gravity ignored Sebastian for a moment with catastrophic consequences for the burning monster. He floated into the air—yanked upward, it seemed—at the simple will of Derrick and his newfound power. As he drifted skyward, Kalandar, too, was caught in the zone of cancelled gravity, and the monster from the depths of the Hells drifted upward, albeit slower, and not as high.
Kalandar blurted out an alarm, then adjusted his swing attempt. He used his considerable might to spin his blade in a hip-high, side to side, devastating swipe. The foot-wide blade slashed through the levitating fire and flesh, hacking a hole in Sebastian and severing a rain of limbs that fell to the street below. They clattered and writhed, crawling away under their own power, going in all directions near Arridon’s feet.
He snapped out of his trance, opening his eyes and glaring at the monster floating nearby, just out of reach. Consumed by fire as Kalandar hacked at him, Sebastian continued to laugh.
One of Arridon’s hands raised up, making a vertical line in the air. His other hand did the same, forming two parallel walls in space. Kalandar’s sword clanged off an invisible wall of force beside Sebastian’s floating body. In the air, the flames visibly bounced off the walls he’d made with his power. He drew another line in the air with his hands, creating a lid, trapping the flames down, keeping the heat and destructive force contained right on top of Sebastian’s body.
“No escape this time,” Arridon said, his voice barely audible over the roar of Kalandar’s magic flames. “No following us. My sister will be safe from you for all time, Sebastian.”
“Hearing your pointless words only makes my stomach rumble in hunger, you mewling, pathetic wretch,” the monster called out from within the fires. Another limb fell with a sickening crunch.
“You must let me strike it!” Kalandar yelled to Arridon. “My blade can sunder its soul!”
“You were trash at Mercy Point. You’re trash here. It is time you were thrown away properly,” he whispered. Arridon made a fist and closed the walls of force to crush Sebastian into nothing.
But the avatar of the Bleed saw that coming, and Sebastian reacted before Arridon could destroy him. Floating in the air, aflame, with Kalandar cutting him into bits one swing at a time, Sebastian had been doomed. But Arridon’s walls gave the monster purchase, and it lashed out, launching itself downward, using the walls as a springboard.
The creature crashed into Arridon like a comet, crushing him into the street, breaking bones, and setting his clothes on fire. The monster reared up as it had with Kalandar, smashing down—still laughing—with all its might, and all its remaining limbs, most of which were burning. Arridon’s body went limp, went lifeless, succumbing to the fury of the Bleed’s hound.
“Nooo!” Timtar yelled in anguish. Still blinded, he fired his weapon of nature over and over into the burning mass, but the fires obscured any sign of it having effect.
“Arridon!” Derrick cried with panicked, trembling lips. Unconsciously, he reached out and grabbed the form of Sebastian, canceling the gravity once more, lifting the monster off his mauled and savaged friend. Flailing, laughing, cackling wildly, the monster rose up.
“For that, you will pay,” a muted, furious Kalandar threatened. He followed his threat with a swing of the sword that would’ve sliced a castle in half.
The whistling blade passed through Sebastian, gutting him, cleaving him in two. He swung again, and again, his strength fueled by the literal fires of Hell and the burning rage of a warrior who sought to battle equals for eternity.
Black tendrils of acidic flesh shot out from the burning ball, lashing at the demon, who didn’t laugh the attacks off. He took them, seeming to revel in the scars the burning, hissing acid left on his hide, and armor. Emotionless now, the red giant worked like a logger felling a tree. One swing of his blade at a time.
Eventually, the laughing from within the flames ended. The storms in the sky above seemed to pause as well. Derrick forgot to hold the dismembered corpse of Sebastian in the air, and the parts fell to the ground. The sound was wretched and nightmarish.
But no more horrible than the still body of Arridon of House Frost.
“We must go with haste,” Kalandar said, walking to Derrick, who was struggling to hold back uncontrollable sobs.
“We can’t…we can’t…we can’t just leave him.”
“We must,” Tim said, wiping the last of the sand from his eyes. “If this creature is here, it means the Bleed has access to return. We can pay proper respect to Arridon at a different time, in a different place.”
Kalandar lifted his blade and grumbled a string of syllables in a harsh language Derrick couldn’t decipher. The blade flared white-hot, burning away all signs of blood and gore. Ash drifted down, and Kalandar sheathed the weapon. He knelt, and lifted the hurt Derrick into his arms, as gently as if he were a babe.
“Stop,” Derrick begged. “Get his pistol. The gun he got from his mom. It should go to his sister, Thistle. We can at least do that, right?”
TImtar nodded, and walked over to the corpse. He muttered more words of enchantment, and his hands became
