Chapter 53 – Sea of Fire

Cassius panicked.

He stood inside a ring of fire, watching more than twenty Blood Spawn Ravagers swelling as if something invisible was pumping air into them from the inside.

Bigger and bigger and bigger. At this rate, in a blink they would fill the entire space and swallow all three of them whole.

And after that?

’Oh, Queen’s threads!’

It didn’t take long for Cassius’s mind to land on what came next. Either they would be suffocated — or worse, reduced to nothing by the explosion that was surely coming.

"Young Master!" Océane, standing at his right, screamed in alarm, pulling him back.

Right then, his eyes caught the old man. He had taken a severed leg from the mountain of corpses nearby and hurled it at one of the swelling monsters standing apart from the others.

The result was instantaneous.

The moment the leg made contact, a resplendent blast of bright crimson fire erupted outward, stretching toward them like the arm of a devilish god, burning everything in its path the way a wave sweeps clean a shore.

It didn’t reach them, the monster had been far enough away. But the sound of the blast was so deafening, so all-consuming, that all three of them swayed on their feet, Océane throwing up a barrier to deflect the searing shockwave.

Smoke blotted out part of the room. The swelling bodies pushed through it, dispersing it as they advanced.

Océane lowered the earth walls, lips trembling, eyes fixing on the old man standing there cocking his head from side to side, and she found herself momentarily wondering how in Vorn’s name the man had thrown anything at all with stumps for hands.

The thought didn’t consolidate before Cassius spoke, voice urgent.

"We need to get back to the surface." He cracked his head upward, sweat clustering on his forehead, taking in the distance between the pit floor and the world above.

Too far. Nearly the height of a skyscraper. Maybe half of one, he couldn’t tell precisely.

His fire would help enormously, but his current control and output weren’t enough to blast himself and the others up there.

Not from here.

He needed something. He needed...

[Momentum!] Ananke said inside his mind, and Cassius’s eyes lit up immediately. [You need to build enough momentum combined with your fire’s explosiveness to launch someone to the surface, Cassius.]

Ideas sparked in rapid succession. It was also at that moment that Cassius noticed a new Snake Loop forming overhead, this one linked to the mind-suppression effect still tightening around his skull.

The loop was forming fast. Not fast enough.

’Right.’ Cassius drew a deep breath and focused completely. ’Remind me later, Queen, to find that man and burn him and his entire family. If he has one.’

Not waiting for an answer, he snapped his attention back to the monsters. They had already consumed more than half of the wide circle he was standing in.

Time was nearly up.

"Momentum!" He yelled to the other two. "I need one of you to generate enough to send someone topside. Who—!"

"Lad, lad, I shall do it!" The old man said, his weathered face breaking into a smile as he raised his two stumps. "My momentum added to yours and we send the little lass overhead to get help!"

"How?" Océane said sharply before Cassius could, eyes hard on him. "How are you going to do anything without hands? And who the hell are you?"

"No hands?" The old man cocked his head, looking genuinely amused. "Can you not see them? My hands? I can see them perfectly well. I still feel the pain, you know. The pain of—!"

"Enough." Cassius cut in, not having the time. "Old man, start."

"But Young Mas—!"

"No time!" Cassius cut in again, he had no time to explain that Ananke herself had told him to trust this strange man.

For now.

Océane fell silent, and all three of them moved.

The old man immediately began spinning in place, each revolution adding to his velocity — faster, faster — until he was a blur, a loud laugh booming out of the whirl.

Océane and Cassius were already moving. Trusting her young master, she obeyed without further argument. She took as much distance as the shrinking circle allowed, then ran straight at him with everything she had.

On her last step, Cassius detonated a small but concentrated burst of fire directly beneath it.

Océane flew like a fired arrow, faster than she expected, her feet burning with pain she swallowed behind a bitten lip.

Cassius set himself — like a batting stance, weight low, ready — and the moment Océane arrived feet-first, he seized her legs.

The veins in his hands bulged and twisted like coiled snakes, fire blazing through them.

He spun, pouring every bit of her momentum into the rotation, building the velocity, then hurled her at the old man and fired a shot of crimson fire through his palms like a gunshot to push her further.

The air detonated, churned and Océane cried out in pain.

She was at Imbued Self — one rank above Cassius — but that did nothing to reduce the burn. It only let her endure it.

So she reached the old man.

"Grit your teeth, little lass!" The old man shouted.

Cassius watched him take Océane’s hands with... nothing. There were only stumps of healed flesh. No visible hands. Yet he was clearly holding her.

Océane felt it too, something tightening around her hands, firm and real, but not quite like hands.

She had no time to think about it.

The old man used their combined momentum — everything built up until that moment — and launched her upward toward the surface.

She tore through the air. The wind howled through her ears until they began to bleed, her mind narrowed entirely onto reaching the top.

"Forgive me, Océane." Cassius said quietly, and she heard the draw of a fire bow behind her.

A densely condensed arrow of flame burned on the string at the hands of Cassius.

Ananke watched all of it with barely hidden awe at her Blessed’s essence manipulation, that he could already do this at his rank was something.

He loosed the arrow. It flew straight beneath Océane just as she was almost there — one final explosive burst — and sent her safely over the edge with a shriek of pain.

Cassius swayed slightly, too much essence spent at once, and shook his head.

The swelling bodies were now only paces away. A minute at most before it was over.

The air smelled of ash and blood and death. His heart was hammering so hard his chest burned with it.

He snapped his head to the old man standing beside him and noticed the spots where his hands should have been, slowly steaming, as if something invisible was burning there.

Something Cassius couldn’t see.

"Who are you, old man?"

"Just an old man, lad! A dying old man!"

"You don’t look like dying to me."

"Ah, I will soon enough. And so will you, lad, if we don’t act right now."

"Young Master!" Océane cried from above, eyes dripping with fear. "Fast! FAST!"

Her heart was at her throat.

"Well, old man," Cassius smiled crookedly, looking at the swelling bodies now an inch away. "This is going to hurt. A lot."

"Better than the alternative!" He yelled back. And as if he had simply understood what Cassius intended, "Shall we, lad?"

Cassius cursed and without another word, found a bone on the ground and hurled it straight at the swelling mass.

This time it was different. The swelling bodies had grown so large they were touching each other.

One detonation set off the next. All of them.

The chain of explosions shook the building’s foundation like something trying to wake in the earth’s belly. The fire was so hot and so loud that the world around them vanished entirely, replaced by nothing but a universe of flame.

Fear moved through both Cassius and the old man at the same instant.

The fire was too fast. Too powerful for Cassius to properly contain or direct.

But he did what he could. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

His control over Bloodflame gave him extraordinary sensitivity to fire. He extended that control over everything around him, squeezed both fists until his knuckles screamed, his nose and eyes bleeding from pushing past his limit.

He built a fist of fire beneath them. Afterwards, he opened his hands.

The fire fist bloomed outward and burst asunder. Both of them were launched upward like rockets, so fast the wind became invisible blades slashing their faces.

They cried out in pain, their bodies smoking, clinging to the desperate hope that the burst would carry them all the way up.

It didn’t.

They felt the speed bleeding out of them with still nearly a hundred metres of pit left to climb.

Cassius’s essence was gone. He had nothing left to try again.

Below them, the fire raged like hell let loose, spreading upward, climbing fast, hungry to take the whole building.

[CASSIUS!]

’Oh fu—!’

He found himself falling back down into it, spent and powerless.

"Lad!!" The old man roared, and grabbed Cassius’s hand with his ghostly left grip.

Both of them falling faster now with gravity doing its job with no interest in their situation.

Then...

"GRAB IT! GRAB IT!" Océane’s voice tore down from above like a banshee’s cry.

The old man snapped his head up in time to see a long rope made of compacted earth shooting downward toward them.

He managed a grin and raised his right ghostly hand, closed it around the rope the moment it entered reach, barely metres above the climbing sea of fire.

"Pull up! Pull up! Pull up!"

He screamed in haste.

"FAST!"

"I KNOW!" Essence nearly emptied, Océane bit her lip until it split and began pulling, dragging the rope back up and trying to be faster than the rising, devouring, hungry fire below.

—End of Chapter 53—