There are a lot of things I don’t get about the man made of flame. He sits there, calmly, impatiently. He goes along with my requests. He doesn’t try to beat me to death - and he did beat Thatch to near death.
So, there is something he wants from me, something that only I can do. He has to appease me, somewhat.
But then, why beat up Thatch? Why not just ask to meet me? I don’t get it. So I wanna know. Despite the fact that he’s a dead man walking, I wanna know. But he gets to speak first. I’ll let him talk and reveal his hand, and then I’ll go.
Flamando sighs and leans back. “You’re curious why I beat your friend halfway to death,” he says.
Damn it. “Yes,” I confirm.
“I’m an avatar of the Flametouched,” he says, and the word rings a little. I feel watched. “So, Hush over here did not take it very well when I asked to meet you. My next question was whether you were in a guild.”
Thatch gave me a guilty smile. Somehow, he looked the least upset by all of this. His wounds were healing more, too. I raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged. “New epitaph, new skill,” he said, as if it explained everything. So that was why he was still alive.
“And then I started hurting him until he activated the distress beacon.”
“Guilty as charged,” Thatch admitted, almost… as if he found it funny.
I tilt my head at him. “Does it not bother you?”
He nods. “It does. I am angry, very angry even,” he says, glancing at Flamando. “But. It was also… freeing. There was no one to protect. Just me, and a few minotaurs who ran when they identified him. It was terrifying, but also…” he leans against the tree, looking up into the canopy. A long pause follows, and he looks over us. “Freeing,” he admits. “It was freeing.”
Slowly, I nod. Then I nod at Flamando. “Hush, do you want me to kill him?”
Thatch smiles. “Yeah,” he admits. “I do. He’s a rat bastard who deserves to die, damn it.”
Yeah. There’s something different about him. Something more honest. Thatch smiles more. For that, I find myself grateful to the walking corpse sitting next to us. “You touched my shoulder,” I tell Flamando. “That is unforgivable, too.”
“Oh, you’re one of them who don’t like to be touched? I see,” he says. “Next time, I’ll use magic to stop you. Is that better?”
I blink, and nod. “Yeah.”
“That’s fire. It might hurt a lot more, but something tells me you don’t mind. I’ll break your legs or something,” he says calmly, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Now, business. My Eye, the Flametouched, wants you. You’ve been marked, and since then we have been observing, like so many Eyes do.”
He looks at me for a long moment, and I get the feeling of a cruel grin from the gleeful flickering of the flames on his head. “And then, you went and set the Green Sea on fire. Just for a moment. But it was enough. You lit our beacon, Ion. You called me down.”
At that, I tilt my head. “And you’re here to kill me?”
“No. I am here to sponsor you.” He extends his hand for me to shake. “Come. I will bring you to the fifth floor, and you can become an avatar of the Flametouched, too. Bring fire and ruin to this Tower, and burn all the other Eyes down. Set the sky ablaze. Let the flames take the world!” His head starts crackling more as his facade of calm cracks again.
Instead of anger, this time mania and ecstasy leak from him. He truly loves the fire. He truly wants to see it all burn. Even me. That look in his eyes, it’s hungry. He’s looking at me as if I’m tinder, something to toss into the crucible of this world and see burn.
But it would get me up faster. “Can you kill a man named Ezekiel?” I ask.
“Respitia’s wayward hunting dog?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, she sent him after you, did she? Damn. That paladin you killed must’ve been on the up-and-up. Or you did something to really spite her.” He sounds amused. “Something tells me it’s a bit of both.” He pauses. “But yeah. I can kill him.”
I look at him, and consider the offer. Then, a heartbeat passes, and I look at Thatch. Then at Opal. I close my eyes, and a thin smile spreads on my lips. “No,” I reply. “No, I won’t serve your Eye. I’m going to kill it, too.”
[The Creeping Darkness snickers in elation.]
Opal tosses their head back and laughs. Loud, cheerily, echoing through the forest. “Bahahaha! Yeah, take that you fucker. You really thought we’d bend a knee? Especially after what you did?” They bare their teeth in a feral snarl that would look more right on a wulven’s face than that of a human. “Nah,” they say, happily. “Nah. Not a chance. You moron. Shoulda seen the look on your face. Hah!”
Flamando’s head flickers purple at their taunts. “I was so very patient with you all,” he says, voice crackling with fire. “I gave you my mana. I let you eat. And this is what you say? You laugh at me? Let me show you then, let me show you fire.”
He stands up from against the tree, and flickering light licks at the edges of the clearing.
[The Earthmother warns the avatar. If it wishes to burn, perhaps the Calamities of the second floor are more appropriate.]
Fire spreads. The heat in the air rises. The ground beneath me catches flame. I feel the heat crawl over my skin. “Amelie?” I ask.
“Norman,” she says, clearly.
With a sigh, Inu’s dad drops his [Unassuming]. A moment passes, and then, the noises of the forest reach us. A hundred beasts, all drawn in by Amelie’s puppets, baited into following us here. Abominations of vines and flowers that have grown to parasitize corpses, overgrown animal hybrids, apes with multiple heads and bark-skinned bears.
They pour into the clearing like a torrent, and then incinerate as Flamando turns a baleful gaze into their direction. “This is nothing,” he snarls. “Nothing against the fire. Let me show you. Show you the flame you scorn, the flame that consumes all.”
And then, the world flips. More flames pour out of him in an endless torrent. They consume trees, they spread to the leaves, crawl up their trunks and into the canopy. Smoke fills the air, then the smoke burns away too. Ash rains onto my head. It’s hot, but despite it all, I can’t help myself.
I watch the mana in the air, even as my skin blisters. Even as my hair curls in on itself, the tips beginning to char in the heat. Even as the world turns red and orange in flickering heat, I reach out to the fire, and [Observe] it. I [Select] and [Suppress] and [Deconstruct] the parts that wanna lick at my skin, and it takes all my mana to even keep it at bay.
Tiny fragments of a monstrously complex skill-pattern flow into my mantle, into my archive. They’re so small and fragile I can barely understand them. The others already run, blasting away with everything they have, and yet, I stand there. In the middle of the flames, wreathed in the soothing embrace of my mantle, building the archive.
[Deconstruction 18 > 19]
And then, I feel the other descent.
Mana around me stirs - not with a skill-pattern, but as if natural. The same kind of movement it takes on when I enter an ascendancy well. The same kind of mana that makes up the system messages.
In a shocking, horrifying, gorgeous and wonderful display of power, I see what it means to draw the Tower’s Wrath.
I watch as staggering amounts of mana coalesce in the air. A torrent so vast it makes my vessel look like a drop in the ocean. A grain of sand in a desert. More mana than I have ever seen before, more mana than I think reasonably should exist fills the air. It’s so dense, it liquifies, but unlike Leo’s liquid mana, this one is thick.
Mana fills my lungs as I breathe, pouring into my vessel. It’s full in moments. The thick, syrupy mana settles around me, and as I try to breathe more, I feel like an insect trapped in tree resin. I can feel the way it moves around me, flowing and consuming despite its viscosity. Flames are snuffed out in moments, charred leaves frozen in time.
And then, Flamando’s gaze meets mine. The burning fire on his head looks pale. Yellowy, instead of his usual red. Around him, the mana is even thicker. It’s so thick that while I may be a bug in amber, he looks like a fly encased in a diamond. The shell of mana is crystalline, multi-layered, and an absolutely beautiful construction.
My eyes bleed, but I do not look away. My brain burns as I drink it all in, but I watch nonetheless.
[Observation 10 > 13]
And then, all at once, the diamond shell around him turns the telltale gold of an ascension well. I get to watch as spontaneously, that monstrously complex transportation formation appears, and against his will, Flamando gets shunted back up the tower.
Like an ant being tossed out the window.
I smile, brightly, as the mana ravages through the forest, extinguishing every hint of ember. As it flows, unstoppable, unbreakable, reclaiming the corpses of beasts and dissolving them into motes of power in moments. I feel its authority brush by my skin, touch upon my mantle, and it recognizes me as alive.
And then, just as quick as it came, the tower withdraws. The mana dissipates into ambient thickness, turning the same thin haze that it usually is. My heart thumps in my chest, released from the amber grip, and breath enters my lungs again. And then, a laugh bubbles up my throat.
“Ha. Hahahaha!”
It was so beautiful. I want it. I want it. All of that mana, all of that, I want to have it.
[One of your minor requests has been consumed for the mana and information you took.]
I look upwards, and feel my will to climb reaffirmed. It leaves me without any requests, without any favours, and yet, I feel the fullness of my core. The wondrous ways that mana flowed and was intricately manipulated despite the volume. The layering plates of diamond - and I laugh some more.
“It’s settled. We’re climbing all the way up.”
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