Blood & Fur

Chapter Forty-Seven: The House of Jaguars

It was like being chased by a storm with a thousand claws.

A chorus of bloodthirsty shrieks erupted behind me, followed by the thundering noise of a raging stampede. Trees collapsed in my wake, crushed under the feet of deers and trihorns. Monkeys threw stones at me. Voles and coati ran faster than they should with frothing mouths while poisonous saliva drooled from their teeth.

When I dared to look behind me, a sea of bloodshot eyes glared back.

I had been taught all my life that the likes of deer and sparrows were nothing to be feared. They fled at a man’s approach and we consumed them for food. We were the predators and they were the prey.

Seeing a horde of herbivores hunting me with predatory hunger forced me to reassess this lesson. There was something utterly perverse about watching peaceful beasts being driven to predatory frenzy. It was a mockery of nature, of normalcy.

The very order of the world had been turned upside down.

The birds among the horde flew after me with all their strength and no concern for their lives. They were no longer animals, but living projectiles. Some pursued me with such relentless fury that they didn’t bother turning to avoid obstacles. They exploded into showers of blood and feathers upon impacting trees I had successfully avoided.

More kept coming. The infection driving these beasts to madness had united thousands in a single tide of screeching fury.

Thankfully, most of my pursuers were landbound beasts, slow and impaired by the forested terrain. Only the birds were quick enough to catch up to me in owl form. I had never been afraid of sparrows until today. I could crush one between my talons easily enough, but a flock of hundreds with their fragile minds set on murder? I might as well be trying to fly through a hail of arrows.

When a few threatened to catch up to me, I activated the Doll spell to defend myself. Talons of darkness tore up the birds trying to peck at me and cut down branches impairing my progress.

My world had turned into a tunnel. There was no left nor right, and nothing but death behind me. I couldn’t escape upward to the sky with the strange unknown effect keeping me close to the ground. I had no idea where I was going, no plan beyond frantically saving myself a few more seconds of life. Only the path ahead mattered.

At least, until I heard the ground tremble.

I mistook the beast’s approach for an earthquake at first. It came from the left with earthshaking steps. Its bloodthirsty roar put all others to shame.

I peeked left and saw a great, serpentine head towering above the trees.

The adult longneck from before charged at me with a glare of frothing madness.

The beast crashed through all obstacles in its way like a landslide of flesh and scales. The forest bent under its weight and stone shattered in its wake.

My heartbeat quickened as its frothing head descended upon me like a hawk on a smaller bird. A surge of strength pulsed through my body. My black wings moved so fast that they began to hurt.

The longneck’s teeth barely missed me by an inch. They instead hit a tree’s trunk and split it in half with a loud crunch.

The monster’s attack proved a blessing in disguise. Its immense size and weight meant that it couldn’t pivot quickly. The longneck found itself between the stampede and me, crushing trihorns and other beasts with the same ease as it did with the rocks and vegetation hampering its way. The horde crashed against the monster’s thick hide. The birds and the most agile landbound creatures quickly moved past it, but it delayed them enough to grant me a brief respite. Time enough to think.

What was I supposed to do? Where was I supposed to go?

Fighting the stampede head-on would be suicide. My offensive spells could have dealt with them in small groups, but not thousands at once. I couldn’t stop moving either lest they catch up to me.

Think, Iztac. This was a hunt. If the disease infecting these animals proved to be lethal, I would simply have to survive until the plague consumed them. But I have no guarantee it will. For all I know, it simply drives its victims mad.

Would the animals turn on each other once they lost sight of me? The stag that was called to the hunt killed its own family before catching up to me. If I could trick this madhouse’s inhabitants into believing me dead, then their aggression might drive them to infighting.

With little hope of fighting off my pursuers anyway, I adjusted my strategy. I canceled the Doll spell and cloaked myself in a Veil of invisibility. My feathers vanished from sight. I became a silent shadow that slithered among a forest of madness.

I heard earthshaking footfalls behind me.

I turned my head just long enough to see trees collapsing. The longneck was hot on my trail, leading the charge of the damned. The ground trembled with each of its steps and its roars boomed like thunder.

The sheer size difference suddenly dawned upon me. I was large enough to carry a llama in my talons while in owl form, but my wingspan barely rivaled the length of one of this titan’s legs. Were we on the surface, I could see the beast crash through my palace’s walls with ease.

I was being chased by a walking mountain.

And it was gaining ground on me.

Something so big shouldn’t move so fast. Longnecks were renowned for their bulk and slowness, yet this one could outpace a deer. Unlike the other creatures, the terrain didn’t slow it down either. The longneck crushed every obstacle in its way with ease.

The disease that drove these beasts to madness also filled them with unholy strength and resolve.

I saw light ahead. I finally flew out of the forests and onto an open plain of rotting flowers. The idyllic landscape of earlier had metamorphosed into a grim vision. Black jaguar statues overlooked vast clearings that stank of blood under a crimson sky.

The false paradise had dropped its mask to reveal its festering true face.

However, leaving the forest meant no more trees to impair my flight. I deviated to my right while invisible. I moved so close to the flowers below that I seemed to disappear.

The stampede emerged from the forest a scant few seconds after me, its tide of legs flattening everything on its path. Thankfully, most of my pursuers fell for my trick. Many of them mindlessly continued to run forward and spread throughout the plain in the wrong direction.

Others did not.

A band of hares and deer chased after me across the flowery plain, snarling and drooling. The longneck followed closely after them. Its sunken, bloodshot eyes glared at me with bottomless malice.

It knew where I was.

The Veil spell showed its limits. I understood human senses enough to hide myself from sight and smother the noise I made, but animals could detect scents unknown to a man’s nose. I needed to cover my tracks somehow.

I furiously tried to recall anything that could give me an advantage, and happened upon one solution.

The river.

If I could reach the nearest river and slip underwater, it would hide my scent for a time. Perhaps long enough for me to figure out how to survive this trial.

My sharp eyes noticed one a mile or so ahead. The water had turned red under the glow of the crimson sky. Its surface remained eerily peaceful, in stark contrast with the raging madness of my pursuers.

The thought that it might be teeming with maddened aquatic creatures hardly crossed my mind. I would rather take the possibility of another attack over the certainty of being trampled to death.

The stampede was growing closer.

I moved in the river’s direction as fast as I could, only to hear screeching close to me. Long ears peeked out of the field of flowers. With no trees nor obstacles to slow them down, the jackrabbits and hares from earlier could make full use of their immense speed. No matter how fast my wings flapped, their legs proved faster.

They caught up to me.

One hare swiftly jumped at me from under the flowers, its teeth sharp and frothing with blood. I swept it away in midair with the Doll spell. More followed its example.

Maintaining multiple spells at once was no longer too difficult for me, but splitting my attention in multiple directions proved difficult. I kept my eyes focused on the river, cloaked my wings in a Veil, and repelled the hares to the best of my ability with the Doll.

Finally, I came within a few inches of the river. I prepared to shapeshift back into a man and dive to safety when a blur of brown fur leaped at me from the flowers below. My dark talons moved to intercept it, but I was too late.

The blur bit me.

Sharp teeth sank into my chest right between the ribs on my right, going so deep that they pierced through my flesh and veins. A sharp pain coursed through my body as I lost control of my flight and hit the river’s surface. My attacker and I tumbled into the red waters.

A jackrabbit had ambushed me. It chewed at my flesh even as my burning blood scared away its face. Its flesh melted off its bones, yet its teeth continued to gnaw with relentless hunger.

It was trying to eat its way to my heart.

I activated Bonecraft and caused my ribs to close in on the hare’s skull. My bones crushed the creature’s head, its remains stuck inside me like a corpse nailed to a hunter’s wall. I had no time to get it out. The longneck rushed into the river right after me. Its immense weight sent mighty waves rippling through the current, pushing me away downstream.

I shapeshifted back into a man and swam down current, struggling against the pain in my chest, struggling against the fear. I used Bonecraft to close my heart-fire from the outside world and prevent the water from touching it.

I held my breath and swam while still under the Veil. I continued to do so until the screams and screeches grew distant enough. When I dared to surface again, I found I had swam all the way to a new forest of dying pines and fir trees. I did not linger for an instant. I rushed away from the river into the woods under the cover of invisibility. I heard the longneck’s roars far in the distance. It would probably follow the stream, and with luck, continue down it without finding me.

I’m thirsty. I couldn’t explain why I felt this way now of all times. I had just come out of a forced bath. My throat has dried up.

My escape led me to a bosquet surrounding another of those cursed jaguar statues. Its obsidian eyes looked down on me as I finally removed the hare stuck in my chest. My blood had melted off its skull to the point that only a bloody, headless corpse remained.

I tossed the body aside and sat in the statue’s shadow to gather my thoughts. I didn’t sense any eyes staring at my Veil, so no beast had located me yet. I had bought myself some time. I couldn’t tell how much, but I knew my respite would be terribly brief.

Escaping wouldn’t solve my problem. I hadn’t seen the creatures turning on each other once they lost sight of me. Maybe the disease only drove them to hunt the uninfected. To spread itself.

What was I supposed to do then? I glared up at the jaguar statue. Was it somehow connected to this trial? Would breaking it and its stone siblings end the curse? With few other options, I used the Doll spell to shatter the statue. The obsidian fell in a rain of sharp shards. I waited for punishment and salvation both.

I received neither.

Breaking that statue had no effect. Not on its own at least. The thought of tracking down the other obsidian jaguars across this hellscape in the vain hope that it might end the trial filled me with anger.

And that thirst… my throat was on fire…

It’s not water I crave. My eyes turned to the dead hare. I crave blood.

I rose to my feet and prepared to consume the dead hare, when my thought process came to an abrupt stop. I held my head with my hands and struggled against aches. Something… something was wrong.

I crave blood.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Those…

Those weren’t my thoughts.

My gaze darted to my chest, where the marks of the hare’s teeth in my flesh remained raw and visible. My blood had mixed with its saliva; and the vile plague that it carried.

The hare had infected me.

Is that so wrong?

“Shut up,” I cursed at the force infesting me. I ripped the patches of flesh around the hare’s bite from myself, though part of me knew it was already too late. Evil flowed through my veins. “Get out of me.”

I am you, thou art I.

No, you were not. The headache grew stronger, sharper. Damn it. I had to complete this trial before I joined the mad legions hunting me. Think, Iztac, think.

No more Iztac, the voice in my head said. No more man, no more owl. Become blood. Shed it, spill it, drink it.

My tongue craved the sweet taste of blood.

No, no, I had to keep myself grounded. Focus on what started this mad hunt in the first place.

That scarecrow of bones and fur. I remembered. I remembered words written on long dead skulls.

“Life is war, death is peace.”

I looked at the dead hare and the solution became clear.

I understand that sentence’s meaning now. I had to bring peace to these war-torn lands. Something I couldn’t do by fleeing. No more than I could escape my fate on the surface. This hunt was not a game of survival.

It was a war. A war I had to win.

I wouldn’t run or hide. I would fight.

Let it flow. Let the blood flow.

The thirst grew overwhelming. I felt my veins drying up and liquid filling my eyes. My world was turning red. Burning anger swelled in my heart like a violent pulsion, demanding that I shed someone’s blood, anybody’s blood.

“You want blood?” I bit my own wrist and let fire pour out of it. “Choke on mine!”

I would be crowned champion of this tournament atop a throne of corpses, but Man did not conquer nature with strength alone. No warrior could hope to slay a feathered tyrant with their teeth and claws. Humans used tools.

One came to mind above all others.

I tossed my blood at the nearest tree and set its dried leaves ablaze. The fires of my heart hungered for death.

“I will happily partake in these festivities,” I whispered to the plague inside me. “But I do not hunt.”

I destroyed.

I summoned a cursed feather of darkness between my fingers. In it, I poured all of my malice, all of my hunger for victory, all of my lust for destruction.

“Let the flames consume all those who would stand in my way!” I shouted with bellowing fury. “May the smoke smother those who would fly away! May this world become a fire in which I alone survive!”

Once I finished speaking, I placed the cursed feather inside the hare’s corpse and swiftly buried it beneath the burning tree. The power of my Haunt spread alongside the flames. It moved from one branch to another the same way the plague had infected host after host, until the entire bosquet became a ring of candles.

I did not stop there though. I cut myself again and again, spilling my burning blood on the grass and flowers. I gave a little of myself to the world. I offered it the mercy of death and the gift of the pyre.

I heard animals shriek in the distance. A few birds, noticing the smoke, descended upon me as I worked. I welcomed them warmly as new sacrifices with my Doll talons. Each of them became a new vessel for my Haunts.

“Consume indiscriminately!” I cursed the flames. “Make a desert of this land and call it peace! Burn everything! Everything that is not me! A cruel death to all of my enemies!”

Within minutes, I had set the land on fire. A beautiful purple wildfire born of my own wicked heart.

I had summoned the ultimate predator, whose hunger for blood knew no limits. Nothing could satiate it.

Before my fire’s burning appetite, the beasts of this doomed land became prey again. The sight of rising smoke and rings of searing flames awakened in them something stronger than bloodlust: fear. I saw flocks of birds trying to escape, only for the same effect that prevented me from flying too high to keep them at the mercy of searing smoke. A melody of deer screams and cries resonated in the distance. One voice was louder than all of them.

The plague in my head could only shriek, its call for blood forgotten.

“Can’t stand the heat, can you?” I grabbed embers and applied them to my wounds. The pain of my cauterizing flesh paled before the pleasure of hurting the enemy inside me. “Figures. We do burn the sick.”

The call of bloodlust lessened in my head, but my thoughts were set on annihilation. If the animals had an ounce of intelligence left, they would seek the river’s safety. I would ambush the survivors there and finish them off.

“No one escapes the slaughter,” I said. “No one escapes alive.”

I slipped back towards the river under the cover of a Veil. A scene of utter chaos awaited me. My Haunts had set both riverbanks on fire, creating a corridor of fire cooking those trapped in it like meat in an oven. The smell of charred flesh proved almost as strong as that of burning wood.

Dozens of beasts big and small had rushed into the river to shield themselves from the flames. Some were already half burned to death by the time they reached safety; the stag that started the entire hunt was among their unfortunate numbers. The front part of its body had turned into a molten mess of exposed bones and calcined flesh. It reminded me of the Burned Men.

The animal’s screams of pain would almost inspire pity in me, if it hadn’t tried to kill me earlier.

I would finish it off quickly enough. The smoke provided a good cover for my scent. I remained undetected so far. I stalked the riverbanks, looking for the one enemy I feared the most. I sensed its approach with the shaking of the earth.

The longneck emerged from the sea of flames, roaring and burning. Its head reminded me of a serpent shedding its skin. Its charred scales simply fell off its flesh under the searing heat. The beast rushed at the river to seek its salvation, its charge raising a cloud of dust in its wake.

It would never reach safety.

Still under a Veil, I raised my right hand at the creature and pointed at its head. I used Bonecraft to transform two of my ribs into a blade ready to burst out of my flesh at a moment’s notice. With no rabid beasts to keep me moving, I could afford to stay still and take aim. I followed Chamiaholom’s instructions, steadied my arm, and held fast.

My bone arrow surged from my arm at lightning speed.

Longnecks were big and strong, but they possessed a key weakness. My projectile nailed it perfectly. My bone arrow hit the longneck at the base of its skull, where it joined with its spine. It pierced the creature’s flesh so fast it didn’t even notice the attack.

The mountain that once hunted me across the land collapsed in on itself.

Its fall was as sudden as it was spectacular. The longneck’s legs stumbled in the middle of its mad dash. The creature’s immense weight, carried by its momentum, tumbled onto the burning earth with the strength of a landslide. The longneck’s own limbs cracked under the pressure; all mad beasts unlucky enough to stand in the titan’s path were crushed to a bloody paste. The cataclysmic collapse shook the world, blowing immense clouds of dust and waves of fire in all directions. The noise reminded me of falling lightning and crumbling houses.

The longneck’s head had fallen a few feet short of the river. Now it could only stare at its waters while the flames began to roast it alive.

How amusing. Such a large body held by such a small linchpin.

I couldn’t put into words the pride I felt. I had spent most of my childhood as a weakling, and my tenure as emperor at the Nightlords’ mercy. Here I had slain a creature twenty times my size with my magical power alone. These months of trials, sweat, and torment were finally starting to pay off.

I had grown strong.

I didn’t need to hide my strength here.

“You may kill a man in a single step, but my word alone has slain thousands,” I taunted the dying creature. “Stay in your place.”

The monster could only snap its teeth in agony. Chamiaholom would be proud.

Only when the flames consumed the longneck did I reveal myself to the other survivors. Since they already learned of my presence, I canceled my Veil and faced them. Their maws snapped at me with hunger and malevolence. I didn't care. They were too few and too weak to prove a threat to me now.

“Come at me if you dare, beasts!” I challenged them. “I shall slay you all! I alone will survive to see the daylight!”

I activated Spiritual Manifestation in an incomplete state. My hands turned into talons and wings grew out of my back, but I did not surrender my legs or arms for an owl’s shape. I became half a man and half a beast, the ferocity of both and the restraint of neither.

I became hatred.

I became murder.

The beasts’ screams of rage turned into shrieks of fear.

I ripped a trihorn’s skull off its body and beat its rabid children to death with it. I pecked to death the hares that tried to overwhelm me one after another. I stuffed the stag who began this mad hunt with sharpened bones. I showered in the guts of all living things.

They folded one after the other. Each murder led to the next in an endless chain of slaughter. My blood mixed with those of my enemies until the flames of my soul cloaked me in a cloud of fire that no tears could extinguish.

My world became a whirlwind, a hurricane of blood and guts and bones. All my victims blurred together through the veil of slaughter. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to practice the dance of desolation until the end of time.

I wasso good at it.

For the first time in my life, I felt truly free. Free from the gaze of others, free from civilization, free from judgment, free from reason and compassion. Free of my own decaying humanity.

I had no enemies. Only victims.

If war was a game, then no one could play better than me. When I let go of my fears and inhibitions, no one could defeat me. No one. No one.

I was born for this.

What my flames hadn’t burned, my spells and talons killed. At no point did I lose control. I wielded my anger like the sharpened edge of an assassin’s blade. I refined my hatred into a weapon.

I had become the cold brutality unique to mankind. Slaughter with a purpose.

And when at long last my talons crushed the neck of my last challenger, the screams finally ended.

Then I was alone.

Alone in a quiet world.

I let go of my latest prey and looked upon my work. My fires had consumed all the forests and flower fields. Plains of gray ashes and landmarks of shared bones stretched far and wide. The river’s waters had mostly boiled. A mass of dismembered limbs and corpses choked its stream, filling it with blood and guts. Most of them were my doing. My trophies.

The hunt had come to an end. No more hunters nor hunted.

Just me.

A single sound bellowed from deep within my throat.

“Eh… eh… ahah, ahah.” My voice grew in strength alongside my joy. “Ahaa! Ahaha! Aaaah!”

My laughter echoed across the bloody river and the graves I had filled. It was a deep and sinister sound, yet one that carried such pure satisfaction and blissful contentment. I was a young child once more, finding amusement in the world without requiring any reason.

It took me minutes to calm down, and when I did, two words escaped my lips.

“I win,” I whispered quietly.

“You did,” a great and terrible voice answered me.

The Lords of Terror came to give me my prize.

I stood along the ember-filled riverbank when the flames consuming the land split in two. A corridor appeared, lined up by the obsidian jaguar statues welcoming their master. The skeletal totem which I had seen earlier crawled towards me on a bed of a thousand rolling skulls.

Another shape emerged from the river on the other side of me: a hideous mass of dismembered animals sewn together by their festering skin and flesh. My victims became a pile with a hundred charred faces and a thousand arms filled with squirming maggots. A cloud of flies formed above it like a halo.

“I am Cuchumaquic,” the bone totem said with a deep voice booming like a war drum. Its court of skulls echoed its words with bitter regrets. “I am the hunter and the hunted. I am the revenge that leaves the world blind. I am murder, I am war, I am violence. I am a cycle.”

“We are Xiquiripat,” the thousand decayed beasts whispered, its flies buzzing and droning. “We are that which you cannot see, but kills all.”

The fear of being hunted and the fear of diseases. Two terrors as old as life itself, with none of Chamiaholom’s twisted veneer of humanity.

However, Cuchumaquic’s words made me realize that he embodied more than the hunt alone. He represented the fear of being preyed upon. The fear of being attacked, whether by man or beast.

“You have triumphed over the House of Jaguars, Peacebringer,” Cuchumaquic declared. “How does it feel to win?”

Win. Such a beautiful word.

I was covered in wounds, from burned scars to half-healed cuts. My skin was soaked with dried blood. What a winner I made, the last man standing after a frenzied free-for-all. I was more of a survivor than a victor.

But I felt thrilled nonetheless.

And it disturbed me.

“I needed that rush,” I replied with a voice brimming with shame. “Were you influencing me? Did your plague drive me into a frenzy?”

“Your flames purged us from your sickened blood,” Xiquiripat replied. The thousand victims making up its body revealed their wounds: slashed throats, crushed skulls, burned hearts. All of them were my doing. “You wished for this.”

That blissful laughter had been mine alone; the same way I had laughed after causing Smoke Mountain’s eruption.

“Good.” The word escaped my mouth on its own, though I couldn’t explain why. It came from the heart. “Good. I am myself.”

I had always been myself.

Somehow, the thought that these atrocities had been forced upon me sickened me more than the fear of owning up to them. The knowledge that my malicious thoughts were mine alone filled me with a grim sort of pride. The one thing I hated most was to be powerless. To be controlled. To dance to another’s tune.

In a sinister way, knowing I had committed this slaughter out of my own free will reassured me. I was the master of my destiny, however bloodsoaked it might be.

Cuchumaquic narrowed its neck and crown of horns at me. The Lord of Terror had no eyes to observe me with, but I felt its gaze on me. “Do you understand now, at the end of all things, the meaning of life?”

I remained silent. I knew the answer, but I dared not say it out loud.

I enjoyed slaughtering my foes.

The same potential for destruction that fueled the Nightlords’ cruelty dwelled within my heart. I couldn’t pretend otherwise, not after this massacre. I had justified my crimes by saying that I committed them in the service of a greater cause.

But to know that a part of me delighted in destruction frightened me to my core. It reminded me too much of the Nightlords for my taste.

King Mictlantecuhtli’s words echoed in my mind. Do not become what you fight against.

“To come into this world is to enter a battlefield,” Cuchumaquic declared. “Nature is war. War of tribes against tribes, of men against beast, of the sick against disease. Life is a constant fight that ends with death. The grave alone knows peace. When one victor witnesses the last sunset, my cycle will end and I shall come undone.”

Hunting, warring, fighting, revenge… all of them required at least two participants. So long as more than one being remained in this world, a new cycle of strife would inevitably arise. Only the dead knew eternal peace.

“The meaning of life is violence,” Cuchumaquic concluded grimly. “To kill is to prove one’s strength, one’s right to life. Murder is a victory that keeps the war going.”

“You needed that thrill,” Xiquiripat whispered. “The pleasure of proving to yourself that you are the strongest. The one fit to survive, even thrive, in this hopeless world. Seek no shame in this pleasure. It is simply the law of nature that life thrives in death.”

“I am not ashamed of victory,” I replied. Not against beasts at least. “No more than I will regret destroying the Nightlords, once I gain the strength to do so.”

But I couldn’t listen to that cruel voice inside my heart.

Even if part of me enjoyed the thrill of battle, I couldn’t let it rule me over. My acts were an unfortunate necessity. If I started enjoying the death and destruction for its own sake… then I would never come back from it. I would fall into the same abyss of depravity that my captors crawled out of.

I had to remain focused on my goal. This would keep me on the straight and narrow path.

Cuchumaquic crawled closer until it towered over me. “We have a gift for you, child,” it said as it moved one of its arms closer to my chest. “Use it to slay those who would deny your right to life.”

The Lord of Terror pressed a hand of bones against my ribcage and filled my Teyolia with malice. Awful images and a chorus of supplications echoed in my skull, the same way the plague once tempted me to fall into a dreadful frenzy.

Unlike Chamiaholom, the Lord of the Hunt and its sibling did not bother to teach me its spell the old-fashioned way. They engraved their knowledge into my soul.

No, scratch that. These two didn’t need to teach me anything.

I was mostly self-taught already. They simply completed my formation.

“The Blaze spell is yours.” Cuchumaquic removed its hand from my chest. “Use it to win your war. Bring the peace of death to the world.”

I clenched my fist and channeled my Teyolia. A shroud of purple flames—the same color as my accursed heart-fire—cloaked my fingers. They did not consume my skin nor erupt from my wounds, and neither did they require fuel to burn. This smokeless flame arose from my will alone.

I didn’t need to shed my own blood to summon flames anymore.

I could do even better. Channeling my Teyolia and Ihiyotl both at once, I opened my mouth and exhaled. My empty lungs burned in my chest, and a cloud of malicious flames erupted from my mouth in response.

With enough divine embers, this paltry breath of fire would burn brighter than the sun. Bright enough to incinerate the Nightlords.

“Let your accursed pyre burn those that stand in your way,” Xiquiripat whispered. “Its flames shall light your way.”

I glanced at the Lord of Plagues’ festering, mutilated flesh. My thoughts swiftly turned to the Nightlords.

They would make good kindling too.

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