“Worth a shot,” Eva hissed, then bolted toward the mysterious creatures.
We were just about to join her in preempting the attack, when they all stopped, as if suddenly paralyzed. It brought us all to a screeching halt. The masked assailants shrieked and wailed as flames erupted from inside their bodies. They were as shocked as we were—but they never got a chance to fight back against what had taken over.
In mere seconds, they all burned up. The bright orange flames grew tall, their tongues licking at the painted ceiling. Moments later, they were on the floor, their carbonized remains falling apart into black, powdery chunks.
“Damn…” Raphael managed.
A gust of hot air blew through the temple. It put all the candles out in an instant, and darkness hugged us with spine-tickling chills. The sound of fire crackling prompted us to turn around. What we saw was going to change our lives forever. I knew it, deep down, in every fiber of my being.
Everything we’d been through until now had been a stepping stone to… this.
Amelia
Never in my life had I seen anything like this.
A column of fire emerged from the darkness, shaping itself into a humanoid creature of sorts. It reminded me of Harper’s account of when she’d first faced Ramin, Neraka’s Fire Hermessi. The association seemed natural in my mind—who else could shape themselves up from raw, blistering flames?
“What… What is that?” Inalia breathed.
With all the lights out in the temple, the fire creature was our only source of light. Amber flickered across the marble walls, playing tag with the shadows.
We all stepped back—except Inalia. She was unable to move, and for good reason. We were somewhat accustomed to weird stuff like this. She wasn’t. She didn’t even understand what she really was, what her fire abilities meant. Cerix, as she knew it, was the closest thing she had to normal throughout her life. This… This was something else entirely.
“Inalia, move back,” Eira warned her, then tried to reach out and pull her away.
Taeral caught Eira’s wrist, instead, motioning for her to keep her distance. “Hold on,” he whispered.
The scene before us was surreal, to say the least. The fire figure was significantly taller than all of us. It was sluggish in its movements but seemed intent on reaching out to… Inalia. My heart got stuck in my throat. I could handle fights with masked maniacs. I could even deal with the earth cracking open and trying to swallow us whole. Heck, I knew my way around the murderous, spiky trees, too. But this was something else entirely.
I understood now why Harper had been in awe of the Hermessi from the very beginning. Ramin had showed himself in his fire form deep inside her consciousness, moments before Shaytan, the daemon king, had almost killed her. Seeing something like this changed you forever.
“Is… Is it a Fire Hermessi?” Riza murmured, unable to take her eyes off the blazing figure.
Taeral nodded. “I can feel him inside me. Burning. Sad. Frustrated…”
Just when I’d thought it couldn’t get any weirder, Taeral seemed to have some kind of emotional connection to the Fire Hermessi. But where did it hail from? Was it Cerixian? How was it strong enough to reveal itself to us like this, without a fae conduit, or at least through Inalia’s body, like Aya had repeatedly done with Vesta?
The fire creature stilled, as if looking at Inalia for a while. Nothing was said. The only sound was that of flames bursting here and there, all over its incandescent body. Inalia was speechless.
“How is this possible?” I finally asked, unable to take the silence anymore.
The Fire Hermessi reached out, as if wanting to touch Inalia. It made a choking noise. I was inclined to assume that it was trying to talk—desperately eager to say something, in fact. I could almost see the shape of a chin, but the flames shuddered. Sparks flew outward like fireworks gone wild.
Then, it was gone.
Darkness prevailed in a puff of black smoke.
Inalia gasped.
We all had questions at this point, but none of us dared to speak. The Fire Hermessi had just tried to communicate, to touch Inalia. Was there a connection between them?
“Was that the rogue Fire Hermessi that Aya told us about?” Raphael asked, basically for all of us. “Because I don’t believe in coincidences. Not when we’re involved. Nothing is random.”
“It could be,” Taeral replied.
Raphael opened his hand. A small flame formed between his splayed fingers. He threw it at the shrine’s candles—with elegance and precision, the little fireball darted from one fuse to another, until the entire temple was lit again. The warm light pushed the dark away, revealing the bloodied and charred corpses of our unknown cult enemies.
Inalia, the poor girl, was absolutely baffled. “A Fire Hermessi… Eons passed in this world, and we never saw one. We never saw proof that they actually existed,” she murmured. “I spent my whole life thinking we’d just ignorantly put names on the natural elements. Little did I know, huh?”
“Seriously? You can create and manipulate fire out of thin air, and you didn’t think the Hermessi existed?” Eva replied dryly, her arms crossed.
I liked the Lamia princess more and more. She didn’t just speak her mind. She delivered the most efficient burns and regretted nothing. I would’ve loved to have some of that spunk.
“All the weird fire guy stuff aside, I must admit, I’m baffled by our fellow Cerixians,” Eira said, staring at the corpses. “We’ll have to investigate this. We must find out where they came from and what it is they’re looking to accomplish. This kind of violence is unprecedented, especially in the heart of Silvergate.”
“So, you’re telling us that masked maniacs don’t just go around killing people here?” Taeral replied, his tone dripping with acid sarcasm. It drilled holes through me—I could only imagine what it did to Eira.
“No,” she said, standing tall. “They don’t. We don’t have such cults in the Rose Domain. Hell, our biggest problem until now was the Brothers of the Shadow, but they’re normal Cerixians. Bastards who think they can break up the empire so one of them can wear a crown again and rule over an isolated kingdom. They want to bring us back to the old ages.”
“What do you know about them?” I asked.
Eira shrugged. “Enough to know they must all be captured and jailed. They have weapons. They radicalize the poor people living on the outskirts of the domains. They are well organized, but not impossible to take down. We just need to identify and disable the central cell—the core of operations. We believe it’s somewhere along the northern border of the Hadeen Domain. But, trust me, none of them don the black silks and porcelain masks.”
“And they can’t wield fire like these guys could,” the Cerixian soldier added, then scowled at Inalia. “Or like she can.”
Eira gave him a sideways glance. “I’ll need you to keep your mouth shut about that.”
“But she—”
