He screamed. A sizzle sounded from his fingers as white tendrils of smoke spun into the air. A yellow-orange flame danced over his hairy knuckles. He waved his hand frantically, crying, “Yowowowow!” as the fire grew brighter.
Now, his sleeve was on fire. He dropped and rolled on the forest floor. The ground was damp, but his efforts only stoked the flames to greater heights. In a matter of seconds, his clothes were engulfed. His screams grew ever louder.
With a sudden whoosh, Lord Tower shot down from the sky. He was fully enveloped in his armor; there was no way he’d had time to put it on in any ordinary way. The Gloryhammer turned night into day as the knight flashed toward Reeker. He grabbed the flailing skunk-man by the ankle, then streaked off in the direction of the stream. I followed at the speed of thought as he threw Reeker into the pool where Infidel had bathed. Reeker vanished beneath the surface with a loud hiss and a mushroom cloud of steam.
Tower spun around. There were flames dancing on the forest floor where Reeker had rolled. They flared higher and higher, the ground crackling and whistling as dampness boiled away. Tower gripped his Gloryhammer with both hands as the flames took on a decidedly serpentine form. At first, I thought a vine was on fire, curling from the heat. Then, I realized I was looking at a dragon — a small drake, no taller than a man, made of pure flame. It reared up on its blazing legs and sucked in air. Tower charged as the beast spewed a cone of flame. The fire engulfed the knight as he swung his enchanted hammer with a grunt. The weapon went right through the flame-beast.
“I’m on it!” shouted Aurora, running toward the conflagration with her hands outstretched. Snowflakes the size of saucers began to fall, vaporizing as they hit the beast with a staccato sss sss sss. Aurora was iced up and took a swing at the fire-dragon with her frozen gauntlet. She spun around, off balance, as her punch failed to connect. There was nothing solid about the beast to hit.
The fire seemed to laugh as it blazed brighter. Aurora raised her arm to cover her eyes as she stumbled back, her armor cracking.
Suddenly, Infidel dropped straight down toward the drake, holding an outstretched blanket. The fluttering edges engulfed the small dragon as she landed, dimming the light. The beast screamed as sparks swirled around the edges.
Off to one corner, there was a tiny remnant of flame curling around a small twig, no bigger than a cockroach. It leapt to a stick, and flashed into a tiny dragon the size of a mouse, then leapt again toward a fallen branch to grow as big as a cat.
Tower charged toward it, trying to stomp it beneath his gleaming boots, but the fire-cat darted away, burning leaves and twigs as it grew to the size of a dog. Aurora pointed both hands at the ground and the forest debris it needed to grow was suddenly coated in ice. The creature darted back toward Infidel, stretching its neck out to nip the edge of the blanket. Infidel jumped back with a yelp as the cloth flared; in the blink of an eye, the creature was man-sized once more.
“You guys are a frickin’ joke,” grumbled a voice from the shadows. The creature craned its blazing neck to discover Zetetic standing directly behind it, hiking up his tattered robes. The Deceiver grumbled, “I can piss out a fire no bigger than this.”
The creature roared toward him, reaching out with claws of flame.
The Deceiver began to pee.
The creature hissed, drawing back. It writhed as streams of urine spattered the ground where it stood. The flames flickered and danced, reaching for new fuel, but the Deceiver kept a steady aim and soon the ground around it was drenched. Fifteen seconds later, the flame flickered out, and the last pale red ember went black.
Aurora demurely covered her eyes as Zetetic stuffed his manhood back into the briefs he wore beneath his robe.
“Good job,” said Tower, his eyes on the Deceiver’s face. “Fast thinking.”
“I’m sure it seemed fast to you,” said Zetetic. He dropped to one knee, studying the blackened ground. His eyes flickered over it like he was reading a map. He reached out and picked up a twisted black twig a few inches in length, right where Reeker had first been standing. He studied it closely, then asked, “Which idiot lit the match?”
“The half-seed!” exclaimed Lord Tower. He turned and bounded through the forest, his armor clanging. Up above, there were a hundred voices jabbering; we’d probably awakened every pygmy in a five-mile radius.
Tower leapt into the pool with a splash, fishing around in the waist deep water with his gauntlets. He jerked upright suddenly, pulling a limp, blackened form back into the air.
Reeker wasn’t moving. His hair was completely burned away; his scalp was raw and red, with charred black flesh peeling away from the bone in places. Tower laid him on the stone by the pool. He pressed on the skunk-man’s chest, forcing out a fountain of water.
Menagerie rushed onto the scene, with No-Face trailing behind him. He didn’t pause to ask what had happened. He pushed Tower aside and dropped his ear to his friend’s chest. His brow knitted as he listened. Then, he jerked his head away and placed his mouth on Reeker’s lips. Reeker’s belly rose as Menagerie blew breath into him.
“Gluh,” said No-Face, sadly.
Menagerie continued to work, breathing in air, then pushing it out, pausing between breathes to listen to the chest.
“Is there a heartbeat?” Aurora asked.
Menagerie shook his head.
“I can’t believe he’s dead,” said Aurora, sounding sadder than I would have expected.
The Deceiver looked down at Reeker’s charred form and said, “Why not? He’s not breathing, there’s no heartbeat, his skin looks like charcoal. It’s not a difficult diagnosis.”
Menagerie looked at the Deceiver as if he was ready to pounce on the man. Then, his body slackened, and he said, in a soft voice, “Fix him. Please.”
The Deceiver shook his head. “The Truthspeakers stripped me of the power to raise the dead. I’m sorry.”
Menagerie ground his teeth together and clenched his fists, his anger rising. But instead of attacking Zetetic, he looked down at the fallen Goon.
“You moron,” he said, his voice trembling.
“That’s a fine goodbye,” said Reeker’s voice from the pool. I looked toward the rippling water and found a bilious yellow vapor rising, coalescing into the familiar form of Reeker. The pale spirit lingered for a few seconds as it looked down on the scene.
“Reeker! It’s me! Stagger!”
Reeker’s eye widened as he saw me. I drifted closer. His naked, barefoot ghost seemed shorter than he had been alive. There had been whispers that he wore lifts in his boots; apparently these rumors were true.
“Stagger?” he asked. “What are you doing here? You’re dead!”
“So are you,” I said. “I’m haunting Infidel. Well, technically, I’m haunting a knife. If you pick something and focus on it, you might be able to stick around.”
He looked down at his burnt body. “Why would I want to stick around?” he said. “Look at what’s left of me. It’s going to hurt like hell popping back inside.”
“I meant you can stay here as a ghost.”
Reeker laughed. “How pathetic would that be? Life was fun because my body was fun. I could eat, drink, and fool around. Can a ghost do any of that?”
“No. But it beats just fading out to nothing, doesn’t it?”
“What? You don’t believe in heaven?” Reeker asked.
“You do?”
“Sure. Like a Black Swan barge in the sky. I’ll just keep on eating, drinking, and sleeping around, only there I won’t get bossed around by tattooed shapeshifters. And in heaven, all my friends will have, you know, faces.” He looked on No-Face with a look of unconcealed disdain.
The giant man was standing over Reeker’s body, shuddering, tears rolling over his blank features from his one visible eye, as he gurgled, “Guh huh huh huh. Guh huh huh huh.”
“The big baby,” Reeker said.
“Kind of a cold thing to say about the only man crying over your death.”