Chapter 287 - Fthagguan (2/2)

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Inside the Vukanovi, Li watched the screen projected atop the central fire. Because he was looking at is with such tension, everyone else was silent, feeling the gravity of the situation. He wondered whether he was making everyone worry without reason, but at the same time, he could not help it. Better to be alert than to be sorry.

For now, Li could only see a wall of white from the fog. He willed the Vukanovi to keep moving forward, towards the light, but slowly and carefully, its combat capabilities readied at a moment's notice.

”Light not so scary,” said Tia as she fidgeted by Li's side. She tugged at his jacket collar, wanting to comfort him. ”When I see it. It was warm. Not like cold fog.”

”I believe you, Tia, but papa just has to make sure,” said Li with a slight smile as he kept his attention up, for the Vukanovi was nearing the source of the light in the depths of this desolate, ash choked land.

Zagan, unlike before, did not lie down in sleep, but instead also sat beside Li, his eyes gazing into the image. The demon was ready to fight.

So too was everybody else. Old Thane and Vilga's fists were clenched. Sheela's claws were out. Mason and Mercer held their longsword and daggers respectively.

It took a tense minute, but the source of the light became apparent. The fog cleared up abruptly, almost as if the Vukanovi had stepped into a completely different dimension, but as Li narrowed his eyes to watch for details, he realized that this was just a small clearing in the fog.

The sky was still shrouded in ash. But up ahead, perhaps forty meters away, there was a scene that Li took in at first with calm analysis, then with genuine surprise.

There was a flickering ripple in space at the center of the clearing, distorting and twisting the colors of the space around it into constantly shimmering and fluxing spirals. In front of that spatial flux, a woman sat atop a squid-like creature that dwarfed her several times over.

Its bright, angry red tentacles stretched limp behind it like tails of fire and its bulb-like head was molten red and lined with fiery cracks like the surface of a burnt planet, and a single eye stared listlessly down to the cracked earth with a dim purple glow.

Li recognized the creature. It was a Fire Vampire. A dead one, though, thankfully.

Li immediately bade the Vukanovi to stop. He knew well what Fire Vampires were, how tremendously difficult an enemy they could be even for Li, especially in swarms. They had no relation to vampires, for those, Li could deal with in spades, and they were known also as Fthagguans.

Eldritch monsters of fire that acted as emissaries for an Old One named the Living Flame.

The woman sitting atop the fire vampire looked up to the Vukanovi and stood. She was dressed in light crimson armor that shimmered like smoky fire, and her eyes were lit up iridescent with the colors of the rainbow as she stared directly at the Vukanovi through a sheen of messy, long golden blonde hair.

As her multi-colored eyes set on the Vukanovi, she thrust her arm out besides her, her hand open, grasping a weapon that rapidly began materializing in her hand in a shower of sparks. It looked initially like a spear, but as it formed more completely, Li realized it was a lengthy torch, though unlike any ordinary one.

It was made of black, segmented metal so dark it reached a shade of vantablack. The b.u.t.t of the torch ended into an elongated, two pronged point, and the head of the torch was elaborately patterned in a spiral of black metal curved into the image of a flickering flame.

The torch lit up, a surprisingly normal colored fire bursting from the vantablack metal in a neat, controlled blaze.

When Asala saw the torch, she hissed not in threat, but in surprise.

”What is it, lads?” said Old Thane. ”Mine hearing is quite lacking in these confines, aye.”

”A shame that thou hath lost thy sight,” said Asala as she immediately materialized a tablet to record with. ”For thou wouldst have looked upon the form of Lira the Seeker, greatest adventurer to have ever walked upon the slopes of this world.”

”Nobody leaves the Vukanovi,” said Li as he raised himself to the ceiling. ”I will handle this. No, I am the only one capable of handling this.”