Three days. Three days of fleeing, dodging, and hearing the old voice coil around his mind.
Arthur Zenith huddled under the twisted roots of a lightning-struck oak deep in the Whisperwood, leagues from the stinking streets of Veridia. He laid his hand fiat on the wet, mossy ground. His senses, thin-stretched and rewired by the parasite, knew the world with awful closeness. He sensed the sluggish thrum of the roots of the tree drinking deep, the minute buzzing of ants burrowing, the faraway moan of water over rock in a secret brook. Further down, there were whispers – whispers of underground fire, of stones remembering mountains, of a powerful slumber far below the earth. "You start to tune in to the world's heartbeat, Host," the parasite noted, its tone ever-present and low in the rear of his head, colder than shade in the forest. "A result of our. integration. The edges fade."
Our union. Arthur winced, massaging his left forearm. Cyan scarring throbbed dully underneath his sleeve, a reminder always of the presence now inhabiting his body. Ashrend, the obsidian dagger, weighed heavily against his hip, bound in rags to damp the disquieting thrum. It thrummed now, an insistent warning vibration.
"It feels convergence zones," the parasite said, a trace of distaste tinging its voice. "Areas where the Veil between worlds thins. Power to power. This forest… it resonates with old magic."
A branch broke, like the snapping of bone, twenty yards to his right. Arthur whirled, a whirl of mist automatically condensing in his hand – a wild, unstable mixture of water and air sucked out of the wet undergrowth. It fizzed and fizzled out before he could fashion it.
Out from behind a screen of dripping moss came a figure wrapped in living flame.
Hair like spun embers, crackling with restless energy, framed a face etched with wary defiance. Her eyes, wide and burning with an intense ember-gold light, locked onto him. Flames danced around her clenched fists, pulsing erratically, casting flickering shadows on the mossy trunks.
"You," she spat, the word marred by smoke and distrust. Her tone was coarse, like pebbles rubbing together. "The one who melted stone in the Fallen Temple. The one who they talk about in the slums."
Arthur slowly lifted his empty hands, palms facing her. The parasite stirred inside him, a curled tension. "I don't want trouble," Arthur said, his voice low, even. His eyes followed the wild rhythm of her flames. Unpredictable. Deadly.
"Trouble?" She let out a harsh, humourless laugh.
Blaze flared more brightly around her shoulders. "I'm made of trouble, stranger. Name's Nyra Vale. Or at least, it was before the Ignis Guild decided I was too much of a liability." She took a step closer. The heat radiating from her was palpable, causing the air to shimmer. "Heard rumors. Whispers on the wind. That a Zenith made it through. That he crawled out of the Forbidden Temple altered." Her blazing eyes swept over him, straying to the pale blue glow evident around his collar. "Thought if anyone would know why fire betrays. it'd be a damned Zenith."
Arthur stiffened. "Why?"
Her mouth curled into a sour line. "Because this," she spat, lifting a hand wrapped in suddenly black-edged fire that hissed like angry snakes, "smells like parasite magic to the Guild sniffers. They called it corruption. A blight."
She didn't cast the firebolt so much as release it. A blazing lance of red-black-veined crimson tore across the clearing. Arthur jumped to the left, but the raw speed and heat were too much for him. The rim of the blast scraped his top arm.
AGONY.
The parasite let out a soundless scream in his head. The cyan marks on his arm flared to burning light, echoing the burn. Searing pain flamed through his nerves, accompanied by a horrifying echo of the temple's assimilation – the ghostly flavor of melting crystal. He shouted and fell back, the acrid smell of charred cloth burning his nose.
"FUSE!" the parasite insisted, its tone rough with urgency. "Neutralize her chaos! NOW!"
With sheer, desperate instinct, Arthur breathed deeply, taking the cool, damp air of the forest into his lungs. At the same time, he concentrated on the sun-heated rocks in front of him, drawing latent heat stored in their centers. He didn't control water or fire; he controlled potential. Then, with a savage expulsion of breath and effort of will, he combined them, pushing the raw power out.
WHOOSH!
A dense, roiling vortex of superheated steam burst from Arthur's extended hand, not directed at Nyra, but cutting her next, already-formed fireball short. The red and black fire and the roiling white mist clashed in a loud hiss. Light blazed, then instantly went out, extinguished as completely as a candle dropped into a river. The cloud of steam expanded outward, surrounding Nyra.
She backed away, coughing hard, swatting at the burning fog. Her fires faltered, doused and disoriented. "What in the hells was that?" she rasped, wiping steam-stung eyes, her voice clogged with incredulity and hanging mist.
Arthur gasped, the mist curling around his clenched fists like ghostly gauntlets before it vanished. A dull throb in his arm where her flames had caressed it. "I don't have an affinity," he said, looking into her wide, ember-gold eyes. "Not fire. Not water. Not air. I… adapt. I merge what's there."
Nyra gazed, the final wisps of black-fringed fire extinguishing on her fingers. Her refusal overriding temporarily by cold, dazed confusion. "That's… that's not possible," she whispered. "Magic doesn't function like that."
A wraith of a smile played about Arthur's mouth, lacking humour. "Grow accustomed to impossible."
They sat under the charred oak at dusk, an uneasy standoff between them. Nyra had a shallow cut on her forearm, her flames reduced to sullen embers. The forest vibrated with twilight insects and the distant call of a nightjar.
Arthur spoke first. "Ignis Guild exiled you just because your fire changed color?"
Nyra snorted. "Not only the color." She stretched out her fingers, and a small flame flickered to life—crimson at its core, but rimmed with inky blackness. "It burns differently now. Warmer. More ferocious. The Guild Masters claimed it smelled like the old texts say parasite magic smells—contaminated. Unclean." Her tone was thick with venom. "They didn't even give me a chance to defend myself. Just proclaimed me corrupted and threw me out."
Arthur watched her, the movement of her flames with the tides of her emotions. "You don't play corrupted."
"Neither do you," she retorted, looking at his cyan scars. "But that won't prevent them from pursuing us."
The parasite stirred in Arthur, the whisper of curiosity. "She is touched. Not bonded, not like us—but scarred by the same ancient powers."
Arthur paused, and then rolled up his other sleeve, exposing the eerie latticework of cyan veins. "I didn't merely discover parasite magic in that temple, Nyra. I drank one."
Nyra's flames died. She looked. "You—what?"
"It's within me. It speaks. It… instructs me." He grabbed the obsidian dagger from his belt, unwinding the rags to expose its serpent-coiled handle. "It gave me visions—this blade, Ashrend, was employed to contain a fire spirit within a Zenith ancestor many centuries ago."
Nyra went pale. "That's a Seeker's relic," she breathed. "My father used to tell me about them—old hunters who hunted down parasite hosts. Why would they leave it for you?"
"Because we are no longer prey," the parasite whispered, its voice echoing in Arthur's bones. "We are evolution."