The looming figures of the chthonic giants are daunting. Three growling monsters hold themselves upright with the claws of their hands, their legs dangling limp on the earth as they stare me down. Their proportions are like the other chthonics, yet enhanced. Shoulders and arms are larger, stronger. Their waist and legs thinner, almost unnecessary.

I was prepared to face one with nothing but a thin coating of flame over my spear, as was the way my elders fought, but there’s no chance I can take three unless my flames engulf them. My intent was to beat them with my weapon skill alone, not rely on the flames I have grown over the years.

My tribe has never relied on fire alone to win their battles. Skill in wielding weapons is almost always the primary focus. Whenever my tribe could fight without their flames, they would. At most, they would enhance their weapons with fire, but rarely did they fight with fire alone.

The way I fight, with the power of fire alone, is not normal amongst the áed. Whether that is simply because everything in the wasteland has a much higher tolerance for the heat we can output, or the typical difficulty in enhancing capacity, I’m not sure.

I’ve lost touch with many of the ways of my people after being away so long, but this is something I have to learn. It was my mum’s way of fighting, and I want to make it my own. Only… the three beasts ahead of me might make that goal impossible, at least for now.

The middle chthonic roars, a loud, screeching howl that is quickly joined by the two others. Their eyes glare deep into me, promising death. I stare back, unaffected.

In sync, they dash forward. Their claws shear through the earth, leaving torn stone in their wake as each swipe of the hand brings them five metres closer.

As the trio are about to crash their hands into the earth for another lunge, I unleash my presence on them and rush forward. They freeze for an instant. Claws miss the earth and their bodies grind against the stone. Their own speed their undoing as they struggle to reorient themselves after tumbling.

My flaming white spear-tip slices through the side of the neck of the first. Momentum carries me to the second, ready to do the same, but this one brings an arm in the path of my spear. My blade sizzles flesh as is slams into its arm, but even with my flames, it gets stuck in the bone.

Tugging at the spear doesn’t work; the chthonic’s arm holds it fast. The third chthonic has already recovered and flings itself at me from my side. My body spins to avoid, but the spear still doesn’t come loose. So close does the chthonic’s long claws come to cutting my head off, missing by a hair’s breadth, but the long blades of the creature my spear stays lodged in don’t.

Its hand slices through my disposable clothes and bisects me through the torso without resistance.

The chthonic growls with glee, clearly thinking it has won. A long tongue slides through exposed teeth, moistening the sharp bones exposed to the dry wasteland air in anticipation of a meal.

Sorry to disappoint. The flames of my chest close without issue. I hardly even felt the strike. With a quick jump, my feet land on both sides of the arm trapping my spear. I tug and throw myself backwards, swinging the spear down on the first major chthonic I hit.

Despite the blood flowing down the side of its body from the wound in its neck, it has regained its sense. Through my thermal sense, I felt the creature throw itself toward Leal and Grímr. Something I will not allow.

The spear cuts into the back of its head, but the blow isn’t strong enough to send it to the ground again. The major chthonic bounds toward my friends almost as if not registering the wound in the back of its brain. It’s too close for comfort. With the help of my spear’s fire boosting inscription, I engulf the chthonic in flame, careful to not push the flamethrower to an invisible heat, what with my two friends so close.

The chthonic shrieks in agony as the muscles melt from its body, but it still pushes forward. It stumbles before Grímr without the strength to swing its long claws, and finds itself squashed beneath the giant bird’s talons.

While burning the chthonic I’d unfortunately not killed in my first strike, the other two hadn’t stood around patiently. Claws tear through my neck only a moment before its teeth sink into my shoulder.

My flames flow out of the gripping maw to the confusion of the beast that now chews on a mouthful of fire. I laugh at the clear indignation crossing its face. Just when it thought it achieved victory, I’d simply walked their attack off, then brushed off their bite to rub it in.

The other chthonic tries to use the opportunity to strike at me, but not being as trapped as it expected, the claws pass harmlessly through the air. I twist my spear in my hands and thrust forward, stabbing right through the side of the creature’s head and incinerating the brain from the inside.

It crashes along the earth, dead.

Wide swings and the flowing motions that are supposed to be better for me simply aren’t that effective against these things. I can’t rely on hitting their weaknesses, because they will just push past them with mindless fury. My strikes need to kill, even if that might mean my spear gets stuck. Thankfully, there is only one left.

I point my spear at its head, but the chthonic doesn’t charge in immediately again. Its eyes flicker from the glowing tip of my spear to the torn clothes I wear with my body completely unmarred beneath. This… is intelligence. Hidden beneath the insatiable lust for blood, there is some level of intelligence within the chthonic.

The creature doesn’t back off. It watched me kill two of its brethren with ease, and yet it looks on with nothing but caution and a deep desire to murder.

Curious to see how it might act, whether it will even consider fleeing, I wait. I let the chthonic make the choice.

Unfortunately, blood-thirst overcomes whatever little rationale it has. The beast rushes forward, throwing itself over my spear. The blade pierces through its chest and out its back. It forward, sinking my spear deep within itself before clamping its blade like claws around the shaft, preventing me from pulling my weapon out.

With the creature’s other clawed hand, it tears into me. I’m forced to release the hold on my spear, as I can’t overcome its strength. Throughout this fight, I’ve tried my hardest to never release the weapon, but if I don’t, I’m only inviting the chthonic to rip me apart. While the claws don’t actually do all that much to me in the way of damage, I would still prefer to keep the clothes I’m wearing as somewhat repairable rather than ragged scraps of cloth.

The chthonic doesn’t remove my spear from its chest. Instead, it keeps it held firmly within it, where I cannot retrieve it.

Fine, if you want to deprive me my weapon, I’ll simply kill you without it.

White fire explodes out from me, quickly engulfing the last major chthonic in a swirling inferno that scorches flesh from its body. The flames enter the spear and create only a tiny amount of invisible fire. Enough to melt the bones along its spine, but not so strong to be felt intensely by Leal and Grímr.

The chthonic roars, but it is futile. The heat has already melted away all the muscles and bones it needs to fight back. It falls flat on its face, arms unable to hold the weight that remains. A large hole in his back, like a miniature crater, reveals the damage of that tiny, clear flame. Bone, muscle, fat; nothing survived contact with it. Not even char marks after the vaporisation of flesh.

It struggles on the ground as my flames recede, unable to do more than squirm through all the damage. I can hardly believe it’s still alive. Grabbing my spear, I tear it from its place in the creature’s chest. The being’s life ends quickly as the spear-tip penetrates the brain.

As I stand over the corpse of the major chthonic, I glance up at the overlookers. The chthonic that were too scared to rush us once their larger variants made an appearance. My gaze itself seems to terrify them, and as soon as they realise my attention is on them, they flee. Many bound up the canyon walls while others run further into the cracked earth.

I don’t follow. Killing them all would be easy, but I’m not in the mood.

That fight annoyed me. My intent was to not rely on my flames, and yet I did exactly that. Using fire when my friends were in danger was fine, but against that final chthonic, I shouldn’t have needed to use anything but my spear, and yet my enemy took that from me.

I knew I shouldn’t let my weapon fall into an enemy’s hands. I simply don’t have the physical strength to compete in trying to win it back, so why did I allow the chthonic to steal it from me? Complacency is the only answer. When it attacked head on, I’d assumed it had given into its blood-lust and mindlessly charged forward. I simply took the easy route and ran it through, not realising the creature intended for that very thing to happen.

It’s not something I’m happy to admit, but I still have a long way to go before I can stand alongside my elders. It’ll be a long while before I can live up to Mum’s skill.

Well, I might have a lot of work before me to reach that level, but right now, we have over a hundred corpses and a certain ursu who really needs some enhancement.

“Can I get some help piling these bodies?” I ask my two observers as physical flames carry what’s left of the final major chthonic.

I try to lift another of the massive creatures, but even with my strength and that of my physical flames, they are far too heavy for me. Thankfully, Grímr knows what I want and sweeps up a bunch of the chthonics and dumps them on the major variants.

Leal glances at the many corpses, uncomfortable. Despite her reservations, she picks up two bodies with an ease only someone of her considerable height could manage.

As the last of the bodies pile up, I begin the weave of flames that quickly form the inheritance ritual. Leal’s eyes widen considerably as lines of the inscription activate overhead, with her in the receiving circle.

“What in…”

The ritual begins. The blood and skin of the many dead chthonics slowly disintegrate into a thousand miniature motes that float and shatter in the air, flowing into the inscription and empowering Leal. She clearly feels the effect, but her attention returns to the floating inscription.

“You can create inscriptions with your hyle… that is so unfair.” Despite her envy, she doesn’t look away. Her gaze analysing every small section of the inscription and the way my flames move within them. The markings around her eyes activate and an ever so slight glow emanates from her iris. “This should be impossible, according to ursu mage teachings… but I’m already well aware how insufficient our knowledge is. Particularly of inscriptions.”

While Leal is transfixed on the ritual, Grímr steps out of the receiver circle and steps past me toward the tunnel one of the major chthonic climbed out from. “There shouldn’t be anything else to worry about now that those creatures are gone, right?” he asks as he walks past me. I can see his nose leading him.

“No. Their tunnels should be empty now. Whatever you find down there, you can have. Just leave me a little; I need to fill up after that fight.”

Within moments, grinding feathers dig through stone and Grímr is out of sight. Leal remains blissfully unaware of the world around her, continuing to voice her thoughts about my inscription.

“This must be the Inheritance Ritual. The upper ranks were the only ones allowed to see it after we took Henosis’ version. It’s incredible. Definitely not something I could picture any of our mages designing. I only know a few of the concepts used in this.”

“Do you know-” she looks down from the inscription to ask a question, and finally realises Grímr is gone. Leal hesitates for a moment, before the curiosity is too much for her and she looks me in the eye. “Do you know any others? Other inscriptions, I mean.”

I nod, and form the only other inscription I know; the energy tracker that riparian — Solon — taught me. It takes a decent amount of my focus to create it while holding the ritual steady, but I manage, and off to the side — where it won’t disrupt the ritual — the tracker inscription appears.

Leal’s face reveals everything, and I can’t help but chuckle. She’s slack-jawed and I know why; the riparian inscription, even to amateur eyes, is simply in a realm of complexity above the inheritance ritual.

“This is… who made this? How can you even recreate this?”

She dives into all sorts of questions that I answer the best I can. It’s like she’s completely forgotten the distance she’s been trying to put between us. I don’t complain. No, I enjoy it while I can because, after her mage curiosity is over, she might return to her silence.

 

When Grímr finally returns to the surface, lugging quite the haul of copper, Leal and I have spent the past few hours simply talking. Most of it was her curiosity about how it is even possible for me to create inscriptions with my fire, but there were a few topics amongst the lot that veered away from her obsessiveness.

Even when those topics came up — mostly stories of my time in the wasteland before we met and things that happened while we were separated — Leal didn’t shy away. She willingly kept the conversation going, even when her curiosity cooled, which I viewed as almost a gift.

Grímr drops a chunk of copper beside me. The metal still rests impure, and as a mostly rocky ore, but it’s still perfect for consumption. Only, as I burn through a good amount of weight to recover my expended energy, I realise that I just went through enough metal to last an áed weeks. Months if rationed well.

Out in the east, I never truly needed to hold back. I could create firestorms to cover vast swathes of land, then burn away a few trees to recover if my fire didn’t fuel itself with the things it incinerated. Now? There are no trees to consume. Rock and sand give near nothing, so I’d be left looking for a metal deposit every other day if I wanted to go all out in every fight.

Metal is far more nutritious than wood, but there is only a limited amount hidden through the wasteland. If I drain every site I come across of all its resources, then what will future tribes have to survive?

I wanted to rely less on my flames, but now I don’t have a choice. Out here, where resources are limited, I need to learn to fight with my spear alone.