Seeing that, Wende bolted through the trees, feet whispering over roots, and plucked a Rune of flame from the air. He drew his bow, ready to rain fire on the frost giant.
“Wende, watch out!”
Just as the blazing arrow was about to loose, a hulking shadow tore through the bushes behind him. A blood-slick blade came for Wende’s neck, cold as nightfall.
Aphelia charged almost on instinct, but she forgot—right now, besides that Crimson Flame, she was no different from any mortal.
Spears of ice burst from the ground like a white forest. Not yet in full command of the flame, she stumbled back in panic. In that blink, the heavy blade ripped the air and fell on a fragile body.
Everywhere she looked, the world went scarlet.
The blonde archer with the longbow fell like a ripped leaf in autumn wind. The blade-bearing giant turned, his gaze fixing on Aphelia, the one who had called forth the fire.
For a heartbeat, a crimson silhouette from memory overlapped with that fallen golden-haired girl.
“Baaaaastard!”
Aphelia’s rage crashed like thunder, but the two giants didn’t care. Their quarry was Wende. With him dealt with, a bug like Aphelia wasn’t worth the trouble.
Crimson Flame roared as Aphelia lunged at the blade-giant on reflex. But now, she could do almost nothing.
The cold blade swung again. Under monstrous force, the Crimson Flame split, and so did Aphelia’s body. Blood bloomed across the earth beneath her.
The giant treated it like brushing dust from a sleeve. He didn’t spare the corpse a glance and slung Wende’s headless body over his back.
“Bastard, stop—stop!”
Aphelia clawed at the giant’s calf with what remained of her upper body. Crimson Flame burst again, a shooting star that died too fast.
The giant yelped at the scorch, loosed a meaningless roar, and kicked away her torso like a broken doll. Then he went to confer with the frost giant.
Despair, helplessness.
Pain, fear.
When was the last time it felt like this?
As blood leaked away, Aphelia’s vision fogged. Memory dragged her back to the Abyssal ranges, to the time of tendon and bone torn away.
Back then… Violet. Ah, Violet was dead…
An enemy too strong to fathom. A self too weak to stand. Why—why didn’t I go with her then? Why let myself live to feel this pain again?!
“Waaaaaaah!”
With Aphelia’s scream, Crimson Flame geysered from her sundered body and turned the forest around her into a raging sea of fire.
That helplessness, that bottomless despair—never again. Never, ever again.
If someone could lend me power—demon or god—I’ll take it all! Pour it into this body!
The inferno from memory answered her fury. It rose like a portrait of her madness, like divine wrath spilling from the heavens, eager to burn the world bare.
Rage, rage, rage.
Her heart filled with anguish and fire, and the body shaped by Primordial Soil began to change. An unspeakable power seeped out, folding itself into the Crimson sea.
After the first storm came a deathly hush.
As the fire-sea formed, the silhouette around Aphelia warped in the flames, then thinned and vanished from the giants’ sight. Only a pool of blood remained to prove she had ever been.
Seeing her vanish, the two giants didn’t relax. The moment the flames rose, they chose to leap, not to tangle with Crimson Flame.
They were far from clumsy. Their fearsome battle instincts told them to avoid the fire without hesitation.
The ground dented under their heels. As they sprang, the air itself seemed to pop. Their massive bodies broke common sense and soared into the sky, as if to vault clear of the whole forest.
BOOM—
They hit ground with a quake and a hail of dirt. But underfoot wasn’t damp soil or a golden plain. It was a sea of heat.
Flame licked their feet and dissolved their skin. They tried to withdraw, but the fire was endless. No matter how they moved, they seemed to run in place.
The blade-giant lost patience first. He hacked at the Crimson waves despite his companion’s warning, chopping at fire like a madman, achieving nothing.
It was as if the world itself had turned inside out.
Then the change came.
From the endless blaze, a twisted figure appeared behind the blade-giant. The whole flaming domain shuddered. A blade of heat punched through his chest, and with that warped flare, the blade-giant crashed down.
The frost giant braced to rush in and crush the ambusher. But at that instant he froze; both hands on the warhammer trembled as if winter had seized his bones.
Through the warped firelight, he met eyes like a starving ghost from hell. Eyes that craved life. A world where only rage and despair could exist.
From the Crimson Flame, an unnameable hungry ghost was born.
The blaze became a cage. The ghoul stepped out, lifted the blade-giant high, and stared at the frost giant with a taunting tilt of the head.
At that glance, the frost giant couldn’t suppress the fear inside. He roared by reflex. Countless icicles sprang up, then melted in the Crimson Fire, bleeding his strength for nothing.
The blade-giant, chest torn through, howled. The ghoul’s grip on his throat melted flesh to slurry. He felt those claws about to slide into his gullet.
The two giants roared again, trading in strange syllables. The Crimson-flame ghoul seemed to understand and smiled, hollow and dark-eyed, like a hunter watching dying prey.
Whatever they said no longer mattered to the ghoul.
Despair, rage, fear flooded the frost giant’s mind. In the torment of burning, he craved release and began to lose the will to fight.
He fell silent, as if sensing his comrade’s death wish. With a mournful bellow, he swung his hammer and smashed toward the edge of the fire-sea.
“Arrrooooaaah!”
As he heaved the hammer, blinding lightning cracked through the Crimson ocean. Power unlike flame braided with it, and the blast knocked the frost giant sprawling.
The Crimson-flame ghoul didn’t care. She kept tormenting the blade-giant, lazily pressing a hand to melt neat, fist-sized holes through flesh, drawing shrieks that clawed the sky.
Seeing no interference, the frost giant roared again, snatched up the hammer, and struck the fire wall.
Another heavy blow. A man-thick bolt of lightning birthed itself and hurled into the terrible wall. The web of his thumb split. Blood, not human, sprayed wide.
This time, as if heaven was merciful, a crack finally opened in the tight wall of flame.
Both giants roared, the frost giant loudest. He lifted the hammer again. Bolts spilled from its head; he bathed in a sea of thunder and charged the gap with a do-or-die will.
At the inferno’s heart, the ghoul suddenly panicked, as if someone had found a weakness. He quickened the burning of the blade-giant in his grasp.
It didn’t hurt him. The blade-giant uttered odd syllables instead, as if mocking the Crimson-flame ghoul.
With a storm of thunder, the frost giant burst the gap and vanished beyond the wall. The blade-giant howled in joy, uncaring of the Crimson Flame chewing through his flesh.
Then the ghoul’s panic vanished. Like a mask flipped, calm horror settled back over him. The flame eating the blade-giant eased.
He hefted the blade-giant and walked toward the crack, unhurried now, like a hunter watching prey stumble into the snare.
Fear crawled up the blade-giant’s spine. If his companion had escaped, why was the ghoul this composed? What was that sudden, staged panic for?
The closer the ghoul drew to the crack, the thicker the fear, and the hotter the Crimson burned upon him.
At last the ghoul reached the gap. He raised the blade-giant high and laughed, a mad, ringing sound. He held him to the slit, made him look through—toward that so-called way out.
