Wildfire

I laid Madjea down gently and stood. Breathing heavily, I stared down at the Temple.

“Hahahaha. Hahahahaha!” I laughed into my palm, my neck craning back as I crowed. “KHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

My hooves and tail emerged as I threw my hand out, and my garb instantly shifted into the ornate green cloak that I usually wore when hunting. I was the Hunger. I was the Tax Collector. I was the Beast of the North.

“God is with ME!” I shrieked, and leapt off the hill. Wings exploded from my back and I soared down to the Temple. The heat of the Hunger returned, slashing at my insides like daggers. It was a good pain. An energising pain.

I landed in the courtyard and ran to the vestibule, with its gorgeous mosaics. Music from the orchestra trumpeted behind the double doors.

The Hunger burned. More, more, just a little bit further, it urged.

Yes.

My tormentor and closest companion.

I threw open the doors. At the end of the aisle, standing at the altar, was Attaran, with a Cardinal standing beside him. The Cardinal was holding an urn that I instantly knew was full of anointing oil—when the music crescendoed, it would be applied.

I moved.

“Sharvara!”

“That’s Sharvara!”

“Curse it, he’s doing it!”

Shouts came from all around me as I blitzed down the aisle and charged straight for Attaran. He reacted quickly, summoning a shield of force just as my charge contacted. He was uninjured, but I kicked out my legs, tripping the Cardinal. The anointing oil clanged to the floor and crimson flames burned from the puddles.

“Get him—get him out!”

“No!”

I raked my claws over Attaran, who defended with another shield, arm crossed over his chest. Huffing, he rolled toward a puddle of burning oil and I understood his intention. He still wanted the fucking anointing! He thought it would give him more power!

Roaring, I pulled him back and narrowly dodged a laser fired by a Bishop who was marching up the transept toward us. Attran’s hand flashed blue—and a small explosion burst between us, reducing my body to smithereens. But I am hardy. My body reformed itself in moments, and in the second Attaran thought that he had, his guard was down.

My fangs gouged into the back of his throat. Attaran screamed and gurgled, reaching out for the anointing fire. His fingertip contacted it—barely—and the flames spread up his arm ferociously. My claws pierced his back and ripped out his guts.

Attaran screamed more vigorously, seising beneath me. I couldn’t tell whether the vibrant screams came from the pain of the anointing failing, if it had failed, or simply because of how I was mutilating him. The fire spread over his whole body and he heaved, eyes facing up to Heaven, as a spectral camellia formed in the air above the altar. It was folded up, like a bud.

With an agonal breath, Attaran reached up for it. It started to bloom. I shoved my hand through his ribcage and ripped out his heart. His eyes rolled backward, the camellia shimmered to nothing, the fires wilted away, and Attaran’s soul released. He had died.

I took his soul in my hand and I cackled.

“Sinners tormenting sinners! I am God’s punishment on the heretic, Attaran Hesh!”

I was giddy with adrenalin. I went to slurp the soul down, when a javelin of light speared into my stomach, fired by an Archbishop who looked utterly furious. “Hrrk—grk,” I groaned.

“Bind him, bind him now!” someone shouted.

Chains of light shot out from the spear and snaked around my limbs to restrain me. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t struggle against them, I couldn’t shift my body, I couldn’t even open my mouth. The soul dropped out of my hand and a Bishop retrieved it.

“You monster and fool, tel-Sharvara. This is your end,” the Archbishop said, then looked over to his right, signalling someone. I couldn’t move my eyes to follow the gesture.

A gentle melody played in the back of my mind. My vision hazed, and abruptly I felt very sleepy.

“You will wake up imprisoned. Pray now we do not decide Nix, even though you would deserve it.”

It was hard to catch all the words. Even though my eyes were open, even though people were running and screaming through the pews, even though my heart was beating with panic, even though the Hunger howled fury, my consciousness was fading as if anaesthetised. Everything smeared in my vision, cotton clouded my hearing, and I teetered on the precipice of unconsciousness. I was scrambling just to stay on the edge.

And all the while the melody sang, threatening to sweep me away. The more I fought, the louder it got. I soon resigned that I couldn’t resist.

I surrendered, and just as my consciousness drowned—

—THOOM.

A deafening bang thundered through the Temple, snapping me vividly awake. Crimson light hovered above the floor like the lingering floodwaters. The chains binding me shattered. I shoved myself up on my hands—the Bishops and Archbishops around me looked equally confused, and slowly lowered their arms.

“Why do you speak now? Why not save our Blessed Attaran?” the fallen Cardinal, who had righted himself, asked to the air with palms open.

He questioned further, “you cannot be siding with Sharvara in this conspiracy? Do you say he was right?”

A stuffy, robed little man in a pince-nez then emerged from a sapphire door at the back of the apse. He looked at the assembled gaggle of Cardinals, Bishops, and Archbishops, and me, and sniffed.

“His Holiness requests the presence of the Night Star, tel-Sharvara.”

It was strange to hear that folk title coming officially from a clergyman. I got myself up and brushed myself off, then wavered on how to present myself. In the Bishop’s habit, as a normal human, or as the chimeric creature I presently was, dressed up in my reaping outfit.

I decided that for a meeting with my God, the form that I died in was most appropriate. The plainness got some strange looks from the onlooking clergy.

I followed the little man in the pince-nez through the sapphire door, to a room made out of sapphire. It led into a room of emerald, then a room of diamond, and another of topaz. A growing pressure hung in the air for each room we passed through, until my head was pounding with a strangely refreshing headache.

We came to the last door.

“His Holiness waits beyond here,” the man said.

I nodded. My eyes were pressing against my skull. Beyond the door was a room on fire. The fire was an inferno. The room was made of ruby, and there was a dais in the centre, upon which was an oddly spry old man in a rocking chair. It was the exact same room from my dream.

I choked as I entered. The pressure was so intense that it forced me onto my knees, and I crawled to the foot of the dais as the old man—the Pontifex—rocked merrily back and forth.

I opened my mouth in an aborted attempt to speak—stupid, I know—but the wind was sucked out of my chest as soon as I breathed in.

A grin like a crescent moon cracked across the Pontifex’s face. His lips split open, and he said:

“WELL DONE

“THE GUY BLOODY DESERVED IT.”