Page 53 of Crown of Flame
“It is.”
“Fascinating that you bother naming yourselves at all.”
He smiles.
“Rest assured that you’re little more than livestock to use, capable of carrying our offspring to term. I think it speaks a great deal to your hubris that you even pretend to erect societies. It would be so much easier just to live among us. We’d give you everything you needed without any of the struggle.”
Aldris is passionate about this topic, I can tell. So much so, that he devotes an unfathomable amount of time talking about how he plans to decimate the human morale of Prazh and subject any disobedient human to brutal torture.
What an idiot. That’ll never happen.
I sigh, then close my eyes. Cinis. Please don’t leave me alone. I can’t do this by myself.
My wrists ache, but I finally get a good enough angle to feel the knot that binds me together. I suck in a deep breath. Freedom is within reach, but I’m running on borrowed time.
19
CINIS
“But how?”
I suppose in some ways, I’ve gotten everything I’ve ever wanted in spite of how much I lost. From my prison, I’ve been freed, brought home to the peace I left without my consent.
Gazing out at the red world all around me, the top of this realm unrecognizable, I’m glad to be in familiar territory. For centuries, I cultivated myself here, becoming a skilled hunter. I can smell the familiar scents of sulfur and goblin… can see the faint outlines of crystals on the hot mountain walls.
I should be thanking the dark elf who sent me here - Aldris. I reach out my hands and touch the boiling, fiery rock walls, and I feel a satisfying sizzle, steam emanating from the snow that falls from my form.
“This is good,” I reassure myself.
While it comforts me to be home, it also distresses me to no end. The last remnants of the plane I visited, Protheka, vanish immediately, and I have almost nothing to remind me of my strange trek. That last bit of fallen snow was the only reminder of my time there.
It might as well have been a dream.
Gone are the strange brown and green towering structures called trees. Gone is craftsmanship and the people who can benefit from and appreciate it. Gone are the long stretches of white fields.
Gone are the humans who need my help. Gone are the dark elves who terrorize the realm and plunder for its resources. Gone are the failed experiments that boggle me and haunt me still.
Gone is Serena.
“Perhaps I make do with this turn of fortune,” I observe. “It’s what I wanted anyway.”
No matter how much I accustomed myself to Serena’s realm, it was not mine.
I could see the way the human prisoners reacted to me, staring at me with fear while I charred and siphoned their slavers. They were thankful for my help, but they were equally terrified, afraid I might turn against them and devour them the same way I did the elves and beasts.
I remember how she reacted to our mental link - something that was strange to even me. It created so much distrust between us that she was willing to throw her life away to be free of me.
I look at the lava, which falls from the ceiling into the deep magma pits where my kind goes to perish. I used to see beauty in it, but now that I’ve seen colors and elements beyond my comprehension, it all seems so small and boring to me.
“And it doesn’t compare to Serena.”
I shake my head sadly, feeling the flames exhale as a mere breath here. She never saw what I saw, and I never quite convinced her.
There was beauty in her peculiarity, but also in her strength. Her skin reminded me of the finest diamonds or quartz, minerals located deep in our caverns, beyond agitated and defensive goblin quarries. Her eyes were more elegant than jade or targonsil, far more intricate than lorem.
And the way she carried herself was pristine. I ponder whether carving stone in her image would be strange. Perhaps I’ve had an entirely new idea, the likes of which her kind has never seen.
“Kills time, I suppose.”