4. The Iron Isle #2
Then the fire, the same fire that defied all logic back in the alley, starts to leak from the silent demon’s veins again, and their odd conversation becomes the least of my problems.
Don’t lose consciousness. Don’t lose consciousness. Do not lose consciousness.
Liquid silver glows from his skin through the cloak, then flames flow out of the ends of the sleeves, along his hands and fingertips, before spreading across the deck in a surge of blue and white and silver.
The sea can't stop it as it engulfs the water itself, setting everything in its path alight. The sea breeze becomes a furnace against my skin, water bubbles as it boils around us. Yet nothing is actually burning or burned.
My lungs feel like they are burning though, and I desperately try to breathe through it.
Do. Not. Lose. Consciousness.
Is this hellfire? I thought hellfire destroyed everything and anything. That it can burn glass and iron and concrete. Melt diamonds.
Whatever he’s doing, it’s different this time than what he did to me in the alley. His intention seems greater somehow than knocking a nephilim unconscious.
The sea grows more restless by the second, its wrath terrifying. It moves all wrong, like something dark and unnatural churns beneath the waves. Then a whirlpool appears, spinning violently, picking up speed and girth.
What is he thinking? Taking us all this way only to drown us at sea.
“You’re going to kill us all!” I snap, fear for the safety of the other nephilim apparently making me braver.
Ignoring me, flames continue to rip from his hands, and his fingers start to move with subtle but precise gestures. When I look back out to sea, the silver flames are starting to gather and spin, like he’s carving a perfect circle out of the air with them.
Runes ignite around the rim, like he’s stitching them into the fire itself while it continues to twist and writhe around them.
My stomach drops. I’ve seen symbols like these before, in books that would be better off sealed and burned and forgotten. Forbidden books about the circles of Hell, where some of these runes represent the deadly sins. Half I recognize, the rest are new, unknown.
The center of the glowing circle warps and ripples, thinning into a veil so fragile it looks ready to tear. I open my mouth to tell him to stop, but it’s too late.
First the circle swallows the sea, then the sea swallows the ship, taking us with it as we are devoured by it.
My vision fractures as sky and sea and ship melt together, merging into a whirl of color. Navy blue, mahogany and black churning with red and gold, and more of that molten silver.
The ship turns inside out.
I turn inside out.
Every breath tastes like salt.
The sky and the sea are at odds, playing tug of war and I am the rope.
I’m falling, sinking, drowning.
Tumbling, flying, soaring.
Time loses all relevance.
I’m dying.
I’m already dead.
Then, as though the water grows tired, or maybe it remembers it’s immune to flame, everything stops.
When I open my eyes, the circle and symbols are gone, and the sky is all dark reds and golds, lit by a burning crimson sun. Or is it a moon? The sea is dark, almost black if not for the reddish reflections.
I stumble forward with a gasp, dizzy. Too much spinning. My temples ache and then my stomach flips, before ejecting everything that had been inside it up and out across the deck.
“It gets easier,” the laughing demon says.
Is he laughing at me?
He isn’t the one who bled fire or caused a typhoon, but clearly none of it has fazed him one bit.
“My first time wasn’t much fun either,” he adds, almost like he is trying to reassure me.
But that makes no sense. I don’t intend to do that again.
I’ll either be dead soon or writing to my father so he can rally the Legion of Light and send in the seraphim to save us all.
But neither of those things are what confuse me, it’s the idea that a demon might want to reassure me that doesn’t sit right at all.
Wrapping an arm around myself, I cling to my stomach, fully prepared to vomit again, but there’s nothing left to come out. I can’t remember the last time I ate. At least the sharp pinch of the journal tucked into the waistband of my underwear is still there.
The fire is gone, and the sea is calmer than it has been since I woke up.
The rope is also gone, or perhaps one of the demons untied it during the chaos, because nephilim are scattered everywhere, clinging to anything they can dig their fingernails into or hook an arm around as they too, hurl up their last meals. I wretch again. Nothing.
“Where are we?” a shaky voice eventually asks. “Is-Is this Scelus?” This nephilim must have been attached to the other side of the mast, as his face is new. Blue eyes, fair hair, tall but too thin.
I look around, it has to be Scelus.
Sea forts rise from the water everywhere, chiseled black stone jutting from the waves like jagged teeth. Each one is guarded by at least three heavily armed demons in fighting leathers and iron armor.
Smoke curls from the tops of the forts, thick and acrid, stinging my eyes. As we sail by, almost all of the guard’s wave or call out their welcomes and well wishes.
“Welcome to the Iron Isle,” one of the demons announces, and I gasp when my eyes fall on the owner of the voice.
Zaheer.
Only now, his hood is down, and sharp, twisted dark colored horns have appeared on his forehead. His hair is long, and black reptilian wings with red tips and a crimson hue hang heavy at his back.
“Wrath demon,” the girl I’d been tied beside on the mast breathes.
My stomach tightens but I keep my gaze forward, careful not to let anyone notice the terror in my eyes at being surrounded by so much evil all armed to the teeth.
I’m suddenly more aware than ever that the company I now keep is very much that of the enemy.
Before, when he glamoured his horns and wings away, his form beneath the cloak almost looked human, nephilim maybe. Not seraphim, he isn’t that magnificent.
“The Iron Isle?” the same nephilim male, braver or more ballsy than the others, asks. I didn’t bother, I already know I can’t trust a word they say. Demons love to lie.
Besides, I have studied every map ever drawn of Trutina, both the Scelus and Virtus sides, in great detail. No such Island exists.
“Not possible,” I mutter.
The one who laughed at me vomiting laughs again. “You won’t find it on a map, love, if that’s what you mean. If you could… well, it wouldn’t be fit for purpose, would it?”
I shrug. To know that, I’d need to know the purpose first. One I fully intend to find out.
“If you are looking for an idea of where the pin might fall, though,” he continues. “We are somewhere off the North coast of Scelus.”
“H-How?” The stuttery voice belongs to me this time.
He nods to the silent demon. “Our friend here kindly opened a hellgate.”
And almost drowned and burned everyone alive.
Simultaneously.
My head hurts.
“We had to wait until we reached Scelus waters, then we had to wait some more for someone,” he rolls his eyes dramatically until they land on me.
“To wake from her little nap. But,” he goes on, putting his hands up in front of him in a sort of mercy or calming gesture, which again makes no sense, and I almost wish I could see his face.
Maybe then I will be able to get a better read on him.
“As Zaheer told you before, we are patient like that. And he,” he nods to the silent one.
“Didn’t fancy explaining to Makina why your insides were on your outsides because he went and took you through a portal while unconscious. ”
Insides on my outsides?
Makina?
A hellgate?