The unnerving chittering sounds now filled the forest all around them and a dozen more chitinous monsters emerged from the darkness. They would have been all but invisible in the darkness except for their black shells gleaming in the growing fire light. They clung to tree trunks and descended from the highest branches and boughs. All the while they moved closer to the two girls.
“I’m not leaving you here.” Said Philippa. “You’re not going to die after all we went through.”
Divina looked around at the encroaching forms as several more emerged from the darkness.
“I don't see a way out of this one.” She gritted her teeth and coughed. IT sounded painful. “I don’t have anything left to give, except maybe to give you a chance to escape. You should run while you still can.”
There was silence from the girl. But Divina knew she hadn’t moved.
“Go now, while you can!”
Philippa replied calmly, and as she did her voice modulated. Power poured from her words again. “You’ve done all you can. Most of all you’ve taught me that I can do way more than I knew.”
Stepping forward, Philippa planted her feet on that accursed soil. In her mind she reached out towards the fire that had devoured her childhood home. Smoke and ash and flame began rolling into the sky in an almighty column. Uttering the primordial name of the fire she let out a cry and commanded it to eat. To devour the plague that had now consumed the town of Orholt. No tears came this time. She had spent all her fear and terror already. She had nothing mentally left to give to those memories. Just her divine wrath remained. Her mind slipped once again into unconsciousness and in that ambiguous unfocused state Divina saw that Philippa had become the embodiment of a storm. The runic burns blazed with light. Her will bent energy and matter around itself. Flames consumed the rotten trees and the corrupt beasts that had made it theirs. It razed the hanging corpses in the trees and purified the desecrated temple, along with the rotting bodies of those that had not long ago been her friends and family. Philippa spoke to the wildfire, coaxing it into a path of unrivalled destruction and cleansing. The fire happily obliged her request. As it did, it grew and grew. Sweeping over the dozen living rot-beasts surrounding them, instantly turning their hard bodies to nothing but brittle charcoal remains. She called up and commanded a great wind. It swept the fire, feeding the flames, strengthening them more and more. It moved the fire outwards from the two girls craving a path of cooling dirt and smouldering trees in front of Philippa until nothing was left.
The paladin followed closely behind the girl she had rescued, for fear of being caught in the fiery-hurricane. Divina knew the safest place in any maelstrom was at the centre and Philippa had now become a force of nature. She had embodied the storm completely. Divina had never seen anything like it. Someone so blessed by Audrashni.
Divina stumbled through the obscuring smoke, making her way over large tree roots that were too big to burn completely. She gripped their trunks to steady herself and almost lost her footing as the ground became soft in several places and once when she failed to notice the corpses of a rot-beast underfoot. Minutes went by in the forest of flame. Divina kept her eyes fixed on Philippa, divine brands still white hot and tried to mimic her steps a few paces behind.
Without warning rain began to fall, as the heavy clouds burst above them. Steam rose around them, hissing and sizzling as giant water droplets collided with the remains of hot trees and rocks. The windstorm turned to a torrential downpour, the clouds emptying themselves, though the land around them continued to burn. The journey seemed to take an eternity.
The girls burst forth from the burning wood onto the main road, flames licking at their heels. As they emerged, they were bleeding and burned but glad to be away from the heat of the fire. In the pouring rain Divina stood hunched over a low wall next to the ancient mile marker trying to catch her breath. She smiled and coughed, smoke still in her lungs. She could no longer hear the chittering. Philippa looked over in concern. The tattoos she bore were now thin burns once more and the colour had returned to her eyes.
Divina met her concern with a weak smile. “Audrashni is with us tonight. We are alive, our world is a better place with one less demon to torment it.”
“What will I do now?” The younger girl asked bewildered.
“We,” she emphasized the word, “will head to the nearest town. Find a healer. We both need medical treatment. Now that we are out of those accursed woods Canter can carry us the rest of the way. Neither of us are in the shape to walk.”
She reached down to her belt again and produced a small blue hued metal coin. It was embossed with an icon that was shaped vaguely like a horse and it caught the dim light in an unusual way. She lifted it up to her lips and began to speak to the coin. A prayer of summoning in three simple words. She stood up straighter and the colour drained from her face. She took one step backwards, her knees buckled beneath her and she crumpled to the ground.
The only living person Phillipa knew lay broken and bleeding in the rain soaked mud road.
“Help!” Philippa yelled into the empty darkness.
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