The Demons of Rome

XV - A Child of Fire

Iatus trudged northwards, following in the wake of the horde with a mixture of walking, flying and teleporting, pushing his physical body and his magical reserves to the point of breaking.

"We should really rest for the night," Aelith said, regarding Iatus with concern.

He had taken on the form of a massive raven, Iatus sliding off his back onto the floor in a pathetic lump.

"I'm fine," Iatus wheezed, "Pick me up and put me back on your back."

"What are you going to do if we actually DO catch up to them if you can't even climb on my back?"

Iatus growled softly but eventually said, "Fine," and curled up into a ball.

Aelith draped an enormous, black wing over Iatus and braced himself against the cold desert night.

Breakfast consisted of the leftovers from a horse they found dead by the road and then they were heading north again.

Iatus spoke the words to teleport himself and the world fell away in a kaleidoscope of colours then reformed into his destination. Teleportation magic for humans was not even half as efficient as that for spirits and it made Iatus feel nauseous every time he did it.

They emerged on the outskirts of a massive, walled city that was in the midst of its final stages of destruction, just as a black dragon blocked out the sky as it flew over them, forcing Iatus to press himself into the remains of a doorway to stay out of sight.

"Damn you Aelith," Iatus hissed, "If I hadn't slept we would have been here in time."

"In time for you to die a spectacular death. We are here to save everyone we can, no more, no less."

Iatus snarled and darted to the next piece of cover, heading towards the centre of the city.

"We can't fight them all, what are we going to do here?" Aelith said.

"There is no way Harzu is personally controlling all of these, he must have had some of the greater spirits summon the smaller ones for him. We just need to find the original and kill it."

"I feel like there is a massive leap in your reasoning there. What if there are more than one of Harzu's original summons in the city? What if he DID actually summon everything here himself. And even if it was just one, a spirit that can summon all of these is going to be a greater mara at least. In our state I'm not sure we could defeat anything close to that power level."

"We can try," Iatus said and darted off, leaving Aelith franticly flapping to stay airborne.

They wound their way through the narrow streets until they heard the sound of laughing and screaming coming from the other side of a wall.

Iatus found a section of the wall that had had a chunk blasted off the top of it and peaked over to see a group of demons standing in a circle, surrounding another, smaller demon doing furious battle with a child of no more than ten.

The demon was desperately throwing bouts of fire at the boy, but each one rolled off his skin without doing damage.

"What on earth..." Iatus gaped, watching the boy desperately trying to throttle his attacker.

"The boy is a mage," Aelith said, he too gawping at the display, "Untrained but clearly powerful."

"How is he immune to the fire like that?"

"It has been noted amongst incredibly powerful fire elementals that they become immune to flames. It's not something you see every day."

"But I'm an incredibly powerful fire elemental and I still burn."