Chapter 26: Love Is A Fire

She burns. She is a creature of flame and she is scorched by her grief. Kari wails. Her thoughts shout enraged to her elder sister who is saying her farewells, asking with peaceful tears to give her love to their father before she opens her spirit to the searching wind.

Why, Kari wonders, would such a radiant being give her life for Mortals? What could they have done to deserve such a sacrifice? It is they who should be sacrificing their lives, Kari thinks. She threatens to rampage and burn all Mortals like chaff, should Phosphora end her life to save them from the Fiends of Ralgrimr. And when Phosphora is unconvinced, Kari threatens to become a rain of cinders and so end her own life, leaving Yuluru to care for their father alone. You would not do this, Phosphora tells her. To leave their father in the care of the sickly flame, such an act would bring their whole family to its end.

So Kari resorts to begging and pleading, and when this fails she is collapsed onto the cold ground of the north, near the borders of Yannis's unsavory dominion. Stunned, she wallows in disbelief, paralyzed and unreachable. Heavy feet thud behind her, and a cold hand touches her molten shoulder. She shouts and pushes him away, telling him not to touch her. She blazes brighter than her father's crown itself, and raging through the mourning sky she comes upon the city of Fiends with blasts of hate from her ethereal furnaces. But there is no more than a crater where the city once stood, and the Fiends are but stains of soot on the immolated soil. The very foundations of Ralgrimr have been scattered by Phosphora's final release, robbing Kari of her vengeance. She turns to the Canyon of the Blazing Stars, but Awondo, Warrior of the Sun, stands between her and the Mortal brood with arms of cold metal that hold the might of stars.

You will not slay them, he tells her, and in her shame she weeps. She takes a burning blade from her belt and stabs herself, hoping to gouge out the pain her belly, but she is impervious to such vulgar wounds, even from her own weapon, so she only increases her pain, and for a long while she is spent in weeping and tragic convulsions. Awondo stands by her for the good of all, not wanting a single Mortal life to be lost to sooth her aching heart. But also he is there for her, having grown to pity her already for a many a reason. He would put his arms around her, were she a softer soul, but she is hotter than the kiln that fuels the engines of the Forgelords, so he refrains, listening with patience to her pitiful sobs.

She commands him to abandon his hunt, and pleads with him to be the executioner of Yannis and not Othomo. When he is silent she rises and beats her fists upon his metal breast. He would take her wrists in his hands and hold her close to him, as a father would a grieving child, but to hold her would be grievous, so he lets her pound her fists until her furnaces burn low. And then he sits beside her on the ground where she slumps, promising to her an easing of her grief. But she is unwilling to await the passing of time, and she demands for an accounting now. To Yannis she points, naming him the true enemy of all that is good. She says the hunt for Othomo must end, that the Father of Fiends has made himself Arun's chief foe. But Awondo is silent, and Kari regrets having imbued him with power and so quickly imprinting his hunt upon him. He opens his jaw but she is quick to deny him speech, favoring instead maniacal shouts over soft pity.

In time she spends herself again, and sits a cinder in the ashes while the Jaguar King laments. He then seats himself beside her and he takes her hand, hurting in his heart to see her red arms so cooled. He reminds her of the day they met, and he tells her that even with his transcendent gifts he still sees her as a thing to be feared. None can escape the judgement of Arun, he tells her, and that she will be her father's first and only weapon.

And so will you abandon us, she asks him. This he denies, but she is beyond hearing and she strikes at him this time in earnest, knocking him back with sudden blasts and volcanic surges. When he stands she knocks him down, and when he tries to flee she rises higher and smites him. New trenches and valleys are dug from their struggle, and in a deep rift she pins him, holding him still with the strength of her hips and the heat in her belly. He dares not resist, fearing the explosion of her want and the movement of his form, so he lies there prone, awaiting her madness to pass while she assaults him her mouth and her hips, and presses him with her figure now unbound, hoping to mask her misery with a display of lust.

In shame she writhes, defiling the man who thinks of his wife, frozen in his homeland between life and death, whom he wants nothing more than to be one with again and forever. He retreats in these thoughts from the violence of his goddess, who besieges him with her mangonels and ballistas, growing ever hotter towards his coolness, and she is moistened by the rains from the pitch black sky that fall heavy on her slick form, undulating alone against the cold figure of the Jaguar King.

Her anger flames, and she cannot understand her madness, for she loved the dignity of her elder sister and now she spits on her memory with her disgrace. Her desire for her own end is renewed, and she would let her flames spill into the air as her sister did her light, but she regrets the indecency she has inflicted upon her father's loyal man, whom she herself made Heir of Fire. She will not end herself here, with him pinned beneath her, in fear that her eruption would be hot enough to melt even his flesh of holy bronze. So her thoughts flitter about in madness while her body contorts, and a tear streams down Awondo's metal cheek.

Now she cries as well, and she throws herself aside in shame, wailing apologies to the Heir of Fire, the Warrior of the Sun. She wails apologies to Phosphora for not having stood by her side, and she wails apologies to Sulphina for having spurned her admiration. She cries out to her father and begs him to rise in strength, and she calls out in the most bitter depths of humility to her father's estranged bride, knowing that the Pale Queen would never taint herself with the likes of Kari, now made a harlot by her grief. Love me, she screams.

Others grieve, she says, in awe and aghast at herself. Why must I grieve as a madwoman, she wonders. Her tears flow like lava from her scarlet eyes, and she is close yet again to self annihilation but is stayed by the movement beside her. Awondo now stands, and rises slowly, casting off the residue of her ravings. He is no longer cold, but radiates the warmth given by her father, and she senses that he has discerned his true self as he floats among the clouds. He departs with a thunderclap, and she is about to end her shame in a nova when his direction occurs to her; not the east after Othomo, but to the desolate north where Yannis lurks. She weeps again, and this time she does not do so madly, but allows herself to feel the emptiness left by her sister's death, for she loved Phosphora deeply, and had always wished to be a worthier woman so that her sister might return that love more fully.

And so she lets her rage renew, no longer having Phosphora's dignity to aspire to. She flings herself upon the ground and pummels her naked body one last time, then puts back on her scant armor and rises above the wind, once again a Mighty one with command. She parts her lips that no longer smile and lets loose her siren call, a vocal clarion that blasts across materium like a battery of trumpets, and deep inside the mountain Gurgu her lieutenants respond. The phoenix birds emerge from their sepulchers and spread their flaming wings, and the great red dragons put away their whips and don their swords and armor. Then the mountain answers her with jets of fire and its vorpal breath, and the black sky is now blazing red across the land, even over the dustlands where the Pillars of Seasons mete out their meager alms. Only over the throne of her father is the sky left unchanged. There the Sun still fountains light as gold as honey.

But in all the other vast expanses of the sky, the breath of Gurgu becomes the only light, and against its red curtain Kari's forces glow with her fury. The great red dragons fly ahead of the vanguard, coming to her first as she becomes pure flame. Lost is her voluptuous form. Gone is her heart shaped face. No longer do her eyes peer into flames, because she has become herself a consuming flame, and the great red dragons wheel about her with their weapons drawn. Then they swoop down to stand on their manly legs and do obeisance to her, raising their arms and clenching their fists. She descends, and makes rings of gold from her flames to ornament the tips of their spiraling horns, and she makes too fiery gold crowns to fit atop their furry heads. They bleat their subservience to her, then rise in authority over the rest of her armies as they arrive in long and warlike trains. The phoenixes fall behind the dragons in formation, and behind them spread the bats and the salamanders and the women who fed their arms to the dragons so they might be replaced with wings. They all rise and spread and ride behind their mistress in their imposing formation, howling with their shrill and odious cries to Yannis, heralding to him his judgement.

And Kari knows he hears her armies, and she knows that he must fear the anger of the world as he has incurred upon himself. But more than all her armies, or even she herself, she knows that Yannis is in direst danger from the Jaguar King, for he is the hybrid son of Arun, and brings the lion's share of his father's Might to bolster his own. The dreadknight will wait, for the malaise of the desolate north has struck a blow too personal to ignore, and Kari's wild power is no longer restrained. But she slows her flight for a moment, because she hears a word, whispered in a voice so terrible it drains the blood from the Rock of Ages. She marches on, and burns still bright, but now the warrior queen is afraid.

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