Hot Blooded

[Mallory]

March 16th, 2020 - Twilight Isle.

Mallory had scarcely slept after the All Ranks Tournament, buzzing with excitement over the secrets held within the Tower of Fire that she had scarcely gotten to explore with the previous Keeper. The sun was barely breaking over the horizon in RhyDin, peeking in through the windows of the Red Dragon Inn as she stalked across the common room to the Twilight Isle portal. She had little gear with her for this expedition, uncertain what would withstand the heat and what would catch fire -- just practical clothes, the brass Key of Fire dangling from a necklace, and a variety of items crammed into the pockets of her jeans and fitted canvas jacket to test the limits of her newfound immunity to heat and fire.

The volcano beckoned to her as soon as she set foot on the Isle, the reddish glow of the vast lava lake serving as a beacon, and her vibrant green eyes rippled and flared like fire itself when she beheld it. She wasn't sure she trusted any wood to withstand the inferno, but if any could, it was the Stygian oar she had bargained from Charon, the same bargain that had earned her the trio of scars across her throat. She tensed her left hand, pressing her ring finger into her palm until her nail lengthened into a claw, punching through her skin to create a wellspring of blood, and whispered the words:

"Πετάμε σαν Θάνατος."

The ancient oar appeared in her grasp, and she swung her leg over it and held on tight as it rose into the air, higher above the Isle than her time as the Keeper of Earth would have comfortably let her.

But rather than turn west over the dense forest that led to the mountains around the Tower of Earth, she turned the Stygian oar north towards the volcano. The rich soil fertilized with volcanic ash made the forest lush where it grew, but the trees were all younger and shorter and in a few valleys there was nothing but swollen channels of ash covering charred and blasted tree trunks. As she gained altitude and drew closer to her destination, smoke and pungent sulfur commingled with the misty clouds trailing off the shoulders of the mountains. She had no real need of air, not since she had cut out her own heart and bound it beyond the Veil -- but the smoke still stung her eyes, and she blinked through the tears as she crested the lip of the crater.

The lava lake she had seen once before filled her clearing vision with its infernal glow, the air rippling with heat over the opposing currents of golden-colored molten liquid and cooling eddies of rock floating across the surface. Two fiery beacons stood out to her, but only one was the Tower itself, sixty feet of flame standing in the center of the lake...

The other was a group of fire giants, mephits, efreeti, and other elementals anxiously awaiting the arrival of the New Keeper. As she set down, the flame-bearded azer in front of them knelt down and held out her flaming warhammer in a show of fealty: "We welcome the new Keeper of Fire. The Tower, its residents, and myself are all at your service."

The witch took the oar (apparently unharmed!) in her left hand and hoisted it over her shoulder, and as she stepped forward, stretched out her right to the kneeling azer... for a shake. The woman rose uncertainly and took it in her fiery grasp, and the witch cracked a smile and observed of her own flesh, "Unburned. What's your name?"

"I am Feruinda, Keeper."

"And I'm Mallory. I'll answer to Keeper... Mallory... Mal..." After a firm shake she let Feruinda's hand go, and smiled between her and the others, "and I'd like to learn some things from all of you. First thing is everyone's names. Then I'd like to learn why my clothes mostly aren't on fire," turning her horned head to note a little bit of singing and smoke rising from one corner of her jacket collar, "and how that works. After that? I'd like to get started on learning the Ignan dialect. Let's start with basic phrases like can you get me boots that won't melt? and go from there."

She'd earned a few chuckles, and then the fiery beings were pressing in around her, filling the space with their heat and their glow and introduced themselves in voices that roared and crackled. And though the heat never harmed her...

...deep down, she could feel it in her blood.

[Stone Cold Hot Dog]

April 5th, 2020.

Mallory had been a frequent visitor to the Tower of Fire up to the last week or so, when something had happened to upset the Keeper. On the 31st the volcano had grown almost unbearably hot, even by fire elemental standards; and at midnight, between the 3rd and 4th, the lava within had turned blood red as it flowed down the side of the mountains and filled the charred valleys at its base.

At first the giants that patrolled the volcanic lakeshore (Kelestarea, Ratharr, and Tim) speculated that this was down to school-related stress. "Final exams were last week, weren't they?" "First year for her, innit?" "She was using the study for preparation instead of research for a while there..." "Maybe it didn't go well." "Ha, reckon they all flunked?"

But Feruinda, the flame-bearded azer gatekeeper, had her doubts. "Our Keeper is not so given to passions. She is a woman of intellectual ambition, of books and knowledge and research. She mastered the innate heat and fire of the Key itself in the first week, and we haven't seen so much as a singed shoe-lace since then! It is clear to me that she is occupied with other matters, but experimenting with her connection to our mighty Tower from afar. Every change has been deliberate."

"Bit rude, innit?" Bill interjected. "Not telling us, like. Someone coulda been hurt."

"By fire?" Kelestarea said, raising an ember-formed eyebrow at him.

"Well, not us!"

"Let us be reasonable," mused Mephistopheles (the magma mephit). "Our Twilight Isle is often reshaped by forces far beyond our reckoning, that only Klytus himself could have foreseen. These are portents of such a change, and with our new Keeper being a pythoness, it is clear that Fate itself--"

"HAAAHT DAAAHG."

"Seconded. Don't start about your ill omens. Your name's Mephistopheles, not Nostradamus, and for the last time, sneezing diamonds into your own tea does not count as reading the rise of the crystal tower in your tea leaves."

"Better the vagaries of Fate than some grand scheme of our glorious Keeper, Feruinda!" the mephit sniffed tauntingly.

"Now Meph, that isn't very nice," Ratharr stated with growing panic in his booming voice; "okay now, Feruinda, put your warhammer down, please...!"

"HAHT DAHG."

As one, the dozen or so elementals arguing on the shore of the lava lake turned to face the diminutive galeb duhr standing before them. Smoke was rising off of his stony form, but judging from his craggy smile and the steady set of his beady eyes, he didn't seem to mind. He held an inscribed message crystal in one crudely formed hand, and in the other, a package of once-frozen all-beef franks. The plastic was drooping as it melted, though, and the hot dogs slid out, hit the ground, and burst into flame.

Feruinda blinked. The galeb duhr made a 'blech' face at the smell of the now thawed and thoroughly roasted franks, then held up the crystal, hopped in place once, waved his arms side to side three times, and repeated, "HAHT DAHG."

The azer snatched the message crystal from his hand and turned to read aloud to the group:

"Denizens of the Tower of Fire, I am sorry that I have not been more present in the last week. An enemy from my past caught up with me, a vampire whom my friends had to free me from and helped me to slay. I am all right, but I need to take a week away to recover. I plan to see you all again on the 12th."

"Told you it was stress-related." "Not exam stress, though, ell-oh-ell!" "Hush, both of you."

"Unfortunately this means I'll be missing the end of the Dream of Spring and the selection of a new Keeper of Earth on Tuesday, something I wanted to attend to honor my old Tower. I trust the Tower's denizens to send an emissary in my stead, and I'm proud to have any of you representing me. Yours, Mallory."

Mephistopheles sniffed, his needle-like snout no longer pointed up arrogantly but drooping uncertainly. "Who among us would we even send? She says that she trusts us, but we barely know her yet!"

"As Gatekeeper, I would like to think that on a spiritual level--"

"Oh, shut up, Feruinda, you do not have a spiritual bond by virtue of blind loyalty. Clearly Fate will provide us with a sign, an unexpected emissary, a noble hero and a dear friend who will clearly represent the Tower of Fire by their presence alone..."

"HAHT DAHG," the galeb duhr declared, expressing support for this line of thought, or perhaps just wanting to feel included.

As one, the fire elementals turned to the lone earth elemental among them. Tim leaned down, giving him a big old grin (Hot Dog beamed right back). "Right, mate. If you're gonna be repping the Tower of Fire, you gotta look the part. Go down to the Market for some fancy duds. I reckon somethin' red 'll do."

"HAHT DAHG," the galeb duhr immediately agreed, and with an exuberant wave of his stubby little arms to them all, he trundled off to the lip of the crater, tucked his limbs in, and went rolling down the mountain.

The group of fire elementals stepped up to the edge to watch him cracking open boulders of volcanic rock and smashing through charred trees further and further into the distance. Many of them folded their arms or hummed thoughtfully; Kelestarea just shrugged her flaming shoulders and declared, "Well, that was easy."

[Mallory]

While Mallory and the elementals within the Tower of Fire were hard at work gathering research and beginning the process of creating diatremes beneath the mountain's northern mesa, the phoenixes were tasked with harvesting something not found beneath the earth, at least as far as they knew: Twilight Berries.

The flock of firebirds soared through the plumes of ash rising from the volcano, causing a burst of hot plasma across the clouds when they tucked in their wings and put on a burst of speed to the broad, flat stretch of the north slope of the volatile mountain. Here bubbling springs boiled so hot that they had began to dry up as elemental beings lit up the mountainside around them like bonfires, and the ephemeral stream beds that ran between them began to buckle and fissure with building pressure. They could see the Keeper out among them, standing in a magic circle on an outcropping of rock that mirrored the larger ones the other beings had drawn around the springs. She was chanting in the bubbling lava-like tongue of Ignan Primordial, the earth beginning to shake as rising magma drew closer to the source of the springs, but she kept her footing and caught sight of the flock in the smoke clouds overhead: she stretched out one arm, the Key of Fire looped around her wrist and swinging like a pendulum, and pointed to a small valley between two of the volcanic mountain's spurs.

Their blazing eyes were as keen as a hawk's, and they saw charred and blasted tree trunks and vine stalks protruding from the black earth. Many of the stalks were laden with budding fruit encased in ash-colored stone; it would take a terrific blast to set them free...

As the phoenixes made ready, the Keeper's voice changed in volume and tempo, the more rapid Ignan syllables now spilling down the slope like hot lava and blasted boulders. While unharmed by heat and fire, even lava, the elemental beings had no interest in being caught in the blast: their part in the ritual now complete, they moved up the slope to safety where shining piles of enchanted brass tools had been gathered. The chant ended, and the Keeper looked over her shoulder. A flame-bearded azer among the gathered group gave a nod, and Mallory returned it. Then she tightened her now bleeding left hand around the Key of Fire and raised it into the sky.

Violent explosions erupted from the springs, opening seams in the earth along the dry stream beds and collapsing the springs themselves into shallow craters, sending debris high into the air and out towards the steaming northern seashore at the foot of the volcano. A cloud of hot ash blasted its way down the ruined slope, violently whipping the hardy vine stalks until the stone encasing their fruit shattered. The newly freed Twilight Berries took flight, more blackened and spicier than their cousins across the Isle but remarkably intact.

The phoenixes darted after them, swooping down over the elemental beings that were already descending to pluck precious gemstones from the broken earth with enchanted brass tongs and pickaxes. Most of the winged berries they drove to the east and west, away from the volcano to find safer paths inland where the other gaelikittens could feed on them, or intrepid mages could find them; they were seeking one in particular, one that had taken the brunt of the eruptions and bloomed along a thread of the Keeper's ritual...

There, a singed winged berry flapping its way down to the steaming seashore, glowing with a corona of Primordial light. Two phoenixes raced forward along its flanks, forcing its darting path to straighten, and a third swooped in just ahead of it with a triumphant screech and snatched it from the air with its talons. It spread its fiery wings to take it high above the mountains, racing away to the black gaelikitten to feed it a sweet-but-spicy snack.

[Mallory]

The volcano surrounding the Tower of Fire had been productive again, but not on the northern slope this time, where azeri miners, delinquents in earth-movers, and a fiery wizard still sifted through the kimberlite deposits for diamonds and garnets. The latest eruption came from the main crater after the workers had left, the lava lake bubbling until it burst high into the air. A column of ash rose into the sky at first, slowly spiraling into a dark and massive shape in the minutes after the explosion, until it resembled a black dragon dotted with burning embers. It rose up with a sound like a roar, then collapsed in on itself, racing down the charred western slope until it fell into an empty valley, at the boundaries of Fire's greatest influence and where the element of Earth began to assert itself.

Here among the newly fallen rich volcanic soil they would have a wild garden, the Keepers of Fire and Earth had agreed, a place to fill with lush vegetation that would bear a bounty of fruit for the two of them and Keepers to come, for as long as it survived. But Mallory's major part in this was finished already, with the cleansing and nourishing burst of fire and ash from her mountain; planting and growing were no longer her forte as they once had been. Instead her steps took her to the far northern end of the valley, stepping through the super-heated smoke, ash thumping softly underfoot like freshly fallen snow, until she heard solid earth once more. She looked back towards the peak of the volcano, then held up the brass compass in her hand as she turned away -- directly northwest, where the Moon she had once fought for hung in the twilight sky.

"Hot Dog?!" she called, her voice echoing in the eerie stillness that followed an eruption. Seconds passed; then what sounded like a boulder thumping its way down the vast western flank of the volcano, thundering her way. She grinned as the little galeb duhr emerged from the smoke, leaping up with his arms out to answer her call:

"HAHT DAHG!"

She reached out a hand to rub his craggy head, then turned back to regard the distant Moon... "Raise rocks from the earth to lay the foundation... and bring me broad, square stones. I'll take care of the rest."

* * * * *

It took nearly two hours of steady work, but at the end of it, at a high point north of the ash-filled valley yet still far below the peak of the volcano, a shrine dedicated to Tsukuyomi with a stone-formed torii and a roof of broad stones leaned together looked out on the moon-lit sea beyond.