25 – Cataclysmic Hammer

The low mortar ceiling crumbled, shuddering from what felt like yet another earthquake. A rock the size of an apple detached from the masonry and plummeted.

It whistled straight through the center of Aury’s perfect circular body and slammed against the floor.

“Bucket!” he cheered.

Then another shock rocked the chamber, and a second stone broke loose, dropping just a few feet in front of him.

Aury strained against the four chains that bound him. The heavy iron links were anchored to the four corners of the room, pulled taut as they passed through his hollow center and back out to the walls, pinning him in a fixed, hovering position like a trapped bird.

He pulled, trying to tilt his body to catch the falling debris, but the chains were too taut. They bit into his inner edges, refusing to give an inch. The rock struck the floor with a dull thud.

“Damn it.”

“Hey!” A guard with a face covered in matted black fur smashed an iron baton against the bars of Aury’s jail. “Shut up in there, or I’ll feed you to the Balrok.”

Aury spun in place, making the chains slide and jingle against his metallic frame. “You, heretic! What is happening up there? Answer me, and I will ensure you have a quick death when I free myself from these chains.”

“Durk you, freak,” the gnome snapped, flipping his pinky at Aury in a crude gesture of defiance, the gnomish equivalent of the human middle finger.

Behind the guard, two others were huddled under the heavy stone lintels of nearby cells, seeking shelter as the room groaned. One had brown fur and the other blond; both kept their noses pointed toward the vibrating ceiling.

“Burt! Hey, Burt! Come here, quick,” the brown-furred one called out. “Take shelter before a rock smashes your durking head.”

“Ah, don’t worry. His skull is so thick the rock should be the scared one,” the blond one joked. Both of them let out a nervous, barking laugh.

“Ha, ha. Very funny,” Burt grumbled, scurrying back to join them under the archway. “Someone should calibrate the powder in those cannons. That’s not normal for the whole city to shake every time they fire a round.”

“Do you think Gomp prepared the powder?” the blond one, Mong, asked.

“That half-witted inventor?”

Another violent tremor rocked the foundation. This time, the ceiling didn’t just groan: it split. A jagged, dark crack raced across the mortar like a lightning bolt.

“I don’t think those are our cannons,” Mong whispered, his voice trembling, eyes fixed on the crack.

“What do you mean?” Burt asked.

“I think it just started. This is… her.”

The three gnomes fell silent, ducking their heads into their shoulders as if trying to disappear into their own armor.

“Her? Mistress! Mistress is here!” Aury cried, his golden frame spinning faster and faster until he was a blur of light. “Now you’ll see!”

Aury stopped spinning. He closed what passed for his eyes and reached upward with everything he had, pushing through the rock and the dark and the impossible distance between them.

There. Faint. Warm. Unmistakable.

She’s here. Finally! Aury thought as a bone-deep shock shattered the ceiling. The fissure burst open, and a thin, glowing rivulet of magma began to pour onto the floor just outside his cell.

The three guards stared at the molten thread, then at each other, and bolted for the exit without a word. Not even turning back to glance one last time at the familiar trapped in chains.

“Yes! Run! Beware of my mistress! She is coming for you,” Aury shouted at their retreating backs. “For all of you!”

The fissure widened with a thunderous roar. The rivulet became a searing cascade, a curtain of liquid fire that hit the floor and spread like a rising tide. The heat turned the air into a furnace, incinerating the gnomes’ discarded belongings as the glowing red pool crept into every cell.

As the magma rose, beginning to lick at the base of his walls, Aury whispered to the empty room, “And for me, hopefully.”

“Now they use fire. Of course.” Ashley snorted as she dodged another searing jet. She tucked her wings in tight, spinning in a controlled freefall to let the stream of flame pass harmlessly overhead. She snapped her wings open again, hanging suspended for a heartbeat in the smoke-choked air as she searched for the source.

“There it is.”

A war-machine, bulkier than any cannon, sat on the ramparts of a flanking tower, rapidly adjusting its gears to aim. A flamethrower war-machine.

“They say you should fight fire with fire. So: [Majestic Fireball].”

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A sphere of expanding, raging fire the size of a hay cart blazed before her, the blistering heat singeing her eyelashes before she threw it directly into the war-machine.

The flamethrower blew apart in a burst of flame and black smoke. The structure beneath it gave way moments later, collapsing in a deafening cascade of rubble. Wide fissures tore across the ground and split open into the surrounding lava moat, which began to drain into the newly formed fissures.

The Balrok screamed at her from below, flexing its wings and preparing to launch. Its iron chains snapped taut, and the perimeter wall buckled and groaned under the strain.

The demon flew a few desperate feet, slashing with its blade at the empty air, before gravity and the chains brought it crashing back down onto the mud and rock.

“You wait there,” she snarled, pointing a finger down at the beast.

The Balrok growled, tilting its head in obvious confusion.

“Good boy.”

She swept a hand through the air just in time. A jolt ran through her wrists as a concentrated shield of light flared, deflecting a salvo of armor-piercing bullets. The gunners in black armor beneath her feet trembled under her cold gaze.

“First the artillery,” she whispered, scanning the walls several feet below. “Then the gunners.”

She turned her head slightly back toward the Balrok.

“Then the fun,” she finally said, a smile spreading wide across her cheeks.