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barely resisted his will. A familiar and monstrous laughter
exploded from my throat, rattling my teeth. I could still see
the flagging killer through the debris, and I found myself
charging forward, my forbear’s will filling me with the
need to kill. Fire ignited around the Prince of Smoke as he
attempted escape, but my father’s fury proved greater. I felt
the axe cleave the plume of otherworldly power in twain,
stranding the triplet out in the open.
The Prince proved a spry creature, sliding inside my
father’s killing arc and slicing open my belly. Yet the rage
that had become me had no time for bleeding, much less
dying. My knee rose to greet the Prince’s chin, shattering
bone. As he reeled from the impact, the butt of the axe found
the spellcaster’s nose. Wet fireworks of teeth and blood
pinwheeled from my enemy’s face, coaxing a storm of
renewed laughter from my aching jaws.
Finally, my father collided with the body of the killer,
sundering it in an explosion of wooden shrapnel. A decoy
of the Prince lay in pieces all around me as his laughter
echoed from all directions. The rubble of the house suddenly
disappeared as I fell, the solid earth beneath me transforming
into a dark pit. Pain rivaled rage as a floor of sharpened
stakes skewered me like a wild beast. I had brooked my last
insult from the Prince.
The Red Dream seared the air around me as I leaped from
the pit, landing upon solid shadow and plunging into my
servitor silence. I watched the Prince from the hollows of
the world, waiting for my next opportunity.
As the revived fires continued to burn, the Prince climbed
the snaking smoke like a staircase into the night. Lifted
beyond the ceiling of the forest, the magician traversed the
smoke as it curled in upon itself and raced sideways across
the treetops. I kept pace, following from within a brook of
shadow that fell thick and quiet from an ancient stand of oak
trees. The magician circled around the glowing wreckage of
my ancestral home, riding the smoke like a steed.
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