"These shall hold still the fires of a star, elf. Beware their touch." He cautioned.
Mere heartbeats passed, the brilliance breaking into a stream of burning skies, raining across the desert's sands. Soft bangs and distant roars gained throat with each breath I took, the points gaining structure and separation, some angling away, others bursting well above us. My only point of reference to offer lays with the frequent eruptions some mountains around Pelori eject. No normal meteors, these, for the colors held their brightness in many cases, ending only with flashes echoed quickly with heaving ground and heated windstorms.
One such impact lay less than a thousand paces away. Billowing walls of dust, ash, and sand raced from that place, leaving me choking. My hand sought Specula's hilt, ready to draw, but fearing the damage I knew wind-driven grit wrought upon metal, even if enchanted to resist such.
To my right, the afreet thundered what I guessed to be a challenge, rumbles and hisses mingled with snaps and loud bangs in that language, one my throat, nor any other mortal's, could make without the aid of magic's aid. Left side of my lip lifting in that familiar quirk, my teeth grinding with determination and the mysterious pains that expression gave me, I waited.
The various thunderclaps and roars that answered him, staggered across night over the time the stars moved hand's width above us. Warring haboobs, the great dust walls at the front of those blasts, rapidly hid the celestial vault, leaving only the beating of one's heart to mark time. Right hand securing my kerchief across nose and mouth, I moved a step away from Batulbel. Twisting violently at my motion, noting my other hand on my saber, he snarled, then warned me against drawing her.
"Metal will be useless on such as me, fool." Turning back, arms flexing in strange ways, even between the joints, the afreet spoke softer. "That talisman or spells of your own are all that will bind them."
Nodding to him, my voice raw from the airborne grit, I answered. "Fire and light are the same, the sages say. Specula holds the light from the stars of day and night, which might give us hope."
"Thaumaturgy will bend under their powers, elf." His eyes brightened. "All the stars, you say?"
"So I was told. What the truth is, she never says." Fear had me granting information to him few others knew. Specula's secrets I'd rarely probed in those days.
"If that blade holds light from that sister of the Mother..." His words died, gouts of teal flame staggering him back, as the first of the creatures opened the battle. The sphere of power tossing that energy at him rolled onto the sometimes island, forcing my retreat from that fight. Still, the stench rising from searing hairs on my head stung my nostrils, as the ends curled smoke around my face. Suddenly, I understood the preference some elder warriors had for shorter lengths of such.
Tearing my eyes off the battle of the afreeti, quick glances revealed more such approaching. Not all that fell answered Batulbel's challenge. Some dimmed, fires quenched or smoldering faintly within earthen prisons, I supposed from crater walls caving in over them. Others danced away fast, mostly smaller afreeti, though at least two fled east, deeper into the sands.
Those to our west left me feeling fear. Shadows and orange glow mingled with the blue-green flames with Pelori. I hoped some mage in town held skill enough to abjure the beasts.
High above the town, deep ruby flames danced over the lava lake within the mountain of the Flame Queen, dim mockeries of their own births drawing most to it. My stomach roiled as hints of violet and indigo tinged those flames, weaving prisons around the first to reach that volcano's high crater. More raced in, either unaware the traps lay waiting or seeking vengeance on the one daring bind their sibs.
(end for now... unless I return someday to it. Tricky, working science into epic fantasy, something I wanted to try here.)
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