Page 50 of Echoes of Fire

The pillar shuddered beneath me. The snakes’ bodies coiled around the column’s base, a living noose tightening as they gnawed through rock with fangs dripping corrosive venom.

The crumbling ledge offered less footing than a cliffside ice sheet. Below, a lava pit bubbled hungrily, shooting up flares of liquid rock that made the entire air shiver. Above, Rath’s battle cries mingled with the wyrm’s shrieks, savage echoes that slammed around the arena in waves of terror and adrenaline.

And the ledge gave way.

I caught a jagged outcrop one-handed, body slamming into the pillar’s searing surface. A snake clung to my boot, its weight dragging me toward the lava’s orange maw. The heat radiating from below scorched my cheeks. I tasted salt from sweat rolling down my lip.

“Not … a chance,” I snarled, swinging my free leg in a desperate arc.

The snake’s skull crunched against the rock. It released me, spiraling into the lava with a hissing pop. I hauled myself onto the outcrop, trembling arms screaming with exertion. Below, the remaining snakes writhed, their acid melting handholds into treacherous sludge, and the stench of dissolving stone added a bitter tang to the suffocating air. The largest snake struck like a piston, fangs glistening with fresh venom. I twisted, driving my dagger upward, praying it would hold.

The blade glanced off its armored snout but lodged in its eye.

It recoiled, shrieking, the dagger protruding from the snake’s ruined socket like a gruesome trophy. It thrashed, tail smashing the pillar and shaking the entire structure.

Rock exploded. I fell and caught the snake’s spasming body.

We dropped together, its acid blood eating through my sleeve. The lava’s heat blistered my cheeks, shriveled my lungs. I wrenched the dagger free as we plummeted, stabbing wildly. The blade struck a chink in its underbelly armor.

Green gore erupted, hissing in midair.

The snake’s final throes flung me sideways. I hit a sloping rockface and slid, shredding my palms on volcanic stone. The lava pool yawned inches away, each bubble a promise of burning finality.

Move.

I crab-crawled upward, dagger clenched between my teeth. Rath’s roar guided me—a beacon in the inferno. I launched myself the last few feet over a jagged lip of rock, vision spinning with exhaustion. I was still alive.

I crested the slope in time to see him grappling the wyrm, its metallic scales refracting hellish light. One of his swords lay shattered nearby, broken edges still glowing. The wyrm’s tail coiled around his torso, squeezing the air from his lungs.

“Hey, glitterlizard!” I hefted my blade, voice raw.

The wyrm’s faceted eyes pivoted.

I leaped onto its thrashing tail, driving my knife toward a gap in its plates. The impact jolted my wrist, and my grip slipped. My weapon spun away, clattering somewhere I couldn’t see.

“Orla, no!” Rath bellowed, baring fangs as he tried to twist free.

The wyrm shook me off like a gnat. I rolled, snatching a shard of Rath’s broken sword—still glowing white-hot. It scorched my fingers, but pain was an afterthought.

The wyrm struck.

I met its jaws with the shard.

Molten steel met crystalline fangs.

The explosion blinded me. A searing flash that devoured all sound, all light, all sense of direction. When the blaze in myretinas finally subsided, the wyrm lay twitching, its skull split by the shard wedged deep in its neural crest. Rivulets of sickly fluid seeped from the wound, burning channels into the arena floor. Rath stood over it, chest heaving, his remaining sword trembling in his grip.

Raw fury radiated off him in waves.

He stared at me, breath ragged, eyes blazing with the reflection of the crowd’s cheers.

I wiped wyrm guts from my cheek. “You’re welcome,” I rasped, somehow finding the breath to speak.

His tail lashed, stirring up a cloud of dust and ash. “You were supposed to stay on the pillar!”

“And you were supposed to duck.” I pointed to the wyrm’s barb embedded in his shoulder.

The arena shuddered—a deep, groaning vibration that traveled up through my boots and into my teeth. Rath’s hand closed around my wrist an instant before the ground split between us, superheated steam screaming from fresh fissures. The entire stadium pulsed with an ominous quake, as if the volcano beneath us throbbed with a living heart.

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