Ashen - Chapter 15: The Walker in Flames

Chapter Fifteen: The Walker in Flames

Bob stood from his seat by the cook pot, staring off in the direction of the errant campfire, which had indeed gotten quite a few miles closer since the last time they’d considered it. He was shaking when he said, “it can’t be.”

    Before anyone could react, he dropped his plate and fork and sprinted off in the direction of the flame. The rest of the crew called after him, and a handful stood up to watch, but no one followed. Even the workers stood and watched him as he ran full bore into the night.

    It wasn’t a campfire. The eagle-eyed among them could just about make it out now. Bob was running toward a man, perhaps a giant. Tall and gaunt, and all in black, and wreathed in flames that seemed to burn up the ground around him.

    Everyone was standing, when Carver cursed. Even the Elf and the Captain had been called from their duties below and were out on the deck. The Elf leaned over the railing to get a better look. Captain Coalbrand was making use of his spyglass. They all watched in horror and awe as the Walker in Flames waved one hand in Bob’s direction and he was gone.

    Vanished - if the stories are to be believed - off to some faraway world, where he might find the purpose laid out for him by the Walker in Flames. To Ceru’s eyes, it looked more like he’d burned up in a conflagration of magical fire.

    Oquee cursed in Quelyan and turned, one hand reaching into the air as he did so. “It’s making right for the ship,” he cried. “Bob said it can be put down! He didn’t much like the idea, but he’s gone now.” His wizard’s staff shot out of an open porthole and into his outstretched hand. “I’ll do my best to slow it.”

    As the tortle turned, striding purposefully in the direction the supposed god, he loosed a volley of magical bolts from his empty hand. Each one slammed into the Walker with a magical hiss and a pop, and the thing fell. The wild inferno surrounding it sputtered to embers. Ceru and all the crew sighed in relief. Someone might have even chuckled; but then, almost as quickly as they gone out, the flames were burning again.

    “It doesn’t stay down long,” Oquee shouted back to them. The Walker was hardly more than the charred husk of some long-dead creature - a giant, surely, for it stood nearly twice as tall as a man. It was already standing to its feet.

    Without getting any closer, Oquee dropped it again; this time with several shards of ice which formed in the air in front of him before streaking toward the burning thing, striking it in the head and chest. The third shard went wide, landing in the desert sand behind the Walker; but the Walker fell nonetheless. Again, the flame was extinguished.

    “Hurry,” the Captain called, “onto the ship! Umpip! If you’re not in the seat, you need to get there now! No time for dawdling! We have no idea what that thing will do to my Ophelia!”

    Adovar sprinted down the gangplank. So much of his treasure was about to be left behind. He was shuffling boxes and crates, directing everyone on which items were the most important, trying not to think about what might be lost.

    Ceru dropped the pieces of an ornate suit of Dwarven Mail on the deck and hustled back down to see what else she could grab. Chancing a glance in the direction of Oquee and the Walker, she saw that it was burning again. Before it stood, however, it turned its outstretched hand in her friend’s direction and he too was dismissed in fire and smoke.

    “Oquee!” It was useless, of course; but she couldn’t stop herself. Standing on the gangplank, she said a silent prayer to Maturin, the tortle’s name for Great Tortuga, the Island Turtle of Quelya. She prayed that Bob was right and the Walker sends its victims where they’re needed, and that it doesn’t seek retribution against those who attack it.

    She prayed to the Walker in Flames for perhaps the only time in her life, asking that the ship and its crew might be spared. All around her, she was surrounded in the hustle and chaos of a battle without weapons. The others were shoving their way up the gangplank. Someone grabbed her arm and pulled her along.

    The voice of Umpip rose up in her mind. “Leave the rest,” he said. “We’re almost ready to lift off.”

    It should have been easy. From the weather deck, they were about 20 or 30 feet high. With bows and crossbows and a few pistols, they did their best to stave off the relentless approach of the burning corpse. God or no, it should have been easy. It was only a zombie, and they dropped it a half dozen times.

    But it takes time for a magus to establish his link to the Helm, and to wrest control of the ship from the forces of natural law. It takes time too for a ship mired in the dry desert sandsea to free itself from its ashen grasp.

    In the end, the Walker in Flames didn’t even try to stand again. Not right away. However the Black Ophelia had come to be in its path, it must have decided that the ship needed to be elsewhere. Without even rolling over off of its back, the corpse's hand rose in their direction and gave a flick of its wrist.

    The Black Ophelia erupted into flames and immediately vanished from the ash-grey wasteland. The Walker in Flames, seemingly undeterred in its singular purpose, rose to its knobby, desiccated feet and continued its course across the barren wasteland.