The best possible outcome would be that Xaphoo never saw Atticus coming and he’d just get an axe in the back and that would be it.
The best possible outcome never happens, though.
The fallen angel heard Atticus coming—or maybe smelled him, because what I thought was a plague mask beak from a distance was actually a super long nose—and whipped around to face him. Atticus rose and charged at that point, the element of surprise lost. But he was too far away. The beanpole arms hefted the bellows and pointed it at Atticus and squeezed the handles together. I immediately sped up to a sprint because that looked like trouble if anything did.
A powerful stream of air shot out of the bellows and ignited like a flamethrower and the evil thing laughed as Atticus was blown backward off his feet in a gust of fiery wind. He lost his grip on his hatchet and that was most definitely trouble.
Atticus didn’t make any sound, but he was rolling to extinguish the flames. I hoped his wards and cold iron aura were working properly. Xaphudge laughed, a screechy cackle, and pried apart the handles of the bellows for another go. He never saw me coming until I was a blur of motion in his peripheral vision. He made a startled noise and started to turn my way as I was in midair. It was enough to make me miss him, but I tore the bellows right out of his grasp and ran with it grasped in my jaws. His cry of outrage was epic and he gave chase, so he missed a couple of things: one was Atticus getting to his feet, his clothes all crispy and his hair smoldering butotherwise okay, extending a hand toward the fallen angel and saying something in Old Irish, and the other was Starbuck coming up behind him to nip at his chicken legs.
They weren’t really chicken legs—he had feet instead of talons, it’s just that they were super skinny and appeared to have no muscles. Starbuck’s efforts were enough to trip him up and he executed a graceless face-plant accompanied by a roar. He really did look like a large avocado that way and I dreamt for a fleeting moment of smashing him to guacamole.
I paused to look back and saw that not only had the fallen angel fallen, but Atticus had too. He’d just been standing a few seconds ago, so I didn’t understand what had happened. Xantac rose and whirled around, locating me and then Starbuck, who was barking at him not far away and calling him a terrible cat person. His scarecrow arms rose and hellfire gushed out from them, one stream for Starbuck and one for me.
There was no avoiding it.
The sulfurous heat blasted over me and I squeezed my eyes shut and hoped it wasn’t my time to die.
I said to Atticus, because if this was the end, I wanted to be grateful for the good times and not say something obvious like
I did let loose with a yipe, because it hurt more than anything ever had, and Starbuck did the same, but after a second of intense heat, most of it was gone. That cold iron talisman I wore on my collar had warded off the hellfire, leaving me and Starbuck very toasty and with lots of singed fur, but otherwise unharmed.
The fallen angel couldn’t believe it. His jaw dropped open, some pink and off-white bits in there like jagged landscaping rocks, and he looked at both of us to make sure we were still alive, and then he looked down at his hands, wondering how they couldhave misfired so badly. He snarled and clenched his fists as he looked up at me, clearly deciding he should just try again. He said something in a language I didn’t recognize—maybe the fell speech of Mordor or something, because it sure wasn’t French—and then his eyes popped open in surprise and he belched. And shortly thereafter, he screamed, as much in surprise as in pain, as his avocado body began to bubble and hiss, and I understood what was happening: he was being consumed from the inside by Cold Fire. Atticus had gotten him after all, and that was what he’d done before he collapsed. Something about that particular unbinding drained my Druid like nothing else.
Fissures appeared in the fallen angel’s body and yellow goo squirted out from them, which caused Starbuck to leap backward in alarm. Xaphig pretty much exploded after that, quickly turning into molten yuck that cooked down into greasy slag.
Starbuck? Oberon? Are you two okay?Atticus asked in our minds.
Starbuck said, then added,
I replied, trotting over to him. He was lying spread-eagled on his back.
I’m wiped out. The hatchet wasn’t much use after all, and I had to use my own strength to cast Cold Fire.
Not much. My muscles don’t want to work at the moment, but I’ll recover eventually.
It could be a good while. Overnight, probably.
The sun had pretty much set and there was some farewell light in the sky, the kind that allowed you time to reflect and judge the kind of dayyou’d had before darkness fell. We wouldn’t get full dark, of course, because of the fire expanding all around us. Our little pockets of air were still okay, but it remained hot and uncomfortable.
I agree that it’s not ideal.
Starbuck hopped around.
We had to explain that no deliveries of any kind could be made to where we were, and Starbuck shivered as he realized what that meant.
Dinner can still happen. It just can’t happen here. You have to get me to where the food is. Through the fire, in other words.
I’m going to bind together some torched wood to make a rough sled—a travois, really—and you’re going to pull me out. It’s going to be a lot of work for a long time, but I’ll try to give you energy.
