Page 42 of King of Fire and Scales

He was awash in a darkly ethereal luminance that made Thalia try to shrink away.

“Oh yes, the war has begun!” he exclaimed, snapping the book closed. “Your king is walking into my trap with the ease of a man kicked by a horse.”

He laughed a strange cackle, and Thalia tugged at the restraints. Her mouth was dry, her voice scratching like sandpaper over her vocal cords.

“Why don’t you just kill me?” she screamed, the chains rattling against the stone table dumbly. “Poisoning me, pinning me down like this, what are you waiting for, you traitorous demon?”

Thalia didn’t really have a scheme in mind. The room was arid and stifling, the medicinal potion that he’d nearly smothered her with having stained her tongue and lips with a hideous sour taste. She writhed on the table desperate to believe that her anger would compel more of her dormant abilities to rush to the surface.

Pyralis snarled and wormed his way to her like a slippery insect. He hovered his ugly face over her own, breath rancid of decomposition. She recoiled.

“What a silly woman you are,” he said, drumming his fingers against his hollow cheek. “You must be as aware as I am of the lore that the Creation Sorceress’s essence can be distilled into a potent source of acute, unimaginable power, are you not?"

Thalia shook her head violently. She didn’t enjoy how close he was standing. The reeking stench of his breath and black-hearted presence was enough to make the witch vomit.

But she caught something in his distant stare – uncertainty.

She stopped struggling, her breath heaving out more hot air to distort the room.

“I am not sure that sounds right. I have not heard it being so."

Pyralis was fixated on the dark beyond her. He spoke whimsically, his fingers crawling musingly along his cheeks.

“To be frank with you, pretty girl, I am not entirely aware of how to obtain such a distillation. I have read all of the literature that exists on the matter. Lore is all I have found. Accounts of the successful procedure… I am afraid…”

Pyralis blinked, catching himself lost in reverie. Thalia tried to take advantage of his candor.

“There have been no accounts?” she said, using the sweetest, minutely flirtatious of timbres as sounds of cannons swelled and obliterated far-off walls.

“Not quite,” he remarked, narrowing his concave eyes at her. “Mythology can only be trusted to an extent, as I am sure you know. I cannot waste this chance at fulfilling the providence of my ancestors…”

He trailed off and floated his stare once again away and back into the dark.

It gave Thalia the chance to gather her thoughts and assess the interweaving of chains as they enveloped her wrists and ankles.

“So you are giving me one more chance…” she whispered, swallowing with somewhat feigned dread. “…to submit to you. To work alongside you, in favor of my demise?”

Pyralis cocked an eyebrow and peered down at the witch. She saw a flash of who the scholar was or could have been, had revenge not savaged his soul. He could have been noble, even handsome, had he not dedicated himself to a lifetime of avenging his departed forefathers.

For a flicker of a moment, Thalia sympathized with him. But then she reminded herself that the man was readying himself to eat her.

“That would be my preference, dearest one. I rather not have to kill you and…have you as my dinner.”

He smiled deviously, staring off with a monstrous crazed gawk. Thalia’s stomach churned.

“I certainly have not consumed as much literature as you have,” Thalia went on, weaponizing a finely spun tale of her own. “But from what I have, it was abundantly clear that these stories of cannibalism are mere fables. Unfortunately, you require something that you simply do not possess.”

The devilish stare vanished.

“Oh?” he mused.

“Yes,” she muttered, exhilarated to see that she captured his attention. “From my brief studies and time with Sorcha, I saw that the practice of consumption by a non-sorcerer would be an exercise in futility. You see, you have to be a witch or have some form of magical prowess to harvest my essence as it leaves my body.”

Her labored breathing had slowed, and Pyralis was staring at her suspiciously. Yet, a glint of credence remained.

“This is what you have…surmised?”

Thalia truly had no idea of the parables she was spinning as they poured out of her mouth. She didn’t know if what she was saying was true but hoped desperately. She spotted no weapons in the shade of the underground hell and prayed that her words would keep him from searching for one.

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