The hollow eye sockets of the sacred hand followed Bloumen and Kirtridge. Kirtridge stumbled backward, gasping in fear.

A gust of wind obscured the creature behind a wall of black flame. Kirtridge turned to run, holding Bloumen’s limp body tightly. The ghostly fire burned higher, fanned by the wind into a sheet of fire along the ridge.

Through the glimmering flames, the silhouettes of the hounds prowled. As Kirtridge pushed through the forest undergrowth, Bloumen could only stare in horror. There was a burst of flame, and a hound leapt through the blaze. It howled, an awful scream that resonated in the smoke-filled air and echoed through the hills. Coated in profane fire, it danced back and forth drunkenly, trying to shake the black flames from its flank. The little heads that covered its boiling skin writhed, screaming discordantly as fire burned to a deep red ash.

“Kirtridge!” Bloumen called. He looked back, and his eyes widened in horror.

He unslung her from his back and turned to face the hound. A horrible lump formed in her throat when she found her body was still frozen. All she could do was watch as the hound approached, wreathed in fire and screaming relentlessly.

Kirtridge withdrew his sword and took in a deep breath. The air glimmered about him, rippling as it does over a stone in the summer heat. “Can you run child?!”

Bloumen barely managed to shake her head.

“Then I’ll see you in Laika.” He chuckled.

The beast approached, swaying back and forth over the burning grass. It crouched, misshapen legs rippling, before it lunged at Kirtridge. The hound looked strangely slow, as if already exhausted. Kirtridge leapt to the side, and the hound passed by him, teeth snapping at the air at his side.

Kirtridge’s eyes filled with a glimmer of surprise. His sword swung in a powerful stroke, carving upwards at the shoulder of the hound. A chunk of flesh fell from its bones, along its left flank. The beast screamed again, and it snapped at him, blood red saliva spraying over Kirtridge's cloak. He barely avoided that attack, and the jaws snapped shut beside his ear. The burning head of a rabbit clamped onto his arm, drawing blood as it pulled off a chunk of flesh.

While he was still avoiding the hound’s broken jaw, a serrated claw swung at his face. His sword went up to guard him.

The claw dissolved into blood red ash on contact with his blade.

Bloumen watched with wide eyes. If she had the strength, she would have cheered. Kirtridge was taking on the horrific beast and winning. Her happiness was short lived.

The branch above her cracked, black fire spreading along the branches of the tree. Panic filled her unmoving body as the unbearable heat drew closer. “Kirtridge!” She called, as loudly as she could.

The hound’s scream filled the air. A pit of dread sunk deep into her chest as she realized Kirtridge couldn’t hear her.

Kirtridge stumbled backward in confusion, his eyes filled with shock. Slowly, a grin spread upon his face, and he slashed at the creature again. The blade struck home, rending flesh and bone. The creature's hip dissolved to ash in the blade's wake, and it feel upon its loathsome belly.

The hound, burning away in the black fire, writhed horribly. It tried to claw at Kirtridge, but each swipe grew slower, as Kirtridge cut at it again and again. Finally, the hound went limp, and its loathsome body crumbled into blood red ash.

Kirtridge wiped his sweat from his brow and cheered. He turned to look at Bloumen, and his eyes caught the flames creeping towards her. His smile faded, replaced with fresh horror.

“Shit!” He yelled and ran over to her. He grabbed her, and roughly pulled her limp body away from the flames. “God, child, call to me if you’re in danger like this!”

“I would like to.” She responded pitifully, her voice barely a whisper.

He pulled her over his shoulder and began carrying her away from the wall of fire that had engulfed the forest. “Was that lip?”

“Perhaps.”

He didn’t respond for a moment, and then began to laugh. Bloumen, for the first time in the last two days, found herself laughing as well. They laughed as they crossed a small creek and began to move up the next ridge. Little flecks of red ash and sparks rained from the sky, and a ghostly white glow spread along the horizon. From their new vantage point, Bloumen could see the fire stretching about the neighboring hill in a vast crescent, flames bounding high into the night sky. Red smoke, like blood, poured from the fire, raining ash like rain about the hills.

Kirtridge finally stopped by a white tree, with red leaves. He took in a deep breath. “Well, look at that mess.”

For whatever reason, Bloumen felt a glimmer of pride in the fire spreading across the horizon. “Will that stop them?”

“The Viscountess will need to stop and deal with the disaster you’ve caused her. What the hell did you do? A sacred hound should have been able to shrug off my blade, and those flames, without an issue.”

“The little voice. It gave me a sigil to use.”

“Huh.” He paused there and looked at the blood red ash as it fell from the sky. “So this is Profane fire.”

“Profane fire, is it something bad?”

“I’ve only heard of it. A black fire of corrupted Erd, one that burns away the essence of all things and cannot be satiated.” He shrugged. “The deep forest is ahead of us; we will need to cut through it. Luckily only a short distance.”

“Is it a bad place?”

“Bad? No, but you’ll see why no one enters it very quickly.”

There was a flash on the horizon, and ripples of golden light splashed across the sky. Bloumen could make out, through the smoke and bloody ash, a lone figure upon a monstrous worm, at the center of the light. It was as tall of the trees and crowned with golden light. It was slender, and elegant, with skeletally thin arms and with a gown of light about it. The fires around it dimmed and flickered out, and the figure vanished behind a veil of smoke. Kirtridge turned to her. “Well. That’s our queue. The viscountess is already beginning her work?”

“That’s the viscountess? I thought she would be more human.”

“When you have used magic quite a bit, your form changes. Especially when you use a large amount. I’m sure she has some enchantment to hide her greater form when necessary. Can you stand?”

Bloumen tried to stand and found herself surprisingly light upon her feet. The exhaustion from the night had left her entirely. She was surprised, pleasantly so. “I feel a lot better actually.”

“You’re definitely an odd one. We’ll get some rest in the deep forest, there’s a small village of silfae I know.”

For the rest of the night, Kirtridge led her up steeper and steeper hills. Red ash fell from the sky like a bloody snow, while ghostly fire crawled over the horizon. He paused along a cliff, as the orange glow of sunrise broke into the sky. “Well, here we are.”

Bloumen stopped beside him and took in the view.

It was as if the world had broken around her. She stood before an impossibly deep chasm, which dropped into an inky blackness far below. Crags of rock grew from the depths, winding and splitting like vast tree branches. What she had thought were hills were floating masses of rock, held up perilously by thousands of pillars of stone. Glimmering orange light fell from each of the pillars, cascading down into the abyss below. Trees and moss grew upon the impossibly large outcroppings, creating lush canopies suspended in the abyss.

The hills around her stopped at this cliff, splitting into vast entwining branches. One, right beside her, led down into the depths in a treacherously steep path, overgrown with grass.

“You’re kidding.” Bloumen felt vertigo just looking at this sight.

“Have you never seen the deep forests before?” Kirtridge asked, chuckling at her shock.

“The highest thing I have ever seen is the ground from the library window.”

“The Aizelwhiches have a library? News to me, should have promised me more money.” Kirtridge shook his head and walked towards the outcropping. He withdrew a rope from his pack and handed it to her. “The path is less treacherous than it looks. Your parents would smuggle Lindum spice through it during the second worm war. If they could make it through the deep forest with a hundred-pound pack on their back and angry border guard on their heels… Well, you can make it through with an old man.”

Bloumen didn’t know where she could argue with that and resigned herself to her fate.

As they began walking along the outcropping, he tied the rope around himself, and motioned for her to do the same. It was about a hundred meters wide, and flatter at the top then the bottom. The stone lay exposed, but it was smooth and rounded by time. White grass grew from the cracks, with little red seed heads flowing in the wind.

It was rounded, and she could see it plunged deep down into the depths. Where it grew hazy from distance, it forked into five, branching from a monstrous central shaft. It really did look like a great tree.

“Kirtridge, is the forest deep because it is going so far down?”

“If you want to be literal child, then sure.” He shrugged. “We will eat when we get passed the steep part of this branch, the Silfae are on that island there.”

With one hand he pointed to a large mass of rock, covered in great green trees, and held aloft by a thousand twisting columns of rock. It was about a mile and a half away from them, and a winding path of connected branches led to it.

Once he helped her climb past a steep drop, and then carefully helped her navigate the algae covered rocks of a waterfall, he sat down. Withdrawing some jerky from his pack, he handed it to Bloumen.

“Thank you.” She tore a chunk off, savoring the taste of the rough meat. It was gone in moments, and she stared at her empty hands in disappointment.

“That’s all we have. I ditched the rest when you summoned that profane flame.” He motioned to the red smoke covering the sky like a storm cloud.

Bloumen sighed.

He handed her a waterskin and told her to drink it slowly to avoid feeling ill. While she drank, he waved at the forested islands, hanging on their spindly foundations. “When your parents were young, they would hike through here with your grandparents every summer. They were one of the few who knew how to travel here, and its how they made their wealth. I would hunt here with Anthon, and believe me, there is big game to be found in those islands.”

He pointed down, to some murky shapes hanging in the gloom. “Down there, in the trunks of the world trees, you can find lesser serpents. Those are big and juicy game. I brought some for dinner two years ago, remember?” He laughed. “You were devouring that stuff like a little monster. It made Anthon laugh so hard he cramped up.”

Bloumen nodded, and a lump built up in her throat. She wanted to say she did, but she didn’t want to cry in front of him.

Kirtridge looked down at her. He paused, and gently patted her on the back. They were silent for a little while, watching the clouds pass by in great rivers below them.

He stood. “The village is only a short walk.” His voice was rough and hoarse, in a way Bloumen had never heard him use.

It was indeed a short walk. There was a difficult climb in the middle of it, which Bloumen couldn’t manage. Kirtridge resorted to pulling her up by their rope once her had scaled the rocks. Occasionally the path would narrow, and she felt like she was walking on a tightrope in the sky. Even so, Kirtridge seemed surefooted, and carefully led her along through it all.

When they reached the floating isle, she couldn’t see any housing. Their approach took them along the side of the island, on a treacherous and narrow path covered in tall grass. It was like a stairway of a castle, one only a foot across. He had her hold tightly to whatever rocks she could, and inch along with her face to the wall.

On his part, he seemed to be searching for something, constantly looking carefully at every cleft in the rocks.

She heard a bell chime, and Kirtridge chuckled. “Found it.”

There was the sound of rattling wood, and a rope ladder unraveled beside him. He grabbed onto it and began to climb. It ended in an obscure hole in the cliff, hidden behind a mass of vines. Once he reached the top, he motioned for Bloumen to follow.