Shadows bled outward, forming a triangular head that seemed to sniff the air and shudder in pleasure.
“I speak through a voice loved and lost to the Agni,” it hissed. “But a voice is only a voice. A voice is not enough.”
The blue flame in his palm rippled, impatient. Samson curled his hand, and the flame grew, wrapping down his arm and torso. Elena whimpered in his arms. Her Agni flared, afraid. She must have realized he was drawing too hard, too quick, but Samson held on. Made her stay.
I’m sorry, he thought.But I need you.
He turned to the dead snake. The shadows had lengthened, forming a crown of antlers that towered above its head like jagged blades.
“Great Serpent, I have come to free you,” he called.
It laughed. The voice, Yassen’s voice, grew more distant, static, as if it came from the darkened bowels of the earth where the carcasses of old gods lay entombed.
“You do not have the power or the will to free me,” the old god rumbled.
“I have Agni and a song,” he said. “A song of the sea.”
The snake sighed. It sounded like a low hiss, rippling down its body and the mountain. In it, Samson felt the old god’s loneliness, its longing. So keen and familiar to his own. They both were strangers trapped in a foreign land. They both craved the open sea and the unending sky above.
“Sing it to me,” it rasped.
He swept his arms, and his flames shot forth, engulfing the snake. The ore’s light swooned in time with his inferno as his voice carried through the chamber.
“There lies a flame, blue as the sea,
True and strong, it remains in the deep,
Beyond the sun where only the shadows can reach,
Master of the realm is the one I seek.”
The mountain trembled violently as Samson sang. Rocks cracked. Stalactites crashed with heavy booms, but he kept on as the Serpent hissed in pleasure, grew in power.
“Agneepath, Agneepath, Agneepath,
The path of the three.
The sand, the sun, and the sea.
Rise, Great Serpent,
Rise, O Preserver,
To Seshar, to the son of the sea.”
A great roar rolled through the chamber, the mountains, and the land beyond. The old god laughed. It was working. The mountain shook, and the Serpent’s voice shed its veneer for the deep truth beneath. Its scales darkened, took form. His flames twisted, crawling up its spine as something more solid replaced its ghostly face.
The old god opened an eye. It was deep and blue and terrible, beautiful and dark and unlike anything Samson had ever seen. It pinned him in place.
“It is you, Agni of three,” the Great Serpent sang.
Its diamond-shaped pupil bore into Samson, but he did not waver.
Samson inhaled, drawing even more of Elena’s Agni. He could feel her resisting, but she had already given him so much. He was like quicksand. The harder she struggled, the more he took.
“Sam,” she whispered.
He should have felt guilt then. Remorse, even. To take and take, to do nothing but devour. But he had always been a hungry man.
