Divine Fire
Divine Fire
Eric & Katherine Nabity
Chapter 1, draft.
The House of Hugo Piatella
For an instant, when Hugo became conscious, he felt blissfully well. That sense of comfort was shattered as he tried to open his eyes. His head exploded in pain, leaving him seeing stars and whirling darkness. He winced and regretted the movement. His entire body ached and his mouth was dry and cottony.
The situation defied quick explanation. He had gone to bed as usual, and he couldn't think of a reason why he should feel this ill. He tried to roll over, to get out of bed, but found he couldn't. It was then that he forced his eyes open and tried to focus despite the discomfort it caused.
Hugo took a long moment to understand what he was seeing. He was sitting in a room that looked very much like his own dining room, except that the long table had been pushed against the far wall and the carpet rolled away to reveal the mirror-shined lacquer of the wooden floor beneath. The portrait that hung on the opposite wall was of his young wife Samar. Just like in his dining room.
A strange object sat four yards from Hugo on the bare floor. It was around four-foot tall and cylindrical with a thicker base, made of a greenish-black ceramic. A large vase perhaps, something Samar had bought and not told him about. She had a habit of doing that.
These thoughts passed through his mind in that first long second. He found it all so absurd that he tried to laugh. Instead, he gagged on the thick wad of cloth that had been shoved into his mouth. Panic caused him to lurch to his feet, but the chair he was tied to caused him to lose his balance and sit down hard. To his left, Samar was tied to a chair as well. She was slumped against her bindings and gagged, still unconscious. Her clothes were soaked and her hair hung in black strands around her dark face.
Samar was covered in fuel oil Hugo realized, and he had been doused himself. On the floor around the vase and their chairs were puddles. Hugo tentatively inhaled. Yes, the not-unpleasant smell of fuel oil was present and strong.
Over the sound of his heartbeat, Hugo heard a hissing noise. It was constant and high pitched, and it came from the general direction of the strange cylindrical vase.
Silently, yellow light flickered into existence and licked up the side of the cylinder. The illumination was not white, as light from an emetanism should be, but empyreal in its radiance. The closest thing that Hugo could compare it with was the divine fire sent by Agnos during a Cleansing. Here it was in miniature, almost comical in its wavering, though there was nothing to laugh about. With a roaring whoosh, ropes of empyreal brilliance raced toward Hugo and his wife.
The heat alarmed Hugo more than the brightness. When the first yellow-orange tongue began to touch his bare feet, he knew. This was what heretics felt when divine fire was sent down to purify them, to help them begin again in their next life. How could he have ever doubted such a reality? Hugo screamed, and thrashed against the chair. Divine fire moved upward to eat upon the flesh of his ankles and calves.
Samar awoke, screaming through the muzzle of gauze stuffed in her mouth. She fought against the ropes with animal intensity, and managed to tip her chair over. She landed with a thud in the pools of divine fire that surrounded them. The ropes that held her legs loosened enough that she was able to scrabble away, still screaming. Almost instantly, her skin peeled away and her bright yellow blood mingled with the richer gold of the empyreal light. She crawled as quickly as she could from Hugo without a glance backward. An aura of divinity clung to her clothes and her hair, and she continued to scream. Then she disappeared from his sight around the corner of the door.
The chair beneath Hugo began to crumble and splinter, finally giving out. When his bindings were finally slack, he pitched forward only to be betrayed by his legs. He tumbled forward and landed on the glowing floor. The pain was enormous, overpowering all thought. It was difficult for Hugo to move though there was nothing he wanted to do more.
Empyreal radiance had reached the top of the green-black cylinder and danced there. And as he watched, the top of the cylinder exploded upward. Divine fire spewed through the ceiling.
"There would be no mercy" was the last thing Hugo thought.
From the street, Hugo Piatella's house erupted with celestial light. Orange and yellow tongues consumed the timbers around the windows and let the glass fall and shatter. It devoured the roof and licked the sky, but left the bricks and mortar of the building merely blackened. Divine fire, sent by Agnos.
Decazzi was the first to see it through his late-night stupor as he made his way down an alley behind the house. He stopped, entranced, by the bright flares. They were beautiful, the most amazing thing Decazzi had ever witnessed. Also the most terrible. He made a sign to the heavens, to the stars and Agnos' body that would rise in a few hours. He stepped backward, back the way he came. His way was blocked, and there was no chance that he was going to pass within a hundred yards of divine fire. Nor did he want to turn his back on it. He took a second step, but stopped when he saw movement inside the house.
From out of the golden light, a figure lurched and caught itself on the kitchen doorjamb. Empyreal radiance still sputtered and clung to what had been clothes and hair. The figure stumbled forward, careening against the wall of the building opposite Hugo's house. And in less time than it took Decazzi to blink, the touch of Agnos was gone. The figure that lay motionless on the ground appeared to have been a woman.
Decazzi took it as a sign. Tomorrow, he would not snort wing dust. He had strayed from the course Agnos had given him at birth and not done right with the life he had been bestowed. The brightness nearby clearly illuminated that for Decazzi. If he lived through tomorrow, he might stay awake to the world for the day after that too. He would remember the vision of this divine fire and the body of this heretic would stay bright in his mind.
© 2007 Eric & Katherine Nabity
