(Very well.)
The hralcin came careening down the stairs, all horrible misjointed claws reaching out toward Herewiss as it staggered from the stairwell and across the floor. (I can direct the fire and the light pretty carefully,) Sunspark said, (but try to keep out from in front of me, or else well ahead. I am going to let go.)
'Right.'
Herewiss stumbled off to Sunspark's right, and the hralcin immediately changed direction a little to follow him. At that moment Sunspark went up in a terrible blaze of light and heat, so brilliant that it no longer manifested the appearance of flames at all — it was a fierce eye-hurting pillar of whiteness, like a column carved of lightning. The hralcin screeched, put up several of its claws to shield what might have been eyes, a circlet of irregular glittering protuberances set in the rounded top of its pear-shaped body. Herewiss dodged around it and scrambled up the stairs, slipping and falling on the slime the thing had left.
At the top of the stairs he paused for just a moment, feeling sick, and his eyes dazzled as his body tried to faint; but he wouldn't let it. The stench in the hall was terrible, as if the hralcin carried around the rotting corpses of its victims as well as their souls. Herewiss went staggering down past doorway after doorway, and finally found the right one. It was still black, and he quailed at the thought of going in there, maybe being imprisoned there himself, never finding the way out again, and the hralcin coming in after him—
He heard it screaming up the stairs after him. He thought, Lorn, dammit!
He went in.
Immediately darkness closed around him, as if he had crawled back into a womb. There was no smell, no sound, nothing to see; he reached out and could feel nothing at all around him. He turned, looked for the doorway. It was still there, thought hard to see through the murkiness of this other place, and it wavered as if seen through a heat haze.
There was something wrong with his chest. He was breathing, but it was as if there was nothing really there to fill his lungs.
He inched back to the doorway, put his head out to breathe. The hralcin was coming down the hall, backlit brilliantly by the pursuing Sunspark. It saw Herewiss, screamed, and came faster. Herewiss took a long, long breath, like a swimmer preparing for a plunge. It could be your last, he thought miserably, and ducked back into darkness.
Silence, and the doorway was vague before him again. He had a sudden thought. Herewiss edged around to the side of the doorway, until he was seeing it only as a very thin wedge of light, and then as a line, like that of a normal door open just a crack. He put his hand gingerly into the place behind the door, where the hallway would have been in the real world.
Nothing, just more darkness.
He slipped around and hid in it, his pulse thundering in his ears, the only thing to be heard.
There was a rippling, a stirring. Right in front of him, hardly a foot from Herewiss's nose, the hralcin seemed to bloom out from a flat, irregularly-shaped plane into complete and rounded existence. He started back, then watched it blunder further into the darkness; Sunspark's light washed through the door after it and limned it clearly. Even muted and blurred by the darkness of this other place, Sunspark's brilliance was still blinding. Herewiss could imagine what the heat must be like. But if it let up for so much as a second, the hralcin would only come out again—
Herewiss ducked out from behind the doorway, his lungs screaming for air, and threw himself through, diving and rolling. Behind him he could feel the vibrations of the hralcin's scream through the water-dark space, cut off sharply as he passed through the doorway and crashed to the ground. His face and hands were seared by Sunspark's fires. He dragged himself behind the elemental, and the burning lessened a little, though the air in the hall was still like an oven; the stone was reflecting back much of the heat of its flames.
(Are you all right?)
'Not really. But we have to finish this—'
A claw waved out through the doorway, and Sunspark blazed up more fiercely yet. The reflected heat stung Herewiss's burned face terribly, but the claw and the limb to which it was attached were withdrawn.
(It is building up a tolerance,) Sunspark said. (Hurry up.)
Herewiss found the grimoire half-hidden under a great glob of slime. He grabbed the book, fumbled at the pages. 'I am, I am—'
Another claw came out the door. Sunspark spat a tongue of flame at it, and the claw disappeared. The smell in the hallway became much worse.
Bindings, inanimate — great bindings — they'd better be! Herewiss threatened himself into a semblance of calm, started building the necessary structure around and against the doorway. Luckily it was a very simple and straightforward one, requiring more power than delicacy, and his need was fueling his power more than adequately. '—e n'sradie!' he finished, sealing it, standing away from the structure in his mind. 'All right, Spark, let's see if it holds.'
Sunspark dimmed down its fires, and the hralcin slammed against the binding thrown over the door as if against a stone wall. The binding held, though Herewiss trembled with the reflected shock.
The hralcin hit the wall again. It still held.
And again.
And again.
The wall held.
Herewiss sagged back against the hot stone, regardless of getting burnt. Sunspark was in the man-shape again, helping him. 'My room,' Herewiss said, the backlash hitting him with redoubled force. 'I think I need a nap—'
Before Sunspark had gotten him halfway down the stairs, he was having one.
He woke up in his bed in the tower workroom, a makeshift affair of cushions and blankets that Sunspark had filched for him from one place or another. It was dark; the room was lit only by the two big candles on the worktable. Herewiss looked up and out the window, seeing early evening stars.
(Well. About time.)
He turned his head to the center of the room. Sunspark was there, enfleshed in the form of a tall slender woman with dark eyes and hair the color of a brilliant sunset, long and red-golden. She sat in a big old padded chair, looking at him with slightly unnerving concern. She was gowned all in wine red, and her sleeves were rolled up.
'How long has it been?' Herewiss said, propping himself up on one elbow.
(A night and a day.) 'The hralcin—'
(The binding is holding very nicely.) Sunspark got up, went to Herewiss and laid her hand against his forehead; it burned him slightly, but he bore it. (Better,) she said. (Last night there was little difference between the feel of your skin and mine; but the fever is down now. How are the burns?)
'They sting a little. The skin is tight, but I'll live, I think.' Herewiss looked around him. There was a big bowl on the floor with a sponge in it, and the dark liquid inside it smelled like burn potion.
'Were you using that on me?'
(Yes. The recipe was in your grimoire, and you had most of the herbs in your supplies—)
'But the water, Spark. I thought you couldn't touch it—'
(A minor inconvenience, in quantities that small — I shielded my hand with a cloth, anyway. It makes a feeling like a headache, nothing so terrible. Can you get up and eat?)
My Goddess — it's, she's worried about me, she cares -what a wonder! 'Spark, thank you — I could eat a Dragon raw.'
(No need, really, I could cook it for you.)
Herewiss sat up straight and stretched. He was stiff from the burns, but not too much so, and the backlash had diminished to the point where he only felt very tired. 'Oh. You brought a new chair?'
(From the little town up north where I've been getting the food.
They've started to leave things out for me at night; some of them leave doors and windows open.) She chuckled and got up, going out of the room and down the hall to another room where supplies were kept. (I guess the news got around when their neighbors started finding pantries empty of food and full of raw gold.)