“Fire,” the professor whispered. His hands shook as he traced the runes etched onto the walls.
The Taldan scholar—bald and stooped, somewhat like a pale turtle—had intricate tattoos coiling up his arms, neck, and cheek, like her own but of a different style. On their first night together, she had asked about the markings. Irezoko, he said they were called, borrowed from her own Varisian tradition and a sign of his rank in Absalom’s College of Mysteries, the rank of enigma.
Seoni frowned and scanned the long tunnel. Various support beams of the same smooth stone as the walls buttressed its length, and script she did not recognize covered the entirety. The symbols were old and worn, done long ago, but she looked for inhabitants anyway. There were no signs that the lizardfolk or giant beasts from the surface had found this place.
“The runes?” her tengu companion Korakai asked, prancing forward with a hop. As he did so, the various vials, scroll cases, paper talismans, totems, and baubles affixed to his robes and chain shirt clinked and slapped musically. An orb of liquid blue light followed at his shoulder. Korakai cocked his corvid head one way then the other, peering at the writing. “They say ‘fire,’ do they? How ominous. What else do they say?”
“It—it will take days,” the scholar said with awe, “perhaps weeks, to decipher. This is ancient script, you understand. More than ancient. From the Age of Serpents, I suspect!” He turned to them dramatically, his voice echoing in the tunnel.
At his declaration, Korakai tilted his head back the way, and Seoni stared unmoved. None of them spoke for several heartbeats. The professor sighed in disappointment at their reactions and turned back to the wall. “But see here,” his knobby finger tapped one rune. “This says ‘fire,’ I’m sure of it. And look there, and there, and here. It’s repeated, see?”
“Fire, fire, everywhere,” Korakai chuckled nervously. His robes and feathers fluttered in the faint breeze that always surrounded him. He tapped the butt of his elaborate staff on the floor. The oracle’s fidgeting made noise incessantly. “What do you think it means, Seoni?”
“That is why we have the professor,” she said simply, shrugging.
If the old man, Enigma Rodos, heard her, he was too preoccupied to respond. Muttering, hands touching each symbol reverently, he combed over the walls everywhere Korakai’s light illuminated them.
“He’s a funny one, isn’t he?” The oracle tapped his staff and jingled his way over to Seoni’s side. She thought he was smiling, but it was difficult for most humans to decipher a tengu’s expressions, even after several weeks together. As Korakai drew nearer, the breeze surrounding him plucked at her cloak and skirts.
“Indeed. As I told you, we did not need to bring Valeros for this part. The perils were in getting the professor here. Other than dying of boredom, I do not see any danger from these forgotten tunnels. No need to fear, Korakai.”
“If you say so, Seoni,” her companion looked left and right, tap-tap-tapping with the staff, which was topped by a stylized, silver eye. “Embrace life’s mysteries, yes? Even when they’re in a dark, unexplored ruin. It will be fine, you say.” He did not sound convinced.
Seoni nodded once, and the two of them watched Enigma Rodos work. After several minutes, the professor paused to deliberately pull a parchment, quill, and inkwell from the pockets of his robes.
“Do you really think it will take days?” Korakai whispered.
“Mmm.” She frowned. “Perhaps we can light a torch and leave him to it. He paid us to find this place and we have done so. We have no expertise here. Let him do…” she made a vague gesture with one tattooed arm, “whatever it is scholars do.”
“Oh, yes, yes, leave this place, good,” Korakai jangled as he unshouldered his backpack and began rummaging through it. “I have one. Professor! We are going to light you a torch and head back to camp, yes? You can find it easily enough? We will be close if you need anything.”
Rodos looked up, confused and blinking, as the words slowly sank in. “Yes, that will be fine.”
“Flint and steel, here we are,” Korakai said, balancing his staff in the crook of one arm. With taloned hands he struck once, twice, three times, and a spark lit the animal fat on the end of the wooden torch.
As soon as the flame ignited, several of the runes around them flared in bright orange light. Then others, spreading out like an infection.
Or perhaps a wildfire.
Rodos gasped. “What—what did you do?”
“Fire?” Korakai laughed anxiously, waving the torch. “You must be right on that translation! Keep up the good—Aaaiiiggghhh!” He jumped back on four-toed taloned feet.
Flames filled the chamber with a great WHOOOSH! Rodos scrambled away on hands and knees, nearly engulfed. As Seoni watched, wide-eyed, the flames coalesced into distinct shapes, each moving independently while still part of the same conflagration. It took her a heartbeat to realize that she faced not one raging blaze, but a dozen smaller ones, each in the shape of a halfling-sized humanoid. The fiery figures prowled forward, moving like a pack of wolves.
“Professor! Away!” she barked. “Get Valeros and the others, quickly!”
Seoni dashed to one side of the tunnel, her arms weaving symbols in the air. Instinctively she plunged her consciousness inward, where a roiling mass of memories awaited her. Images and voices from experiences before her birth flooded her mind. In her childhood, this sort of bombardment threatened to overwhelm her. Now, she utilized her tattoos; for her they were not a sign of rank but instead a map, a reminder of her ancestral blood and the thousand generations of spellcasters who preceded her. Power flowed through her. Power and knowledge. And Seoni channeled it through the detailed patterns across her skin, focusing the chaos into her spells.
“Frost and ice!” she called to Korakai. “Quench the flames!” As she said the words, an orb of biting cold formed around one of the fiery figures. Steam filled the tunnel as the elemental screeched like a teakettle.
“You mean to fight?!” the oracle gasped. “But… oh, bother.”
Korakai tamped his staff to the ground and the silver eye atop it flared. Geometric sigils, triangles and circles of blue light, spun around the head of the oracle’s weapon and, as they did, his free hand swirled with liquid, azure energy. The tengu had explained to Seoni that he could glimpse the First Storm that existed before creation, when the planes were nothing more than a roiling sea of lightning, wind, and rain. It was these fleeting glimpses, he speculated, that allowed the many gods and goddesses of weather to grant him their blessings.
The oracle reached out with his tempest’s touch, the water leaping from his outstretched talon to the nearest figure. More steam and high-pitched screeching let Seoni know that Korakai’s attacks were as deadly to these creatures as her own orbs of frost.
Korakai and Seoni fight fire with ice in this illustration by Gunship Revolution from Pathfinder Player Core 2.
Small arcs of lightning etched at random intervals across his robed form, and he moved to attack again. The breeze surrounding him was now a gale, buffeting Seoni’s hair and clothes. For all his fear, a true force of nature raged, barely contained, within her companion.
Their opponents breathed gouts of flame in response. The collective experience of Seoni’s ancestors guided her every movement as she raised a round shield of energy. Arcane sigils around her hands glowed blurrily in the steam. To her right, in a divine battle cry, Korakai let forth a mighty crow’s call as the tempest around him roared in response.
Seoni smiled fiercely, the light of fire dancing in her eyes.
About the Author
Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar was a founding columnist for Magic: the Gathering’s official website, which he wrote weekly for five years (along with various other gaming columns). During that time, he also penned several Kamigawa block web stories for Wizards of the Coast. He is a lifelong tabletop roleplaying gamer, frequent GM, and currently part of a fiction writers’ group in Oakland, CA. His serialized novelization of the Age of Ashes Adventure Path is available on Pathfinder Infinite.
About Iconic Encounters
Iconic Encounters is a series of web-based flash fiction set in the worlds of Pathfinder and Starfinder. Each short story provides a glimpse into the life and personality of one of the games’ iconic characters, showing the myriad stories of adventure and excitement players can tell with the Pathfinder and Starfinder roleplaying games.
Korakai’s and Seoni’s classes—the oracle and sorcerer—appear in Pathfinder Player Core 2, which remasters eight Pathfinder Second Edition classes and presents a vast array of existing and new character options for members of all classes, including the chilling spray and tempest touch spells the pair cast in this story. Pathfinder Player Core 2 is available for preorder now, and will release in hardcover, special edition hardcover, retailer exclusive sketch variant hardcover, and PDF on August 1, 2024, and in pocket edition softcover in October.
