FFM 12: Playing With Fire

Exhausted and well sated by good wine and good food, I don’t immediately appreciate what I’m seeing.  “How are you doing that?”
    Octavian takes his hands out of the fire.  “I thought you had fallen asleep.”
    “Nearly.”  I glance into my cup.  “It has been many years since I drank enough wine to affect my perception.”
    Octavian smiles, mischief in his eyes.  “It is not the wine.  I have kept this a secret for a long time, but I know I can trust you.”  He reaches into the fire again, and scoops up a handful of hot coals.  Turning to me, he plays them back and forth through this hands like water, like sand.
    “How are you doing it?” I ask again.  “What is the trick?”
    “No trick, my friend,” he says almost grinning now.  “Manipulating fire is the oldest and simplest application of sorcery.”
    “Sorcery?”
    “I’ve always had a whisper of talent,” he goes on, still pouring the blazing embers through his fingers.  He reminds me of a showman rolling dice.  The fire flickers and flows around his knuckles, but he is not burned.  “For a very long time it was wild, and faint, I had no real control.”
    “Clearly you have learned.  Did you find an instructor?”
    “More like a patron,” Octavian says.  There is something sinister in his smile.
    “What does that mean, brother?”
    For a minute he does not reply, but continues to manipulate the red coals.  “Men bow before the pantheon; Jupiter, Mars, Minerva,” he says.  I nod, though I pray to them under different names.  “But there are other gods, my friend.  Older gods.  Creatures of pure power.”
    “You mean the Titans,” I say.
    “That is one of the names men have given them,” Octavian agrees.  
    “There are no more Titans,” I tell him.  “The Twelve defeated them long ago.”
    “Their influence has waned,” Octavian says, nodding in acknowledgement, “but they are still here, and their favours are available if one knows where to seek.  And how to ask.”
    I do not like the way he says that.  “I think you dabble with forces beyond your reckoning.  What bargain have you made, my brother?”
    “You are upset with me,” Octavian says, sounding wounded.
    “I am concerned, my friend.  I see here with my own eyes what you are capable of, and I wonder, what has it cost you, and how far will you take it?”
    “Cost?  Think instead of the gain, brother,” Octavian says.  “This fireplay is nothing.”  He casts the hot embers back into the fire, sending up a spatter of sparks and smoke.  “My power grows, my control with it.  Imagine; instead of spending the lives of your worthy Spartans in open battle, I could ensorcell our enemies and end their resistance before it starts.”
    “Every Spartan was born to spend his life in war,” I say.
    “But not to squander it pacifying some rabble," he says.
    I must concede the point.
    “And that is only one application,” he goes on.  “I could charm statesmen, I could bedevil our enemies’ spies.  I could bolster the Imperial navy, calming the seas before them and putting wind in their sails regardless of the season or the tide.”  The ferver in him is engaging, he is so full of excited vision.  “I can do anything.  All ways will be open to me.  All things will be possible.”
    “And you would bend your talent to serve the Empire?” I ask.
    “Of course, brother,” he says, as though the mere thought of any contrary line of action was abhorant.  There is something dark in his eye that makes me doubt his word.  But I am tired, fed, and full of wine and he is my friend, and I trust him.