Pyromancer- The chronicles of Isaac Karthall

tick tock, tick tock.

flames suddenly sprouted on Isaac's arms as his skin appeared to combust.

“DON'T GIVE ME THAT BULL!” Isaac picked up the chair he'd been sitting on and threw it at a wall.The wood shattered. “I WILL NOT BE LIED TO!” Harforn had a pistol in his hand, and had jumped back from his desk. Old man or not, he was a trained officer and Karthall's unexpected rage had surprised him.

Isaac calmed himself, and the flames slowly died down. Isaac was sick of this. He knew would Harforn was doing. feeding him lies about missions, making sure Eleanor wasn't available for back up and sending him as far away as possible while still being able to monitor his movements with some ammount of success.

Harforn was trying to get him killed.

Isaac very carefully pulled his great coat open. A large red sigil, a hexagon with seven line sthrough it and a circle at its centre became visible over the right ide of his chest. His revolver was also obvious on the left side of his chest. Karthall pointed at the rune.

“shield. good for three bullets. Don't shoot or I'll kill you. I jut want to know one thing: why are you trying to kill me?”

Harforn slowly lowered his pistol. “Isaac I think we both know the answer to that particular question. You're dangerous. With runist rogues becoming more and more common these days, I have to make sure you aren't going to turn on us. The easiest way to do that is to kill you.”

“So why not just shoot me?” Isaac's arms were still smoking, and he was resisting the urge to let them catch again.

Harforn was sweating, possibly out of concern, possibly because the fire place was now a roaring mass of flames threatening to devour the entire wall. Isaac grimaced and forced the flames to die down to embers.

“We both know that if I tried to kill you I would end up dead. You think I'm stupid enough to believe you don't hve a shield grafted into your skin somewhere?”

Isaac already knew that Harforn wasn't an idiot, but he was honestly surprised the dolt had thought of that. Indeed, A rune was scared into the back of Karthall's scalp, invisible through his thick hair and powered with just enough energy to block a single bullet. It made him effectively immune to snipers, for the first shot anyway. Altough because of the rune's sensitive loacation, its activating still hurt like all of hell.

Isaac's hand instinctively reached behind his head, and Harforn nodded.

“knew it. Isaac, we both know you aren't going to kill me. I'm not goingto kill you, so where do we go from here?”

Isaac grinned, but it didn't reach his eyes. Those were full of malice.

“You need to try harder. I want the most difficult missions you can get me, and I want to be notified every time a runist turns from the military. And any information you can give me on them. I want a list of all registered runists who have deserted the military, and information there of. Finally, I want you to know that if I desert the military you'll be the first one I burn.”

Isaac turned on his heel and left the office, leaving Harforn to fumble with putting his gun away and collapse back into his chair. Harforn's brow was drenched, and he muttered to himself.

“Isaac, stupid Isaac. If you knew...You'd be singing a different tune.”

“I could take on a tank.”

“he could send a dozen of them.”

“I could not handle a dozen tanks.”