Loren could feel the strain of having sent out so many powerful blasts in rapid succession as he made some distance between himself and other large and heavy objects—like the table and the dish cabinets—that could be thrown at him. The Flames he'd used hadn't emptied his reserves, but he could certainly feel the dent the blasts had made in his capacity. Flame mages didn't have a hard upper limit on how much magic they could hold, merely a limit on how much they produced naturally with time, rest and food. Beyond that, he could add to his reserves by consuming oil, alcohol, butane or any other hydrocarbon, or standing out in the sun and absorbing the heat. While that reserve was still plentiful, he'd spent a lot of imbuement in a few exchanges.

  The dining area he'd been dragged to had been partially on a balcony that looked out over a lower floor and down at a large living room. Both had faced large floor-to-ceiling windows that had looked out onto the view of the lake. In avoiding the side table, and the sofa, and book after book after book that had been thrown at him afterwards—many of the books had been hardcovers of biographies of famous people, and probably had never actually been read—he'd had to run downstairs, moving even further away from the door he knew was open.

  The Flame mage tried to break through the windows, but while they had cracked when he'd blasted kinetic energy at them, they had stubbornly remained intact and not provided him a way out. It took him two more panicked tries before he conceded that he couldn't get out that way, or at least not by trying to break the windows, and had rushed to try and find some sort of sliding door mechanism before the familiar cold pressure came at his back. Goddesses damn it, what kind of stupidly tough glass was this?-!

  "You have a lot of nerve!" the ghost screamed as it pulled him back by his shirt and threw him across the room. Loren's legs slammed into the long sofa facing the windows sending him flipping over the back of the furniture. "My parents will punish you! Worthless!"

  Loren scrambled to his feet on the carpet he'd partially landed on—it hadn't helped with how painful the landing had been—raising up his torch to see the ghost. It had manifested again, its green skin covered by pale keres that existed only in the shine of the ghostlight. The ghost didn't seem to notice them, or didn't care. "Do what I say!" it cried, raising its fists angrily as it ran towards him, climbing over the sofa as it did so.

  The Flame mage thought frantically as he shuffled back, watching the ghost's hands in case it started throwing things again. All right, energy and kinetic force obviously wasn't working, or at least not as well as it had with the keres. Life? Nothing alive there, or anything he could animate would be useful. Change? What could he change about the ghost? Light? He didn't even think it needed light to see, how was he supposed to blind it? Energy?

  …

  The ghost hadn't felt any physical tactile sensation for who knows how long.

  Loren let Flame rush down to his fist, aligned it to Energy, then stepped forward to punch the ghost. Actual punch, not just magic air-punch. The ghost didn't even try to dodge until the last moment, stepping sideways, but he changed his hand's movement to a backhanded sweep. His fist slammed into the side of the ghost's head, a pale copy of what had once been a soul. This close, actually touching the ghost, he could feel it, the feeling of a Flame completely claimed by someone else.

  The Flame around his hand anchored to the spiritform, if just barely, and he stepped back immediately to avoid the ghost's flailing limbs as the fire that had been around his hand adhered onto the side of the ghost's head.

  The ghost immediately began to scream. "Hot! Hot! It hurts, it hurts!" The ghosts began to flail at its face, trying to get the Flame to come off as Loren made space, eyeing the back stairs up to the dining area. Could he make it up while the ghost was—?

  Still screaming, the ghost ran upstairs, drowning that idea. Still, that meant that he had time without the ghost bothering him. Loren eyed the cracked windows, doing a scan of the frame holding the panes in place. The window was solid, not some kind of sliding window array, but there was a large deck outside. That meant a door…

  There, in the corner. He rushed to the door, turning the knob and pulling, then pushing at the door to get it to open. It was only at a second look that he saw the deadbolt above the knob. A deadbolt that required a key.

  Up above, he felt the Flame that he'd anchored onto the ghost extinguish, even as the ghost continued to wail in pain. Water. There was water somewhere in the house. Shit.

  There was no time to unlock the door. The ghost would be coming back, he had to do something—

  Calling Flame to his hand again, Loren turned towards the oncoming voice.

  Loren lost track of time after that, but no matter how long it was, what followed was agonizing. When the ghost came at him again, he managed to tag it with another Flame to let it feel what it was like to be burned again, ending it running once more, but it was immediately clear that the ghost had managed to find some water to put out the Flame. It came at him even more pissed, and this time it seemed to have learned. The few plates and bowls that had survived in the dining area were thrown down at him, and he wasn't able to avoid them all. They hit his legs, his arms, his torso, and he was just barely able to keep them away from his head. Sharp edges and tumbling shards of glassware tore at his exposed arms and sometimes struck him through his clothes. He felt patches of skin growing wet with blood.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He'd once read somewhere that some Flame mages in the military could put up a 'heat shield' to protect themselves, a self-contained layer of Flames so hot that bullets liquified on passing through, leaving only molten metal to harmlessly splash on them. Well, harmlessly for a Flame mage. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option for him, not only because he didn't know how but also because the things being thrown at him were made of glass and ceramic. It was one of the many random thoughts that occurred to him as he tried to do his best to stalemate the ghost. As long as it stayed between him and the only way out that he was sure would open, he was trapped.

  He ran in what limited space there was, dodging projectiles, and then the ghost itself when it thought it had a chance of grabbing him. He deliberately backed himself into a corner of the room to keep the ghost from being able to come at him from a direction he couldn't see coming. He'd blasted the ghost with sprays of fire to hold it at bay, anchoring Flame to it whenever his had a chance using punches, kicks, or the end of the slowly shortening table leg he was holding.

  It was like the most painful and exhausting game of basketball he'd ever been forced to play. He couldn't stay in place, because he'd get things thrown at him. He had to keep moving, but he was hemmed in by the boundaries of the house. He had to get back to the front door, but the ghost was always in the way, rushing back upstairs whenever he managed to set them on fire and putting it out, and the reprieve wasn't long enough for him to make it to the door. The sofa and armchairs and coffee table were shoved at him, and he was forced to learn to jump and roll over them to avoid getting hit. The pane of glass on the coffee table was swung at him like a swatter, and even though he was able to shatter if with a Flame of kinetic Energy, he was still pelted with large glass shards. Glass shards also became part of the things thrown at him.

  Adrenaline kept him going, letting him ignore the pain until it faded, and he had to push on regardless. Pain throbbed through him from the plates and bowl and shards and whatever else the ghost had on hand that had managed to strike true. His throat was dry, and his feet ached from all the running. There was a stitch in his side, and despite his best efforts he was breathing hard. The back of his head still ached slightly despite the Life he'd gathered there, and it throbbed every time he moved too suddenly, which was all the time.

  The ghost, goddesses damn it, didn't seem to be getting tired. It was relentless, constantly screaming at him in ever-increasing murderous fury, and Loren had long since stopped paying attention to the actual words. The Flame mage was terribly aware that he had the ghost's full attention. There was no hunger to distract it, no lingering pain from the Flames that Loren inflicted on it once they'd been put out, no distraction to draw it away. If it had been isolated here, then Loren was the distraction from its tedium, and for all that it was bitching and moaning and clearly didn't like the sensation of being on fire, it also kept coming back for more.

  Time didn't lose meaning so much as it became a quantity he couldn't measure. How much he hurt, how much of his reserves of magic he had expended, how tired he was… those he was able to keep track of very well, and the answer every passing moment was 'more'. He wasn't even afraid or angry anymore. Everything had narrowed down to a simple, brutal game: don't get hit and set the ghost on fire. Fail the first, he'd hurt more. Succeed in the second, and he'd be able to earn a brief reprieve to stand still and breathe as the ghost screamed and ran to get away from the heat. If he only hit it with a spray of Flames, the reprieve was very brief. On the other hand, if he took a risk and got close enough to hit the ghost so the Flame would anchor, he'd have precious seconds as the ghost ran away to douse the Flames in… ugh… water.

  He thought he imagined it when he heard the sound of a door opening. After all, the ghost was still screaming, because not having an actual throat meant one could be as high and whiny as one wanted and not have their throat hurt. The ghost also didn't react, instead focusing on Loren and picking broken debris off the floor to throw at him.

  He didn't really notice the blood-colored haze of venefog slowly filling the air, thinking that the slight reddish tinge to the light was just the reflections off the wooden furniture, or simply a sign that the sun was setting and the colors shifting with it. So when a stream of crimson venefluid slammed into the ghost like a trashcan-thick stream of goo, Loren was momentarily taken aback, wondering what was going on before he hand the presence of mind to look up.

  Three people were standing on the dining area above, and one of them was a blue-skinned oni woman directing the red stream of liquid-like materialized magic at the ghost. The spray blasted the ghost like a firehose, pushing it against the far wall.

  "Come on!" one of the three people cried, and it actually took Loren a moment to realize they were talking to him. "We're here to rescue you! Get up here!"

  It was only then that he recognized the armor plates they were wearing atop their otherwise normal clothes. Or more specifically, the logo on parts of the armor, a sword behind a stylized, watchful eye: the symbol of the vigilants.

  Casting one last glance at the ghost, whom the stream of venefluid was pressing up against the one of the walls of the house, Lori ran for the stairs up to the dining area.

  Seeing this, the ghost shouted something—probably something about not getting away—and tried to intercept him, managing to move sideways from the stream. The thaumaturgist tried to realign the stream of magic, even as the third vigilant cried out something—Loren heard the keywords 'ghost', 'seek' and 'bullet'—as the ghost moved rapidly to the other side of the living room, forcing the thaumaturgist to sweep the stream of venefluid to chase after it. With a scream of anger, the ghost dashed under the floor of the dining area and rose up through it, getting behind the vigilants even as one of them—the Spiritualist—turned to track where it seemed the ghost would rise and the thaumaturgist cut off the stream. The venefluid splashed briefly on the ground before the pseudo-liquid sublimated into crimson venefog and faded, the magic decomposing back into the atmosphere.

  The Flame mage skidded at the base of the stairs as the ghost found itself back upstairs, blocking his path out once more, just as the tabletop of the dining area rose up and was thrown at the three vigilants.

  The vigilant who was probably a spiritualist dodged, throwing himself into a roll that let the table go flying above him. The Thaumaturgist formed a barrier of veneplate in less than a blink of an eye, the crimson panel floating into being between her and the table. The table clipped the barrier and tumbled, causing its corner to slam directly into the forehead of the last vigilant.

  The man was knocked back, hitting the wall before collapsing to the ground unconscious, the table falling on top of him.

  Lore was already not impressed with this rescue.