Ann

“Your helmet is red hot,” Ringil told him. And watched as the man screamed, dropped his ax and grabbed his helm with both hands, screamed again as his fingers touched the metal and melted from the heat, went to his knees still screaming. The skirmish ranger spasmed to the cobbles and thrashed and rolled and arched in agony, scream on scream on scream, until it was done, and finally lay there twitching, eyes poached white in their sockets. Faint steam curled out of the wrenched gape of his mouth, like a soul departing. The cost of it all came and took Gil like a kick in the guts. It was a major effort not to flinch, not to sag in the wake of the forces that had passed through him, not to sit down right there on the cobbled street. He lifted the Ravensfriend instead, trembling fingers clenched once more around the grip. He pointed with the blade at the staring privateers. The voice that grated up out of him seemed to belong to another creature entirely. “Who’s next?” it asked them. They broke and ran. Luckily.”
― Richard K. Morgan, The Dark Defiles