The Fire Opal is a powerful precious stone that is the source of the Soul Eaters' power. This object is also one of the things driving the plot of Michelle Paver's prehistoric Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series.
Appearance and Powers
The Fire Opal is a beautiful stone that emits fiery and mesmerizing red light. It is cold to the touch, which is why Wolf calls it the "Bright Beast-that-Bites-Cold" instead of "Bright Beast-that-Bites-Hot", the expression he uses to call fire. Nobody knows how old the Fire Opal is. It is said to be light from the red eye of the Great Auroch, the most powerful demon of the Otherworld and a celestial body of great evil. That is why it draws demons to itself. Whoever holds it can control demons as long as it does not touch earth or stone.
The Fire Opal also prevents its wielder from being hurt by fire, as shown in Soul Eater and Oath Breaker. It also seems to hold at bay the Watchers who guard a door to the Otherworld that situates in a cave close to the Walker's valley. In Wolf Brother, the Watchers avoid being slashed by the ceremonial knife of Torak's father. The knife's hilt has one of the Fire Opal pieces hidden inside it at the time, though this is not revealed until the events of Oucast.
Even when the Fire Opal is smashed into pieces, all the pieces remain as powerful as ever. There is only one way to destroy the power of an individual Fire Opal piece. It must be buried under earth or stone, and a living creature must die in its proximity at the same time. When the Fire Opal becomes powerless, it stops glowing.
History
Background
It is unknown how or where the Soul Eaters received the original Fire Opal, but they used it to hold the Forest within their grip of terror. This ended when they gathered on Souls' Night at the western edge of the Deep Forest on a hill that would later be known as the Burnt Hill. The Soul Eaters intended to release the demons trapped under the rocks and use the Fire Opal to bind them to do their bidding. However, Torak's father put a stop to this and shattered the Fire Opal into three pieces, forcing the Soul Eaters to go underground. Unfortunately, each piece remained as powerful as the original Fire Opal.
The First Piece Presented
This piece appears in Soul Eater and is about the size of a duck's egg. It had ended up in the possession of Eostra. She teams up with Thiazzi, Seshru and Nef with the intention to find a door to the Otherworld hidden inside the Eye of the Viper, a mountain in the Far North. The Soul Eaters plan to open the Door and release demons from the Otherworld. They would then bind the demons to their will with the Fire Opal and use them to force all the clans to submit to them. However, while the Soul Eaters find the Door and keep it open long enough to release a flog of demons, they cannot control them because Renn steals the Fire Opal from Eostra before she flees with Torak and Wolf.
Renn eventually finds a chasm and decides to jump down with the Fire Opal. Before she can sacrifice herself, however, the Soul Eaters arrive with the captured Torak, and Wolf drives the released demons there with the help of an arctic wolf pack. During the fight, Nef takes the Fire Opal from Renn and sacrifices herself in order to repay her debt to Torak's father for saving her life. The demons follow her and the Opal down the chasm and end up being trapped under ice.
The Second Piece Presented
This piece from Outcast is about the size of a robin's egg. Torak's father took it, but he was unable to destroy it for some reason, so he hid it in a hollow he had carved in his ceremonial knife's hilt. He passes the knife down to his son when he dies. Torak remains unaware of the Fire Opal piece hidden inside the knife, until his raven friend Rip figures it out.
This Fire Opal is eventually destroyed when Torak smashes it with a lump of granite. When Seshru tries to stop him, Bale shoots her with an arrow as Torak smashes the Opal right at the same time. As the dying Viper Mage reaches for the shards, Renn places them in Seshru's palm and forcefully clenches the hand in a fist. This allows the Fire Opal's power to extinguish along with Seshru's life.
The Third Piece Presented
This piece appears in Oath Breaker and Ghost Hunter. About the size of a sloe, it had ended up in the possession of Tenris. He used it to trap an elemental (the strongest type of demons) inside a bear's body in order to create a weapon to destroy his brother, Torak's father. While killing wantonly in the Forest, the demon bear kills Torak's father before being destroyed in Wolf Brother. Tenris also used his Fire Opal piece to create two tokoroths to do his bidding.
After Tenris dies in Spirit Walker, his Fire Opal piece remains hidden under the altar of the sacred Crag of the Seal Island. In the beginning of Oath Breaker, Thiazzi shifts the altar and finds this last remaining piece of the Fire Opal. He then goes to the Deep Forest to use it in his own plans to seize control over the Forest. At the end of the book, Eostra's eagle owl steals the Fire Opal from Thiazzi right before he dies. The owl flies off to deliver the Fire Opal to its mistress somewhere in the eastern High Mountains.
The last Fire Opal piece remains in Eostra's possession for most of the plot of Ghost Hunter. She uses it to create tokoroths and corrupted dogs to do her bidding. During the final fight between Torak and the Eagle Owl Mage inside the Mountain of Ghosts, Eostra winds around the Fire Opal a cord that is twined from the deceased Soul Eaters' hairs. When she summons their spirits, they are bound to her will. When Torak burns the cord and shatters the Fire Opal, the spirits of the deceased Soul Eaters vanish. However, Eostra recovers the Fire Opal shards, but then the Walker (the former Soul Eater Narrander) summons the Hidden People of the Mountain to destroy Eostra. As the mountain trembles, Eostra falls down a chasm with the Fire Opal shards, ending both the threat of the Soul Eaters and the Fire Opal once and for all.
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