The Nemesis of Flame is a fictional entity featured in the short story "The Last Test" (1928), by Adolphe de Castro and H. P. Lovecraft.
History[]
As its name indicates, the Nemesis of Flame is a fiery creature that seems to be made of living flames. At some point, Dr. Alfred Clarendon's studies into occultism taught him how to summon this entity, having possibly learned it from a man in Yemen who had seen the legendary city of Irem.
Clarendon used his knowledge of the Nemesis of Flame to implicitly threaten Surama, and told James Dalton that the Nemesis of Flame might be the only way to destroy Surama, other than a stake through the heart.
After inoculating himself with a deadly extraterrestrial pathogen, Clarendon summoned the Nemesis of Flame to burn down his clinic with flames that "half resembled some nameless, Cyclopean creatures of nightmare". Surama laughed at first, until a bolt of lightning came straight from the sky and destroyed him. After his death, the flames "resumed their normal shape".
Behind the Mythos[]
The Nemesis of Flame might take its name from the Algernon Blackwood story "The Nemesis of Fire", published in his 1908 collection John Silence, Physician Extraordinary. H. P. Lovecraft praised the John Silence stories, including "The Nemesis of Fire", in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature".
In Blackwood's story, the entity is identified by Silence as a fire elemental, employed in ancient Egypt to guard the tomb of a mummy and punish those who disturb it.