The pirate looked at me for a moment, understandably confused. He had the complete upper hand at the moment, but as he searched my eyes, he found not a trace of empty bravado.
“You truly believe that, huh?” he asked after a moment.
My smile widened. “You will, too,” I said, straightening myself slowly. My limbs were still shaky from the whole ordeal, but I was feeling better by the second.
The man shook his head, finally arriving at the conclusion that I had lost my mind to the pain.
“For someone so untrained, you put up an interesting fight,” he said, angling a hand to my throat, his sharp fingers pressed together to make an edge as dangerous as any blade. “I will remember you.”
And then he plunged his hand forward.
Flame erupted around my skin as his hand moved – not bursting out from within me as before, but leaping into existence around me as if the air itself had caught fire. It burned brighter and hotter than ever before, the colour more a blinding white than the old orange.
The sudden oppressive heat pressed down on the man as his ice gauntlet approached my throat, steam rising off of his hand and drops of water falling. By the time his fingers reached my throat, they were nothing but skin.
The pirate frantically brought his hand away, leaping backward a few feet. Still, the few seconds his fingers spent in my flame scorched them badly.
I stepped forward as he backed up, ecstasy painting my face insane. I watched the man as he realized what had just happened. As he realized what I had been trying to do, and how my insane gamble had paid off. I watched as his face morphed into a strange cocktail of shock, fear, and disbelief, with a little awe mixed in.
I extended my hand out, pointing it toward the man. My eyes mirrored the man's surprise as the fire finally reacted to me. At long last, the wild dancing flames obeyed my mind. The flames surged forward, gathering around my outstretched hand. Feeling experimental, I forced the fire to swirl around my hands with a simple thought, almost caught off guard when it actually responded.
The pirate immediately knew what was going to happen, but instead of dodging, he put his hands together in front of himself and condensed a massive shield of ice, big enough in diameter to cover his entire body.
Not a second after it formed, I urged the fire to surge forward with another thought. Like before, the fire obeyed almost immediately, shooting off of my arm in a swirling column of fire that crashed into the man’s shield. A sharp hiss sounded out as the heat met the ice, the crystalline water turning into vapour immediately.
The pirate slid back a few feet under the force, but he managed to keep his shield from evaporating under the heat by constantly supplying it with Flux.
Slowly getting into the groove of this new fighting style, I called off the flame and leapt forward myself, my fist aimed at his face. As expected, the man chose to raise his shield and block, but I quickly stopped and dropped to a low crouch, my flame-encased foot sweeping out in a kick to the man’s exposed shin. I felt the same resistance as before when my foot came within an inch of the pirate’s leg, but this time, the strange invisible barrier fell away after only a second of resistance. My foot carried on, contacting the man’s leg and eliciting a painful shriek as the fire scorched his calf.
His leg bent under the force, making him fall to his knees, his shield held just a bit to the side. It was a mistake, made in the haze of the pain, but I capitalized on it immediately.
I summoned swirling fire back onto my arm and punched the man’s now exposed chest, hitting him square on the ribs. The force pushed the man back an inch, but the fire left my fist and travelled further. The column of flame carried the man up in the air a meter before it dispersed, letting him fall back onto the metal floor with a dull thud. A scorched black hole about a foot wide marked the center of his chest, his shirt singed around it. It was a gruesome wound, but the man quickly underwent a Revive and healed himself. The blackened circle on his chest was replaced with a brand-new patch of smooth skin.
The man pushed himself back up to his feet, wincing as he did. A seasoned warrior he might have been, but few could walk off a severe burn like that without at least some kind of reaction.
He was angered now – I could tell by the newfound ferocity with which he launched his next barrage of attacks. But at that point, I was much beyond anger or rage; my sanity was held together by threads and, as I’d already demonstrated, my capacity for pain far exceeded his.
I grinned as the man swiped at me with a double-edged icicle, the glimmering blade whistling as it cut through the air. I ducked and rolled to the side at the last moment, sending a short burst of fire at him as I did. He managed to sidestep the flame, but the heat still singed his shirt.
I was still experimenting with the new power, and my control was nowhere near the pirate’s. His finesse with ice was leagues ahead of my sloppy flame, but for some reason, the heat of my flame far overpowered his ice. Every time we clashed, unless he focused entirely on supplying it with Flux, my heat would quickly melt his ice. I didn’t know why – logically, his should’ve been much stronger than mine, given his experience – but I was hardly in the mindset to question things like that.
All I knew was that I now had the tools I needed to make the pirate feel the pain he had made me feel. And for the second time in my life, the tiny voice in my head that begged mercy for my enemies was utterly silent. And the crazed glint in my eye reflected that.
The man realized the same, and opted to go on the defensive instead. It made sense, considering the fact that his side outnumbered mine. All he had to do was last long enough for one of his comrades to finish up and help him out. And that wouldn’t take too long, considering the fact that Leo currently fought with two blades stuck in his chest.
But I wasn’t about to let the man have his way so easily. I fired burst after burst of fire at his thick icy shield, each hit leaving behind a steaming crater.
The two of us were quickly locked into a stalemate, which was to his benefit. So, abandoning my initial strategy, I called off the flame on my hands and ran toward the man. He reacted quickly, placing the shield in between us, but I had something else in mind.
The step before I reached his shield, I conjured the flame at my feet and pushed it down onto the ground. Unbelievably, my experiment worked, and the force managed to propel me up. Coupled with my jump, I managed to reach a height far higher than I’d ever jumped before – more than high enough to vault the man’s shield.
As the man watched in awe, I somersaulted over his ice and planted a flaming foot on his face. The force pushed his head down to the floor, his nose breaking with a crunch.
The heat of my foot added to the pain manyfold, and when I stepped off of his face, the man stayed right there, dazed and lost to the throes of his pain.
I stood above him, watching with eyes utterly devoid of emotion. I paused for just a moment, searching within myself to find that hesitation that always overcame me in moments like this, but I came up empty.
I didn’t know if that was a good thing, but at the moment, I didn’t much care.
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Instead, I lifted my hand up and gathered the Flux around me in the center of my palm. With a thought, the Flux erupted in flame, creating a hovering ball of brilliant orange over my hand. It writhed and danced like real flame, but the only thing I felt was a slight, pleasant warmth on my palm.
With a deep exhale, I closed my eyes and focused my mind on the Flux that I could sense burning above my hand. I tried squeezing the ball with my mind. It was an interesting endeavour, like trying to mould a ball of clay with my mind. Unsurprisingly, the unruly flame didn’t obey, staying in its writhing haphazard ball shape.
So it’ll move on command, but I still can’t control it entirely, I thought to myself, strangely removed from the moment. Everything faded in my mind – the danger, the pain, the fear. My mind was far too busy analyzing the fire, trying to make it mould to my will.
On my second attempt, I tried something different. Rallying the power within me, I let the Flux seep out through my skin and into the ball of flame above.
Instantly, I felt my sense of the flame expand, a feeling almost akin to opening my eyes. Suddenly, instead of my mind simply peering from the outside at the ball, it was like I could simultaneously see the outside and feel the inside.
A wide grin split my face. With another thought, the ball obeyed me, the dancing arms no longer wailing about in chaos. It solidified, taking a shape much closer to a proper sphere. The edge still undulated gently, like a living, breathing thing, but it was far more like a ball than before.
With another nudge, the ball elongated, moulding itself into a cucumber-like shape. I squeezed harder, making the body thinner and thinner, until it reached the thickness of a little stick. Finally, I pushed more of the fire to the end of the little rod, moulding it into a little arrowhead. Or at least, as best of an arrowhead as I could make with my clumsy control and my fuzzy memory of what exactly it was supposed to look like. The point was, it was sharp and incredibly hot.
The pirate at my feet groaned then, finally coming back to consciousness.
With the flame of ecstasy in my eye, I fired the arrow that hovered over my palm. The thing whizzed forward at an incredible speed, burying itself into the man’s thigh just as he had begun to sit up. The arrow burrowed in deep as the man screamed, the fire burning for a few seconds before fizzling out. The heat had cauterized the wound immediately, so no blood leaked out, but the pain was enough to bring tears to the man’s eyes.
With a desperate grunt, he clawed at the floor with his hands, trying to drag himself away from me. I didn’t try to stop him, standing and watching with a complex emotion colouring my eyes.
Instead, I ignited another ball of fire on my hand. Using the same method, I moulded the ball into the same shape. I was still clumsy and slow, my entire focus required to keep control over the thing. The man had managed to get almost a meter away from me by the time I finished making my next arrow. In his hands, he had begun to form some kind of icicle that I assumed he was planning on hitting me with.
Before he could finish forming it, however, my next arrow embedded itself into the back of his hand. Another scream echoed in the room as the man crumpled to the ground, clutching his hand.
Briefly, I wondered why the man wouldn’t Revive, but I quickly came to a conclusion. I’d had wounds cauterized before, and I knew – better than I had ever wanted to know – just how painful the Revive’s that followed would be.
As the man writhed on the ground in pain, I wordlessly began to form my next arrow. Unfortunately, just as I began to mould the arrowhead, my mind lost focus for a second and the entire thing slipped out of my control. Cut off from its fuel, the thing fizzled out and disappeared within the second.
Unfazed by my failure, I began again. This time, the arrow was made with no hitches, and I fired again, aiming at the man’s other thigh.
The man’s responding scream was cut through by another one. My mind immediately registered the second voice as Leonard’s, and the realization snapped me out of my strange state. Turning my head, I quickly surveyed the rest of the room.
Ren was currently trapped in another corner of the room, embroiled in a fierce exchange of blows with two pirates. He fought on a completely different level than the last time I’d seen him. Armed with only a walking stick and his incredible speed, he managed to fight almost on equal footing with the two pirates.
On the other side of the room stood Leonard. The two swords that had been impaled through him were gone, though the wounds were still clearly visible, meaning that he hadn’t been able to Revive. And more worryingly, there was another blade stabbed right through the center of his chest.
The big man fell to a knee as he stumbled, his head bowed. Immediately seeing the opportunity, one of the pirates brought his sword up above his head, aiming a lethal strike on the back of Leonard’s neck.
Without conscious thought, I formed another arrow in the second that I had and fired it at the man. The arrow flew like a homing missile, hitting right where I had aimed it.
The pirate’s sword fell to the ground with a clatter, his hand knocked to the side as the arrow smacked into it. The arrow didn’t manage to break the skin on the man, likely because of the increased distance and the fact that the man was stronger than the pirate that I was fighting. Still, the thing still left a scorched circle on the back of his hand, which was certainly painful.
Both men turned their gazes to me, and I matched their anger with my own. The pirates turned to each other and nodded, quickly reaching a tacit understanding.
Immediately realizing what their plan was, I leapt forward with two blazing arms. The pirate that I had hit with the arrow came forward to meet me, while the other seized his sword and once again swung at Leonard.
With rage boiling my veins, I swung a flaming fist at the man coming to stop me. He stretched forward a massive hand of dirt to meet my strike, and the thick, earthy palm of his gauntlet caught my fist with ease, quickly snuffing out the flame. I barely had time to register the fact that the pirate was also an Elemental mage, my entire focus on the blade that was racing to meet Leonard’s defenceless neck. I knew I would be too late to stop it, if I could even get there in time. Still, I couldn’t tear my widened eyes away from the scene.
Then, just as the edge of the blade made contact with Leonard’s skin, an elongated black blur crashed into the handle of the blade with pinpoint accuracy. The blade was knocked out of the pirate’s hand, shaving the back of Leonard’s head as it flew away. There was a beat of silence as the entire room processed what happened. Then, in unison, all eyes landed on Ren, who stood still in between the two pirates he was fighting. Somehow, in the middle of the fight, he’d managed to launch his walking stick with enough accuracy to save Leonard’s life at the last possible moment.
Then, just as I thought that Leonard was saved, the pirate above him grinned with malice as he formed a spear in his hand of pure metal. At the end of it sat a vicious, four-sided blade. Before I could even process what was happening, the spear buried itself in Leonard’s chest, going from the back straight out to the front.
I stared in unmoving shock, frozen in place, as the pirate began to cackle like a madman. The others soon joined him, and for a moment, the sound of raucous laughter filled the room.
I could feel that same insanity poking at my brain again, but this time, through sheer force of will, I silenced it. I refused to lose myself to the anger this time. I would stay conscious and savour feeling as I made them all suffer.
The man who still held my fist clasped within his earthy grip stopped laughing as he felt a sudden, intense heat appear in his hand. He locked eyes with me and found within them a hollowness that none had seen since Bartholomew.
Fire swirled at my feet then, so hot it made the metal floor beneath glow. The man decided to put an immediate stop to whatever I was doing, and yanked my hand towards him. His other fist raced toward my face, encased in a stone armour. But, before he could make contact, my hand reached forward and grabbed his face, my fingers splayed out as I gripped his skin hard. The man immediately shrieked in pain, the flame raging on my fingers scorching his face. The pain more than distracted the man, slowing his punch enough for me to dodge easily.
I followed up with a knee to his gut, shooting the flame forward this time as I made contact. The physical force bent his gut inward as the fire spread across his entire torso; the instant, incredible heat was painful enough for him to finally let go of my fist.
His face still gripped in my hand, I used my second hand to land three flaming punches on the man’s chest, adding to his pain.
Before I could continue my assault, however, the second pirate appeared at my side. He’d abandoned the spear in Leonard, and stabbed at me with just the blade of a longsword – the metal was attached to the skin of his palm, so he didn’t even need a handle.
Reacting without conscious thought, I pushed off with my feet, using the flame to propel me sideways. My reaction wouldn’t have been fast enough to save myself, but the added force of the flame gave me just enough speed to dodge out of the way.
With a smooth roll, I got back up to my feet and turned to face the pair of pirates. The first was still out of it, staggering back a little as his face and torso scorched. He was hurt, but I knew better than to assume he was out of the fight.
I didn’t bother to smile at the two, the usual excitement of a challenging fight nowhere to be found. This time, I didn’t want to have a good time, and I didn’t want to just win. All I wanted now was to make them suffer.