Lucas gazed into the flames, watching them sway and dance. The fire consumed the entirety of his vision, his focus, his feeling. Sitting this close, it was eye-searingly bright, driving spikes of pain through his skull. Heat scorched his face, arms, and bare chest. Sweat slicked every square inch of his body.
He endured. It wasn’t a matter of determination, but necessity. If he was to survive this world, let alone save it, he needed to get stronger. If he wanted to survive the next few days, he needed to be able to counter a master pyromancer.
No pressure.
His mana suffused the air in a close bubble around him. He wanted his focus as narrow as possible so he could give all his attention to the flames.
So far, it hadn’t made much of a difference.
Night had fallen, plunging the cavernous Summoning Hall into darkness. Valerie had stuck her sword point down into the marble at the centre of the safe circle, and it had sunk halfway to the hilt as easy as slicing cheese. Beside it, she’d taken out a flint and steel and lit a small fire.
At first, Lucas hadn’t been able to help staring at it distrustfully, half expecting the flames to rear up and attack at any moment. He’d known it was irrational. If the safe circle at the summoning array’s centre prevented an indirect attack through heat, it would surely stop Jyn from taking their little camp fire in hand.
But knowing something logically didn’t stop one’s subconscious reactions. It was probably going to be difficult to trust fire, so long as the pyromancer was out there somewhere and Lucas hadn’t yet figured out how to contest him.
They were working under the assumption he was nearby. Through one of the gaps in the dome, they could see the dim red glow of a distant fire, blazing somewhere outside the city walls if the docile plant mana was anything to go by. Lucas had hoped it was just the remnants of Jyn’s fires burning away on their own after his retreat; there was no hint of distress in the network. Valerie wasn’t willing to be so optimistic.
They’d agreed on one point, however: Lucas needed to learn pyromancy. To counter Jyn, to give him a new weapon and useful tool, to test his Gift. And to keep his mind distracted.
Anything to stop him from thinking about Aarya.
~~~
“First, some context is required,” Valerie said. She held up her hand to forestall Lucas’ arguments. “I’ll get to Lady Aarya, I promise. But things will make more sense if you have a better understanding of the history behind these events.”
Lucas settled down, scowling. “Fine.”
“First off, you are in Pentaburgh, formerly a major city in the county of Seffonshire, in north-central Mornlunn. Mornlunn is a country on the eastern coast of Aureon, which is a continent on Aerth. We’ll delve deeper into geography at a later date.” Valerie waited for Lucas’ nod before continuing. “It’s currently the fourth month—known as quatmuun here—of the year 1101 After Conquest. The conquest refers to the unification of several states that have long since divided once more, Mornlunn being one of them. 120 years ago, the Demon Lord appeared in the far north of Aureon, in a frozen country called Aeyem.
“According to records, our world has always dealt with demons and chaos beasts of unclear origin. They were a fact of life. A devastating phenomenon in certain circumstances and the cause of countless tragedies, their numbers waxing and waning in long cycles for reasons that were never discovered. But they never pushed the world to the brink of ending. Our ancestors defeated them each time.
“Historians note that the world was already in the grip of a particularly bad cycle, and things got worse. With the Demon Lord came the Blight, a massive chaos effect that corrupted the world—reality itself—on a massive scale. The demons suddenly had a place where they could retreat to and grow.
“Aeyem fell within a year, its people scattered south into neighbouring lands. It became known as the Blighted Land. Demons under his command were able to grow to power our histories had never seen, and he named the foulest of them his Dread Generals. The Dread Generals led armies of demons under his banner to ravage the continent. Armies of men rose to face him and fell on the field. The more the demons spread, the more people were killed or driven away, the more chaos got a foothold, the larger his Blighted Lands grew.
“Within twenty years, the Blighted Lands covered a quarter of the continent, and much more of the world besides.”
Here, she pulled out the map scroll from beneath her cloak and unfurled it. It stayed flat on the ground without her having to hold it down. Swiping a black ink bar on the left, she zoomed the image out to show five continents. She pointed to the easternmost continent, a curving mass with a narrow land bridge at the peak linking it to the ice cap at the top of the world.
“They did not know it at the time, but his influence had spread north of Aeyem and onto the Winterlands. We believe now that his armies marched across the ice and onto Ixia, Aureon’s closest neighbour to our east. We have had no contact with any human civilisation from Ixia in thirty years.”
Lucas’ foot kept tapping. He couldn’t stop. “So your people turned to the old Prophecy.”
Valerie nodded. “Mornlunn was perhaps the strongest country still standing on Aureon at the time, and certainly the biggest believers in the Doctrine of Five in all the world. Seeing the danger the Demon Lord posed, they sought the Heroes they believed were destined to defeat him.”
“You’ve already told me this part,” Lucas said impatiently. His hands were trembling. He couldn’t sit still.
“One hundred years ago, the greatest work of summoning in the history of Mornlunn—of Aerth—was carried out in this hall. The Heroes were brought to this very spot,” Valerie spoke softly, the light of her sword shimmering in her eyes. They seemed to glow in the dark as brightly as her sword did. “As you know, there were only four of them.”
Lucas could imagine it. This room, without the plants, marble unmarred and grand, the floor packed with robed wizards. Rian would’ve been the first to speak, demanding what the hell was going on and who all the creepy-looking wizard types around them were with lots of swearing. Aarya would’ve defaulted to trying to befriend them, peacemaking, charming. Claire probably wouldn’t have said a word, watching and calculating. Jamie’s first thought would’ve been making sure his friends were safe, all else including his own wellbeing falling to the wayside.
He wondered what his first actions would have been, if he’d been there with them. How he would have felt. He found he didn’t know. All he was sure of was that it would have been a hell of a lot nicer to face all this with his friends at his side.
“No one has any idea why I wasn’t there with them?” Lucas asked, feeling numb.
“People have a lot of ideas,” Valerie said. “No one knows the truth.”
“Best guesses?”
“The prevailing theory is to do with the sacrifices.” Valerie grimaced. “Another matter that perhaps should have been revealed to you more delicately. More failings on my part.”
Lucas grimaced. Another thing to feel guilty about, even though it wasn’t his fault and wasn’t something he’d asked for. “How did they react when they arrived?”
“Confused. Understandably distrustful. Worried about you. Lady Aarya wrote in her diaries that she was terrified, in those first few days. But she gained courage from her friends.”
“Diaries?”
“There are copies of them in the Moontower. You can read them when we get to Dawnguard, if you like.”
Setting aside the assumption that would be their course of action, Lucas leaned forward. “What happened next?”
“They agreed to help, and they remained in Pentaburgh for a time to train in the Great Powers granted them. Each occupied one of the Five Towers, and had a small army of instructors to help them gather knowledge and strength. By all accounts, their progress was incredible, beyond the wildest dreams of the First Order.”
Towers, Lucas thought. He mentally oriented himself to figure out which one he’d climbed, then pointed north. “Which tower’s in that direction?”
“That would be the Tower of the Star,” Valerie said.
Lucas huffed a mirthless laugh. Of course it was.
“It wasn’t long before the four set out to gather field experience, and their power was immediately obvious,” Valerie said, eyeing him. “Never before had a party achieved such success. They killed a Dread General within six months of their first quest, and hope swept through the surviving people of Aureon as the Heroes travelled the continent. Before long, they were armies unto themselves, and no one could hope to match them in their discipline.
“Years went by, and political power concentrated around them to match their personal prowess. They were more influential than any noble, and eventually even royalty answered to them. Who could give orders to people who could mount excursions deep into the Blighted Lands by themselves?
“After an incident involving the ousting of a corrupt king who had been oppressing his people, Lady Aarya took control of the country of Solara, far west of Mornlunn in central Aureon. Solara prospered under her rule, and by all accounts the people loved her.
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“Twelve years after the Heroes had been summoned, the Demon Lord took to the field outside the Blighted Lands for the first time that we know of. Solara was taken by surprise, its people butchered for weeks before a word of warning could travel. Lady Aarya’s army was forced to face the Demon Lord at Caelan, the capital of Solara, wildly outnumbered and without reinforcements.
“Survivors were few, and what accounts we have from them are contradictory. We can’t be certain what exactly happened,” Valerie said solemnly. “Lady Aarya’s army is said to have been slain to the last man, but the squire of Solara’s Lord Commander was able to carry her body across the countryside strapped to his back. He was exhausted, delirious, barely able to speak. But the cleric who recorded his final words wrote that Lady Aarya’s arrows decimated entire legions of the Demon Lord’s army and slew three Dread Generals before she faced the Demon Lord himself in single combat.”
“And she lost,” Lucas said, his voice a thin rasp, barely able to escape past the lump in his throat. His eyes stung.
Twelve years after they’d been summoned. 88 years ago. And where was Lucas?
Valerie nodded. “We can only assume so. Her body was borne back to Mornlunn, where the remaining three mourned her. After that…”
“What?” Lucas snapped. “Don’t hold back now, after all that.”
“Lady Aarya was said to be ‘the life of the party’ and after her death Lord Rian and Lord James fell apart. The former vanished. The latter became cold and unfeeling. Only Lady Claire kept strong, and she recognised the loss of Lady Aarya as a devastating one beyond her personal feelings.
“And so she sought to extract the Great Bow from Lady Aarya’s deceased body, if she could.”
~~~
Lucas had not reacted well to that revelation. He could admit that. The surrounding plants hadn’t deserved to feel his wrath. They’d done nothing wrong except be the nearest thing on hand he could destroy, and yet he’d turned them black, forced them to strangle and snap one another, made them rot away until there was no hint of the lifeful verdure there had been before.
It had felt wrong, to see anything around him alive when Aarya wasn’t.
They’d grown back anyway the moment he’d let the plant network’s will back in, and forcing them into destroying each other had provided him no relief. If anything, It just made him feel worse, like a child who’d calmed down from a tantrum and regretted breaking a toy.
Valerie had watched him shout and cry and rage without a hint of judgement in her gaze, and when he was done, sitting on the floor with his head in his hands, she’d asked him what he wanted to do next.
And so here he was. Sitting cross legged inches from a tall fire, feeling the heat scorch his skin, and wondering what the hell he was doing.
Distracting yourself, a voice in his head snarked at him. Valerie had offered to give him the introductory initiation into pyromancy she knew, but when she'd told him it was the very basics of a course that took months or even years depending on talent, he'd decided to try figure it out for himself.
He closed his eyes, trying to shut out every sense but his mana, thinking back to the ways he’d discovered floramancy. And… that other one he didn’t like to consider. It was a weapon in his arsenal and he knew he’d have to face it some day, but not today. Or any time soon.
In both, he thought with a grimace, it had started with contact. Touch as a conduit to channel his vital energy. Mana to object.
That didn’t seem so appealing with fire. Sure, Valerie had healing capabilities, but there was still a primal, instinctive part of him that recoiled from the mere idea of sticking his hand into a burning flame.
Lucas pulsed his mana, focusing on the feeling of the flaming sticks. He could feel, distantly, how they were charring, the fire burning away the fuel in the wood. It was simple enough to slip his mana in there and keep the fire sated past the point that the kindling should have remained combustible. He’d figured it out with mere seconds of experimentation.
It was as Jyn had said, back in that crumbling building during the storm. Fire wished to burn, and so helping it to do so was as easy as giving it a source. Floramancy was the same: making a leaf grow a little faster barely even required attention. Coaxing an element to do what it was meant to was as simple as magical techniques got. A pure, simple application of mana.
But Lucas wanted—needed—more than that.
He thought back on Jyn’s words, tips freely given in the assumption that Lucas wouldn’t be able to employ any pyromantic techniques anyway. The Wandmaster probably wouldn’t have been so forthcoming if he’d known who Ser Rian really was. Lucas revelled in the schadenfreude that thought brought him.
With work, one’s mana attunes to the fire, Lucas recalled Jyn’s voice and words with startling clarity.
So how do I attune my mana to the fire? Lucas thought. From the way Jyn had talked about it, it seemed like a process that took a while. Right now, his only connection to the fire was through the sticks it was burning, and he needed to somehow copy the feeling of fire to his very soul. A heart’s flame, Jyn had called it.
The monstercat currently occupying the chest area of his mana system probably wouldn’t like that much. He’d have to cope with it, the little freeloader.
Jyn said it felt like his soul was on fire.
Lucas grimaced. The flames were hot on his eyelids, shining through them and turning his vision red like he was looking at the sun. He focused on the heat, and the beat of his heart.
Reaching down, he picked up one of the newer burning sticks. It was only aflame at one end, right at the tip, but even the unlit end was uncomfortable to the touch. He moved his mana into the wood directly and it lit up in his mind.
It was a strange sensation, to wield a stick that was on fire. His mana coursed through most of the wood as it usually did, but at the end, where the fire burned, his mana would be drawn away and devoured by the flame. Fire was different from what he’d worked with so far. Sticks and bones were mere receptacles to his mana, and living plants didn’t so much consume his mana as accept it.
Fire, on the other hand, was hungry. It took his mana by default, and he had to actively hold it back. A simple enough task with such a small flame, but hotter and larger fires made it harder, like it gained strength with size. Fire had no pathways, nowhere for mana to flow, because it consumed mana to live. Pushing more mana into it just made it grow hotter. It drained him far faster than floramancy, making him feel out of breath.
Somehow, he had to do the same thing with his soul. An inner fire—the heart’s flame—that consumed mana in order to burn. Lucas ghosted the tips of the fingers of one hand across his chest. The scorched skin prickled at even the soft touch. Lucas held back a wince, breathing deeply. He turned his attention to his internal mana while keeping his mind focused on the heat of his body.
All this thinking was just delaying the inevitable.
In his other hand, the smaller flame consumed his mana like a ravenous, insatiable beast. He dropped the stick back into the fire and felt as it quickly consumed the last of the mana that had been lingering in the wood.
Drawing in a deep breath, Lucas shoved the now-free hand into the fire.
Pain. His vision went white, and he cried out. The world faded away. There was only a searing heat, intense and all-encompassing, as if his hand had been plunged into molten lava. The pain was immediate, a white-hot agony that shot through his nerves like lightning, searing every inch of his flesh despite only his hand touching the fire. A violent shudder thrummed through him.
His skin blistered and sizzled, the scent of burning flesh filling the air with a sickening stench. The flames danced and writhed around his hand, as if taunting him with their relentless hunger. It felt as though his very bones were being consumed by the inferno, every nerve ending screaming in protest against the onslaught of fire.
Even after all he’d agonised over doing this, he hadn’t been anywhere near prepared for the reality of the agony.
With each passing moment, the pain intensified, becoming a relentless torment that threatened to consume him whole. Sweat streamed down his face. He wanted to scream, to tear his hand away from the fire and flee, but something held him there, rooted to the spot, as if his soul were being tested by the flames.
Yet, amid the unbearable pain, there was a growing sense of detachment, as if he were watching the scene unfold from a distance. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, each agonising second stretching out into eternity.
And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the pain began to recede, replaced by a numbness that spread through his hand like ice. The flames still crackled before him, but he felt strangely disconnected from them, as if the fire were no longer a threat but merely a distant memory.
Panting for breath, he grabbed his mana and slowed it in his hand, providing more fuel for the flame. It kept burning even as he withdrew his hand from the fire, cradling it against his chest, the skin blackened and charred, the pain now a dull ache that pulsed with every beat of his heart. His arm trembled.
Focusing on the burn in his hand and the way the fire tore away his flesh and blood and bones, he drew on his mana, copying that feeling of an outside force consuming his mana and placing it in his chest.
And his heart caught fire.
The feeling was so immediate, so intense that he almost lost control entirely. He gasped, doubling over, but held on.
It wasn’t painful, not like his hand. It was strong, vivid. As he fed it mana, it got hotter, burned higher. It was hungry for fuel; it would consume every drop of mana in his pathways if he let it.
But it was his, part of his soul, a construct of his mana, and he took it under his control, using it to pump soulfire through his body like a heart pumping blood. Magma flooded through his pathways like they were veins, and head radiated through his body. He could feel potential crackling at the edge of his fingertips, and he pushed on it. Heat rushed into the burned limb, pushing out the pain.
Jamie the monstercat regarded the new intruder on his domain for a moment, confusion emanating from him as he tilted his mana-constructed head from side to side. He batted at it a few times like it was a toy, then recoiled at its warmth, hissing. Not for long, though. In moments he seemed to adjust to the situation, and ended up curling around it, purring contentedly. Lucas couldn’t help but give a shaky smile at that.
Stoking his heart’s flame, Lucas pushed his mana out in an omnidirectional wave, just as he would for sensing plants nearby. The information he received was both familiar and so, so new.
It was just like seeing through a heat vision camera without the cold parts, only the heat. He saw everything in his dozen-metre range from every angle. A mental 3D map. The flames before him were white hot, as was much of his body—particularly his hand. Valerie was hovering just behind him, her armour a deep red and her body a rosy pink, hand outstretched but not touching him, uncharacteristically hesitant. Judging by the angle of her head, she was looking at his hand. He couldn’t blame her.
Heat rippled through the air from the fire, projecting a red-to-yellow-to-green gradient of warmth through the plant wall all the way to the edge of his range. Even the ground held heat, white beneath the fire, then transitioning from red to green in a wide circle.
It was beautiful.
Lucas opened his eyes and stared at his hand, no longer burnt but burning, a limb made of moulded fire. He flexed his fiery fingers once, marvelling at the contained flame, then looked at Valerie over his shoulder. The sheer bafflement on her face might have been amusing, in other circumstances.
“Fucking ow,” Lucas said with a tremor in his voice.
That was when the roof caved in.