The fiery inferno was raging on full force. Tan had enhanced the speed of her pace with the help of her Gift, but despite that, the flames had managed to swallow quite a few buildings by the time she reached the centre. The frightened cries of men and children carried through the air like a ghostly quire. She hid in the shadows of one of the nearby buildings and switched her armour’s cloaking shield off. Of all the times for this piece of shit to overheat!

She would have to improvise. Thankfully, with all the chaos around combined with the thick clouds of smoke still blocking the daylight, she had plenty of shadows to help her move around undetected. She cast an eye up from time to time, as she progressed – she should be able to see the earth terrorists soon.

She had almost reached the other side of the building she was using for cover, when she heard an ominous creak coming from somewhere above her head. Her eyes followed the huge metalline billboard which had broken off from its stand and was speeding towards the ground. Right towards the piece of pavement currently occupied by a little boy who had apparently fallen down and was desperately crying for help. Tan cursed under her breath – she didn’t have enough time to call forth a strong enough wind to change the billboard’s trajectory in such a short amount of time. She clenched her teeth and, painfully aware of the fact that her entire plan could go to Kriyan hell in a handbasket, jumped out of the shadows and raced towards the child at almost sound barrier breaking speed.

She was rushing so hard, that she almost missed it. Still, the distinct reflection of something large and metalline caught her eye just for a split second, which was thankfully more than enough for her to remember the building it was coming from.

Tan looked around dazed, as her eyes were struggling to re-adjust to the normal speed of reality. The child tore himself from her arms and jumped in his father’s arms, still sobbing. The expression on the young man’s face was a heartbreaking mixture of horror, combined with superstitious reverence and, of course, gratitude. It had been quite a while since someone had looked at her that way – as if she were something out of an ancient legend.

She nodded their way, partly as a sort of greeting, but mostly to clear her still swirling mind. Her little stunt had surely attracted more than a couple prying eyes, which meant she had to act quickly, if she ever stood a chance of getting to the building she had just noticed. And indeed – the crowd around her was growing pretty fast and the faces staring at her wore the same expressions of bewilderment and fear as the young father of the child she’d rescued.

“Miracle!” A woman, covered from head to toe in soot, cried out. “It’s a miracle! Praise the Goddess!”

The crowd picked up the exclamation and the quire of voices rose up and rushed around like a hurricane. In the state of heightened sensitivity to air vibrations that Tan currently found herself in, this came as an unexpected, but welcome help. She focused on the frequency of the soundwave and let it wash over her entire body.

Despite the legends told by some old men in her hometown, the windstorms couldn’t fly. And there was a very good, scientific explanation for that – whereas calling forth wind, strong enough to move even the heaviest of objects was relatively easy, doing the same to try and lift yourself was much like stepping into a bucket and attempting to lift yourself up by its handle. The eye of the storm moves with the caster and therefore not even a single hair on the windstorm’s head would get blown out of place, as it were.

For the more experienced in the Gift however, there was a way to work around this minor inconvenience.

Wind, by its nature, is the movement of air particles between two points in space with varying pressure – there was no arguing with physics on that. The voices around her could be said to do pretty much the same. But unlike any storm she could summon herself, the voices were directed at her, rather than coming from her.

She took hold of the pressure from the exclamations around her with her Gift and directed them to the soles of her feet, until the noise almost disappear and the air around her ankles began shaking like a midsummer haze.

She took a deep breath… and jumped.

The muscles in her legs were pulsing from the sheer strength of the energy coursing through them and pushing her off the ground. Well, she might have also torn or strained a ligament or two, but that was a tomorrow problem. Right now the only concern she had was whether the force of her jump would be enough to take her all the way to the top of the building she had targeted.

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Her eyes were flicking up and down, following the glass panes of the bentonite and metalline monster she was flying towards. Some of the windows shattered – some because of the raging fires inside, some because of the speed with which she herself was moving.

Two pairs of dark eyes pinned her down the instant her feet touched the roof. Tan had no intention of leaving them time to react and, using the last bits of charge she had left, rushed towards the smaller of the two women. She was already bare mat’ri away from her, when the air brought these words to her ears:

“…unless you stop.”

Tan turned toward her with the speed and expression of a rabid predator and the other one had to muster a significant amount of self-control not to tremble.

“You surprised us, without a doubt.” The disgusting earth legless continued, confidence restored and with a nasty grin on her thin lips. “Apparently, even on this goddess-forsaken continent there are still watchful eyes that guard. And a windstorm’s eyes at that! Yet, as you’ll soon find out – your sacrifice will be worthless. A lone woman cannot stop the wrath of the Goddess.”

Tan burst out in a brief laughter so suddenly, that the other two almost jumped in the air.

“The wrath of the Goddess?! You see a people, desperately fighting against nature’s chaos and all that you can think of is that it’s some form of divine punishment? You fanatics are clearly also psychotics. Beg your Goddess to save you from me now!”

Before the bewildered stares of the two earth women, the eyes of the windstorm turned almost completely into her skull and left two near completely white eyeballs. The hurricane wind which rushed over the roof was so powerful, that the metalline sphere the terrorists had installed squeaked unpleasantly and started slipping towards the edge of the building. For one dangerously long moment neither Shankh, nor Zeb could move. The general came out of her stupor first and, lifting the small black remote in front of Tan’s face screamed at the top of her lungs:

“Stop! Stop or I’ll press it!”

The storm ended just as swiftly as it had begun, but the eyes of the wind woman were still filled with its potential. Shankh was quick to mask her unease with a confident smirk:

“Caught your attention, didn’t I?” She playfully twisted the small gadget in her strong, meaty fingers, before continuing. “Perhaps you are aware what this is?”

“You wouldn’t dare, you cowardly lesbian!” Tan barked, electrified with rage.

Shankh was a patient woman, but she was definitely not immune to provocation. And the windstorm’s words proved to be the straw that broke her proverbial camel’s back. The button sunk under her finger. Tan felt almost crushed by the empathetic pain she felt for all her colleagues who had been foolish enough to activate the fireproof shields on their armour.

Technology was AWA’s pride and joy. Every scientific advance was a new barrier conquered; a new deadly disease defeated – a new way discovered to make life better. But technology was not without its drawbacks. Take the smart, lightweight vacuum generators that powered the fireproof shields of the Warden’s suits. All they did was disperse the air particles at a safe distance from the wearer, ensuring a protective parameter of sorts where flames couldn’t thrive. But they were “smart” and what that meant was that someone “smart” had invented a kill switch, in case they malfunctioned. Anyone with even a vague idea of computer science is surely feeling shivers down their spine in realization. For if such a switch existed, surely a backdoor to the software had been left open that could be exploited just as easily to cause a malfunction, rather than prevent it.

All it took was a single digit change in the device configuration, a single error in the algorithm and the field of vacuum would shrink, effectively suffocating its helpless victim.

Tan bellowed like an angry beast and threw herself at the earth general. She was so blinded by her rage that she didn’t see the knife before it wedged itself into her ribcage. But even then, it was already too late for the earth terrorists. The hurricane wind had returned, this time even more powerful than before and before they knew it, their priceless spherical machine had slipped over the edge of the building, to fall to its ultimate destruction a few hundred mat’ri below.

Not a few minutes had passed since the kriyan device was abruptly taken offline, did the rejuvenating rays of the Day star breach finally the stinking layer of dark smoke which was covering Syfis. Tan let the smile flow fully onto her face – for one brief, beautiful moment, she felt she had succeeded.

After, of course, the bullets the earth women shot her way started flying past her and although the typhoon she had summoned managed to redirect most of them, one still managed to slip through and bit into her clavicle like an angry insect. That was her cue to leave.

Getting down with the help of the wind was definitely easier than going up, but in her current state, she had to almost run down the side of the building, because she wasn’t sure she correctly determine the distance from the ground at which she should start creating the air cushion necessary to prevent her from breaking her legs when landing. She blinked a couple of times, when she finally stood on firm ground, trying to chase away the bloody veil clouding her vision. No luck there.

She didn’t let that stop her. Squeezing as much of her Gift as she could, considering the weakening effect every drop of blood lost had, she ran like the wind back to the barracks.

“Not yet!” Her inner voice kept screaming, as the silhouettes of her surroundings faded into an impenetrable haze. “Not yet!”