Lyle Margrave walked impatiently through downtown Saint Paul, passing buildings of glass, steel, and stone hundreds of feet tall. It was all very impressive, with the newfound wealth of the city flowing from the nearby Tower. He couldn’t really appreciate it, though, because anticipation and nervousness were bursting within him, filling his stomach with butterflies. His focus was singular, and when he turned a final corner, his eyes locked onto the facade of his destination.
Among the skyscrapers, it was oddly squat and militaristic. Stone and metal dominated the construction, giving it the appearance of a bunker, though several thick windows looked like they would allow a small amount of natural light inside. Security was the prerogative of this branch of the Department of Ember Regulation, since it facilitated Kindlings—awakenings of the powers of Embers. In front of the Bunker, as it was often called, cameras pointed every which way, and a man and a woman with thick kevlar vests and rifles guarded the doors along with two unarmed but uniformed men.
Government Embers, Lyle thought to himself as he studied them, though he noticed they carried no visible Tokens. One would think the government would equip their people well, but either their Tokens were hidden, or DOER was skimping.
They noticed his direct approach while he was still a couple hundred feet away, so he nodded politely and progressed towards the entrance as unthreateningly as he could manage. Lyle was a tall man at six foot three, with brown hair and eyes and a handsomely disarming face, but he wasn’t a particularly scary person in his estimation, and he tried to keep his body language as neutral and open as possible during his approach. They barely tensed as he closed in on them.
One of the uniformed men stepped forward when Lyle was close enough. He was middle-aged and wore a neat black hat with a front visor and a DOER label. “Appointment?” he guessed, probably since he didn’t recognize Lyle.
Lyle nodded. “I’ve got my ID here. Do you need anything else?” He suspected not, since he’d already been screened prior to his arrival.
The man shook his head, taking Lyle’s ID and referencing a tablet that he pulled from within his jacket. “ID is all. You’ll take care of the rest inside.”
Lyle thanked him as he got his ID back, and the other uniformed man escorted him through the thick doors.
Inside, he encountered more security. He put his belongings through an x-ray machine, and felt much like he was entering an airport terminal as he held his arms out to his sides and they scanned him.
Isn’t that overkill? Lyle wondered to himself as he got through the second layer and saw several more uniformed guards. These were also unarmed, but these ones carried visible Tokens, which could only mean one thing—more Embers. One wore a turtle shell on a chain around his neck that pulled heavily towards the ground. Another had a thin piece of wood with a horizontal red stripe tucked behind his ear, and Lyle thought he also saw a piece of brown-gold metal in the man’s hand when he pulled it out of a pocket to stretch.
He realized after a moment that it wasn’t overkill. The Cinders—essentially manifested, crystalline power that could Kindle a normal human, turning them into an Ember if they had the potential—were still incredibly valuable, since the other methods of Kindling were so rare or difficult. DOER controlled most of the Cinders in the US, which explained all the bureaucracy and waiting he had to get through to make it to this point, and they didn’t want to risk giving any of them up. It was possible to become an Ember by going through private companies that had skilled Embers or Cinders of their own, but that was far too expensive for Lyle to consider a real option. A part of him regretted that he was born too early to be granted his powers by bloodline, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that.
Lyle’s escort led him down several well-lit hallways and sat him down in what felt like an interrogation room, and his anxiety spiked again. Instead of a one-way mirror, it had a window to a park behind the building, but that wasn’t enough to calm Lyle’s nerves. He took a deep breath. It’ll be fine.
The man asked him to fill out several forms, then left him alone, telling him that another official would be with him shortly. Lyle smiled wanly to himself. Now it’s not an airport, but a doctor’s office.
Another deep breath. This was important, but even if he didn’t become an Ember today of his own, he had other options. Sure, he’d quit his job at the administrative DOER office across the river, but he could find another job. Being what amounted to an office grunt had been a dead end anyway, and that was a large part of the reason he’d quit. The other part was his boss, Thomas Harding, had had a vendetta against him for some inscrutable reason, and it was annoying to deal with on the best of days.
It was a bit of a problem that he’d quit DOER, though. It wouldn’t be easy to get another government job, and Thomas certainly wouldn’t recommend him. Maybe he could work for a guild? That would be far from ideal, but it was better than nothing.
He shook his head. “Stop it,” he said aloud to himself. “Optimism, man. Optimism.”
He tried to smile again, but a hint of worry betrayed him, and the expression faded from his face.
The door opened, and another DOER uniform stepped through. This one was a woman, fit and sharp, but older than Lyle’s escort. Her hair was streaked with gray that matched the severity of her expression. She had the precision of movement and discipline of military.
“Lyle Margrave?” she asked. Her voice brooked no nonsense, and he straightened up.
“Yep, that’s me,” he replied, and she sat at the table across from him. She pulled the papers towards herself and shuffled them together.
“Your name’s familiar,” she said while she studied what he’d written.
A slight frown creased his face. He’d much rather be anonymous. It was much easier to make good impressions on people if they didn’t have any expectations. He said nothing, trying to relax, and the woman continued to read.
With one finger, she folded the papers down so she could get a better look at Lyle and raised an eyebrow. He raised an eyebrow to mirror her.
“Nothing to say?” she asked finally.
He shrugged. “You were reading, and I didn’t really want to interrupt. And, to be honest, I’d rather be evaluated for me than my brother.”
“I suppose so,” she replied, putting the papers flat on the desk. “So tell me, Mr. Margrave—why do you even want to be an Ember?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “I guess there’s no avoiding talking about him. He made a difference in an enormous amount of people’s lives, and it’s inspiring. I want to make a difference, too.”
The woman took a pen from her pocket and scrawled a note on one of his papers. “I’m assuming Carson Margrave was your brother? The Boundary Guard?”
“Yes.”
“You have large shoes to fill.”
Lyle nodded slowly. “True. He was a great Ember. Although, to be honest, I don’t think whether I succeed or not is relevant today, and I don’t personally think I’m doomed to fail, uh...” He paused, realizing he didn’t know how to address her.
“Dana. And I apologize if what I said came off that way—it's not what I meant. But you intend to apply to be a Boundary Guard if you are Kindled today?”
“Probably not immediately. I would need to practice with the power and get stronger first, of course.”
“I see. Well, let’s move on.”
She rattled off a series of interview questions. Where was he from? Had he lived elsewhere? Was he trained for combat? How? What did he do for a living, or was he a student? The questions kept coming.
She notably didn’t ask about any other Embers in his family. He wondered if she knew about his father, Stephen, in addition to Carson. Other than the basic questions he’d answered on the forms she held, she basically dragged a resume out of him.
“You quit DOER?” she asked at one point. “And you’re still coming to DOER for a Kindling?”
He nodded, keeping his face neutral and open. “I have my issues with DOER, but in general I think you do good work.” He chuckled. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have been working there in the first place. No, it was a personnel issue.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“I had a conflict with my direct supervisor.”
“Work-related?”
He answered slowly. “No… kind of. I didn’t see myself getting fair treatment under him, and seeking new horizons seemed like the best option if I actually wanted to make any progress.”
“You could have transferred.”
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“I could have tried. He wouldn’t have recommended me.”
“You could have gone above him.”
Lyle nodded. “I could have, but I was… a little heated. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing.” Just the thought of Thomas was making him mad again, but he didn’t let it show.
“Was this recent?”
“Very. Yesterday. I’m kind of lucky about the timing, since I was already scheduled to come here today. Maybe that’s why I didn’t try too hard to keep the job.”
“You could still contact the regional DOER administration.”
“You’re right, and maybe I will. But it might be a moot point if I become an Ember today. I was trying to put together enough money to do this, and working there longterm was kind of secondary. More of an in to become a Boundary Guard or some other specialist. Moot point now, though.”
Dana pressed her lips together. “Fair enough.”
A few more questions, and she was satisfied. She made a copy of his ID and filed his papers, then led him out of the interview room and down the hall. A door opened to reveal a small, dark space inside, and she gestured for him to walk in and lay on the cushioned platform that filled nearly all of it. It wasn’t quite a bed—more like an ottoman. Lyle frowned in consternation.
“Why not just do it in the interview room?” he asked.
“The power released by your Emberflame igniting runs rampant through your body for a few minutes once it’s activated, which can cause seizures and will almost certainly knock you unconscious. Better to lay somewhere comfortable and safe for that than the stone floor. Less chance of hurting yourself. The walls are padded, too.”
“What if I’m claustrophobic?” he asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.
“Are you claustrophobic?”
He chuckled and shrugged at her quick response, and she gestured once more inside.
Here goes nothing, he thought, and lay down flat on the cushion. It was wide and tall enough that he couldn’t reach the wall that bordered it.
“Just relax,” Dana told him. “I’m going to close the door, and a panel there is going to open. Take the Cinder and hold onto it. Shouldn’t take more than a few seconds to work, if it does. Then, when you come out, the Cinder will either be void of its power and you’ll be an Ember, or not. We’ve got a tech keeping an eye on you, so if anything goes wrong I’ll be right outside, and we have medical staff on call. Don’t worry, though—that’s very unlikely.”
“Got it,” he said, preparing himself mentally and accepting the small risk without a hint of hesitation. This was it. Either he was Kindled, or he wasn’t.
“Good luck,” Dana said, and she closed the door.
Lyle hadn’t lied—he wasn’t claustrophobic. The darkness pressed in on him, though, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to freak out or take a nap. Nervous energy filled his body, and he twitched and shifted to try to release some of it. It didn’t work.
There was a soft hiss, and a warm, dim light suddenly shone from the object that was revealed. A Cinder, right before his eyes. It was rather unremarkable—a quartzite stone with jagged, yellow-orange lines of light throbbing across it. Particles of the same light floated lazily within.
“Moment of truth,” he said to the stone, reaching for it. His fingers stopped less than an inch from the source of the light and spoke to it. “Please work.”
Then his hand closed around the Cinder, and he pulled it in close, clutching it to his chest with both hands. He closed his eyes and waited, breathing heavily in anticipation. There was a flare of light behind his eyelids, and he squeezed them tighter.
But he felt nothing. After thirty seconds, he cracked his eyelids open once more. The light in the room was stifled, so he uncovered the Cinder—no, it wasn’t just stifled. The light had gone from the crystal, the lines now faded. Elation filled him. It had worked! The power from the stone was inside him now, and he was an Ember. It was a bit strange that it had been so painless, though—he hadn’t felt much of anything.
Lyle grinned and rolled the chunk of power made manifest—dim though it now was—around his hand, then clenched it tightly. He knocked on the door from the inside, and it quickly swung open with a clunk.
“That was fast,” Dana said, eyeing him from the hallway. He resisted the urge to cover his eyes, which had dilated heavily in the darkness.
“I think it worked,” he said, still unable to keep the happiness off his face as he offered her the depleted Cinder.
“Of course it worked,” she said, taking the stone. She held it up. “Thing’s empty, isn’t it?”
“I thought it would feel like an obvious difference,” he admitted, shrugging and looking down at his body as if he would be able to see a change, even though he knew that was unlikely. “Still, as long as it worked, I’m happy.”
A slight frown crossed Dana’s face and she glanced down at the depleted Cinder in her hand once more. “You mean, you can’t feel it? I’m not an Ember, but from what I’m told it is an obvious difference. Hang on, we can make sure.” She stepped back and shouted down the hallway, “Ray? Can you come here for a second?”
A man came jogging up—one of the Embers Lyle had seen standing guard. “Dana?” he asked.
“Look at him,” she commanded. “See anything?”
Ray studied Lyle closely where he sat at the edge of the compartment. He narrowed his eyes.
“Should I see something?” he asked eventually, and Dana held up the empty stone in response. “Weird. No, I don’t see anything. He’s not an Ember.”
The floor dropped out from under him, and Lyle’s blood turned to ice.
***
The sand shifted beneath Camille’s feet as she danced between blades and rocks, her body flowing and her glaive flashing as it cut through the elementals, dispersing them into dust. None could even come close to hitting her unless she let them, such was the difference between their speed and strength, and soon her eight opponents were all in pieces.
She looked down. The sand wasn’t an optimal surface to fight on, even if it made landings easier should she fall. She didn’t expect to fall, so it was a rather moot point. Fortunately, she was likely nearing the end of this floor of the Tower. That was good. She didn’t like the look of the sky here, angry and red as it was. It felt… ominous. The whipping wind and oppressive heat didn’t help.
Ahead, a cave opening was set into the face of the plateau that rose out of the desert. As Camille made her way inside, she saw that it wasn’t deep, perhaps only a couple hundred feet. There were no sources of light, but that wasn’t too much of a problem. Shrouded in darkness though the inhabitants were, the orange and yellow light from the outside was plenty for her sharp eyes to pick out their features.
She sighed as she took them in. More elementals. They were rocky and humanoid, though they varied widely in size and shape nonetheless. Some were rounded and had massive, crushing limbs, while others looked more like the unfinished molds of people. One in particular, which sat neatly in the middle of those two extremes, exuded a sense of power that was unlike the others, and her eyes snapped to the elemental.
Her Emberflame burned, and she pushed her power into the butterfly Token on her braid. Wings of light exploded from her back, and she burst forward before the stone men could react. In an instant, she’d cut the powerful elemental in half, and she imagined if the other elementals could feel surprise, they would have frozen in shock as she alighted behind his cracking body. It crumbled and fell to the ground, and she whirled her glaive again at the nearest elemental in range.
They all fell quickly, and Camille made her way to the back of the cave. A chest sat on the ground, waiting for her. Within sat a weak Token and what looked to her like a small stack of shale, but she knew it was much more valuable. Not that the reward mattered much. This, the thirty-fifth floor, was the only license she could get this week, and it didn’t pose even the most remote challenge. It left her feeling empty.
The space around her suddenly warped, and she was in another cave.
“What the—” she began, leaping to her feet and holding her weapon at the ready.
“Calm, Camille,” a familiar, deeply resonant voice said, and she realized what had happened.
“Tiamat,” she acknowledged, placing her glaive in its harness and stowing the shale and the Token. A flicker of annoyance ran through her. “What was that?”
A gargantuan golden eye gleamed at her from out of the darkness. “I have need of you. It is most convenient to pull you into my domain when you’re already within one of the crafted realms of the Tower.”
“I see. Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?” Camille asked, suddenly feeling hopeful.
“No, Camille.”
Her heart sank, and the darkness broke as a man emerged from it walking towards her. There was something odd about his appearance, aside from the fact that he was a human in Tiamat’s home. He was tall and handsome enough, with dark brown hair and kind eyes, though his expression was deadly serious.
Camille frowned at him. “Who are you?”
“I’m—” he began to say, before Tiamat interrupted, her deep voice holding a warning.
“He is an ally,” she said, leaving Camille to wonder why the dragon didn’t want her to know his identity. She resisted the urge to glare at them both, since she’d guessed what was coming, and it meant she’d failed.
“I… right,” the man said as he was now within comfortable speaking distance. A slight expression of surprise had flickered across his face when Tiamat spoke, but it was gone now, replaced again by certainty.
“So, who is it?” Camille asked, crossing her arms across her body.
“Oh, you already know? That makes this easier,” the man replied. “It’s Lyle Margrave.”
She looked at him blankly, and his confidence wavered as confusion seemed to come over him once more. Was she supposed to know that name?
“The others interfered with his Kindling,” Tiamat rumbled. “I can understand where they’re coming from, I suppose, but they are misguided. Now is the time to lift up those with potential, not suppress them out of fear. You will go to him, and you will send him to me.”
The man nodded. “You’ll find him in Saint Paul. He just—”
“Yeah, whatever,” Camille interrupted, and the man looked taken aback. She was angry that Tiamat was ignoring her, though, and she didn’t have to be happy about it to do her duty. “Just show me what he looks like and put me close by. And can you do something about my stuff? It’s covered with sand.”
There was a whisper-soft rush of displaced air and a light touch on her body, then all of her clothes had been replaced. Her weapon, its harness, and the bag also disappeared.
“You’ll find them in your room in Minneapolis,” Tiamat said. “I apologize for forcing you to move around so much, but we may have further need to contact him without my entering your realm.”
Camille shrugged, trying not to show too much of her lingering disappointment. “It is what it is. How long do you think I’ll be there?”
“I do not know,” Tiamat replied. She hesitated, then spoke again. “It may be some time.”
Camille pursed her lips. “Well, hopefully it rains enough that my plants don’t die. Let’s just get this over with.”