Fire, Fire

You formed the sun and stars

Fire, Fire

You forged the dwarven hearts

Fire, Fire

The heart-blood of the Earth

Father, Father

Hold us till our last verse…

The old dwarf king’s voice lingers in the silence after his song. Deep lines crack his mud-dark skin, and the breeze ruffles leaves on his strange armour carved of petrified wood. Shapes and whispers move in the shadows past the campfire’s light. Many folks around camp have dropped their tasks to come and listen to the newcomers’ tales.

Maybe the quiet gets to the stoutfolk elder. His harrumphs sound embarrassed. “It works better in our people’s tongue,” he says.

“No.” The murmurs die when the general speaks. There are emotions in his eyes I have not seen in many moons. “I like it,” he says. “Please, sing another.”

The old king sings through the night. We listen close. No one gets trouble for slacking tonight. We all know this is our last moment of peace for a long time.

Tomorrow, we march.

– extract from Memoirs of a Nameless Soldier, apocryphal manuscript stored in Phoenix Rise’s imperial library, restricted section, author unknown.

-

Remembrance 2, 2497 AK, Radiant Empire, Cleft Isles, Greyport, Industry District

Greyport’s rooftops blurred into a smudge of slate and stone as Kaydence hurtled across the city faster than she ever knew possible. Shingles splintered under her feet. Cold air whipped at her face. Her cloak of Darkness trailed behind her like a cape, struggling to keep up.

I was right there!

She had passed that damned windmill hours ago, after her episode, when she decided to go hunt down drug dealers to clear her head—for all the good that did. Those little shitheads must have slipped in right after I left. Her teeth ground together so hard they started to crack. If that twig has let himself be hurt, I’ll finish him off myself! Her heart hammered inside her ribs as she neared the industrial district.

An inferno leapt into view.

As soon as Kaydence circumvented the high temples of the Holy Sanctuary, she saw it. The old mill was on fire, bright flames curling up into the night sky. Her eyes widened. Her steps faltered. What in the Void... Thomas’ round face flickered through her mind, a grin plastered on as he flaunted that pitiful flame cantrip at the twig. Kaydence’s pupils constricted into slits, a low growl bubbling from her throat. I’ll roast that fat swine!

Without hesitation, she launched herself across the street.

BOOM

Mid-leap, a deafening explosion rocked the neighbourhood. Blinding light seared Kaydence’s vision as the shockwave flung her off course. Spiralling, she almost missed her target, hands scraping against the roof’s gutter before she managed to haul herself up, gasping, mostly blind, blood dripping from her ears. But her magic was already hard at work fixing the damage. Her lost senses quickly returned, showing her a scene of devastation.

A few streets away, a crater had swallowed half-a-dozen buildings. Many more had their windows shattered. The ambient aether thrummed, disturbed by the magical detonation. Two faint, familiar auras prickled Kaydence’s senses from that direction—one of which she had just left behind moments ago. What in the Void are those two doing here? And together? Could that Air mage also work for the Inquisition? Was that why he approached her and her mother?

Kaydence suddenly felt as if an invisible net was closing in around her.

Another familiar magical surge swept through the area, distracting her. This one belonged to a mage in the City Guard. Kaydence spat a curse and resumed her mad dash towards the burning windmill. Time was running out. Soon, this place would be crawling with guards. If Sarmin was in there, she needed to get to him first.

Come on. Don’t be too late. Kaydence’s legs screamed, but she poured formless Life mana into her torn muscles and fractured bones, healing as she ran, relentless. More tiles shattered beneath her. She ignored them, as she ignored the pain—and everything else. She would not acknowledge the worry and guilt twisting her guts. This was not her fault. She was never meant to be a protector. She could help no one. She was the threat—a menace to everyone around her.

Sei… please… help me…

Kaydence’s breath hitched violently. She missed a step and shook her head to dissipate the encroaching memory. Now was not the time.

She had reached her destination.

A blazing hellscape greeted her. Fire roared from the windmill’s high windows, licking hungrily at its rickety, rotten sails. A chunk of the roof had caved in, belching out smoke. The entire structure groaned in its death throes. Kaydence hit the ground hard in front of the inferno, her heart pounding. The street was deserted—for now—but she had to be fast.

Scorching heat washed over her, carrying the smell of burning wood and white-hot stone, the stench of charred flesh and the taste of ash. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. The world started to spin.

Sei! Help me, Sei!

Kaydence blinked, trying to clear her head. That voice—it was not real.

But suddenly, the fire was not just in front of her anymore—it was everywhere. She was back there. The mansion was burning down around her; in her ears, nothing but eerie silence and the dull roar of the flames. The king’s mission, the ambush against her squad, it had all been a trap—a diversion, for this. She had run back as fast as she could, tried her hardest to make it in time. But she was too late, too slow—too weak. She could do nothing. She could help nobody. Everyone was already–

“…Kay…”

Her head jerked up. Was this real? Over the roar of flames, she strained to listen. The fire, clearly magical in origin, was muddling her senses. But now she could feel it—somewhere inside the inferno, a flicker of life, faint and fading. “Yuna?!” Her voice cracked, her eyes misty and unfocused. “Yuna, I’m coming!”

Kaydence thrust her hand out, casting magic to part the flames. But suddenly, wails filled her ears, the taste of boiling blood flooded her tongue, and pleading ghosts flashed before her eyes. Her focus wavered. Half-formed orange glyphs destabilised. Her spell burst, blasting her backwards. She crashed into a house with a startled, pained gasp.

“Argh!” She blinked stone dust away. “Void! Now’s not the time!” Her hands were trembling. Why won’t you listen to me?! Fire had once been her loyal servant, a ravenous pet, always eager to burn at her call and consume everything in her path. But now, when she needed it most, it defied her. Why! Is it me? Am I the problem? …Figures. The thought clawed at her, but she shoved it away.

Fire magic be damned. The spell backlash stung, but at least it had the merit of slapping her mind back to the present. I don’t need it. Gritting her teeth, Kaydence staggered to her feet, then charged headlong towards the inferno. She slammed through the burning door, throwing her arms up at the last second to shield her face. The brittle wood crumbled on impact, and she stumbled inside.

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Fire roared all around.

The heat gnawed at her, arcane flames lapping greedily at every inch of space. Her skin blistered and blackened in an instant; her hair and clothes ignited. The smoke was thick, acrid, and each breath felt like nails down her throat. Her regeneration kept pace, but the constant cycle of her nerves burning and regrowing was torture. The agony was relentless, assaulting her senses—but pain was an old friend of Kaydence’s. What would incapacitate another only kept her grounded—focused. She refused to let old memories drag her down again. She pressed forward, eyes stinging, struggling to see more than a step ahead through the smoke even as the fire enveloped her and tried to consume her whole.

“Twig! If you’re alive, say something!” she bellowed, before breaking into a coughing fit. Blasted! She could stop breathing, but every bodily function she shut down drained her mana faster—and no matter how invincible she acted, her reserves were not actually infinite.

She tried to keep her body low, but each step on the rotted, burning floorboards was treacherous. As Kaydence edged toward the centre of the room, they grew worryingly unstable, the dry wood groaning under her weight. She quickly veered toward the stone wall, where the fire was slightly less fierce and the footing more solid.

When her boot nudged something small and charred, her heart stuttered—but it was not Sarmin. The curled body was a child’s alright, but all too tall. Kaydence knelt, her fingers briefly brushing the blackened skin, checking the boy’s vitals—only to confirm what her other senses were telling her. Stupid kids… Clenching her fist, she moved on.

“SARMIN!!” she shouted again. There was no answer, only the groans of wood turning to ash. “Answer, you little bitch! Answer me, or I’ll kick your spinless ass until it’s on backwards!”

“…here…”

Kaydence’s ear somehow caught a whimper, coming from all the way across the burning mill. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Cursing, she hurried around the room, following the incurved wall to the source of the voice. “Don’t move! Stay low! Cover your mouth!”

“…I can’t…”

The moment Kaydence saw him, she realised why.

Sarmin, shirtless, was strung up on a metal hook like a piece of cured meat. Rage flared through Kaydence, the flames closest to her surging blue before she reined herself in. A weak smile lit up the Half-Elf’s battered face when he spotted his friend. “…you came… I knew…”

“Save your breath, idiot,” Kaydence snapped, unhooking Sarmin and dragging him down to the floor, where the air was marginally breathable. A steady draught rose through the loose floorboards, feeding the flames but also creating some room to breathe—literally.

With a flick of her knife, she sliced through his half-burnt restraints and yanked off the useless gag that had slipped down around his neck. “Look at you. What a mess,” she grumbled, checking his injuries. Relief flickered in her chest—he was charred, but far less than she had feared. Most of his burns did not look like random fire damage, implying something that made Kaydence’s blood simmer. She ran a hand over a missing patch of Sarmin’s fluffy hair. I’ll shave those little shits. The rest of his injuries were bruises and rope burns on his wrists. His life was not in immediate danger—present circumstances aside.

Satisfied, Kaydence withdrew her mana and hoisted the boy across her shoulders. “Let’s get out of here.”

She turned to move, but Sarmin’s weak voice rasped out, “...wait...”

Kaydence’s irritation flared. “What now?”

“...he’ll die...” Sarmin wheezed, pointing shakily toward the centre of the room. Her gaze followed his finger, and through the smoke and fire, she saw another charred body engulfed in flames.

Thomas.

Kaydence’s jaw clenched. She did not need to go closer to know it was him. The brat’s mana saturated the fire all around them. As expected, he had lost control of his magic. She had even warned him—or at least, meant to. None of that mattered now. Honestly, she was more surprised mana exhaustion had not killed him before the fire got its chance.

But Thomas was not dead—not yet.

“So what?” she spat, shaking her head at Sarmin. “He did this to you. We should leave him—spare the world another careless, arrogant mage.” She turned away. “We need to get out before this place collapses.” An ominous crack above them underscored her point. The flames were not dying down; the gap she had squeezed through along the wall was rapidly closing. She placed a hand on the hot stone beside her, considering. Should I just try breaking through?

A weak squeeze on her shoulder stopped Kaydence in her tracks. She glared at the Half-Elf, but the usually meek boy held her gaze unflinchingly. His left eye was swollen shut, but the other shone with determination—and worse—trust.

“...Damn it, Sarmin,” she muttered, more to herself than him, and set him down against the wall. She tore off the remnants of her burnt shirt and shoved them at him. “Don’t move. Stay low. Breathe through that.” Without waiting for a response, she strode toward the centre of the room, body low to the ground, warily eyeing the burning support beams above. The weakened floorboards creaked ominously beneath her, and through the cracks, she glimpsed a dark abyss below.

Whatever basement the mill hid, it was deep. A fall would be painful—or, at the very least, a waste of more precious time.

By some miracle, she made it to Thomas without incident and knelt beside the unconscious boy, her scowl deepening. This idiot was actively on fire. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch,” she hisssed, pressing a hand to his back and sending a pulse of mana through his body. His natural resistance was pathetic; she severed his connection to the flames easily. It did not stop the inferno, but at least it kept him from turning into a drained husk. With a grunt, she rolled him over, smothering the flames still licking at his charred skin.

How is he even still alive? Thomas was a wreck, one step removed from a lump of coal. Kaydence let her Life mana probe through him, patching up just enough to stop him catching a ride to the Underworld. But in doing so, she noticed something that definitely did not belong. What the Void did you do to yourself, you absolute moron?

Before she could investigate further, a loud rumble shook the burning windmill. Kaydence’s head whipped up just in time to see a massive flaming gear tumbling through the smoke. Instinct kicked in; she grabbed Thomas’s charred body and rolled away, narrowly avoiding the huge cogwheel as it crashed through the floor where they had been just moments before.

But they had not escaped yet. The impact triggered a chain reaction, and the floorboards started to give way beneath them like an opening sinkhole.

Kaydence scrambled to her feet, yanking her burden towards the outer wall. She was not fast enough. The floor crumbled from under her feet, and suddenly, she was falling. Time slowed as she flailed in a dark void, already bracing herself for a painful landing—until her hand grasped something metallic. White-hot iron melted into her palm, and her drop abruptly stopped, the momentum slamming her painfully into stone.

“Ugh. I hate today…” Groaning, she glanced down.

Her feet dangled over an abyss—a dark shaft that plunged into fathomless depth. She could barely make out the reflection of the fire in some water far down below. Fresh air and the tang of brine drifted up on a cold, persistent draught. She had caught onto the last rung of an old, rusted ladder. Incredibly, she had not let go of Thomas’s wrist. Judging by the weird angle, his shoulder was dislocated, but Kaydence frankly did not give a damn.

“Void, you’re heavy,” she muttered through gritted teeth, more for the sake of venting than because of any real strain. “I really want to drop your roasted pig ass.” Nevertheless, she hoisted the charred boy up on her shoulder and started climbing back up the scalding ladder. They had not fallen that far down, luckily. “I’d make a joke about burning fat,” she grunted as she inched upward, “But I’m not in the mood. Just wait. I’ll get even with you. Then you’ll wish you’d burned to death instead.”

Reaching the top of the well, Kaydence tossed Thomas’s limp form over the edge. His body thudded onto the floor near Sarmin, who stared worriedly, still clutching her torn shirt over his nose and mouth to block out the smoke. He had not moved, just as she had ordered. Not that it brought Kaydence any satisfaction. She was pissed.

With a final grunt, Kaydence hauled herself out of the pit and back into the inferno. The path to the exit was now fully cut off, the flames closing in on them. She stomped over to the boys, flexing her fingers branded with the shape of the rungs.

Burns like these were annoying. The cauterised wounds required her to consciously guide her healing to avoid permanent scars. Not that she cared much about scars, aesthetically speaking, but the loss of dexterity would be unacceptable.

“K-Kay… I–” Sarmin began, his voice trembling.

“Don’t,” Kaydence growled, cutting him off with a raised finger, “talk to me right now.” Without another glance, she pressed her ear against the wall, rapping her knuckles against the masonry until she found a spot that echoed with a hollow thud. “Get back,” she barked with a sharp gesture at the Half-Elf, who scrambled to obey.

Kaydence drew in a deep breath, her jaw tightening as she flooded her right arm with Life magic. Glowing teal veins appeared beneath her bronze skin, spreading from her chest to her clenched fist like a network of pulsing roots. Her muscles bulged, stretching her skin taut. With a step back, she wound her bloated arm like a coiled spring. “Get ready to run,” she said in a strained voice. She exhaled. The roar of the firestorm and the groaning windmill faded into the background as she sharpened her focus, honing in on her rebellious Fire magic.

Obey.

Blazing orange glyphs ignited in a circle above her fist. They flickered wildly, overwrought by the raw elemental power swirling around them. The inferno’s flames surged towards Kaydence, crawling along the walls like a living creature answering her siren call. Scorching heat rolled over in suffocating waves, closing in on the children. Breathing became impossible.

“K-Kay?!” Sarmin wheezed urgently.

With a primal roar, Kaydence struck. Her fist smashed into stone, and the Fire spell detonated—properly, this time. Physical and arcane forces combined into a massive explosion, obliterating the wall in a concentrated blast that shot dust and debris flying out into the street. The entire windmill quaked, releasing a deep, mournful groan.

“GO!”

Kaydence lifted the unconscious bully in her left arm and threw herself through the gaping hole before the dust even settled, keeping a sharp eye on Sarmin to make sure the boy kept pace. A torrent of flames roared at their heels, hungrily devouring the fresh influx of air. The outside cold embraced them like a slap to the face. But there was no time to relish. The building behind them keened and groaned as it began to tilt. Kaydence had dealt the final blow, and now, the air thundered with the rumble of crashing wood and cracking stone as the windmill finally collapsed.

The ground quaked beneath her feet, and Kaydence saw Sarmin stumble, his reedy legs faltering on the uneven cobblestones. With a burst of adrenaline, she tossed Thomas over her shoulder and snatched the Half-Elf by the back of his pants, hauling him forward. In the corner of her sight, the windmill’s blazing sails were hurtling straight at them like a burning guillotine. Come on. Come on! Kaydence sped up. Her legs screamed. Her heart pounded in her chest. Her destroyed right hand throbbed in agony.

The windmill’s final groan echoed like a death knell.

Kaydence dove forward, dragging both boys with her, shielding them with her body as the edge of the wreckage rained down around them. Burning debris pelted her bare back—shards of wood, scalding stone, and embers slicing through the air. Every breath tasted like ash and dust; her lungs begged for relief.

Finally—after an eternity that was really but an instant—the rumbling stopped. Stillness settled on the world, broken only by the crackle of the flames nibbling at the rubble.

Kaydence rolled onto her back, arms sprawled out as she gasped for air, staring up at the night sky. Her body trembled as the adrenaline began to fade, leaving her limbs heavy and her mind numb. The stars glittered above, peaceful and uncaring.

They had made it. Barely.

* * * * *