“You will not use fire in the library,” I said, jabbing my fork in Jackson’s direction.

“I won’t, I won’t! All I did was suggest I roast the monster…”

“An’ risk damaging the library?” Salem demanded. “Do ya have a death wish? Your god’s not the self-immolation type, is he?”

“No, nothing like that,” Jackson reassured us. I squinted at him, then bit into my butternut squash.

“No fire,” Yushin said firmly.

“I get it!”

The bell over the door jangled as someone else entered the restaurant Jackson had led us to. It was a small mom-and-pop sort of affair. It was a little expensive for my tastes, but for a place in the middle of a major city, it was comparatively quite cheap. The fact it was sandwiched amidst residential neighborhoods probably helped a lot with that.

“I think we should have two people reading the shelves,” I said. “Yushin and I speak the most languages, but we have a lot of overlap, like Hua-Long. So I think it should either be Yushin and Salem, or Salem and me who–”

My sentence was cut off as the faint scent of suppressed smoke hit my nostrils, and a hand landed on my shoulder.

“Hello, little sister,” a light, feminine, sneering voice said. “Or is it little brother, now? Either way it doesn’t change the fact it’s time to come home.”

And then everything exploded in a blur of motion.

When the two finely dressed strangers had entered the shop, Salem hadn’t really thought much of it, until he felt a headache coming on.

Sure, they were dressed far nicer than most people in this part of town, but that didn’t really mean much. They could be rich people slumming it, or normal people pretending to be rich, or a million other things.

The fact they were so pretty didn’t mean as much to Salem as it would to most. His mother had worked for an Elder Fae of Hydref, and he’d spent plenty of time around very nasty people who wore very pretty faces.

But when his head throbbed, Salem began flicking his hands under the table and shaping ether into his affinity magic.

He wasn’t a precog or an oracle, but any psychic worth their salt learned to read and trust their headaches.

When the girl put her hand on Emrys’ shoulder and said that she would be taking him home, Salem began speaking the words of power aloud.

His affinity for mind magic was powerful, flexible, and paired so perfectly with his psychic abilities that he had almost cried in relief when he’d read it.

But it was still new. He’d done a bit of training, but he’d possessed the affinity for just over a week.

As such, he barely managed to snap a shield over his own mind when the wave of smoke rushed off the girl’s form, and supernatural fear washed over the restaurant. It slammed into his mind shield like a hammer, and Salem staggered.

Emrys, on the other hand, barely flinched. He began babbling, but the girl lashed out with a punch. Emrys’ small body crashed down on the table and snapped it in two, while Yushin and Jackson both staggered back.

“In our fight,” the girl lectured Emrys. “You hid your face and scent. Hemp and tobacco. But you sweat during the fight. It didn’t click, not at first.”

Emrys staggered to his feet, and Salem was shocked that he wasn’t dead.

“Gerhard put it together,” the girl monologued, plumes of smoke rushing off her body as she drove a fist into Emrys’ gut.

Emrys’ body launched back and crunched into the wall, then to Salem’s amazement, the wall crumbled as his body kept moving, going through the multiple inch thick plasterboard like it was paper.

“Come on out, Hailaga,” the girl taunted. Smoke exploded off her and the unnatural fear redoubled, interrupting Salem’s whispered chant for a few moments.

“Greta,” the man who had entered with her said. “Stop playing around. Catch them, and we can drag them back to mother. And by the divines, get a grip. You’ve wasted half your power on pointless smoke.”

The fear had staggered Salem, amazement had shaken him, and the redoubling of the fear had slowed him down again, but none of those had stopped him.

The moment he’d been thrown back, he’d begun working on another affinity spell, and as he completed it, he reached within himself, where three cores of power lay.

In his heart, his ether pool drained rapidly into the spell, and behind his forehead, the vibrating strings of his psychic power, bound into neat knots lay. He connected them to the affinity spell he was casting and rushed all the spare psionic power he could muster in as well.

Drawing so much from his two primary sources of power caused the third to take notice. The murderous beast trapped at the base of his spine screamed in anger as it demanded to be let out, but the magic keeping it contained flared brightly. Salem did his best to ignore that power. Sometimes it was calm and easy to keep contained, but of course, he had to give his all on a day when the monster was trying its best to break its cage.

He shoved it down, and spoke the last word of his affinity spell, launching a mental assault against both of the well-dressed strangers. His mind battered against theirs, to mixed success.

Stolen novel; please report.

His mind spike hit the younger girl – Greta? – like a runaway horse, snapping the artificial fear that she’d struck each of them with. She slammed to the ground, writhing as her mind was pushed to the limits.

Against the older man, though, it was as effective as a chocolate fire gaurd. It bounced off his mind, doing nothing more than drawing a flicker of the man’s gaze. Salem’s mental shield shattered, and his vision went fuzzy as his mind staggered with absolute fear. He struggled to do anything more than stay conscious as he was forced to watch his failure.

While Salem was unleashing his powers against the Drekis, Yushin was beginning her own spells. Her affinity was also new and young, but she knew that now wasn’t the time for subtlety, and she had a far more reliable set of powers to draw on. She would simply need to augment herself with her assassin affinity.

Against a foe as powerful as Gerhard Dreki, there was little that Yushin could do in a pure fight. But the blood of the traitor-wyrm ran through her veins, and the pool of pungent poison throbbed, hidden just below the enshroud spell.

She would need every drop of poison in her fangs for this.

She finished her invisibility spell, augmented by the power of the affinity magic. Though, perhaps augmented was the wrong word – expanded was a bit more accurate. She’d forced the spell to mask her scent and muffle the sound of her movements. Neither were completely gone, but it was the best that she could manage.

She couldn’t overcome the frailty of the invisibility spell on her own yet. She knew that, in time, she could make this spell so much more than what it was, but as things stood, that was just wishes and dreams. The moment she cast another spell, broke her enshroud, or attacked someone, the spell would snap like a strand of glass underfoot.

“Come on out,” Gerhard said, his voice resonating through the room. “Hiding your power and running through the back room isn’t going to work, Hailaga.”

He leisurely began walking toward the hole in the wall that Emrys had been punched through, and Yushin carefully shifted through the restaurant, buying time. Jackson was standing, gesturing, and chanting, but Gerhard was arrogantly ignoring him.

That was reasonable. A Dreki of his strength would have no more need to fear fire than the Divine King would.

Yushin gently climbed onto the counter, scurrying down it and drawing her hand back and waiting for just the right moment. As Gerhard walked by her, his throat exposed, Yushin let go.

The enshroud around her spirit fell away, and the bloodline of the traitor-wyrm rushed to her hand. She couldn’t compress her poison’s potency a fraction as well as Emrys could compress his fire, but she had far more poison to draw on than he had fire, as her years with Auntie Lei had allowed her to train herself freely.

She pushed everything she could into the strike, letting her fingers sharpen into a knife’s edge, dripping with toxic green power, compressing it best she could. She was only able to funnel so much power through her toxin strike power at once, but it was still her strongest power, draining a full third of her poison at once.

It slammed into Gerhard’s exposed neck, leaving a long, thin, shallow cut that glowed green.

Gerhard barely slowed his stroll, lifting one hand and striking her in the chest. She was thrown backwards into the wall, but this was an exterior wall of brick, and she didn’t punch through it. The wind was knocked from her lungs as she tried to focus, the remainder of her bloodline draining away to stop her body from breaking…

Oh. That wasn’t good. She could sense her vitality rapidly draining as blood started filling her lungs, and she focused, pushing poison to the cracks at the bottom of her pool.

Gerhard’s glowing green wound did seem to give him trouble for a few seconds. He put his hand to his neck, and a bright red light leaked from beneath it as he burnt the poison away, cauterized the cut, and then healed it.

If this had been an exhibition or sparring match, the fact she’d forced him to draw on his bloodline at all was something that would have been a point of pride. But as she felt her bloodline guttering dry with her body still too weak to move, ready to die within minutes, she could only think of how she failed.

When the fear clouding his mind had abated, Jackson had forced himself to his feet and began a chant for his greatest spell. He had been in possession of his affinity magic for longer than any of his friends, new or old, and he had a responsibility to defend them.

The man was walking in his general direction, and Jackson sweated as he swept his arm out, trying to work all of his powers together for this attack before the man could cross the distance and cut him down.

When Yushin appeared from nowhere and struck at the fancy man, Jackson had been surprised, though he really shouldn’t have been. That was her affinity, after all.

It bought him the precious seconds that he needed, though, and mere moments after she was slammed into the far wall, his divine boon screamed, and he completed the spell.

The base for his ultimate attack was the standard fireball spell, but he layered his affinity magic into it to turn the heat of the fire up beyond its normal limits, then reached for his divine boon. The pair of granted magics danced over his head like a floating crown, and one of them flowed into his spell as he finished casting it.

Effervesce was a god of light, goodness, and purity. The boon to amplify Jackson’s fire had been a welcome gift, and one that Jackson was still trying to understand fully. He knew he wasn’t able to draw as much out of the soulfire boon as he might one day be able to, but he had learned a few things.

The boon gave a permanent boost to the potency of all fire magic, and he could draw on his faithful connection to the divine to increase that boost further, so Jackson threw every bit of invested prayer and faith into the attack as he could, praying to Effervesce to defend his friends.

And that was important. Because one of the other things he’d learned about the soulfire was that intention and actions made all the difference. The same amount of faith being used for his own training was much less effective than using it to help others. He assumed that if he tried to use the boon for dark purposes, it would fail entirely, or maybe even turn on him

And using it to defend and protect his friends? To protect the innocent people who ran the restaurant from someone who was destroying their shop and might break or kill them if they tried to interfere?

Protection was one of Effervesce’s most important tenets.

Jackson threw every drop of ether into his affinity, and every bit of faith and prayer into his boon. A spark flew from his hands, striking the fancy man in the chest.

The red of the fireball mixed with the silver of soulfire and the golden color of his affinity magic erupted over every inch of the man, who actually staggered back a step. He let out a grunt of annoyance, then waved his hand, flames of his own exploding from his skin.

Jackson’s fire flickered, but didn’t go out. That seemed to surprise the man, and he clenched his fist, taking a breath.

All the fire snuffed out, and Jackson saw the man’s skin, hair, and eyes had been singed, but he was very much alive. The man seemed even more annoyed by Jackson’s fireball than the strike that Yushin had delivered, and he popped his neck as he looked at Jackson.

“I remember you. I broke your arm,” the man said. Jackson blinked, realizing that this was a Dreki. The girl… was that the one the swordsman from Middlehold had beaten on the boat? But she’d been talking about fighting Emrys?

His eyes glanced over to her. She’d staggered to her feet, and was sitting in one of the booths, watching as the older Dreki handled things.

The Dreki sighed.

“I’m putting an end to this. Come out now, Hailaga, or whatever your name is now. If you don’t…”

The world blurred, and Jackson was being held by the throat in one of the Dreki’s hands. In the other hand, the man held Salem, and one of his feet was on Yushin’s throat. Jackson had a terrified moment where he thought Yushin was dead, her chest caved in, but he wasn’t able to think as the Dreki’s hand started tightening. The last thing he could clearly hear was the man’s words.

“They all die.”