Fire plumed like a nuclear explosion in front of Akemi.

It took several seconds for her to actually understand what was happening. Several seconds that, under normal circumstances, should have absolutely cost her her life.

And without Bamo, they would have.

But the bat had been watching, as bats do.

“Get down!” he screamed, jumping her. He knocked Akemi to the ground like a domino, his wings covering her torso protectively. Before she could complain or resist, it became immediately apparent that he had a good reason to impede on her personal space—a torrent of cindering flame shot over their heads, right in front of Akemi’s eyes, nearly burning her corneas. All she could do was dumbly stare at it for a moment, stuck in disbelief.

She slowly craned her neck, looking past Bamo’s shivering head to see Pyre standing a few feet from them, hands thrust forward, breathing heavy. Akemi swore she must have missed something. Had there been a threat behind them? She looked to check—but saw only the same corpses as before, now even more charred than they were a moment ago.

Akemi snapped her head back, and their eyes met. Pyre’s entire body was trembling.

“Was that—” Akemi said, then paused. A slow boil of rage had begun to simmer in her veins. “Was that—did you mean to kill me, Pyre?”

She all but threw Bamo off of her. The bat let himself fall off, scrambling backward as Akemi shakily found her footing. As she stood toe to toe with Pyre, the woman remained silent, but the tremors running through her only increased. She still had her hands poised, as if she was ready to fire off another attack at any second, but none came.

Akemi studied the other woman’s face, looking for something. Anything. An apology. An excuse. Pyre gave her nothing but silent guilt.

“Say something!” Akemi shouted, nearly frothing at the mouth. Without even meaning to, she dropped into Pyre’s native tongue, portuguese spilling out her lips. “And I thought I was the coldblooded one, you asshole.”

Pyre looked like she’d been smacked. Guilt was written all over her face; she was practically paralyzed with it.

Encased in a blanket of hot anger, Akemi stepped closer to her, jaw clenched. She felt almost outside of her body then, as if she was watching from a film camera as the two of them stood, chests heaving, in a field of molten debris. Just two clay figures propped up by unseen hands, a thin, rapidly fraying string keeping them in position.

“Why?” Akemi barked, emotion swelling in her chest. She despised Pyre more for her silence than even the attempt on her life. “Before I kill you, I atleast want to know what I’m doing it for. So, what is it? Did you get tired of me already?”

Pyre and her weren’t friends, but they had been… companionable. Pyre had liked her. Enjoyed her company. Akemi knew that, even as much as she had tried to ignore it. Bamo had brought it up enough times for it to be painfully obvious, even to her.

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Pyre had helped her. Had given her money and advice and direction. Had saved her life, that first time they met, and probably a few times after that. Pyre tried to disguise it as coincidental, as meaningless and mercantile and happenstance, but it wasn’t. Akemi was antisocial, but she wasn’t stupid. These were all signs of camaraderie. Of connection, between two people. Naive onlookers might even refer to it as friendship.

But it wasn’t friendship—it wasn’t reciprocated. But it was at least one-directional, pointed in an arrow from Pyre to her. It wasn’t all a facade.

Her stomach burned.

Akemi was used to people hating her. She gave them every reason to. She was rude for no reason. Cruel for fun. But liking her, genuinely feeling some sort of compassionate human emotion toward her, and then trying to kill her?

That was just… It was just…. Extremely annoying.

“It’s Nocturne,” Akemi said, and the realization basically hit her as the words left her mouth. “He put you up to this. Sent you to do his dirty work. Of course. I don’t know why I didn’t see that immediately. Gosh, you really are his little obedient pet dog, aren’t you? Completely mindless. Not a thought of your own.”

“I am not.”

Akemi’s eyebrows rose as the words left Pyre’s mouth in an angry rush. The woman’s cheeks had heated considerably, and small flames erupted in her palms. As a precaution, Akemi cast her orb, and lifted it to her side. Pyre took it as a provocation and raised her own hands in a martial position, schooling her tremors.

“Whatever,” Akemi said, aiming for apathy, but it sounded a whole lot like hurt bitterness. She didn’t have time to process why that was. “If you want to die, then so be it.”

“Guys—wait—” Bamo interjected, fumbling to stand in the middle of them. He turned to Pyre, just as she was about to take Akemi’s invitation. “Pyre. Don’t do this. You could just tell Nocturne that you couldn’t find her. That she ran off. We’ll go off the grid for a while.”

“Not an option, Bamo,” Pyre gritted through her teeth. “Now get out of the way. Unlike Akemi, I don’t get high off of collateral damage.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Akemi fumed, pupils dilating. “Bamo, move.”

“Pyre, whatever Nocturne’s offering you, Akemi can offer something better,” Bamo continued, stalwartly not moving. “We just found an extremely powerful artifact from down in the drotling’s fjord. It’s a rune. A really powerful rune, by the looks of it. It has to be worth millions of silvers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen something like it. It’s some sort of… sacrificial death rune.”

Akemi’s stomach dropped. He didn’t just…

She seethed. “Bamo, I’m actually going to kill you now.”

Pyre had the opposite reaction. Her face dropped, militant anger turning into utter bafflement. After a moment, something seemed to click.

“You didn’t,” she said, voice hoarse.

Akemi hovered the orb upwards, the bloodthirsty insects chopping at the air, ready to eat.

“Take the prize from right under Nocturne’s nose, while he’s off uselessly scouring the countryside?” she said, and a mirthless smile crept up her face. “I sure did. Now, get out of my way. I’m tired of looking at you.”

Akemi moved to fire the orb, when another voice—a foreign voice, speaking in a high, chirping dialect, much like Bamo’s own—interrupted their screaming match.

“Hm. And here I thought I was going to have to deal with the drotlings myself. How convenient.”

A cane pressed into the rubble, and red magic reverberated at the contact. Akemi nearly lost her footing as a small earthquake shuddered through the ground.

Standing a league away, in the ashes of the enclave gate, was a chimera. He was the tallest Akemi had seen, with wrought-iron spikes lining the tips of his wings, and gold caps on his fanged teeth. They reflected the light when he grinned, almost blindingly.

“Thank you for keeping my gift warm, underling,” he said to Bamo, pupils enlarging as he stepped toward them. “But your job is done now. Time to hand it over.”

Viscount Dimitri Basomolav | Level 65 Blood Arcanist