Nightmares of fire plagued Samuel’s mind. Of his mother’s body rolling into an oven large enough to fit a human being. Flames licked at her skin, melting it away down to bone and then eating some of that away, too. The old metal from a hip replacement melted from the heat, pooling together in small silvery mirrors under the ash. The fire was all-consuming, stealing all that remained of his mother away from him.

She made the decision to be cremated, rather than subjecting her remaining loved ones to the sight of her lifeless body pumped with chemicals and caked in makeup. Her ashes were placed in an intricately designed ceramic urn and displayed in a sparsely filled room of mourners. The service was somber and brief.

Sometime after the few remaining individuals paid their final respects and left, Samuel's father, Marc, arrived. He stood at the rear of the room wearing an ill-fitting suit, his hands wringing in feigned humility. But Samuel knew the truth. This man had torn their family apart after Lucas's death, turning to alcohol and abusing both Samuel and his mother. When he finally left for another woman, it was a relief.

Samuel took his mother’s urn and left the funeral without speaking a word to his father. He wished it had been Marc who had been wheeled into the oven of fire instead of his mother.

Rage overpowered Samuel’s grief that day. He clung to it. And when he fulfilled his mother’s wishes by spreading her ashes at various places she had loved in childhood, he did it with that anger for his father burning.

Samuel connected with that flame that ate his mother. He could—would—become that flame to find and eat his father. Reduce that ugly man to ashes.

----------------------------------------

“Wake up, you bloody idiot!”

A stinging slap and an overload of adrenaline slammed Samuel back into consciousness. He had a brain-splitting headache and his entire body tingled. He shot up and found himself nose-to-nose with Blythe. Her glare bore into him with evident hatred.

Behind Blythe on the floor Ned’s head rested in a pool of unnaturally dark blood. The stablemaster’s body was still wedged in the window, his open neck occasionally dropping globs of thick fluid to the floor.

“Did you do that?” Samuel asked, his voice hoarse.

“It took me three years to cultivate and buy that firestone, you thieving bastard!” Blythe shouted, shaking Samuel. “Three years spent a thousand miles south of here in the Mother-forsaken Ashlands. Three years breaking my back and calling in a dozen favors for that loathsome little rock. I was going to make a fortune off it in Moldren. Do you have any idea how rare a firestone is this far north?”

Oscar sat in a chair near the bar, watching the two with a concerned expression. He held a one-and-a-half-hand sword up half-heartedly between himself and Blythe.

“Have you nothing to say?” Blythe yelled, grief in the back of her throat causing her voice to catch.

“You left us,” Samuel muttered weakly.

“Of course I left you! We were surrounded by demons on open ground! We’d be dead if we fought out there!”

“I—did you kill them all?”

“That doesn’t—“she retorted before she stopped and collected herself. “You owe me a debt. What is your name?”

“Samuel.”

“And your father’s?”

That rage entered Samuel’s heart again, igniting that eternal flame of hatred.

“Why do you ask?” he bit out.

“Names bring power,” she answered cryptically.

Not willing to speak his father’s name, Samuel gave Blythe his mother’s.

“Molly.”

Blythe raised an eyebrow at that. “Your father must be proud, as you desecrate his name. Samuel, Son of Molly, I swear on the memory of the Five Makers below and the Sweet Mother beyond, you will pay me what is owed. In this life. I don’t care a whit about the next.”

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“The stone’s right there,” Samuel argued, eyeing the dull red stone sitting amidst the dirt. “I didn’t steal anything!”

“The magic’s snuffed out of it, you idiot child,” she said, poking his chest. “It’s in here now.”

“I’m not a child,” Samuel retorted, feeling more like a child then than he had in years. Blythe reminded him of his particularly malicious 2nd-grade teacher, scolding him for tapping his pencil too much or looking out the window too much. That woman had been out to get him from the start.

“Where did you make the brand, idiot child?” She asked, ignoring him.

Blythe pulled down the collar of Samuel’s shirt to look at his collarbone. She traced a finger over his skin, looking for something and not finding it.

Samuel felt a heat growing in his thumb. Blythe noticed and snatched up his hand. She looked the pad of his thumb over and let out a long breath. The etching of the flame that was once on the stone was burned into his skin as if a brand, marring Samuel’s thumbprint. Blythe brushed her finger over the burn and sat back onto her knees, her anger deflating.

“The thumb’s an unorthodox placement,” She remarked, her voice taking on a distant monotone. “Too easily chopped off.”

She made a chopping motion with her hand.

“No brand, no magic…” she said, almost to herself.

"I didn’t mean to do anything… I have no idea what a firestone even is.” Samuel answered honestly, trying to wiggle out of the guilt growing in his chest.

Blythe slapped him across the face, harder this time, her hand leaving a buzzing sting behind on Samuel’s cheek.

“How dare you?” she spat. “That makes it worse!”

Samuel felt hot. Felt his anger transforming to literal heat.

“Never do that again,” he warned.

Blythe laughed.

“Oh no, whatever will I do? The idiot child who has no idea how to use his magic is threatening me.”

She raised a hand to slap Samuel again but Samuel caught her by the wrist. She was strong. Far stronger than Samuel. Anger boiled within him as he struggled to hold her hand away from striking him.

Heat rose in his chest. Heat that needed an outlet. Needed to get out of him. Out of him. A river of lava roiled by in his ears, whispering him on. Stoking the flame within him. He gripped Blythe’s wrist with white knuckles even as she pushed her hand pushed toward his face.

“Never…” Samuel breathed, anger so overwhelming he couldn’t finish his sentence.

Smoke rose from out from under his hand clutching Blythe’s wrist with the smell of burning flesh. Blythe cried out and wrenched her arm away from Samuel’s hand. The heat—and blinding anger—within Samuel vanished and he shivered at its absence.

Blythe clutched her wrist. An oval, the exact size of Samuel’s thumb pad, was burned into her skin, already blistered. She gave Samuel an appraising look.

“If you don’t even know what a firestone is, how in the Five Makers did you do that?”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Samuel breathed out, literally exhaling excess heat. “But never lay your hands on me again.”

“You owe me a debt.”

“Fine,” Samuel snapped. “I owe you a debt and I will pay it back, but you will never strike me again. Agreed?”

She considered.

“Agreed,” Blythe said. “Did you steal anything else?”

“No,” Samuel said.

“Hardtack,” Oscar called out.

Samuel glared at the man and then turned back to Blythe.

“Hardtack,” Samuel confirmed.

Blythe picked her backpack up onto her back. She reached behind herself and pulled a scroll out. Samuel’s eyes widened in shock.

“Is that a Player Scroll?” he asked.

“A what?”

“A Player Scroll,” he repeated, summoning his own scroll from behind his back to show her.

“You daft?” Blythe asked. “That’s a Maker’s Scroll.”

“Do you know what The Core is? Are you from Earth?”

“Give me a moment,” she said, pouring over her scroll’s contents. “Everything seems to be here. You’re lucky you didn’t meddle with my Naraskan spider.”

“Do you know what The Core is?” Samuel repeated, growing frustrated with Blythe once again.

“The Core? Never heard of it.”

Samuel shook his head. “It’s the thing that brought us here. To this world. Speaks to us sometimes. In our head.”

Blythe looked at Samuel with a blank expression, and Samuel felt his ears burn. He replayed back the words he had said in his mind and felt like he was turning into a crazy person.

“Do you mean the Sweet Mother?”

“No…” Samuel said, thinking. “It literally brought us here, Oscar and I, from another world.”

Blythe’s mouth hung open in shock. “Are you saying you two are sojourners? World travelers?”

“I guess so?” Samuel replied, unsure.

The woman regarded Samuel and Oscar with renewed scrutiny, distaste giving way to a hint of awe.

“What do you mean by sojourner?”

“A sojourner is—”

Oscar cleared his throat, cutting Samuel off.

“Uh… guys?”

Samuel and Blythe glared at Oscar. His face was almost paper white, a look of horror in his eyes. He was pointing behind them. At the open doorway behind Blythe.

Just inside stood Jon flanked by two other zombies.

Samuel sighed.

“You always gotta lock the door,” he said to no one in particular.