Soulburned : The School of Souls

Chapter 7 : Ill-advised Heroics

The fire raged around Thale. The fires created from Soul-Eater's rampage would consume the wood buildings quickly. There were mere minutes before this building was nothing but dust and ash. At this rate, there was maybe an hour before the entire district was gone.

It's happening again. Thale panicked internally. He promptly pushed the comparison out of his mind. He had to focus and be in the here and now, not the past.

Someone screamed, the sound distorted in the roaring flames.

"Where are you?" he shouted though the fire. The heat was intense, and just being in the building made Thale's eyes burn and water.

"Up here!" a boy shouted.

Thale glanced around wildly until he found a set of smoke-choked stairs.

"Are you by yourself?!"

"No! My father's collapsed! I can't pick him up!"

"Stay low! Don't breathe the smoke! I'm on my way!"

Thale ran to the stairs, then began slowly crawling up them, careful to follow his own advice and avoid breathing the smoke. He tested each step to ensure it would hold his weight as he crawled. The last thing he needed was to fall through a weakened board and bury himself under a burning house. His body painfully reminded him that he had no business performing these type of heroics. He could already barely breathe from overdrawing his Eros Every movement was excruciating, he was still battered from his ramshackled Mending and poorly transfigured legs.

And if Magnus is right, I'm on borrowed time, he thought, This Eros won't last long.

He shivered just thinking about the paralysis he had induced on himself, despite the heat, and he wasn't looking forward to repeating the experience when Magnus's Eros inevitably ran dry.

"Where are you?!" Thale shouted over the flames, "Keep talking to me!"

"Here!" the boy shouted.

Thale followed the boy's shouts until he came to a jammed door. The roof had collapsed, and the shift in weight had pinned the door to its frame. Thale gave the door a hearty shove, trying to dislodge it, followed by raming shoulder into the stuck wood.

It didn't budge.

Thale reached for his Eros without thinking. A quick Transfiguration to shrink the door would have the doorway clear in a heartbeat.

He froze as his senses contacted the alien source of power, then reminded himself of Magnus's rushed warning.

Don't Draw.

Thale swore, then instead of drawing on his Eros, he drew his short sword.

"Stand back! I'm going to chop through the door!" he swallowed the lump growing in his throat. "It might be load-bearing! Get as far from it as you can, if there's a beam, stand by it! Tell me when you're ready!"

Thale paused a moment, waiting for the boy to move. He was already drenched in sweat and covered in soot.

"Ready!"

Thale slammed the pommel of his sword hard against the door, right next to the metal door knob. It cracked slightly, and something above him shifted, causing hot embers to rain down and singe him. He grimaced, then slammed the pommel against the door again, causing the crack to widen. He repeated this proceses a few times, then flipped his sword around and thrust the tip it into the crack. He began prying and sawing, slowly widening the crack until it was a hole.

He wished he could transfigure his Sword into an ax or machete, either would be infinitely more useful than a short sword.

"He's not breathing!" The boy shouted.

Thale fought back another flashback and continued sawing.

"What's your name?!" Thale shouted in response, continuing to widen the hole.

Just a little more... he thought.

"I'm Oliver! Hurry! Da's not breathing!"

Thale took half a second to wipe his brow, and scrape the sweat off his palms onto his tunic.

"Oliver, I know that this is super scary, but try to stay calm! Place your fingers on the side of your father's neck. Right under his jaw. Do you feel a pulse?"

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There was another tense silence. More embers fell onto Thale's back and he winched in pain

"Yes! I think so!"

"That's great Oliver!" Thale shouted back through clenched teeth. "Oliver, you're going to need to help him breathe. Tilt his head back, and pinch his nose closed, take a deep breath, Not of smoke! Then exhale into his mouth. Count to ten, then repeat! Do not stop until I get to you! You're doing great!"

Thale began chopping wildly at the door, now splitting off large chunks of wood. The roof groaned ominously.

"I'm coming in!" Thale shouted.

He slid the sword through the gap, then squeezed through the gap. It was tight, and he scraped his check against the splintered wood, drawing blood. The floor was hot, and Thale could see through cracks in the floor that the fire was getting progressively worse.

Void!

It was no sooner than he had clambered to his knees, that Thale heard the roof cave-in behind him. Thatch and wood from the flaming roof now blocked the hole Thale had carved into the door.

Thale growled in frustration, then moved over to the two prone figures in the room.

Oliver was younger than Thale had anticipated, maybe six or seven. The soot covered boy was hunched over his father, dutifully performing rescue breathing. The unconcious man was most likely in his fifties.

"Don't stop." Thale said calmly, then placed a hand on the unconcious man's chest.

Don't. Draw.

I'm not exactly drawing, am I? He thought, Just moving it into my hand to shift my sense of perception. Like turning your head to see a different part of the room.

The alien Eros resisted his command, but did eventually comply.

He could feel the man's lungs inflating as Oliver exhaled, and Thale was able to confirm that the man's heart was indeed still beating. The man's Eros, significantly weaker than that of a Mage but still present, was absent from the area around his lungs. This was wrong. In non-mages, the Eros was equally spread throught the body. It was the portion of one's Soul that was the body.

Thale focused on the man's listless Eros.

Maybe I can shift it?

He thought of Magnus's spell, the one that he used to transfer his own Eros into Thale. That was squarely outside what Thale was capable of. It certainly hadn't been part of curriculum he had studied at the Iris.

But Thale wasn't planning on infusing the man with Eros just shift what the man already haad back into position.

He concentracted. His perception of the man's soul grew more and more clear the longer he focused on it, and he did his best to drown out the sounds of raging fire, battle, and Oliver's increasingly belaboured breaths.

He could see it, an absense of energy. A small area of tissue void of Eros. Carefully, Thale pushed a strand of his borrowed Eros into the unconsious man and carefully coased and proded the inert energy back into place.

"Da!" Oliver shouted.

The man choughed violenly.

Thale forced himself to remain focused. Just as slowly as he had poured it into the man, he reeled his Eros back in, careful not to expend any in the process. He gasped as it snapped back into place, impossibley feeling even more drained that he had before. His head swam. He may not have drawn from his Soul, but there was definitely less of Magnus's Eros to go around then there had been.

Outside the burning house, the Soul-Eater roared, snapping Thale back to attention.

"We gotta go! Is there anyone else in the house?!"

"No!" Oliver said.

Thale cast a glance around the smoke filled room. Fire was beginning to wear through the floorboards and creep up the walls, causing the whole room to begin to sag.

Void, what now? Thale thought, he hadn't exactly formulated an exit plan.

"Window, next room." Oliver's father croaked. The man's eyes were bloodshot, and his breathing was ragged, but he was managing to find his footing.

Thale picked his sword off the smoldering floor and began hacking at the wall, making short work of the increasingly unstable wood.

Once the newly carved doorway was large enough, the man scooped Oliver into his arms, stumbled into the adjacent burning room, and promptly threw himelf back first through the window, cradling Oliver closely to his chest.

Thale followed unceremonously, landing hard onto the cobblestones next to Oliver and his father. The man was clearly winded and dazed from his fall, but still consious. Thankfully he still appeared lucid. Oliver was unharmed, but visibly terrified.

Fires were raging along the main roadway, and all up and down the district people were fleeing there homes and flooding into the street.

"Get into the tunnels!" Thale shouted over the din, "Under the warehouses!"

"I know where they are!" Oliver chimed, "Me and my friends have-"

The Soul-Eater roared, then one of the Tower Guardian's flew through the air like a ragdoll narrowly missing Thale and his companions, then smashed through one of the walls of the ruined house that Thale had just left.

"Show your Da, then start helping as many people as you can find them!"

Without waiting for confirmation, Thale rushed back in the burning house.

It was so much worse than before. The upper floor of the house had completely caved in, turning what was once a home into a framed bonfire.

The Tower Guardian lay in a heap, impaled in several places by burnt and splintered beams. Thale recognized him as the first Guardian to engage the beast, not Magnus. Blood trickled from the man's mouth, and Thale was immediatly overwhelmed by the sickening smell of burning flesh. He was burned from head to toe, and not from just being in the building, clearly he had taken a fire blast from the Accursed.

The man's greatsword, one of the Shrive Blades hung loosely from the man's limp grip, it's Void-fire already begining to dim.

Thale rushed to the large man's side and quickly felt for a pulse. Already Thale was forcing Eros into his hands in preperation to attempt another shoddy Mend spell, Magnus's instructions be damned.

The man was dead, had likley been dead before he crashed through the building.

Outside, the Soul-Eater continued to roar and rampage.

Void help me...

Thale closed the Tower Guardian's eyes, then picked up the late man's sword.