They’d… lost. No, lost wasn’t a strong enough word for what’d just happened. They’d gotten obliterated. When was the last time the Firestorm had been on the losing end of a battle? A few stalemate’s with Guld, sure, but an outright loss?

El shook her head and gazed down at the army crawling below her. They hadn’t stilled after the knight’s display of power, and instead spread through the ruins of the old city. Why? What were they looking for?

Of course! El did a quick count of the icy tombs below her. There were other Firestorm survivors besides her. But with all the lizards on the roofs watching for flaming wings, they had to be hiding. Safe as she was high above, she needed to do something to give them an opportunity to escape. A distraction? Yes, but… something that wouldn’t put her at risk. Faled had been right about one thing; she needed to get this intel back to the capital.

El’s eyes fell on the knight standing below her, barely moving as the scaled army spread and spread, still more rushing from within the winter wall. He had to be the leader. Could she do more than just cause a distraction? Their flames hadn’t done anything to him before, but maybe that was because they just weren’t strong enough.

Switching electrum foci, El brought her bow to bear again, pulling back on the flaming string and willed an arrow into existence. Aiming straight down at the knight, El hung in the air, her wings spread wide, and the flaming arrow growing in intensity with every passing second.

She poured her power into it, and larger and larger it grew, from an arrow to a spear, to a ballista bolt, to an angry, flaming spike the size of one of the lizards. It practically roared in her ears, a tamed tornado waiting to be unleashed, engulfing her entire arm and shoulder, and mingling with the flames of her wing.

The power she forced into the “arrow” was exhausting, but she felt no heat. It wasn’t even warm, thanks to the Spark in her chest. The knight wouldn’t be able to say the same.

Hopefully.

“Let’s see you try and freeze this,” El forced between clenched teeth, and let the arrow fly.

It practically leapt out of her hands, the force of its release kicking her fifteen feet further up into the air, and howled as it rocketed down.

Picking up speed as it went, the flaming missile hit the ground barely two seconds after El let it go; just enough time for the knight to notice the sound and tilt his head back to look up.

The flames washed over him with a deafening BOOM, and a blazing sphere erupted outward from the epicenter, engulfing nearby lizards and turning them to ash as it expanded. Like a second sun had made its home in the small town, it incinerated everything within its circumference.

Ten feet.

Twenty feet.

Thirty feet.

Forty feet.

And then it stopped just as suddenly as it began, the searing glow replaced by the cool chill of a giant globe of ice.

“No way…” El breathed, the bow in her hand dissipating from fatigue. Her wings barely held her aloft, and the primal part of her brain told her she needed to get out of there while she still could. But she couldn’t just leave. She had to see if the knight had survived that.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

A single echoing crack, and fractures raced all along the surface of the icy globe, flakes falling to the ground as the lizards backed away. The fissures spread and snaked further and further, until with a great sigh, the sphere split into five giant shards and fell away, the knight standing at the center.

He’d not only survived; he looked completely unharmed.

And he definitely saw her.

The knight raised his left hand above his head, fingers spread and palm up. A brief, blue glow, and suddenly a spear of ice shot straight at El.

Still too drained from her own attack, El’s body didn’t respond quickly enough to the spear aimed straight her for her heart. She’d never be able to avoid it.

“Corporal!” a voice said at the same time something slammed into her.

El grunted from the impact, but she didn’t feel any pain. Was she dead so quickly she didn’t feel anything? Wait, if she was dead, how was she wondering if she was dead?

She opened eyes she didn’t realize she’d closed and found Dayne’s strong arms wrapped around her, and terrain whipping by below. The streets swarming with lizards quickly gave way to the deserted city they’d first found. Then, just like that, the buildings were gone, replaced by open fields and a large forest to the east.

“…okay there, Corporal?” a voice, Nidina’s voice, said in her ear. Their communications were working again!

“El, say something, El!” Laze’s voice. “Did you kill her Dayne? You better not have killed her!”

“I’m… fine…” El said weakly, thought maybe fine wasn’t the best way to describe how she felt.

“Can you fly?” Dayne asked her.

She met his eyes and gave a small nod.

He carefully let her go without slowing, and El let her momentum carry her until they were far enough apart she could ignite her wings without bathing him in flame. Sure, it wouldn’t hurt him, but it was the courteous thing to do.

Why was she worried about being courteous after what had just happened?

“I heard Laze and Nidina, and of course Dayne,” El said and looked left and right, finding the three of them in formation with her. “Who else have we got?”

No reply.

El rolled in the air, searching for somebody, anybody, else who’d survived.

“Just us,” Laze said. “A couple from Esis’s unit shoved us under cover when things went sideways. Told us to hunker down and wait for an opening to escape. They drew the lizards and… that thing in the armor… away from us. Still, with so many around, I didn’t think we’d have a chance…”

“Then you did hit him with a star,” Nidina said, her voice husky. “At least, that’s what it looked like. Like you pulled a star out of the sky and dropped it on him.”

“Teth?” El asked, though she should know the answer.

“He took a spear for me,” Nidina choked out the words. “Didn’t even see it coming, and he just shoved me out of the way. Hit him square in the chest,” Nidina tapped the center of her jacket. “Pinned him to the wall like some kind of bug, then encased him in a block of ice. Gone. Just like that.

“I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye. Or thank you…” Nidina’s voice broke into a heartbreaking sob. “Stupid, rhyming bastard,” she whispered.

“Faled… Faled saved me the same way,” El told them. “They were good soldiers, good people, both of them.”

“That means you’re in charge,” Dayne pointed out.

Great.

“What do we do, El?” Laze asked her. “Do we go back for them? For Faled and Teth?”

“No,” El said too quickly. “Look, maybe I’m scared, and this is just an excuse, but we need to get what just happened back to the capital. We need to warn them. If that army reaches Balacin, well, I’m sure you can imagine. Our Spark, our flames, weren’t enough. We need a better plan.

“Any objections?” El asked and looked at the three remaining members of her wing. Her three remaining friends. Burn it, how’d it come to this?

“You’re in charge,” Dayne said.

“No objections here,” Laze added.

“Nidina?” El asked when the woman didn’t answer.

“They need to pay for what they did to my brother,” she said. “But we can’t do that on our own. So, no, no objections from me. But I’ll be on the front line when we hit them back. You got that?”

El opened her mouth, but didn’t speak. How would she feel if she’d lost Nexin like that? “And I’ll be right there with you,” she finally said.

“Thanks,” Nidina said.

“So, straight back home?” Laze asked.

El scanned their surroundings, even going so far as to flip around so she was flying backward to look at Helibak. The city wasn’t even a dot on the horizon anymore, they’d flown so far.

“Let’s land for a few minutes,” El said. “Get some food, something to drink, a little rest, then burn the rest of the daylight in the air.”