“What did you get us into, El?” Laze asked, late in the afternoon three days later.

El and her three wing mates followed a good two miles behind the four full wings they’d been sent with.

Those other wings had made it very clear they didn’t want anything to do with El’s unit. Their unit would be tolerated, barely, but they were to keep their distance. They weren’t even allowed to camp near the other Firestorm, though they’d only rested a few hours each night.

The group’s leader, Sergeant Milyer, had set a grueling pace.

“It’s not like I asked for this assignment,” El replied so only Laze, Dayne, and Nidina could hear her.

“But, why are we here?” Laze asked. “It’s not like we’re welcome. What in the Blaze did we do to piss everybody off, anyway?”

“I don’t know the answer to either of those questions,” El said. “Maybe they want to prove us wrong by finding this lizard army?”

“You think it’s normal, red newts?” Laze asked.

“Maybe? I mean reports came in of this army passing by one of our infantry groups, right? You’d think they’d have mentioned if it was blue and killing them,” El answered. Was this army even connected to what they’d run into down in Salid? “Nidina, did you hear anything before we deployed? Did your parents mention anything?” Nidina’s family worked in information. If anybody knew anything, it would be them.

No response.

“Nidina?” El asked again and glanced in her friend’s direction.

“Sorry, what?” Nidina asked, her voice hoarse.

“Hey, you okay?” Laze asked.

“I… I just…” Nidina started but didn’t finish her sentence.

El looked ahead to the other wings, everything seemed normal up there. “What’s on your mind, Nidina?”

“Teth,” Nidina said. “I… miss him. I really miss him.”

“We all miss him,” El said. “It’s hard, and nobody expects you to get over it this quickly.”

“But that’s the worst part,” Nidina sniffled. “I was over it. I… don’t get it, but while we were grounded, I didn’t even think about him. Neither did my parents. We all just went on like normal. Like nothing was missing. Like Teth wasn’t…” she choked off. “How could we do that?”

“It wasn’t just me?” Laze whispered.

“What did you say, Laze?” El asked.

“I didn’t want to say anything… it was too… I was ashamed,” Laze said quietly. “We got back, then they threw us right into that interrogation, then… you know, we met in the cafeteria. But, after that, I don’t know, they just didn’t cross my mind. Not once the whole time we were back. I just went on like things were normal, like there weren’t eleven of my closest friends missing…”

“What are you two talking about?” El asked. “How can you not miss them? We’ve known them for years.”

“No, it’s not that I don’t miss them, it’s that I didn’t miss them.”

“What does that even mean?” El asked, but was she really any different? She’d gone sparring and moped in her room about being grounded, but none of that had been centered around the loss of her friends. Just about being grounded. What the Blaze?

“This morning, when I woke up, it was like there was a hole in my heart where Teth should’ve been,” Nidina explained. “All the feelings I should’ve felt came rushing out, like they’d been damned up. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“How could that even—” El started.

“Looks like one of the scouts found something,” Dayne interrupted. “Incoming, northwest.”

El looked where he said, and sure enough, a pair of flaming wings streaked in the direction of the lead wings at top speed. Why was the scout coming back? Couldn’t they have just… oh burn it.

“Guys, I think we might be getting close to a storm,” El said. No response. She gave it a few more seconds, still nothing, then raised her fist and brought herself to a full stop.

The other three glided in close to her, and from the looks on their faces, they’d figured it out too.

“Storm?” Dayne asked, practically shouting to be heard over the wind at their altitude.

“Seems that way,” El said. “Scout must not have been able to reach us over comms, so they came back.”

“What do you think they’ll do?” Nidina asked. “Never mind, they’re blindly following the scout despite their magic not working. What the Blaze is a storm doing all the way up here?”

“Maybe it isn’t a storm?” Laze offered. “It might be something else interfering with our comms.”

“Seems like too much of a coincidence,” El said. “Come on, let’s see where this goes. Stay on your toes though. We’re all going home together.”

She waited for the other three to salute, then turned to the northwest and raced off after the distant wings. They hadn’t even bothered sending somebody to let El’s group know what was going on. Seriously, what had they done to deserve that kind of treatment?

About a mile later, El watched five sets of wings descend from the group to the ground below. The scout and the four wing sergeants? Protocol dictated she go ahead and leave her wing to keep an eye out. Well, not like the other wings were strictly following protocols, so she waved for her friends to follow, and arced down to where the others had landed.

“…tracks lead straight west,” the scout was saying to the four sergeants. “They can’t be more than a day or two old.”

El hovered above the ground scarred with tracks, but didn’t land. There had to be hundreds of sets of tracks. Thousands. On the open plains, like they were, it would’ve been impossible to miss them. Whoever they were, they weren’t hiding.

“Okay, we’re going after them,” Sergeant Milyer said to the other three sergeants, then turned and looked right at El. “Just stay in the back where it’s easier to run away. We’ll show you how real Firestorm deal with newts.”

“Aren’t you worried about our communications?” El asked. “It could mean trouble.”

“Just a glitch with the magic. Happens sometimes,” he said and ignited his wings. “Let’s kill us some newts!” he added and jetted up to join his wing. The other three turned dirty looks in El’s direction, then followed the first sergeant.

“Have you ever heard about the magic glitching?” Nidina asked. “I sure haven’t. Not other than… you know.”

“No,” El said. “Doesn’t matter though. I hope we’re wrong about what’s happening here, but if we’re not, we need to be careful. The lizards’ range is limited. Their breath reaches maybe fifty feet pretty reliably, but their spears seemed accurate up to about five times that. If we engage, ranged bombardment from up high only.”

“I don’t know if that’ll be an option,” Nidina said as the Firestorm above them collectively angled after the tracks. “I checked the maps before we came out this way. If we’re where I think we are, it’s dense forest just over that hill there,” she said and pointed to the west.

“I don’t like the sounds of that at all,” El said. “Plays to the newts’ strengths and negates most of ours.”

“Orders?” Dayne asked.

El considered a moment. Burn it. “As much as I don’t like how they’re treating us, I won’t just abandon those jerks if we can help. Engage if you have to, but preferably at a range, and only if you have an escape route. If things turn, get out of there. This will be our rendezvous if we need to retreat. Questions?”

Three salutes were her answer.

“Let’s go,” El said and flew after the Firestorm who’d disappeared behind the hill.

She angled up first, to get a good look at things from above, but like Nidina had said, a sea of bushy green treetops spread out before her, the last of the Firestorm just then zipping inside its borders.

Burn it. They weren’t being careful at all. Had she been that overconfident too?

El poured on the speed as she raced for the tree line, and not even ten seconds later, three cones of flame burst through the canopy, incinerating all the green in their paths.

There! That was her entry point! El changed her descent and angled for the newly opened breach in the treetops, charred leaves still smoking around the holes.

That flame wasn’t Firestorm, it was too… raw. Which meant newts. Red newts. They could beat red newts.

El passed the edge of the forest, skimming along the treetops so close she could reach out and pluck leaves if she wanted, and zeroed in on one of the smoking holes, miles of green stretching out beyond it.

And then, just like that, the green vanished, swallowed whole by a solid wall of falling snow a hundred and fifty feet ahead of her. White extended north and south as far as the eye could see, but El didn’t have time to worry about it, she was at the hole in the canopy, and dove inside.

Out came her shield while her sword sizzled to life as a crossfire of… well, fire, greeted her. Red newts swarming the ground between the trees ahead of her breathed out wide cones of flames that engulfed everything they touched. Firestorm whizzed through the treetops, ignoring the blistering breath attacks, and laid into enemy troops with flaming arrows or burning swords.

Already in full retreat, the lizards’ weapons had no effect on the Firestorm they managed to catch. Flame armor absorbed the fiery breath and deflected the heavy but primitive weapons. The battle had barely started, and it was already a rout, with only small pockets of resistance still fighting back.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

One such group, five lizards strong, fought below, and El’s combat instincts took over.

She dodged left, even though she didn’t have to, as a spear cut the air where she’d been, and weaved behind a group of large trees. The newts would be watching for her flaming wings to reappear somewhere above, so she doused them the second she was hidden from view and let gravity take her.

Boots skidding on fallen leaves when she hit the ground, El twisted her body and flared her wings, launching herself along the ground like an arrow straight for the lizard group. Maybe they saw the flash from her wings, but she hit them before they could react, their attention still aimed above.

Her momentum slammed her shield into the face of the first lizard so hard the sound of fracturing bone carried over the din of battle, and ricocheted her straight into the next. The second lizard’s body toppled to the ground at the same time as the first’s, its neck opened from a flick of her sword.

El hit the ground and rolled to her feet as the other three newts turned her way, bringing their weapons to bare.

Too slow!

A flare of her wings got her inside the guard of one, and her sword easily punched a hole through its heavy scales. It fell, chest smoking, while El leapt spinning into the air and flared her wings a second time. The tight rotation of her jump kept the thrust from throwing her in any one direction, but the unfortunate lizards couldn’t say the same.

The spiraling gout of flame washed over them with the force of a battering ram and hurled them in opposite directions to crash into, and through, nearby trees.

El let gravity pull her back down to the ground and turned to go after the lizard on her right. Dayne was already there, doing the job for her. Nidina, meanwhile, ended the suffering of the other.

“Didn’t want any help?” Laze asked as she touched down beside El.

“Sorry,” El said. “I needed to know I could do this. That I wouldn’t hesitate.”

Laze looked at the five lizard bodies as Dayne and Nidina joined them. “Hesitate is the one thing you didn’t do,” she said just for El.

“It’s a massacre,” Nidina said, either not hearing or pretending not to hear the end of Laze and El’s conversation.

“Lizards are in full retreat to the west,” Dayne said. “I saw Milyer and his wing flying ahead to get ahead and cut them off.”

“The west?” El asked. “Did any of you see the storm?”

“Yeah,” Laze said. “You think the newts are trying to escape into it?”

“Only one way to find out,” El said, a dozen pairs of Firestorm wings zipping by overhead. Small battles still raged all around them, but the real fight had already finished, if it could even be called that. Nidina was right, it was shaping up to be a one-sided slaughter.

Why were these lizards so… so weak… compared to the ones in Salid? Was it something to do with one of those storms?

“Storm can’t be far to the west. Don’t chase the lizards inside. No matter what,” she said and ignited her wings, then took off to the west, the others close behind.

Charred and smoking lizard bodies covered the ground where’d they’d vainly tried to put up a fight.

El hadn’t even gone fifty feet before she found the lizard army, a writhing mass of bodies so thick they stood scaly shoulder to shoulder. A quick signal to ignore them, she and her wing whipped above until they found the front lines in chaos. Half the lizards seemed to be trying to rush forward, toward where Milyer’s wing had engaged them, while the other half wanted to go back the way they’d come.

Retreat?

“Storm wall,” Dayne said, and El caught sight of the falling white just a dozen feet past where Milyer’s forces ground their lizard opponents into meat.

That close to escape, and they were hesitating? Were they that scared of the Firestorm?

The answer to the question came bursting out of the storm, a line of blue newts just like the ones from Salid that hit Milyer’s group from behind like a hammer. So focused on their easy wins over the red newts, the Firestorm didn’t react quickly enough. Within seconds, half of them were already entombed in ice, the others scrambling to get into the air and figure out just what in the Blaze was going on.

“Supporting fire!” El shouted, ignited her bow, and pulled up short. “Watch for return fire,” she ordered and unleashed a barrage of arrows. Flaming bolts lanced through the air and into the blue lizards, but as before, the wounds were superficial at best.

Had the red lizards been leading them into a trap all along?

No, that wasn’t it at all.

The blue newts’ crushing charge didn’t stop with the Firestorm. They poured out of the storm, hundreds of them, through the thin Firestorm line and straight into the front ranks of the red newts. If possible, they showed even less mercy to their red-scaled brethren than they did to the Firestorm.

Blue claws tore out red throats. Icy spears plunged deep into crimson-scaled chests. Cones of frosty breath froze entire groups solid.

The red newts, for their part, fought just as hard. At first hesitant, they threw themselves headlong at the blue newts when it became apparent there would be no cooperation.

“What the Blaze?” Laze asked. “Who do we shoot at?”

“Enemy of my enemy,” El answered as an icy spear whipped past her face, missing her by mere inches. “Keep aiming for the blue ones, but fall back.”

El and her wing ducked back, alternating between releasing arrows and dodging behind trees or evading ice-tipped projectiles.

Other Firestorm, meanwhile, pushed ahead, still unaware of the real danger ahead of them. They plunged into the lizard army full-tilt, weapons swinging and feeling invincible. Then they found the blue newts, and their weapons didn’t cut as deep. Their armor didn’t deflect the blue weapons.

Sure, the Firestorm carved a hole in the red-army ranks, but that just left them vulnerable to the blues.

“Fall back!” El shouted. “Retreat!” Nobody was listening.

The Firestorm ranks had fallen into chaos, the sergeants all already dead and the ranks spread thin.

“Burn it,” she cursed and turned to her wing mates. “Go, up above the tree line and get to the rendezvous spot.”

“El, what about—” Laze started.

“Go! Now!” El ordered, and mercifully the other three launched straight up and through the canopy, their flaming wings slicing the branches like hot knives through butter.

El hovered while severed branches fell around her. Could that work?

She turned to the front of the battle, the remaining Firestorm struggling to retake the battle’s momentum, and failing miserably. They whipped through the air above their enemy, but the confines of the forest limited their mobility, allowing the lizards to pick them off one by one.

They needed a signal to escape. Time to give them that.

El shifted slightly to the side, lining up her shot, then leaned forward and doused her wings. She dropped maybe a foot before she flared her wings at full power and ignited them as wide as she could. Bursting forward like she’d been launched by a catapult, her wings carved through the trees on both sides of her. Where she’d tried to avoid touching the trees before, expecting resistance, she instead maneuvered to have her wings cut through as many as she could.

“Fall back!” she yelled as she roared past, trees collapsing behind her like a comet’s tail.

Surprised Firestorm bolted out of the way of falling trees, their superior agility the one advantage they still held over the dual newt armies. Cones of flames and frost tried to intercept the plummeting foliage, but only added to the chaos, smoke and weighted branches tangling lizard limbs.

“Go! Fall back!” El shouted again and waved to anybody who looked her way. She didn’t have time to see if they listened though, a group of three Firestorm about to be ambushed by twice as many blue newts straight ahead of her.

If she used the tree tactic, the Firestorm with their backs to her were just as likely to get caught. But, if it worked on the trees, could it work on newts?

El pulled her wings in tight, lanced for the back of the unsuspecting pack of newts, and ignited swords in both her hands. Just before she hit the group, she spread her swords and wings wide, cutting dual lines each of flame across the back two lizards.

As the newts screamed their surprise and pain, El skidded to a stop right in the midst of the group. Maybe… this wasn’t such a good idea. But, she’d already committed.

Using the surprise to her advantage, El ducked low and quickstepped a tight circle, not bothering to aim. Blades and wings scorched blue scales all around her. Arms, legs, bodies, faces, anything she could hit. Like a buzz saw with her at the middle, four new lizard voices joined the two she’d hit on the way in. She cut and scored them each half a dozen times in seconds, but didn’t manage to kill a single one.

Have to hope the Firestorm noticed. Time to get myself to safety.

El doused her wings and halted her spin to take stock of the situation. One of the lizards she’d hit on the way in was on the ground, hands on its singed face. Two were staggering, nasty burns crisscrossing their body, while the final three just looked burning angry.

A lizard on her left thrust lamely with his spear, swollen and burned fingers barely holding the weapon level. El parried the blade aside with the sword in her left hand and spun in with a downward slash of her right. Her flaming blade carved across the lizard’s gut, and through the short sash hanging from its waist.

Oh, how it howled in pain.

Guess that one was male…?

Sensing more than seeing movement behind her, El stepped up on the falling lizard’s knee and leapt into the air, twisting and igniting her wings in the same motion.

Flaming feathers burst outward at face-level to the lizards, slashing those still standing and disrupting their aim. Still, one of the ice-tipped spears almost found its mark, and El barely shifted to the side in time to prevent it from striking her in the shoulder as she took to the air.

The weapon wasn’t completely ineffective though, a sudden weight on her right pulling her down and spiraling her into a large, nearby tree. She grunted at the impact, more surprise than pain, her flame armor protecting her, and tumbled to the ground.

What the Blaze? Something wrong with my wing?

El glanced to her right. Oh yeah, something definitely wrong.

Her entire right wing had frozen solid; the lizard’s spear still embedded deep in the ice. The weapons could even freeze their wings?

El couldn’t peel her eyes away as she doused her wings, the one on the right not simply vanishing as usual, and instead dropping unceremoniously to the ground in its entirety, spear and all.

Her fingers reached forward of their own accord toward the ice…

THUNK, a spear slammed into the tree inches in front of her face. Veins of ice crawled out of the spear tip, freezing bark as it went, and reached for her face like it could smell her.

Time to go. Really, really, time to go.

El rolled opposite the spear, just in time as another spear embedded itself in the tree where her head had been, scrambled to her feet, and dove behind a tree wider than she was.

Twin columns of frosty breath, a fog so thick the individual icy crystals were visible, hit the tree at her back. Cold like stories from the deepest winters washed over her, even though the breath itself didn’t touch her. She pushed as close to the tree as she could while it shuddered and cracked from the sudden temperature drop. Much longer and the tree would freeze straight through, and then her shield would be gone.

But the lizards wouldn’t be able to keep it up long. She’d seen it before. A few seconds at most was how long they could… there! The freezing breath halted, though a thin frost hung in the air, and El dashed forward, leapt into the air, and flared her wings with everything she had.

A terrifying heartbeat of resistance from her right-wing nub, El brought her arms up and braced for her one-sided flare to send her spinning off course into another tree.

BURN, she yelled at her wing in her mind, and it mercifully burst to life only a fraction of a second after the first, launching her through the canopy and into the open air above.

Blue sky, not a cloud to be seen, stretched out to the east, and Laze offered a wave from where she hovered high above the forest top with the remaining Firestorm.

The flare of the wings got El a good three hundred feet above the forest, and as gravity tried to pull her back down, she ignited her wings. Flaming feathers stretched out in both directions, and she breathed a small sigh of relief.

She’d made it. Somehow.

Smoke drifted up from the burning greenery below, and El lifted herself further into the sky. No need to risk a lucky spear reaching her. Even grazing her wing could be enough to bring her down. She turned in the air to find the winter-storm wall, and it stood barely ten feet away from her. She’d gotten that close while fighting the lizards? What would’ve happened if she’d gone in. Oril had come back out okay…

“What were you thinking?” Laze asked, suddenly right beside El. “I thought you were going to be right behind us, but when I turned around… you… you… you could’ve been killed!”

El sheathed the electrum hilt in her right hand, she must’ve dropped the other one in the confusion, and patted the air to calm her aggravated friend.

“They needed my help. I couldn’t just leave them, again,” she said, the last word barely more than a whisper.

“And yet you made us leave? We could’ve helped you.”

“I couldn’t bear to lose you too, Laze,” El said.

“And you think we could bare to lose you anymore?” Laze snapped back. “You’re not the only one who lost friends. And you’re certainly not the only one who doesn’t want to lose more. You ever do that again, ever, and I will seriously make you regret it. You understand me?”

El hovered forward slowly, put her hands on Laze’s shoulders, then gently leaned her forehead against Laze’s. “I understand,” she said. “Thank you for caring.”

Laze nodded against her head, but didn’t say anything.

“How many made it?” El asked. “How many survivors?”

“Ten, that I counted,” Laze answered. “Maybe there’s more down there still…”

El closed her eyes against the answer. Only ten? Out of more than sixty who’d come out. “We can’t go back down there,” El said, opened her eyes, and backed up from Laze. “We’ll take the survivors back to Balacin. Let them tell their story. See if another… loss… makes the generals believe.”

“Then what?” Laze asked.

El didn’t have an answer.