“El? Is that you?” a voice asked behind her, and El rotated in the air.

“Sol?” El asked. “How did I get here?”

“That is very close to what I was just about to ask you,” Sol answered, standing from where he knelt beside a bucket of water, the pendant El had seen in his room dangling from around his neck.

Guess he was worried about not having locked doors too.

“I was on the other side of the mountains, lost in a storm,” El said and shook her head, snow falling to the floor with the gesture. “Uh… sorry,” she said, looking from the snow on the clean floor to Sol.

But he didn’t even notice, his eyes locked on the snow.

El gently dropped to the ground and doused her wings, the snow on her shoulders practically demanding to be brushed off. It wasn’t level, with more on her left shoulder than her right, and only the stark look on Sol’s face kept El from evening it off. Or removing it completely.

“Look, Sol, I’m really sorry about your floor, but I’ve got to…” El trailed off when Sol looked up and met her gaze, his eyes deep and dark. Bottomless.

“I see,” he said. “You lost your Spark. Briefly. Somehow you got it back, but the connection remains.”

El blinked. “The connection? To what?” she asked.

“The connection to…” Sol started.

“Oh, this is just perfect,” Oril’s voice carried from the door to the room. “I’d say we have to stop meeting here like this, but I just can’t complain. Looks like we found our next volunteer, boys.”

El tore her eyes away from Sol. There was something there, something she needed to know, but turned to Oril. He wasn’t alone. More than just Loaker and Bills at his side this time too. Four other Firestorm stood with him, all from Nexin’s year.

“What are you doing here, Oril?” she asked. “How did you get back from the front so quickly?”

“Never went,” he said. “Got special orders from the Church, and an offer to join the Ignitio. Not that it’s any of your business really. And, not like it will matter in an hour. Take her,” Oril said, and pointed at El. “Unconscious is fine, but don’t kill her. Her Spark won’t be any help if she’s dead.”

“Oril, what are you doing?” El said, but put her hands on the electrum hilts at her waist.

“Just following orders,” he said with a sadistic smile.

“Not something you’re known for,” El mumbled, her eyes following the six Firestorm slowly spreading out around her.

“Well, these ones serve my purpose,” Oril answered, though he didn’t join the mob moving on El. “Here we were looking for the few cadets we missed, and we come across a full Firestorm who deserted her post? Oh, really, this is going to be fun.”

“I didn’t desert,” she said, and drew an electrum hilt in each hand. The other Firestorm in the room did the same thing. “Sol, get behind me,” she said out of the side of her mouth.

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“No,” Sol said with a shake of his head. “This time, I will protect you.”

“Sparkless is going to protect Corporal Coward?” Loaker asked, and changed his path from El to Sol. “This should be a treat. Let’s see you protect anything, you worthless little piece of…”

Loaker’s words cut off abruptly, as did the end of his tongue, as Sol’s uppercut took him hard on the chin.

Blood arced in the air while Loaker lifted clear off the ground and flipped head over heels from the force of Sol’s fist. He hit the ground face-first with a wordless thump, unconscious before he landed.

El stood frozen. Loaker’s flame armor should’ve protected him. Even El, with the full power of her Spark, wouldn’t have been able to land a blow like that.

Was Sol really Sparkless?

“Don’t just stand there,” Oril finally said, breaking the silence. “That was just a lucky hit!”

Lucky? No, that was way beyond lucky, and El took a step back, that same sense of dread from Oril and Sol’s earlier encounter settling on the room.

Bills moved first, his flaming sword igniting to life and swinging for Sol’s exposed neck. Without flame armor, it would decapitate him in a breath.

If it hit him. Which it didn’t.

Sol ducked under the blade like it moved in slow motion, then rolled around and snapped his hip.

Bills got his arm up to block the kick, but what did he need to fear from it anyway?

CRAAAAACK.

The sound of his arm breaking filled the air, and then suddenly Bills was on the other side of the room, another CRAAAAACK as his body cratered the reinforced training wall.

That was apparently enough for the other four Firestorm, and they all converged on Sol in a rush.

Too bad for them.

Sol moved almost lazily, simply not standing where the Firestorm swung, like he could predict the paths of their weapons. Flaming weapons arced and stabbed, a chaotic storm, but always a step behind him. He raised his arm, and one of the Firestorm seemed to walk into it, except the impact broke the man’s nose and sent him tumbling backward.

A spin and Sol was behind the only woman of the group, his arms around her waist. Up and over, he bridged his back, and the back of the woman’s head smashed against the hard floor, her legs twitching and then stilling as Sol rolled to his feet.

The last two Firestorm around Sol took a step back and shared a nervous glance. Yeah, that wasn’t going as planned. Both of their faces screwed up as the same thought must’ve gone through their heads, and the one on the left gave a subtle nod. All the signal the other needed, both lunged in, their blades swinging around, one for Sol’s neck and the other for his waist.

And Sol wasn’t getting out of the way this time. Because he couldn’t?

No, because he didn’t need to.

Quick as vipers his hands appeared in front of the fiery blades, stopping the weapons in their tracks as sure as a grown man would stop a child. Flames danced and roared between his fingers, instead of cutting clean through them, and Sol met the eyes of each man.

In response, they yelled in his face and poured power into their weapons, the flames bucking and thrashing like trapped snakes.

Why was this so familiar? Why had…?

No. It couldn’t be.

But it was. In a flash that chilled El even through her flame armor, the Spark-powered blades froze solid, and the two men collapsed to their knees. Sol broke the blades with a twist of his wrists, and then slammed those same icy shards straight into the two men’s chests.

Just like that, frost raced across their bodies until they were entombed in ice.

Daggers of ice formed in Sol’s hands, one for each of the four other Firestorm on the floor, and with a few flicks, ice encased them as well. His head, slowly, finally turned toward El, and she involuntarily took a step back.

Was she next?

No. He was looking past her. Oril!

El twisted sideways to keep Sol in her field of vision, and looked for Oril. But the man was nowhere to be seen.

“Who’s the coward now?” Sol asked.

El turned back to him, swords igniting in her hands. “It’s you,” she hissed.

“I’ve always been me,” Sol said in reply and shrugged.

“How could you do this? To us? To me?” she finished in a yell, all her anger at losing Nexin boiling to the surface. She’d… liked Sol. Even trusted him. And he’d taken the most important things in her life away from her. “I won’t let you take any more…”

“El, you need to stop. You need to listen to me,” he said, but she was done listening.