“That’s… not what I was expecting,” El mumbled to herself, but her Spark pulled her toward the torch-like flame, and she hovered forward slowly. No doubt about it, that was the Ember. A stick, maybe an inch and a half thick and two feet long, wrapped in cloth at the top, just like a primitive torch, burned with the eternal flame.

The entire temple, and the wide dish on top of it, had all been built to support the flame. This was that the whole war was about. The cause of thousands of deaths. El’s head swiveled to the massive fortress all around her, and she corrected herself. Millions of deaths.

Well, she couldn’t bring those people back, but she could bring an end to the war, so she hopped up on the dish with the aid of her wings and crouched in front of the Ember.

“You’re coming with me,” she said, grabbed the base of the torch, and lifted it out of its slot in the altar. “That wasn’t so…”

The flame on the end of the torch flared and reached for her, tiny fiery claws extending in a flash to cup her face and head. They ignored her flame armor, passing through without resistance, and sunk into her flesh with a sizzle.

“OBEY ME,” a voice crackled like a bonfire.

El’s Spark flared in her chest while sinuous tendrils of fire reached through her eyes into her brain. Sparking agony raced inside her skull and her muscles spasmed, the Ember vying for control of her body.

“Burn. You,” El hissed back, pulling the Ember away from her face.

The physical action simply wasn’t enough though; this was a God asserting its control after all, and El’s consciousness started to fade.

But then the tendrils reached something in her chest, something in her Spark, the prism of ice, and they withered like dried up weeds. The Ember hissed and recoiled in agony, the tips of its frozen tendrils dropping to the ground.

Should’ve known the Ember would be burning alive.

El’s lungs heaved in air, her body shaking but under her control, and she stared at the quivering flame. The prism of ice, it wasn’t gone after all. Was that how she’d been able to enter the In-Between? Ah, whatever, it’d saved her life.

“You better not try that again,” she said to the Ember, nothing else really to do. She couldn’t leave it behind, so she’d just need to watch out for another attempt at possession. Did it have any other tricks up its sleeve?

A deafening roar shook the temple in answer, knocking El to her knees and triggering her flame armor from the sheer volume. In answer, the Ember in her hand roared back, inside her head, and only the shock and sudden tension in her muscles kept her from dropping it.

“El,” Sol’s voice said, like wind against her ear. “The avatar knows you have the Ember.”

“You don’t say?” El snapped back and got to her feet.

“Go back exactly the way you came,” Sol said, ignoring her sarcasm. “The door to the In-Between is still here. Get the Ember inside. Get it to the cabin. Do what only you can. I will keep the golem occupied.”

“What about the cannons?” El asked.

No answer. Of course not.

El hovered into the air and ignited her second set of smaller wings, and this time they didn’t sputter and die. If anything, they felt stronger than ever. She glanced at the Ember in her hand.

“Oh, did I accidently borrow some of your power?” she asked the flame.

Hatred oozed off the fire in place of heat.

Maybe mocking a god wasn’t the brightest move, but El shrugged and dipped down the stairs. Building speed as she descended, she pulled out of the dive just before the ground and ramped her wings up to full speed. She was going to need as much of a head start as she could get.

The ground zipped by three feet below her, the Ember glowing in her left hand, and her wings burning hot. Twenty feet before the end of the fortress walls, El flared her wings and blasted down the street toward the hanging wall of mist.

THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM echoed behind her as her first flare ended. Right wing nub flaring, El flipped up and to the left, rolling over the cannon fire that shredded the street, then flared both wings and cut down and to the right, under the line of fire that swung back around.

So predictable.

Alternating wing flares, jerking left and right, up then down, she swerved through the fiery javelins constantly trying to intercept her path. Explosions echoed all around her, the concussion of each impact triggering her flame armor, and then she passed into the wall of mist, the world turning a hazy white.

Still she dodged, and still orange flashed around her.

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A heavy THUMP ahead of her, and a fiery claw reached out of a building on the side of street. Double-forged electrum fingers extended to crush her, but Sol flashed past, knocking the hand aside just in time for her get by.

Frustration roared behind her, then vanished within the drumming echo of explosions as the cannon fire reached where the golem had been.

“Sol?” El asked into the wind as she raced down the street, but she couldn’t slow or turn back, not with the ceaseless cannons chasing her.

“Still…here…” he said, and great concussive blasts punctuated his words from above and ahead of El. How had they gotten ahead of her again? “You need to go… faster…”

“Already going as fast as I can,” El grunted, flaring her wings and dodging up into the air before diving right back down between shots, so close the heat stung her face. She had to stay on the street. The door to the In-Between should be any second…

The Pycrin golem and Sol appeared in the mist right ahead of her, a flaming sword the size of a building cutting across to be intercepted by Sol’s ice-covered weapon. Where they met, reality warped, and the ensuing shockwave hit El head-on, stalling her forward momentum. Blinking, she dropped straight down to the ground, while through sheer luck, a dozen flaming javelins shot straight over her head and into the golem.

Bolts that leveled buildings and shredded solid stone hit the flame-enshrouded, double-forged electrum and… did nothing. The golem didn’t even seem to notice, his focus fully on the Stormbearer in front of him.

Again they clashed, the impacts of their weapons flattening the few buildings that remained standing and skidding El backward.

THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM.

El couldn’t stay there.

The great swords parted and then began their collision course anew, and El flared her wings. Straight at the point where the swords would meet.

If her timing was perfect, it would give her the speed she needed. If it wasn’t… well, she wouldn’t be alive to care about it in a second.

The cone of flame shot El forward, but it was immediately clear it wasn’t going to be enough. She’d misjudged. She should’ve cut her smaller wings to add the power to the flare. She wasn’t going to… explosions rocked the ground where she’d been standing, and that little extra lift nudged her through the closing space between the weapons.

From that close, the concussion of the swords meeting hit her in the back like a giant fist, hurling her forward on top of her flare. Even with her smaller wings, she had no control, and she rocketed down the street like an out-of-control meteor.

Black resolved in the mist ahead her while she struggled to rein in her trajectory. The golem again? Nope. Just a wall. A big-ass wall.

El threw her arms in front of her head and braced for impact, fingers tightening around the Ember so she didn’t lose it.

This is going to hurt.

But then it didn’t, and El opened eyes she didn’t know she’d closed just in time to go plowing into the snow. White surrounded her as she skidded along, enough of her momentum stolen by the cold cushion she could take control of her flight with her wings. Arching her back, she gently pulled herself out of the knee-deep snow and looked around.

Massive trees and snow as far as she could see, which wasn’t far in the heavy storm. She’d made it back to the In-Between. She was safe!

“You’re not safe there,” Sol’s voice danced on the snowflakes. “I don’t… how, maybe… of… Ember, but… followed… in,” he said, his voice fading in and out like something was interfering with it.

“What?! Who followed me in?” El asked and rotated in the air. If the golem had followed her, how the Blaze was she supposed to get away from it? No, don’t worry about that. Worry about getting to the cabin. Which way is it?

El picked a direction and… the storm was gone. The trees were gone. Barren earth, cracked and parched, sat where snow had been piled. To her right, an inferno as far as the eye could see, consuming everything. Heat rolled off it in waves, black smoke stretching to the sky and darkening it as sure as night would.

To her left, a snowstorm equally as large as the inferno, the white curtain radiating cold out to meet the heat.

And where they met… El.

The Ember in El’s hand pulled toward the inferno, a longing replacing the hatred she’d felt earlier. Something about it was… home. Comfort. Completeness. She took a step toward it, her own longing for those things swelling in her throat. The inferno would burn away the hurt at losing Nexin. It would make her the hero who returned the final Ember to Pycrin.

The city would celebrate her like no other. Forgotten would be her failures against the blue newts. She’d go down in history as…

…as…

…

Who would write the history? If she returned the Ember, that inferno would engulf the entire world. Its hunger was as clear as its heat, maybe more so.

She wouldn’t be the hero. She was never the hero.

El looked at the Ember in her hand.

All this time, she’d never realized it. She was… the villain. Her entire nation was wrong. Maybe even evil. The things they’d done in the name of their god. How had they ever thought it was the right thing to do?

What belief justified killing so many? Destroying entire civilizations? For what? Because they were different?

El took a step back from the inferno, fist clenching around the torch in her hand.

“I may not be a hero,” she said to the Ember. “But I’m done being the bad guy. And, as long as I’m breathing, you aren’t going back there.” She gestured to the inferno.

The longing vanished in a heartbeat, once again replaced by a burning hatred. The Ember had tried to control her again, more subtle than before, and it’d failed a second time.

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” she told it.

“Oh, we plan to,” Lhogan’s voice said from within the inferno, and the man stepped out of the flames. No, not the man. A twisted version of him. Corrupted by the Pyre. The Lhogan she knew was gone.

“We?” El asked, her voice stronger than she’d expected, but needn’t have bothered.

Oril stepped out beside Lhogan, and flaming swords burst to life in their hands. The golem had somehow sent twisted echoes of the two soldiers into the In-Between after her. Didn’t know it could do that. Wonderful.

“We’ll be taking that back where it belongs,” Oril said. “Over your pleasantly dead body.”

“That doesn’t sound so pleasant to me,” El said, but pulled on the power from her electrum wing nubs.

Flames arced out and down to her hands, wrapping them in a nimbus of flame and then extending out in wide claws.

Elation replaced hatred, and El realized her mistake too late.

A twang in her chest, like a cord snapping, and a breath-stealing burst of pain, the Ember in her left hand devoured her flames. It sucked them in like a whirlpool, and she dropped out of the sky in a flash.

Her weapons were gone.

Worse, so were her wings.

She focused on igniting them to life, but nothing happened.

No wings. Not even a…

El reached within herself, grasping madly for the heat that’d defined her life.

As the icy prism shattered into dust, all she found was emptiness.

No…

Her connection weakened by the Stormbearer, and with a suddenly direct connection, the Ember hadn’t just taken her flame, it’d devoured her Spark.