There were dozens more people chased by the bartiangs. Dozens more huddled in corners, hoping the fire and smoke would leave them alone long enough for the apes to leave. Fire licked at every building.

Eventually, the screams fell silent, with just the crackling fire threatening the village.

Cass had circled back to the break in the palisades they’d entered from. A ways back, a collection of tents had gone up behind fire breaks. Within, the survivors huddled together for safety.

“I think we got them all,” Alyx said. “I haven’t heard their howling in a few minutes.”

Cass nodded. The bartiang monsters were dead.

But the tragedy before her was ongoing. The town burned, smoke billowing off it in a black, writhing mass of malice and choking death. It snaked into the amber sky of the dying day, the last of the sun’s light cast in a harsh crimson as it filtered through the dark smoke.

Had it been a kitchen fire out of control in the monster attack that started this?

It didn’t matter now.

Cass couldn’t summon nearly enough water with Elemental Manipulation to put it out.

“There are still people out there.” Cass could still feel their shallow breaths on the air. The little girl’s face overtook Cass’s vision. Her big, hopeful eyes stared up at her. Any of them could be her mother.

Alyx shook her head. “I’m sure. It’s unfortunate.”

Cass waited. Waited for the words that had to come out of Alyx’s mouth next. A suggestion of how to help. A plan for putting out the fires. A rescue attempt for the stranglers.

She remained silent as the seconds stretched on.

“We aren’t going to leave them there, are we?” Cass asked, barely believing the question or the implied answer.

“What can we do?” Alyx asked. “It was dangerous enough fighting in those conditions. We got a lot of people out. I should be able to get a lot from my aunt for cleaning up her mess.”

“What?”

“My aunt is the First General. It’s her job to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen in our lands. I’ve just done her job, therefore, she owes me. Not to mention the general shame I can throw at her for her failure.”

Cass turned the words over and over in her head, her heightened Alacrity running them again and again. She must be misunderstanding. That sounded like the people here hadn’t been Alyx’s first concern.

“You look confused?” Alyx said. “Look, don’t worry about Velillian politics. It’s not something you need to worry about.”

Cass wasn’t worried about that in the slightest. “But the rest of the survivors.”

Alyx’s face darkened as she looked back toward the burning town. “Are you fireproof, Cass?”

“No.” Slyphids were a lot of things, the minor burns she’d gotten Elemental Manipulating fire and the blistering skin from today’s fighting strongly suggested fireproof wasn’t one of them.

“Then what exactly are you suggesting we do?”

“But,” there had to be something more that they could do. There was so much fire. If she’d taken Summon Water when it had been offered, would she be able to do something about this now?

“Come on, Cass.” Alyx turned away from the burning town. “We can only do what we can.”

Was this as much as she could do?

Cass followed her back to the tents in a daze, her mind turning over the options.

Focus: 98/369

A little less than a third of her Focus remained. It cost a little over 20 Focus to summon water and then direct it as she wanted. She could summon about a balance ball’s volume of water with a single casting.

With 98 Focus, that was only 4 uses. Laughably small. Not nearly enough for an entire town on fire.

Was that the only way to help? Was that all she had?

How did one put out fire?

Douse it in water. Smother it with sand. Cover it with a lid.

Fire needed air, fuel, and heat. All the methods she’d listed were primarily about removing its access to air, with water having the added benefit of the escaping steam sapping some of the fuel’s heat, too.

But this wasn’t some campfire that she could bury under old ashes and loose sand. This wasn’t a scented candle she could screw the lid back on top of.

Worse, any plan that might have cut off oxygen would be a problem for the people within as well. They needed that air as much as the fire.

But she couldn’t attack the fuel or the heat either.

She didn’t have an ice spell, and even if she did, would it be big enough to cover the entire town? Even part of the town?

Could she use Elemental Manipulation? Ice was sort of an element. As much as lightning was.

Or, if it wasn’t, wasn’t it just water, but cold? She’d once superheated her flames to disinfect something. Could she supercool something too? Was thermodynamics a “natural force” that Elemental Manipulation could alter directly?

Then again, superheating that fire had burned through her Focus. She didn’t have the energy to experiment with supercooling. Not supercooling summoned water or the air around the flames, at least. She didn’t think she could supercool just any material, either. Unless thermodynamics in and of itself was an element of Elemental Manipulation…

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They stepped through the fire breaks and into the tent city.

A child’s face was waiting expectantly at the entrance. The little girl with the purple hair.

She looked back and forth between Cass and Alyx, her eyes wide, the hope in them darkening with every step they took toward her.

The girl opened her mouth and Cass froze.

If she was here… If she looked like that… If she was alone…

Where was her mother?

But Cass knew the answer.

She knew the answer.

The scared breaths from within the flames echoed in her ears. The roar of the fire. The snap of beams giving way under the weight of the flames.

“I’ll be right back,” Cass said before the girl could speak. Before Alyx could stop her. Cass Sprinted back to the burning town, the wind whirling at her heels.

She couldn’t leave them. She couldn’t believe she’d been talked into it.

What are you doing? Salos hissed from her shoulder.

“I have to do something.”

You are not fireproof!

“I’ll figure it out.” How many had already died in the fires? How many were still trapped?

She stopped short of the first burning building, her rampaging thoughts hitting the wall she’d been circling.

What could she actually do?

Water? No way to summon enough to make a difference.

Air? The area was too open to have any chance of pushing enough of it off the fire to put it out. Also, the villagers trapped within still needed it.

Stone? Similar problem as water.

Fire?

What could she do with fire? She could create it, could she just destroy it?

No. Elemental Manipulations description said, “Attune your mana to an elemental force to summon and/or control that element.” She wasn’t creating these forces, she was “summoning” them. And there was no dispel or dismissal included in the description.

Cass, you need to leave.

Cass ignored Salos. She needed to save the person trapped within the fire.

That was all she needed to do.

Save the people.

She didn’t care what happened to the buildings. Even if they were put out now, they were damaged beyond simple repair. Probably structurally compromised. They’d require significant work to rebuild, no matter what she did now.

She didn’t need to put out the building. She only needed to get in and out again safely. Which meant she just needed to dodge the flames. Or maybe just the heat?

You wish to dodge damage type: heat. Would you like to attempt this feat with Dodge? Heat is far outside the normal range of dodgeable damage. Attempting to do so will be minimally effective and consume both Focus and significant Stamina.

This was crazy. Absolutely crazy.

Earth Cass didn’t think this made any sense.

Dodge wasn’t sure this would work but was chomping at the bit to try it.

Something stirred in Cass’s core, curious and quiet.

“Salos, get off my shoulder.”

Cass don’t! Salos shouted. Do not go in there.

“Salos, off my shoulder.” She could barely believe she was doing this either, but the other options were unacceptable.

Cass!

Cass scooped him off her shoulder, dropping him on the dirt road beside her. “Go back to Alyx. Tell her to prepare to receive burn victims.”

Do not—

“I’m going, Salos.” She didn’t look back to see if he’d done as she asked. Instead, she ran toward the building and the fire, accepting the extended range of Dodge’s capabilities.

Dodge screamed in her ears. She was inches away from the flames before it pointed out an area of weaker heat. She flitted through the gap.

She could feel the breath of a person amid the flames ahead. As clear as day. They wanted to be found. Wanted to be saved.

The fire’s heat surrounded her. The crackle and snap of it devouring the wooden supports rang in her ears. The smoke billowed through the building, rushing out on the gusts created by the hot air. The creak of the roof warned her from above as it bowed under the pressure of the damage and heat.

But she could do this.

Flames licked at her body. Dodge pulled her from the worst, yet her skin still fried. It blistered.

The hot air burned her lungs. Every breath was a choking lungful of smoke.

The sulfuric scent of burning hair followed her.

Ahead, a young man sat curled up within the fireplace, the stone rapidly heating around him, but blessedly not on fire. His eyes widened when he saw her approach and widened further as she danced through the rising flames between them.

“Let’s go!” Cass yelled through the smoke. “Can you move?”

He nodded and scrambled up to Cass’s side.

“This way. Stay very close to me.” Cass pointed back toward the door. She pulled him along. Dodge warned her they needed a wider path to take this man with them. That he would not make it through without burns.

That was fine, as long as they both made it out.

Dodge screamed for her to freeze. Her free hand snapped out to snatch the man back to her side. Burning roof fell before them, smashing through the wooden floor with a crash. Going out the way she’d come would not work.

Fine. If that was how it was going to be, she’d just make her own exit.

She threw a Wind Blade through the nearest wall. It crumbled before her, the fires around it wicking out in the gust.

But the roof above did not approve of the sudden lack of support. It fell, pieces of burning timber falling all around them.

She grabbed the man, Sprinting for all it was worth toward her new exit.

She was fast, but so was the burning roof.

She wove through it, side-stepping roof and flaming floor alike.

Dodge screamed a warning. She’d boxed herself in. Ahead were flames. Behind falling debris. She couldn’t get out.

Or could she?

Time crept to a crawl. She wasn’t supposed to be here, yet where else could she be?

Dodge snapped up the feeling. A system message flared over her vision.

Concept Applied: [Liminality - Dodge

Bob and weave. The best defense is not getting hit in the first place! Find yourself in the place between the target and the attack.

Passively increases one’s reaction time to a small degree.

Actively increases one’s speed in getting out of the way and advises on how best to move one’s body to avoid unwanted impacts.

Modified by Dex.

Association with the Concept of Liminality allows the body to phase through some hits that should have struck. This effect is inversely proportional to how direct the impact would have been and how great the damage incurred would have been. This effect cost Stamina directly proportional to the damage avoided.]

Calmly, Dodge told her to step through the flames before her and to hold the man at her side very close. It felt almost like Wind Stepping as she stepped through the flames. Like she was incorporeal, yet there was no whirl of air in her ears like she was used to. Instead, it was like all the color around her inverted and the sound cut out.

The world snapped back to normal as she stepped out of the fire again. Behind her, the rubble crashed through the floor. There wasn’t time for reflection. The way out was clear. She could do this.

She dragged the man behind her as she Sprinted out. She phased through another wall of fire with Dodge, but it didn’t so much as slow her.

She crashed through the opening, throwing the man out beside her.

He collapsed to his hands and knees outside, panting through the smoky air. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Head that way.” Cass pointed him toward the camp. There were so many more people she needed to save.