Time passes. A lot of it? A little? Fire cares not for time, so nor do I. All I care about is that my flames keep consuming. I am only pushing in one direction now.

I stopped pushing in the other direction after I met trees which were different, less easy to burn. I don’t quite remember why it was important, but I do remember that I’m only supposed to burn the easily flammable trees.

I was tempted to ignore my urge to stop pushing. Why should I stop pushing? I am Fire and fire burns everything. Yet something inside me kept insisting not to push past the limit of the easily combustible plants, and so in the end, I reined in my hunger for more.

The fire under my control protested, but I soothed it by redoubling the efforts on the other front: one tree or the other, as long as it could burn and grow, it’s happy, and so am I.

My consciousness is spread thin; I start to lose connection entirely with my physical body. I’m aware of it, but can’t recall why that’s a problem. My flesh body is inherently limiting; my new fire body offers so much more. More power, more flexibility. Just…more.

Though the fire doesn’t have a voice, I feel it urging me to join it, to leave my earthly concerns aside. To become part of the immortal being of Fire. As the inferno grows ever bigger, ever hotter, ever more powerful, the seductive call becomes equally more powerful.

Join us, I almost hear, whispered through my mind like it had always existed there. Be part of us forever. Never know pain or death, disappointment or heartbreak again.

I waver. That would be nice. My memories of pain and death, disappointment, and heartbreak are hard to recall in this moment, but I remember that I didn’t like them.

Part of me reaches for the promise, disconnecting almost entirely from who I had been. There is an odd, uncomfortable feeling like I’m being stretched. Like I have bindings around me which are being pulled too tightly.

A sense of worry touches me from one of the bindings, concern mingled with deep, deep trust. The two emotions seem so contradictory that I find myself hesitating. What is this?

Then other emotions seem to spill into me: worry, fear, concern, awe, admiration, hope, determination, protectiveness…love. I touch each of them, their presence spilling colour into the world which I realised had narrowed down to black, white, and shades of orange.

Without realising it, I’ve drifted back to my body. Back to a greater sense of me.

Suddenly, like being hit by a concrete hammer, I remember what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and most importantly, what I must not do.

The fire crackles in displeasure. It has grown big enough to gain more of its own consciousness, and it doesn’t like that I have drawn away from it. It is possessive, and sees me as belonging to it, a part of it.

Too, I find that there is a voice screaming in my mind, one I could not hear when enveloped by the crackling of the flames.

I yield, I yield, please! Please stop! Just leave part of me alive and I will do whatever you want!

It’s the forest. Desperate, without any recourse but to beg for its life from the force of nature currently threatening its existence.

Very well, is all I can say, and that only a bare thought which I hope it can hear. While I would love to finalise the deal now, I simply can’t spare the attention. The fire is trying to buck out of my control for real and I need every ounce of concentration I can spare to keep it from raging unchecked.

The fire has done its job. I don’t know how much forest it has consumed, but I sense that it’s a huge amount. It’s time to pull it in.

Gritting my teeth, I reach out to the front lines, to where the fire is greedily leaping to the next trees, passing along the root network. I wrap my will around it and hold it back. Like I’m trying to hold back a team of stallions with bits between their teeth and thin pieces of leather for reins, my control teeters on a knife-edge of failure.

The fire screams at me, the sound heard with my mind, my soul, rather than my ears. It rejects my attempts to stop it, rails against my control. I just clench my teeth until they crack and hold on tighter.

I have friends with me, family. River and his group are travelling somewhere in the woods. I can not lose control now.

The fire fights me. It struggles against me. But it is made of my mana, it has been directed by my Will. I have fed it, led it to burn more, sparked it in the first place. It and I are inextricably interwoven. It obeys, pausing where it is and not spreading anywhere new. But it is not happy: it knows that its fuel is limited and will soon be gone.

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I do not wish to die! I feel it moan through the wind that it continues to greedily suck into its maw. I feel struck through the heart: did not the forest say just that a moment ago? Why must one die to allow the other to survive?

Acting more on instinct than anything else, I start feeding it with my own mana, beckoning the flames back to me. When I start running out of mana, I draw from the heat still around me, the conversion between the lingering fire magic and my mana a poor one, but it helps me to sustain the fire.

The flames move. Quickly. Happily. Eagerly, even. I am giving the fire a command which does not spell its oblivion, which offers it something to consume; it is happy to cooperate. It pulls back from the vine-stranglers, not even embers left to burn. It streams across the burned and destroyed gulf between me and the head of the fire. It shouldn’t work – there is nothing more for it to burn – but magic seems to solve all problems.

It is much reduced by the time it reaches me, but what actually returns to me is stronger, oddly more solid. It streams around me, twining around my whole body in streams like a strangely-shaped cat. Being this close to the almost white-hot flames should be enough to consume me in seconds, but it’s not even uncomfortable.

This is the core of the flame, the heart of the inferno. It has come at my call, trusting in me to offer a solution to it being starved.

Not even fully knowing what I’m doing, I direct the flames to condense more and more. From thick streamers which can wrap all around my body at the same time, I direct them to become thinner and thinner streamers which shift around me faster and faster.

Then, sensing that it is time, I hold out my hand to catch them. They condense in my palm, the immensity of the inferno confined to a space which could hold a large marble. I flood the space and flames with what remains of my mana.

It’s not enough. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I sense that it’s not enough.

I draw all the lingering fire magic from the environment which I can, feeding it into the ball. It’s still not enough.

Desperate, I pull my Bonds, feeling small bits of magic flow down the links between us. It’s still not enough.

Going beyond frantic, I convert my own health into mana, pouring it into the ball even as my body weakens and pain creeps in. I feel liquid trickle from my eyes, from my nose, from my ears.

It is enough.

A moment before I sense that I will not be able to take any more from my own health and am wondering whether I can justify taking it from my Bound’s health, I realise that it’s done.

What’s done? I don’t know.

But it’s done.

The glowing ball which had been formed when the streamers of fire condensed in my hand has become incandescent. It shivers, trembling in my palm. For a moment, I think that it’s because my hand is shaking. And that is true, but it’s not why.

The ball vibrates, its small shifts to one side and then to the other growing in speed and frequency. It isn’t long before I can’t see the movement any more, but that’s not because it’s stopped: it’s because it’s too fast for my eyes to track.

Almost feeling like I’m sobering up, I return to full awareness of myself. I stare at the ball. What the hell have I created here? I wonder, a sense of dread sinking deeply into my stomach. I wonder frantically whether I should throw the thing away: it looks like it’s going to explode. If so, I want to be well away from it.

I try to throw the ball into the already desolated swathe of land ahead of me. It refuses to leave my hand – it’s stuck somehow. I try to brush it off, but my other hand just passes through it as if it’s not there.

I look frantically around me and, for the first time, realise that I’m surrounded by my concerned Bound. They’re not all looking so good: tired, singed, several with blood marking their faces.

“Get away from me!” I croak, or try to. My throat would put the Sahara to shame in its dryness and lets very little sound out. But that doesn’t matter: they’ve heard my instruction through their Bonds and back away. Bastet is the last, moving slowly and reluctantly.

The vibration of the ball reaches a point where it’s sending ripples through my whole body. How it can do that when I can’t seem to touch it otherwise, I don’t know, but it does. I sense that it’s coming to some sort of denouement and fear ripples through me with the vibrations at what that might be.

A moment later, the ball explodes.

It’s like a mini sun has just gone supernova, a wave of light, heat, and wind explodes out from my palm. It hits me in the chest and knocks me backwards. From my position, I see Bastet shield herself with her wings, the heat fortunately dissipating to the environment quickly: she is otherwise unharmed. My other Bound are further away and are only knocked off balance a little.

I feel awful. Almost as bad as when the water monster knocked me into a wall and I broke my jaw, spine, gave myself brain damage, and ended up covered in bruises and other injuries. This isn’t the same kind of hurt: this time I feel like I’ve had my head squeezed through an old laundry press and my gut sliced open with all my internal organs pulled out to leave an empty, aching hollow within.

I’m nauseous and exhausted, my mental and physical energy completely defeated. I couldn’t fight off a beetle at this point, can’t even bring myself to push my body off the ground and stand up.

But all that vanishes when I see what’s in front of me.

A flame hangs in midair above my face. It’s impossible. What is it burning? Nothing. My exhaustion forgotten, I lift my trembling hand up to touch it. It twines with my fingers, a sense of…affection coming from it? From it, or from me? Or from both of us? It’s an odd temperature: immensely hot, but it doesn’t burn. Like the flame is contained within something which only lets a hint of its true heat through.

Then I feel a moment of mischievousness and a moment later the flame shifts down to hop on my nose.

Mystified, I stare at it. What the hell have I done? I ask myself again.