Everyone that had escaped the firestorm could do nothing but sit and wait.

The flames fluctuated, growing hotter, then cooler, then growing increasingly hotter as time carried on. All-the-while, they could feel the war of two opposed forces occurring from within—forces that they knew to be Orion and Arika. Half way through, Gizmo had regained his senses. The automaton entered the storm despite, or maybe because of, everyone’s warnings, but he soon returned, the flames completely unmitigated by his improved body.

Femera remained alive, but unmoving.

The sensations coming from inside the storm were something entirely new to them. They were all surprised that the emanating powers felt just as innate and natural as using their abilities did. The battling sides carried the familiar senses that Orion and Arika projected, and the hate radiating from Arika could be felt just as clearly as the love coming from Orion.

They also clearly felt Orion’s hope turn to despair and back again.

“This feels wrong,” Frida said as the emotions ramped up. “We shouldn’t stay here. It’s like seeing inside of his brain.”

“It is.” Honeypot nodded. “But if he didn’t want us to take a peek, he shouldn’t have left the house with no pants on.”

“I don’t—”

“He’s got a point,” Truth agreed. “If anything, this is like Orion is exposing himself to us. He’s like a pervert on the street, wearing only a trench coat and flashing his meat and two veg to anyone in sight.”

“This really isn’t the time for joking, Truth.” Frida shot a look between Truth and Honeypot. “And would you please stop mirroring his energy? It’s hard enough having one of you.”

Honeypot and Truth grinned at each other.

Honeypot made to say something that was, by his estimate, equally witty and infuriating, when the fury radiating from Arika spiked and the firestorm’s borders shot out toward them.

The pulse of emotion was all the warning they needed, and no one was standing in the firestorm's way when its area of effect increased.

“Isn’t an ability supposed to get, you know, weaker when it increases in size?” Honeypot asked.

“This doesn’t feel like an ability,” Shadow said. “I’m getting really worried.”

“At least someone is worried.” Frida looked at Honeypot. “Aren’t you the least bit concerned for your friends?”

“He is,” Truth and Shadow both said, Truth with quick anger, and Shadow with calm certainty. Truth blushed, but Shadow smiled at her kindly.

“That’s just how Honeypot deals with stress.”

Honeypot pouted. “Don’t give away all my secrets, Shadow. The ladies love a bit of mystery.”

“I know, because I do the same,” Truth admitted sheepishly.

Honeypot raised an eyebrow at her. “The misdirection, or the love of mystery?”

“Yes.”

Frida just shook her head.

Again, the fire expanded, and they had to retreat. As they were running, a flash of black engulfed them. It seemed to encompass the world, everything as far as they could see being replaced by a dark void. As quickly as it had come, however, it was gone, and the world returned to normal—that is, if you could call it normal to be teleported back to the place they had first fled from.

Noises of shock and confusion left their mouths. The storm had completely dissipated, and from the place that they could previously sense the battle being waged, a single form lay on the fire-swept street.

Orion lay there, skin pink but otherwise undamaged, arms wrapped around the upper chest of Arika as they lay in the street.

“Grabbing hold of an unconscious lady!” Truth said with faux admonishment. “Truly, your party is filled with miscreants, Shadow. I weep for the company you must hold.”

“Are—are they alive?” Shadow asked.

Honeypot turned and booted Gizmo a little too hard. He yowled and grabbed his foot after discovering first hand just how durable the little robot had become.

“Thank you.” Gizmo hummed with clear joy. “May I please have another?”

“Why did you do that?” Archer asked Honeypot with confusion.

Femera stirred, looking around with squinted eyes, as if waking with a hangover.

Shadow laughed in triumph and scooped the hesitant form of Femera into his arms before making his way towards his two unconscious friends.

“If Gizmo is alive, and so is Femera, so are they!”

Other than a raised scar on Arika’s neck from Cain’s dagger, and a long, puckered scar on Orion’s calf, the unconscious adventurers seemed both healthy and stable.

“Surprising,” Angus stated.

“What is?” Frida asked.

“That they actually seem fine. I know Honeypot and Truth were joking around, but I really didn’t think they could unleash that sort of power and come out whole.”

Archer scrunched his face in thought. “What was that flash of black at the end? If felt like Orion…”

“His abilities revolve around space and time.” Shadow shrugged. “So it’s not too surprising, to me at least.”

“But the scope…” Truth said, “The speed and the sheer size of it…”

“What can I say?” Honeypot puffed out his chest. “We do it large and fast in our party.”

Truth smirked. “Fast isn’t always a good thing, you know…”

Ignoring the banter between Truth and Honeypot, Shadow knelt down over Orion and Arika, intending to remove her from his grasp to give them more room to breathe. He found Orion’s grasp iron-tight, however, and didn’t think he could remove his arms without hurting him.

A notification appeared, the urgency of it grabbing all their attention.

World announcement! All creatures of the attacking force have been eliminated!

Hello! This is your friendly neighborhood System speaking! The rewards of the related quest have been postponed for a week, due to fuckery committed by Orion of the Malignant Miscreants. Feel free to let him know, boldly and repeatedly, just how annoying that is!

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

“That’s what Orion’s been seeing this whole time?” Honeypot threw his hands in the air, frustration clear. “I thought he was exaggerating, but they’re downright petty—why couldn’t I be on the receiving end of such sass?”

“He’s had messages like that before?” Truth cocked her head.

“The whole time!”

Truth’s face went through a complex series of emotions that only Honeypot recognized for what they truly represented—she, too, felt left out.

Arika and Orion both stirred, showing the first signs of wakefulness.

Gizmo hummed a high pitch noise to get everyone’s attention. “I believe that we should provide a more adequate circumference, so as to gift them the requisite time for defragmentation.”

Seeing the confusion on everyone else’s face, Honeypot spoke.

“You lost them, Mr Roboto. Your time offline may have set your speech back a couple days. You do have a point, though…”

“What point?” Angus asked. “What did he say?”

“I think he’s saying to give them some space.” Archer glanced between the two prone adventurers. “So that they can decompress if needed.”

Gizmo hummed in satisfaction at being understood.

“Yes.”

***

Orion and Arika regained consciousness at the same time. They felt the slight movements of wakefulness coming from the other, close as they were. Orion relaxed his grip, finding his hands and arms aching from the force he had used to stay close to Arika.

They both groggily separated, sitting up and looking at each other.

“Arika… are you okay?”

She stared back at him, not saying a word. All at once, her eyes filled with tears, and she wrapped Orion in a hug. “Am I okay? I—I thought—I thought I killed you,” she said haltingly.

“I promised I would never abandon you, didn’t I?”

He wrapped his arms around her.

She laughed through tears as she held him tight.

“I don’t think it counts as abandoning someone if they’re trying to kill you.”

“Try? I think I may have actually died for a bit there, maybe more than once.” He felt her body stiffen, so rushed to continue, “I’m okay, and it wasn’t you trying to kill me, as far as I’m concerned.”

Arika sniffed and rubbed at her eyes.

“What was all of that, Orion?” She pulled away from him and put her hand to her chest as she looked down. “I can feel something here; it was where all of that fire came from. Whatever it is, I remember tearing it open. I felt like it shouldn’t be able to heal, but I can feel it now. It seems… wrong. Almost like a healed scar.”

Orion nodded. “I shattered mine completely.” He looked up at her, the sadness in her eyes breaking his heart. “I could feel yours. Did you feel mine, too?”

She nodded back. “I felt you destroy it.”

He put his hand just below the bottom of his ribcage, just above where he felt the orb of power physically existed. “It’s healed, but scarred as you said. The entire thing feels like it’s been stitched back together…”

She held her own hand in the same spot on her body.

“… what are they?”

“Some part of this world? The source of power for our abilities?” he guessed. “The Creator said that I shouldn’t have had access to that power yet the first time I used it. He warned me not to use it again, no matter what… because even if he wanted, which I seriously doubt he would, he wouldn’t be able to save me if something went wrong.”

She held her hand to her pounding head as she tried to cobble together the different chunks of information.

“How did they get fixed, then, if even he couldn’t help?”

“I…” Orion stared down at the spot.. “I think I did it. I think I reversed it somehow?”

A silence stretched between them as they both got lost in thought and implication.

“Do—do you hate me?” she asked, bringing Orion back to the present.

“Hate you?” He looked at her. “Why would I hate you?”

“Because of what I did. Towards the end, I got sucked into you. I could feel what you felt. Every time you burned, every time I tried to destroy you…” She shuddered and wrapped her hands around her knees. “I witnessed all of it, and it was horrible. I hate me, so why wouldn’t you?”

“Arika, I don’t hate you. I completely understand why you had such a visceral reaction to what happened.” He looked her in the eyes as she looked back up at him. “When I first grasped that power again, I got pulled into you. I saw—”

“That’s right,” she said, remembering. “I could feel you witnessing my…” She pulled away from him and looked down again. “Well, I could tell you were reliving my memories with me,” she finished with a small voice.

As Arika looked back up at him, she saw something in his face that filled her with rage. She scrambled back from him, only the pounding headache and damage done to her body stopping her from going very far. She stared at Orion’s eyes with reignited fury.

“Don’t you dare.”

“Huh? D-don’t I dare what?” he stammered, confusion warring with admiration on his face.

“Don’t look at me like that!” She wrapped her arms around her legs, closing herself off both physically and emotionally. “Not you. Not ever.”

“Like what?” Orion asked as he grew more-and-more confused.

“Like I’m a dog that’s been kicked by its owner, like I’m a bird with a broken wing that needs to be nursed back to health.”

She paused for a moment, trying in vain to calm herself before the self-righteous anger coursing through her swept her along in its current.

“I’m not a child that needs to be coddled. I don’t need anyone’s pity, Orion, and I definitely don’t need yours.”

He cocked his head at her and looked amused for a moment before he started laughing. It wasn’t a polite laugh, or a small, genuine laugh when a peer says something funny—it was the boisterous, uncontrollable laughter of someone who’s taken in the funniest thing they’ve ever heard.

She scowled at him, anger building as he struggled to stay upright. She got to her feet and stood over him. She held herself from going any closer, unsure if she could stop herself from kicking him.

“What’s so damn funny?”

“Pity?” he asked, a giggle threatening to bubble up again. “You think I pity you?” He sat up and wiped tears of laughter from his eyes.

She glared her feelings back at him.

“Is that why you fought so hard to bring me back? Is it because you pity me, Orion? Am I just a lost puppy that needs to be saved?” She looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes as she felt tears threatening to well up again. “You’re still doing it. If that look isn’t pity, then what is it?”

“It’s admiration, Arika. Awe, maybe. After all you went through, everything that you had to live through…”

She looked down at him, the tears spilling down her cheeks. She was confused. Hadn’t they all gone through terrible things? She had handled it worse than all of them, so why would he admire her?

“We all went through terrible situations,” he continued. “I mean, that much is obvious if we all ended up… you know. But your memories. I saw them, Arika. When I joined you in that firestorm, I lived them.”

She looked away again. She already knew that—she’d felt his presence alongside hers, but she couldn’t face him as he admitted as much.

“Of the origin stories I know, they were all relatively short. I had a deformity in my legs, but that wasn’t what made me, well, you know.”

He paused for a moment, and they sat there in silence before he continued.

“What I’m trying to say is, you were subject to abuse for such a long time. Over half of your life. You held out hope for your father, but to eventually lose him like that, then that piece of shit you got married to—”

She whirled on him, fresh tears on her cheeks as she thought once more of her father, and of that night.

Orion sat up straighter as he realized what he’d done. He looked away.

“I’m sorry. What am I doing, saying that to you? I’m terrible at this, Arika.” He rubbed his head and sighed. “I don’t pity you, okay? I can’t believe that after everything that happened, you didn’t give up. When Cain tried to take you, you didn’t despair and let him kill you easily. You fought—you more than fought. You pulled a firestorm out of thin air that would kill anything and everything in its path.”

“Except for you.”

He smiled.

“Except for me. I had a promise to keep and the power of friendship to keep me alive, though, so you never stood a chance.”

She snorted and sat down next to him as she looked over the blackened state of the street through blurred vision.

“You promise you don’t pity me?”

“I promise. I mean what I said. I’m sorry for everything you went through, and I’m sorry I brought it up. I—shit, I brought it up again. Sorry. I really am terrible at this.”

She laughed and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“It’s okay. Maybe I’ll need to talk about it one day. It’s just a little too fresh right now.”

“We can talk about it whenever you want. Or not at all. Your call.”

She nodded, unable to look at him yet and not trusting her voice to reply without cracking.

They sat there in silence for a long time, a soft breeze slowly sweeping away some of the soot and ash from the myriad conflagrations that the street had been subjected to. Orion saw Arika glance at him from the corner of his eye.

He realized he had been tapping his finger rhythmically on the blackened cobblestone below. He paused, making a conscious effort to keep his eyes averted.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

His back stiffened further at her accusatory tone.

“You’re fighting the urge to console me, aren’t you? You want to wrap me in a hug and kiss it all better, right?”

He froze in panic at the revelation she had seen through him so clearly. What should he do?

Do I deny it? Shit, I really am bad at thi—

His thoughts shifted dramatically as her body hit his, her calculated tackle enough to drive them both to the ground in a sprawl. He ended up on his back, and she lay atop him, long hair draping down around his face as she looked down at him.

“Everyone needs comforting sometimes,” she said, then kissed him on the forehead. “Even those that are strong and not deserving of pity.”

He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her body in close, and kissed her.