Gareth ran.

Gareth ran, pulling his brother who fought tooth and nail, screaming stupidity in an impotent rage that blinded him to reality. He was still shrieking threats of murder that he had no power to carry out, and Gareth understood, but they had to stay together. They had to be solution oriented.

For Gareth, it was as if none of it had ever happened, or if it had happened to someone else, a character in a book perhaps. He didn’t register Ronnie’s screams or the attacks as he clawed as his brother’s arm, didn’t think about how evenly matched they were and how, if Garon had really wanted to fight him, he could have. Gareth’s world had narrowed to a single idea. He had to obey his father and make it to his godmother’s house. His parents were going to meet them there. That’s what his father had said, and his father was a holy man who believed in the importance of telling the truth.

They had to run. They had to make it through the city, through the darkness and the ash that fell from the sky and whatever was in that smoke that hurt to breath, and they had to make it to the marketplace, then down the mountain. They shouldn’t take to the air, because it was full and the smoke was even worse up there.

Gareth was hot, which was strange because he didn’t normally get hot, but he pushed this, like everything else, from his mind and kept pressing forward, ignoring his brother, ignoring the people they ran into, ignoring the corpses or the pleas of those who would soon be corpses that he stepped over. He didn’t speak to Garon or anyone else, because they would try to tell him terrible things, and he didn’t have time for them.

Because he had to get to his godmother’s. His parents would meet him at his godmother’s. And then everything would be alright.

But it is impossible to ignore your name, even if one is single-minded and in a crowd of noise, pain, and busyness. It was a strange voice that called, “Firefist!” And it came from above.

“Heir of Orenda Firefist,” the voice said, and Gareth looked up.

An entire regiment of archers were aiming at them, and like he had done with the Emerald Knight, he froze in his tracks.

Then something strange happened. One of the archers broke rank, and released her arrow in the wrong direction. It hit her commanding officer right between the eyes, and Gareth watched her fall with the force of it from where she had stood on the edge of the roof of an apartment building.

“Soko!” A voice came from behind them, “She’s lost her fucking mind! You dumb bitch!”

The archer jumped, dangling from windowpane to windowpane until she hit the ground hard and came barreling toward them.

“It’s ok!” She yelled over the crowd, “I’ve got you!”

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But it was not ok, not at all. The rest of the archers had recovered from their shock, and they released at once. The torrent of arrows rained down upon them, and Gareth raised his arms to shield his face as if it would do any good.

But the pain never came.

He opened his eyes and saw that another woman stood in front of them, holding a shield over them. She was a little taller than the other, a little more muscular than the archer, and Gareth had difficulty telling the earth elves apart, but he thought they may be related.

Soko fared worse. She was bigger than the children and only partially under the shield. Three arrows stuck into her body on the right side, embedded in her thigh, torso, and shoulder. Gareth did not have time to think too heavily on this fact, because the relative darkness became pitch darkness, as a dome of stone flowed over them, cutting off the light from the fires burning outside.

“What the fuck?” A male voice asked, and Garon lit a flame.

“I wouldn’t let them,” Soko broke off the arrow in her shoulder and threw it to the ground as her sister pulled it out from the back, “fire on children.”

“Soko, we’re gonna die!” The man, who Gareth also thought looked remarkably like her, accused. “We’re gonna fuckin die here! The Emerald Knight is here!”

Soko continued to break off and allow her sister to extract the arrows, and Gareth stared at her wounds.

“The Emerald Knight killed my father!” Garon said.

“That’s fuckin great, kid!” The man snapped.

Soko opened her pouch and pulled out a green potion. She downed it as if it was a shot and leaned heavily against her sister.

“What do we do now?” The man yelled, “We don’t have time for this! They’ll break the shield! We’re fucked we’re fucked we’re fucked why did you do that!?”

The tall woman slapped him full in the face so hard he went spiraling to the ground, but it seemed to calm him down. His breathing became more regular and he pushed himself onto his arms. Gareth thought he was right, though. There were cracks forming in the shield he had cast.

“We have to get to our godmother’s!” Gareth told them, “In Henoluhur.”

“We have to go down,” Sokomaur said, “That’s all we can do. We have to be solution oriented. Hey, kids,” she knelt to be more on their level, “My name is Sokomaur Sambress. This is my sister, Solomaur, and my brother Tolimaur. Everything is going to be alright. We’ll get you to your godmother.”

“I’m already tired,” Tolimaur said as he stood, but his staff began to glow, and the ground opened up before them at an angle, “Go!” he said, “I can’t maintain the shield- go go go go!”

Gareth took his advice because he had to, not because he trusted these people, and ran into the hole pulling Garon behind him. The Sambresses rushed in after them, and the last thing Gareth saw before Tolimaur closed the opening behind them was his earth shield shattering.

“It was,” Gareth said, staring at a spot on the ground in the middle of the street, “a really bad day. It’s amazing how it can only take one really bad day to change your life, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Orenda agreed. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “Gareth… it’s possible this place can be healed. Perhaps it could… be rebuilt. We can rebuild.”

“Rebuild for who?” Gareth asked. “That was the last time I ever saw another fire elf. I don’t know how it happened so quickly… I don’t know how they destroyed everything so fast…”

“You said that there had to be others,” Orenda reminded helpfully.

“I say a lot of things,” Gareth began to walk forward again. “Do you see that tall building built into the mountain? That’s the temple.”

Orenda nodded, and thought of how right Gareth had been when he told her that he had earned his madness.