31. Burn

Vivian awoke, staring up at the moonlight pouring down from the hole in the ceiling. The hole, she realized, that Rin made when he fell through while trying to preserve Silvis. The branches of Silvis’ tree crept into the view, but her eyes remained transfixed on the moonlight. Her brain ached where Silvis touched her.

A weight was pressing down on her. She pushed it aside, sat up, and looked down, to investigate.

Lynn’s body flopped over.

“No,” she whispered. She trembled. “No! I chose to live, Lynn! I chose to live! No! You can’t do this!”

Her hand erupted into flames. Cauterize the wound. She could save him, she just needed to stop the bleeding. Her hand slammed down onto his other stump. A bloody shard of ice melted into a pool of scarlet beside her.

“He’s dead,” Rin said, his voice dull and defeated. “There’s no spark of life left in him. He died to bring you back.”

Vivian looked up and saw him. He stood, not looking at her or Lynn. Instead, he stared blankly into the massive tree trunk. A tree trunk that had changed drastically since she last remembered seeing it. Now, it was a sickly gray, the leaves brown where they’d been green.

“No! He can’t be. Help me, Rin! You saved Silvis, save Lynn. Please!”

“I can’t. He’s gone.”

“I don’t accept that!” she cried out. Tears trickled down towards Lynn’s corpse before evaporating from the heat.

Rin said nothing. Instead, he fell to his knees.

The room’s temperature accelerated upward. The plants caught as if dry from a drought. With a wail, the room erupted.

The flames circled around Lynn’s body as she clutched at it. His blood stained her clothing but he bled no more from his mangled body. Ice melted from him and steamed into the air. A drip of water trailed down his cheek, but she knew it belonged more to herself than to him. His beard felt coarse against her as she held him close. Her dear friend.

Dimly, she noted a severed hand off to the side. She wondered which sacrifice meant more to her from him. His life or his remaining limb. Then, bitterly, she knew it didn’t matter. He gave both to her.

When the flames died down, Rin threw himself down next to her. Burnt rags clung to him but his skin was as smooth as every, not a blemish present.

“Kill me, please. And again. I deserve pain. Throw me in the bottom of the ocean and let me stay there for eternity.”

Anger boiled in her. The details didn’t matter, she understood enough to hate him. She almost blasted him away with a roar of flames…but Silvis’ final request echoed in her ears. Tell him to live.

Setting Lynn’s empty shell gently to the side, Vivian reached out and embraced Rin.

His rigid body relaxed after a moment. Shaking, he buried his head into her shoulder and warm tears seeped into her shirt. The world seemed to stop all around them. Both of their best friends now gone, all they had left was one another.

Finally, time returned with a lurch.

The underground garden blazed. The tree’s leaves now replaced by charred dead branches. She felt no regret as plants smoldered all around her. Just a hollowed nothingness next to her heart. Lynn had been a noble. She was nothing. Born of nothing and raised to become the same. Why did he die and leave her to live?

That self pity planted a seed of hope in her. She died once as well. Anything she managed to do, surely Lynn could replicate.

“I’m going to kill them all,” Vivian whispered.

Rin continued to hold himself to her. His skin felt cool against hers. “They killed my friend. They killed Silvis. I tried to save him. But I couldn’t do it. I’m useless to him.”

His tears evaporated as they touched her, leaving tiny trails of steam fading into nothing.

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She stood and set Rin to the side.

Then she laboriously took the steps up the stairs. Numbly, she noted that every step she took left behind blackened footprints scorched into the stone. When she reached where the trapdoor used to be, she found only hunks of melted metal. Her earlier flames had consumed it.

Nobody remained near the entrance. All signs of Nyx and Alexis had disappeared. She hoped they’d found somewhere safe to hide. But callously, she realized even if she killed them, they’d be worth the price of vengeance. Not only her pain resided in her now, she felt the broken connection between Rin and Silvis as well.

The moonlight had been obscured by clouds that hid in the darkness they created. But she didn’t need light. She became light.

Every piece of her burned. Just like that time so long ago when she burned alongside her brother. Vaguely, she could still hear his screams. But only as if carried by the wind. And her flames burned the wind away. She released everything. Every shred of energy she contained in her left in wave after wave of flames. Dimly, she was surprised by her own reserves. They felt bottomless.

A new sense awakened in her as she began to feel the flames. They became an extension of herself as they blazed through the streets. She felt them consume the invaders. She fed off the pain as if it relieved her of her own. The bodies reformed under her flames, so she kept burning them. The pain of burning to death once as she had experienced it wasn’t enough for these monsters. Dimly, she noted it was the empathy that her experience granted her that drove her to want to inflict the pain. Repeatedly, they reformed and burned through all the lives they’d so callously stolen. She burned them until their corpses lost the form of solidity and scattered into ashes.

Her flames licked the back of Alexis, causing her to cry out and fall to the ground. For a moment, Vivian knew fear. She remembered Silvis’ loss of control. His utter destruction and disregard for life. The wall of flame’s awareness didn’t comprehend the words spoken as Alexis pleaded for her life. But, every breath of air she took symbolized the gesture. Vivian felt the slight air change. Mustering every bit of willpower in her, she pulled herself back. Away from Alexis and Nyx. Then she split her river of flames and sent them roaring past the pair and onto more prey.

The flames burned through several more of the invaders. Many of them waved their arms about wildly, as if trying to steal her life. But she wasn’t there. She was the flames. Their curses dried up in their throats as they danced about within her grasp.

Some fled the city. They raced through the forest down to the beach. But her flames weren’t confined by the city boundaries. She stalked them. Some trees and plants fed her, but she contained herself, only burning as necessary as she pursued the invaders. At the beach, she found more invaders, but these ones winked out after a single life extinguished from within them. Not the monsters, but supporters of them. The clothing that burned tasted of salt. Sailors then. The sailors that had brought the invaders. They had no life stealing magic to keep them alive more than once.

She reached for the ship, but the water’s edge stopped her. She pushed past, erupting the sea in a blast of steam. Her strength ended there. The ship remained anchored off shore. The flames growled in frustration as they died. But as she flickered out, she made out two familiar beings on the deck beyond her grasp. She felt their breathing, trying to place them. The heavy laboring breath that was so familiar to her. Owen stood, facing her from the ship’s deck. And his brother beside him. Owen’s breathing reminded her of all the days he’d exhausted himself in exercise and drills alongside her. Then she realized that several of the bodies she’d consumed hadn’t struggled to intake air or flailed about when burned. They had died from previous wounds. Owen protected the island against the invasion. When he realized what happened, he went to their escape to cut them off. That relaxed her. She let herself flicker out.

Finally, with the rising sun, she collapsed to the ground. Her exhaustion was complete save for the fact that sleep refused to take her. She simply lay on the stone, staring up into the sky.

After a while, she realized that she lay in the center of the stadium. Her flames had carried her body unbidden as she burned the city. Unconsciously, she had brought herself to the place she felt the strongest.

Nothing remained of the wooden chest or the practice dummies. Only bare stone. Just as Silvis had done centuries ago, she had cleansed the city. But this time, she cleaned the death out of it, instead of the life.

She closed her eyes and let herself absorb the sun’s warm rays. She felt like a plant, sucking energy from the earth and sky. When she opened her eyes again, the sun hung directly overhead. She had not slept though, only lain there, acknowledging every second that passed her by.

“Vivian.” Owen sat down next to her. Caked blood matted down his hair and an eye looked as if it had been sliced through. One of his arms was in a sloppy sling, but the other one looked like it needed one just as badly.

“Ya were right, she really was here of all places,” another surprised voice said.

His brother stood behind him. Lynn’s teacher and friend. His clothes hung ragged on his body. She noted one sleeve of his had been used for Owen’s sling.

She wanted to say something to him, but the words couldn’t form in her mouth. Her throat croaked out noise. She needed to tell him about Lynn’s death. It was her fault. Always, it was her fault.

“It’s over Vivian. They’re all gone now.”

Vivian realized Owen didn’t understand how correct he was. All gone. Her brother. Her mother. Even her closest friend.

Cresting the hill that shadowed the city, smoke now rose in plumes from the library. No flickers of fire. Just smoldering smoke against the white overcast.

Owen stepped to the side and revealed Nyx standing behind him. And Alexis. And Rin.

They weren’t much, just five other beaten and bloody people. All of them looked broken and hollow. But they were what she still had. And she clung to them.