Jarl Anoures' forces are an unwelcome sight.

Despite the Jarl’s entire purpose for being here likely to put down Sylvan and his navy, she is still the slaver I’ve been fighting to free the heqet from. We may now have a common enemy, but that hardly makes us friends.

But the fury bubbling through my flames will not allow Jarl Anoures to reach Sylvan first. He is mine to unleash retribution.

While her fleet sails in from the horizon, blocking the entire mouth of the fjord, I spear through the air faster than any ship.

This entire attempt on the fortress has done nothing but doom Sylvan to his fate. Without me to fight off Anoures, he could not have won even if he had succeeded in my assassination. Not only did he lose the only asset that brought him this far, the attempt made an enemy he really should have been intelligent enough to realise he couldn’t oppose.

What exactly was his goal, trying to off me at such a point? He could have simply sent me on my way after we had won, and that would be it. I may not have liked Sylvan, but he was still better than most heqet. Better than Jarl Anoures, who holds half her own race to thralldom.

If not for this stupid attempt of his, I would either be protecting him from the massive incoming fleet, or already be on my way to the Anatla beam Leal and I came to the Warring Isles for in the first place. It’s not like I would have killed the man after having gone through so much effort to put everything under his command.

But of course, whether he succumbed to his brutal instincts or had some foolish designs, he has made the attempt. A mistake worse than he could imagine. He even called me a deity; I thought he would be wiser than to make me angry. I guess intelligence from a heqet is too much to ask. Regardless of the potential I know they have.

Sylvan's fleet incinerates as I pass. Those unfortunate to sail between me and my target burst into balls of fire as the heat radiating off my long swept wings of white flame encourages the cinders already spreading to explode now that I’m not bothering to keep the vessels safe.

All through the fjord, warriors rush to douse the flames the pressure laced screech had unleashed upon their vessels. I do not send my influence through those, but with how flammable their longships are, the natural spread is enough to cause irreparable damage.

Anoures’ fleet avoided the worst, but even so distant from my influence as they are, there are many instances of their ships igniting and burning to cinders.

Leal, wreathed within the grasp of my flames, holds none of the familiarity she’s grown to being carried like this. She squirms, as if not trusting that she won’t fall through the shrouding tongues of fire that hold her aloft.

I feel slightly guilty for not immediately facing her towards the ember moon, but I also do not want to let her face the death she so hates if she doesn’t need to. Right now, I really should hold back. I shouldn’t allow my anger for Sylvan to reflect in how I treat the heqet floating on their vessels. But it is difficult to look upon such vicious people kindly. Few opposed the enslavement of their kin until they were pulled under Sylvan’s command, after all.

It is clear whatever alternate version of events that this Leal experienced, she and I were not as close. And going by her earlier reaction, I take it as my death has already come to pass.

I soar over Sylvan's head, slamming into the deck of the Jarlship while I hold Leal above in a ball of fire. Lashing out with my fury, a blaze engulfs the ship in mere moments. From all around, heqet charge me. Clambering from beneath the deck, or rushing from the bow, none survive the whips that scorch through their outer mucus and burn away their innards in moments.

The foolish heqet, having seen my strength through weeks of conquest, still have not learnt they stand no chance. Even as their kin fall seconds before to little more than a touch of my blaze, they follow suit without restraint. They understand what will happen, and yet they throw themselves at me as if it were the only logical decision.

Each strand of fire follows my intention without a need to truly direct my focus. As if the fire itself has learnt the instinct to enact my will.

Flames thread through the closed sails of the Jarl ship. They burn through every rope and timber plank around us, until nothing but an inferno surrounds both myself, and the heqet I’ve not taken my eyes from.

Sylvan glares at me with a familiar anger. It is the same look each of his crew would send my way in these past weeks. He screams a battle cry and leaps toward me with axe raised, but as his weapon slices through my form, I disperse into the surrounding fire.

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“I guess you still don’t know,” I speak to the backstabbing bastard, who twists in a circle, unable to pinpoint my voice. “fire doesn’t simply bend to my will. It is me; in every sense.”

I appear from the swathe of flames behind him and touch his shoulder. Sylvan spins with a scream, trying to slice at me, but it is already too late. My white fire eats into his arm and burns it up in a second. The axe slices through me, but instead of reforming, I allow my body to reappear behind him again.

“Did you believe me limited to a single body? That dousing me in water was enough?” with slow, deliberate steps, I approach the doomed heqet. “It makes no sense to me. You could have avoided death if you’d simply let me leave. Let us reach the origin of the beam as we wanted. Why?”

To the steersman’s credit, he stands with a crisped stump without so much as the slightest show of pain overcoming the rage marring his face. The ship’s structure finally collapses, shattering into a burning pyre around us. Only the ring of timber beneath our feet survives; suspended over the waters by my flames.

“Is it not obvious?” Sylvan snarls, his croaky voice rough. “You are an outsider. A monstrosity. You deserve nothing less than death,” he spits, swinging his axe at me again, a wide overarm strike that only shatters the planks beneath me.

If I had still been limited to a physical body, it might have been enough to drop me into the waters below, but now I simply float amongst the rest of the surrounding flames that are just as much a part of myself.

“Besides, I can hardly legitimise my status as a Jarl with you alive.”

He throws his axe at my head, destabilising my head along with the eyes within. Unfortunately for him, I hardly leave myself limited to only one set of the imitation organs anymore; while not noticeable amongst the swirl of fire, they exist all through my flames. And that is assuming I wouldn’t have noticed with the thermal sense.

In the moment he thinks I’m blinded, he dives for the shattered section of timber beneath me. It’s a good plan. Well, the only one he likely has available. The waters below would provide him safety from my flames, and I know the heqet — especially those with some amount of enhancement — can hold their breaths for a long time. If he dives lower than a metre, I’ll probably be unable to touch him, no matter how much I’m willing to hurt myself to get at him.

I snatch him up in a shroud of fire, halting his attempt before he can even reach the gap in the deck.

No longer needing the platform, I allow it to burn up below, leaving the heqet with nothing but a world of flames to watch as he dies. The mucus covering his body is the first to go. Followed soon after by the wart-laced leathery skin of his webbed feet and sole remaining hand.

“Sylvan,” I say. “You should not have crossed me.”

The heqet burns. A scream of hatred and cursed death is the only thing that escapes the consuming blaze.

I breathe in deep before letting out a sigh. The man had a surprising amount of enhancement, considering how little of a fight he put up. Nothing on Kalma, of course, but more than I thought he could have. The Jarlship itself was satiating for a completely different reason. Aboard, there was so much explosive powder and almost as many of those massive cannons as the fort had. It had taken a bit of effort to stop them from exploding and taking out everything for hundreds of metres.

I look around. Nothing remains of Sylvan, the crew, or the Jarlship itself. Considering the effort to take the fort for a simple ship, I’d thought it was likely important, but I thought it would be more difficult for one to become a Jarl than simply owning a big ship. It was clear the heqet gave him more authority as soon as he took command of the vessel. But did he really need to sacrifice me and Leal for that?

It’s not even his attempted assassination I’m most mad about. I’d trusted Sylvan as the only one to free the heqet from slavery. He was the only one that seemed inclined to do as such. I cast my attention to the incoming fleet — magnitudes larger than Sylvan’s even before I decimated it — Jarl Anoures is here to return things to the way they were.

I cannot let her thrust her whole kind back into thralldom.

As much as I’ve come to hate the heqet and the way they do things, I just can’t leave them to the tyranny of a slaver. Allowing them to endlessly murder themselves with pointless wars is far better than trapping their freedom. Even if my Leal might disagree.

I rise from the ruins of the Jarlship and move toward Anoures’ fleet. I’m not yet done.

Leal, wrapped in my flames, rejoins me. Her gaze seems shocked, her eye once more holding that analytical lens of water as she scans over me. I guess her version of me never grew this strong.

Almost as soon as I start heading toward the massive navy blocking the fjord’s mouth, a red flag raises on the fleet’s own Jarlship. All vessels lower their sails and drop their oars, slowing to a stop. All besides the Jarlship. Anoures and her ship sail out into the waters between forces entirely alone.

Some dumb and plucky ships lingering at the rear of what was Sylvan’s fleet fire their cannons at the incoming vessel, but despite the ship being made of timber like any other, the iron balls bounce off without damage. They might as well be firing upon a Henosis battleship.

The few ships that do fire don’t go unpunished. I watch a heqet standing on the bow raise an axe, before it disappears. I can’t even see the weapon as it shoots through the air, only the break in water that follows and the sudden split of the vessel that shot at them. Bisected, the ship sinks rapidly.

This is Jarl Anoures. I have no doubt. Honestly, how did Sylvan ever think he could take her on? The difference in strength is simply too vast.

Her ship continues to sail towards me, and I spot her looking my way, not with the hate common of her kind, but with expectation. Sylvan always referred to her as a woman, but I don’t see any differences between her and any other heqet. She throws another axe at the fourth foolish ship to fire at her, sinking it within seconds, but her gaze immediately returns to me. Not so much as confirming her kill.

I watch intently, ready to burn her and her Jarlship out of the water, but she suddenly grins. Her large, head-spanning mouth smirks with satisfaction as her arms widen, as if welcoming me. It looks much like the aggressive, battle-ready joy I’ve seen from her kin… until she drops her axes.

Does she want to talk?