I was really getting deep into the forest now. The trees may not have risen any higher — still sitting at about ten metres tall — but they were definitely getting fatter.

I made my way through the labyrinth of interlacing roots, passing under an aerial root almost as wide as I am, and forced to turn to my right and crawl through a tight space before reaching open air again.

I climb above one of the higher growing roots in the area and look around to get my bearings. I hadn’t even noticed it, but I’d been crawling through the roots directly under a tree. Although, it wasn’t surprising considering how fat the thing was; It was easily wider than even the furnace I’d lived in for so long.

Navigation through this forest was a nightmare. I would love to just walk in a straight line, but the maze created by the interconnected trees was a confusing mess. I had tried to keep above the roots, sticking to just the highest parts of the disorder. But doing so had become difficult quickly, often forcing me to make risky jumps to keep out of the depths. Which, many times already, resulted in hurting myself or falling deeper into the roots than I wanted.

I hadn’t seen the ground underneath or the underbrush in a few days now and it was making me curious. I had so far hesitated to go too far down, preferring to watch that I’m heading in a roughly straight line — which I could only hope was still north-west — and well, I still disliked being in cramped areas. I didn’t like the idea of being closed in, no matter how used to it I had become.

But my curiosity won out. I was moving down into the roots, using my small size to crawl between many tight gaps between roots. A sudden thought of an ursu attempting to do the same, but getting stuck, brought a giggle bubbling up from my chest.

I still felt horrible for what I had done back in Morne, but the freedom from the furnace was liberating. It was great being out here by myself and not having the constant fear of Gloria’s anger or the steps of an ursu outside my hole drowning my thoughts.

Of course, that wasn’t to say I still didn’t have worries. The incident with the wolves made me wary of my surroundings, even if I hadn’t had an issue with them again. No, simply making my own choices was the real reason I felt myself untangling from stress. I never wanted to be stuck doing someone else’s bidding again. I needed to make sure I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for the same trick Gloria had pulled on me. I needed to make sure not to trust anyone who put themselves forward as being generous.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to worry about that right now. All I needed to focus on was finding how deep these roots went.

I push through another tight squeeze to find… more roots. I had already gone down as far as the trees were tall. Where was the ground? As I lower myself down from a suspended root, a soft hiss entered my ears. I spin on the spot and see a… snake? It’d been such a long time since I’d seen one, but I had never seen one with such a deep green colour. It wasn’t as big as the ones I had seen in the deserts of the northern wastelands, but it was still as wide as my arm and almost as long as my body.

The snake hissed at me, rising in an obviously aggressive pose. I didn’t want to bother it, so I tried to move around it, careful in case it attacked. Well, it attacked, and I didn’t even realise it before it had already bitten deep into my hand.

Wow, it was quick. The bite stung a bit, making me reflexively burn its head off.

Okay… things outside the desert really burn quick, huh?

I tug out the fangs that didn’t burn along with the rest of its head and pick up the now limp body.

“I guess you’re my lunch now, huh?” I say to the dead serpent. If he wants to object, now would be the time after all.

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

I take a bite from the dead snake and continue on. The roots are getting almost too tight to move through now. I poke my head through the last gap in the roots I can. A glance below shows nothing but a dark abyss. I drop an orb of flame to light the opening beneath me.

I shiver when I realise how much space is below me. I can’t see anything from the light of my flame until I reach the limit of the range I’m able to control it. The undergrowth below appears, only slightly illuminated by the light of my flame, but it sways, as if experiencing a calm breeze.

I’m just about to extinguish the orb of flame when I feel the flame suffocated by some other force.

I’m frozen, staring down into the darkness below. I don’t know what caused it, but I dare not light another orb. I move my head out of the gap, only to be pelted by a turbulent gust from below. The blast of air shakes the surrounding roots, the same roots that haven’t budged even with all my weight standing on them. A loud wail surrounds me, shrieking from all directions.

In a panic, I quickly scramble back upwards, trying to burn my fingers into the wood of the roots, as I had done with the bark of the trees. I tried, but found myself rebuffed by the roots. My flames unable to burn the wood, I could do nothing but try to escape without them.

In my scramble to rise out of the depths, I didn’t notice the labyrinth had returned to its calm, immovable state long before I had reached the heights of the nearest tree. In that tall tree, I watched over the roots below and waited for whatever monster I hadn’t seen made its way to the surface.

It was a good five minutes later before I calm enough to berate myself for my stupid curiosity. There was something down there, in the dark space under the tree roots, and it didn’t like me poking my nose into its territory.

Okay… nah-uh, never going inside the roots again.

I think now is a perfect time to rest. Anything to keep up here, away from the roots for a while. I glance down at the long rain jacket I was wearing, tied up at the bottom so that it only reached my knees rather than the ground. It’s probably about time I get around to fireproofing it.

I had hoped to find the proper materials I’d need for this procedure, but the forest had nothing I could use, suspended above the earth as it was. I toss the jacket on the branch in front of me and settle for the mediocre method.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

I need to fireproof my jacket. I could direct my flames enough even when I let my form return to its natural state, I could usually prevent damage to my clothing, but it wasn’t foolproof. I was lucky to have the foresight to remove Leal’s jacket before I had gone and burnt down Gloria’s building… and Gloria… and the rest of the city.

Uncle had shown me the many methods áed used to keep our own clothing from burning up even when we burn at our hottest. Of course, tempering our clothing wouldn’t stop the flames from burning through them if that was the intention. In combination with our desire to keep the things we have, intentionally preventing our fire from damaging those things, it was possible for us to return to our flame form without destroying them every time.

There were a few different ways of doing this. The best usually involved lots of salt and metal powder or, if possible, lining the cloth or material intended with thin strips of metal. The clothes lined with metal tended to be rather heavy, so only my elders wore them.

The method I would use is the least effective, needing to be reapplied once every week lest it wear off. But it was by far the easiest to accomplish. I didn’t even need to use anything. Well, anything but time and patience. The sight of roots looms below. If it meant more time away from whatever that monster was, I had plenty of both.

I hadn’t done this in a long time now — It’s been far longer than a year since I was last with my family, right? It still feels like they’ve barely just left me, while also feeling like it’s been forever since I’ve seen them. — I place my hand on the jacket, I hope I haven’t forgotten how to do it. It’d be a horrible shame to damage Leal’s gift.

I hold my flame, or more specifically, the energy within. I morph it, cool it into a state that won’t burn the leather as it passes through. I push it into the jacket, lining the energy into a pattern that I repeat over and over again through the entire surface. As the patterns in the jacket glow, I realise they look much like the inscriptions the ursu used.

Huh? Why didn’t I notice it sooner? The lines being burnt into the wolf pelt were much simpler than the inscriptions in the relic weapons of our tribe, but they were inscriptions all the same. Did the elders know anything about it? Did they know how to use inscriptions? Or was this passed down from one of my elder’s elders?

Now I would sit here for the next hour to make sure the patterns — what I now knew to be an inscription — take hold. Using salt and metal powder would both increase the speed the inscription took hold and would increase the time it held for. I don’t know if it would hold permanently, but I’d never seen a treated object ever have to be repaired from damage caused by time. It was always external damage, like from a fight with a beast or a spar between tribe members.

After sitting up in the tree for a while, I had finally relaxed from the stress and fear of what might be below me. Well, maybe not fully, but I had stopped sending worried glances down every few seconds. I definitely didn’t want to sleep here tonight. After I had finished treating Leal’s jacket, I wanted to be as far from here before night came.

The rain-jacket took a lot longer than I thought to complete. I didn’t know whether it was because of how big it was or it was because I hadn’t done it in a while, but once I had finally finished etching the patterns into it, I tossed it over my shoulders and moved down the tree once again.

I was wary of being heard, so I kept my feet light and hesitated to make any large jumps which may attract attention.

Unfortunately, the only options I had were making those noisy jumps or crawling through the entangled roots. Once again, I try to burn my fingers into the roots to make climbing them easier, but fail. The roots seem to be almost impervious to my flames.

Is it just the roots that’s fire resistant? I try the same with the wide trunk of a tree. The bark burns as quickly as it had when I first entered the forest, but once I reached the actual timber underneath, I found it was the same as the roots. I couldn’t ignite it no matter how much I try.

It was strange, a type of wood that didn’t burn. I’d assumed I wouldn’t be starved of choice with what I could eat in this forest, but unless I came across other creatures I could hunt, bark was the only edible thing. And from what I’d tasted so far, it wasn’t exactly brimming with energy.

The wolves I’d eaten the other day filled me up, but I couldn’t help but feel like I let my uncle down. I didn’t even try to make use of their pelts, fangs or claws. It was wasteful to just consume everything the way I did, and I could imagine Uncle’s disappointed glare in my mind. He would have called me lazy.

Uncle was always a proponent for not needlessly killing and he had made sure I knew never to kill without necessity. But what really was necessity? Would it have been okay to kill the wolf if I had needed one of its claws?

It’s not like I think killing the wolves was wrong. I needed to protect myself, and I was being attacked. It was simply survival. I could even say the same about Gloria. She attacked me, so I was in the right to defend myself, right?

But if I kill an animal, I need to make as much use of what that creature has given to make it a reasonable trade of life. At least that’s what my uncle believed. What if the creature I killed doesn’t have any value? What then? Is it still reasonable? Or does that make me nothing more than a beast myself?

Why am I even thinking this? I’ve never cared about hunting animals before. And I didn’t feel bad about killing the wolves, not really. So why? Why are my uncle’s words from so long ago sticking in my mind?

I knew the answer, of course; Gloria.

Her death had unsettled me. The gruesome way she melted under my flames. The sheer hatred she held for me as I watched her die. But what was I supposed to use from her death? I couldn’t skin her like an animal, right? Not only had all her fur been burnt away, but she was a person. That’d be just wrong.

Was I supposed to have taken her property or something? I’m pretty sure I burned all that down before I had killed her.

The only thing I could think of is if I was supposed to learn some lesson from this. Maybe my uncle wanted me to learn from her death or my mistake. No, not uncle, he was already in the Great Inferno. In all likelihood, it was a subconscious part of myself that realised this, not my dead uncle who had long since passed on.

So, what did I need to learn? I already knew I’d let my anger and hatred overcome my common sense. I realised that after an entire city burned from my carelessness. I also knew now that I couldn’t simply trust someone because they acted nice. I needed to assume the worst in everyone. That was the only way I could think of to stop myself from being taken advantage of. Maybe there was a better way to do that, but I didn’t know it.

Maybe I should think about it from the other way. Why did Gloria act the way she did? Thinking back to the first time we met, she could tell I was an áed from just looking at me. No other ursu has done that, most thinking I’m something they called an albanic. She’d been ingratiating herself to me from the moment we met. Making me feel like everything she did was for me. She knew áed are more efficient at burning fuel than doing it normally, didn’t she? Even I hadn’t known that until later on.

I had seen the other ursu around the furnace as well. Maybe it was their thick coat of fur, but they couldn’t handle the heat for long, having to change out often or overheat. By putting me in there, she probably cut down the effort she needed to put in to manage the oven.

So, by using me, she cut down on the amount of coal she had to use and could get me to reduce her workload. I made her job easy. Is that why she ended up considering me her property? I was just a tool for her. She had thought that of me from the very start.

Is that the lesson I have to learn? To know the value she slapped on my efficiency? I guess I could probably make a train run far longer than usual, what with how Leal had told me they operate. That seems like a bit of a stretch. It could be that simply being a different race to the norm is enough to be treated differently. I had seen that enough when the average ursu’s opinion had turned hostile towards me, simply for being non-ursu.

I wouldn’t be able to pretend to be an ursu, but maybe I could hide as one of these albanic. Well, that was assuming I couldn’t get back into the wasteland.