Firewyrm

by Erik Schubach

  “While the fringes of this tsunami of flame is physical fire, the core here seems to be violent eddies of compressed magic causing extreme heat,” Mother said.

  While I nodded at the confirmation to my hunch, Graz blurted, “Someone is doing this on purpose?”

  The fire marshal's voice crackled in my ear, “Shade, do you copy? Our scanners aren't tracking you in there, there's some sort of magic interference. The epicenter is moving. Do you read?”

  “I copy Hanalee. The fire is magic in nature, but I think there's more to it. Moving into position, ETA to heart, fifteen seconds.”

  After a moment's hesitation, she responded, “Magic? This was intentional?” She seemed to refocus and said, “First priority is to stop this before we have structural collapse, we can sort out the who's and why's later.” Then she whispered, “Mother says three Greater Fae from the Summer Court are two minutes out, I'd prefer to get this contained before they get involved.”

  “On it. Shade out.”

  Ok, I was smirking a bit at that, so it wasn't just me who felt that if the Greater Fae had to pull our asses out of the literal fire, it would just reinforce the fact that without them, we'd all have perished long ago. It seemed the other preternatural races felt the same.

  I stepped through a melted section of the bulkhead and moved into what looked to be someone's housing quarters, but everything was charred, the deck plates were melted in spots and the alloys of the walls were sagging... all the belongings were charred rubble. I moved through three walls that had almost perfectly circular holes burned through them. Like something had been burrowing through them.

  The closer I got to the heart of the fire, the more I could taste magic like it was coating my tongue, and I could feel it moving. I stepped into a mechanical equipment room that looked to have something to do with environmental controls for this section, judging by the huge ducts and pipes that were melted through. In a clear path.

  I could hear something over the roaring, magic-induced flames, almost like a whimpering. According to the map in my peripheral, we were almost against Bulkhead A again. Mother's readings showed the superstructure was reaching critical temperatures again. In that area there was no buffer between the forest and the bulkhead if the fire made it through, the forest was sure to go up like kindling.

  Something huge was sort of flowing and squirming like it was curling itself up into a ball as it nestled against the wall. My jaw hung open when I realized what I was looking at. It couldn't be... so this is why the fire was acting like it was alive. It was some sort of huge creature with hyper-compressed magic radiating from it. And judging by the sounds, and the way it was curling up, it was afraid.

  I said into coms as I set the cryo-charge down to move in for a closer look, “Han, we've got a little problem. I won't be able to set off the charge. There's something alive in here, I think it is causing all of this.”

  “We don't have a choice, the fire is about to breach the bulkhead, set the charge and get out. The higher-ups can examine the body later.”

  “Gods be damned woman. Whatever it is it is afraid. Just give me a minute to see if I can talk with it. If not then I'll set off the fleeking charge.”

  She started to argue but Mother anticipated me and cut the com channel. I inhaled and held my breath as I steeled myself. I started forward cautiously, calling out, “Hello? I'm Knith Shade, Brigade Enforcer. I'm not going to hurt you.”

  The ball of flame was huge, at least nine feet tall, it seemed to uncoil slightly.

  I kept talking. “I know you're afraid, but I can help.”

  It unfurled more and backed away, flowing like a river of flame.

  “It's ok. I won't hurt you.”

  It swung toward me and I almost tripped as I backpedaled, then I froze when the fire... blinked. I pulled back slightly to look at the saucer-sized eye, and I smiled as I made out a big muzzle. It was some sort of animal. “It's ok. Can you move over this way more? I know you don't mean to, but you're endangering everyone on the world. We need to move away from the wall.”

  I felt like a fool when I held a hand up for it to sniff like it were a canine, or fairy. Huge nostrils flared and it moved along with me as I backed away from the bulkhead. I noticed the flames were dying in fury and I didn't feel the heat radiating as much. “That's it. See? I'm not going to hurt you. That's a good...” Girl, boy? “...fire being.”

  It flowed like a snake with me and I chanced to step up to it when we were clear of the bulkhead and I realized in a flash of insight what I was looking at and the impossibility of it had me blinking. It couldn't be. Even among the Fae, it was just folklore. The Vikings had stories... and in all those legends, they were all female.

  I reached up and placed a hand on its muzzle and scritched as I said, “That's it, good girl.”

  The Firewyrm closed her eyes and made a satisfied moaning sound. I grinned and patted her more enthusiastically. A Firewrym? By all the celestial gods, they were real? The power flowing off of her was diminishing and the flames settled into fluffy feather-like layered fur as she almost knocked me over when she nuzzled me.

  I chuckled as I glanced around to see the fire slowly dying without her fear-fueled magic feeding it. Now that I could see her, I noted how much she looked like a combination of the legless dragons from old earth legends from a cultural division they called countries which they designated China, and the European division dragons.

  Magic, had a problem sticking to me, and even Mab's mark needed her to renew it from time to time or it lost its hold. I took a chance, and with a thought I had my armor retract one of my gauntlets, exposing my hand.

  Mother made a distressed sound as she gasped, “Knith!”

  The air was almost painfully hot, but it had dropped from over a thousand degrees to around a hundred and twenty-five since the Firewyrm started to calm down, I think most of the heat was from the residual fire and superheated ceramic and metal around us.

  Then I placed my hand on the beast, sinking my hand into the surprisingly soft fur. It practically purred as I placed my helmet against its massive head. “There we go sweetie, everything is going to be ok. I promise.”

  My head was filled with flashes of emotion, mostly fear and confusion, and impressions of words, like 'door' and 'big dark' or 'afraid' and 'hide', 'lost' and 'home'. It was sentient, but like a small child. I withdrew my other gauntlet and my visor rose. I breathed in the smoke-filled scalding air, and hugged her head, whispering to her, “It's ok, baby girl. I've got you. You don't need to be afraid.”

  The Firewrym cooed and snuggled its massive head against me, and I smiled at the impressions I was getting from her. Was this how she communicated? I stroked her fur and reactivated my coms as I said while Graz timidly flew out of my helmet to hover in front of the beast's eye, waving from her hip. As she asked in a stunned voice, “Umm... Knith? Do you know what this is?”

  I nodded and provided, “A Firewyrm, and if I'm right, just a baby.”

  Then I was on coms. “Hanalee, this is Shade. Situation is under control. You should make short work of the fire now. I need everyone to stay back until we can get someone in here who is good with young people. I've got a Firewyrm in here and she is frightened.”

  There was a long pause before a disbelieving Minotaur asked, “A... Firewyrm? But those are just... are you sure?”

  I nodded to myself as I continued to scritch the thirty-foot long baby. “Pretty positive, she's actually pretty cute, but any stress will likely start this whole mess all over.” Then I added... “I umm... I think she's Fae. We're sort of communicating.”

  Another pause and she started to speak, then instead blurted in an almost whisper, “Fuck me, you've got incoming.”

  Incoming?

  I could feel the overwhelming magic approaching through the dwindling fires and knew who it was before the woman stepped through the flames as if she didn't feel them, gouts of swirling flame and heat flowing i
nto her like she was absorbing the inferno as she walked up to us.

  I moved my body between her and the Firewyrm, like that would do any good. Queen Titania hesitated when she saw me and with a sneer on her inhumanly beautiful face she hissed out, “You! I should have known. Every travesty has your mark on it.”

  I said in a wavering voice, knowing magic resistance or not, she could crush me with but a thought, just like Mab, “Leave her alone. She didn't mean to do this. She's...”

  I trailed off when Titania just brushed past me to wrap her arms around the neck of the beastie and said, “It's ok, Ember, mommy's here.”

  This Ember seemed to undulate in excitement. I started to smile then froze when the Summer Lady turned to me, her hands bursting into flames as she spoke to Ember, “If she's hurt you...”

  I held my hands up. “I'd never hurt her. She's a sweetheart! We're buddies.”

  She seemed to blink in shock when Ember gave me a big wet sloppy slurp with her immense tongue, leaving my entire face sopping wet. Eww. I scratched her under her massive jaw.

  The woman studied me as Graz flew back into my helmet and burrowed down as far as she could get into my armor. She was terrified. Titania exhaled and said, “I'm done with you for now. Leave us, I need to get Ember back to her pen.”

  My armor barely sealed up in time as a fireball struck my chest, sending me flying back through all the holes in the walls pushing me until it made a ninety-degree turn and sent me tumbling across the deck back out in the open Ring. I came to a rolling stop at the feet of Hanalee and an overly miffed looking Brigade Commander. My visor slid up and I groaned, “Ow.” Then I held up a finger before either of them could lay into me. “Queen Titania has things from here. I'm just going to lay here a minute and count my bruises.”

  Mother, in all her sarcastic glory, started playing Bad Reputation by a singer named Joan Jett, in my head. Every part of me ached too much to flip off the nearest observation camera. She chuckled at the thought, making me nervous about the neural interface of my experimental helmet again.

  Chapter 3 – Heavily Broken

  It was an almost painful debriefing after the other two Fae of the Summer Court corralled all the fire into one spot instead of absorbing it as Titania had, and a cryo-charge snuffed it out. When crews went in to locate the Summer Lady, she was nowhere to be found. Nor I noted to myself, was the Firewyrm.

  Engineers from every ring were showing up to assess the damage and Mother seemed distracted as she ran extensive system diagnostics and structural scans of every micron of the ring and its superstructure to assess the extent of the damage to her critical systems like life support.

  The entire ring was shrouded in hazy smoke as the air scrubbers kicked into overtime to try to clean the air. Some scrubbers were damaged in the mechanical room Ember had hidden in so it may take weeks to clear the air.

  Crews were out looking for all of the residents who were displaced to be sure of headcounts to verify there were no casualties.

  And crews were looking to me for answers, seeing as how I was the only one to see the “supposed Firewyrm” besides the Summer Lady and she wasn't answering coms and Mother couldn't locate her anywhere on the world, they all ignored Graz's account, which made me angry. I hated how some races were discounted. And that wasn't just sour grapes being one of those races... well maybe.

  While I was going over it for the fifth or sixth time, showing them footage from the various cameras on my armor to show I hadn't just gotten “disoriented” in the fire and was seeing things, word of Titania resurfacing came to us.

  Commander J'mayaght's eyes were reading something in his heads up display, I could see the lights in his ice-blue eyes, his pointed ears twitching. He cursed in Elvish, “Ta'raght.” Then he fixed me with his gaze. “Queen Titania and President Yang want us, your Commander Reise, and your partner in the FABLE office at Verd'real in thirty minutes. I swear, Shade if your reckless behavior puts me in a bad light in the Summer Court...”

  I would have been a little excited to see the Summer Palace if I hadn't known I was about to have my ass handed to me. I was sort of persona non grata in the Summer Court since I sort of, well... after Titania's son tried to kill me and harvested my eggs, then tried to enthrall me with his glamour, I sort of arrested him. And after his trial I was also the one who operated the controls to carry out his sentence of being spaced... his body ejected out into the unforgiving hard vacuum of space.

  So there was that.

  While the elf was contacting his Enforcers to start canvassing the area to investigate where the Firewyrm had come from, I asked Mother, “Can you contact...”

  She sighed with patience. “I've already sent word to Lieutenant Keller. And I took the liberty to access your Tac-Bike, I'm flying it here now, ETA ten minutes.”

  I grinned. “What would I do without you, Mother?”

  She and Graz said at the same time, “Die.”

  Everybody is a comedian.

  I'm sure my Grindle partner from the Fae and Brigade Liaison Enforcers office, or FABLE, was going to be wishing me a slow roast in one of the hells for getting him pulled into this. But that's what Dan and I had signed up for, being the bridge between the Fae and... well and everyone else living on the world.

  Ok, neither of us signed up for it, we were assigned. The duplicitous Fae princess who, I think I might be dating... or something, was behind it along with Queen Mab.

  Commander J'mayaght looked at me. “Lieutenant Shade, you're with me.”

  Mother sounded in my head. “Rerouting Tac-Bike now to A-Ring spoke terminal,” as I stood at attention. “Sir!” Oh goody, a fifteen-minute ride with a superior who already didn't like me. Fun.

  It was an awkward, silent ride in a Battalion personnel skimmer to the nearest spoke terminal then up-ring to the A-Ring. I had only seen Alpha-Stack's A-Ring in holos, waves, and pictures. The Beta-Stack A-Ring was the most awe-inspiring thing I had ever seen, except for seeing the Leviathan herself from space earlier that day, but the habitat ring of the Summer Lady? It was a world of its own.

  Impossible lattices of flowering vines climbed the superstructure to hang from the girders supporting the day-lights far above, framing the view of the lower rings and the trunk in explosions of color. The forests were all flowering too, and every building and all the bulkheads were covered in moss and vines and flowers as well, the air was heavy with the sweet perfume from them which almost made me light-headed.

  This would be what I would imagine one of the Old Earth religions would refer to as the Garden of Eden. And like that cautionary tale, I knew there were snakes and forbidden apples here too. Everything the Greater Fae did was deceptive.

  Because they were all cursed with a powerful gaes, and literally could not tell a lie, they were the greatest of deceivers using the truth to lull you into complacency. And before you knew it, you'd find yourself and your descendants owing a debt to them and not quite understanding how they had tricked you into it.

  Where the Winter Court saw it as a game and was cruel about the game most of the time, the Summer Court, in my opinion, was worse, since they did it with smiles and kindness for the most part, unless you run afoul of them as I did, then they can be even more cruel than the Winter.

  We skimmed above the roads that were sculpted to resemble cobblestones once we dipped down from the spoke terminal to be swallowed in the thick canopy of impossibly huge trees which reached for the Day Lights over a mile above, which were off for the night.

  I still find it hard to believe that each of the four A-Rings has almost two thousand square miles of space, four times that of the crowded C-Rings I had lived in prior to getting entangled with the Fae. Even more than the surface of the seven-mile diameter asteroid encased in the Heart sphere located... well located in the heart of the Leviathan. The workers and ore extractors there have virtually no gravity, so they can't even come farther out than the small D-Rings without requiring exosk
eleton support or magic buffs to support their brittle bone structure in the higher gravity of the spinning rings.

  We slowly elevated over the lower level traffic as we got clearance to fly in the priority lanes just above the canopy. My breath caught as we cleared the trees again as we flew along and the Summer Palace of Verd'real rotated into view, dominating the horizon as we sped toward it.

  The Winter Court's Ha'real was in tune with the nature around it, looking majestic and... well, cold. Having a central pointed tower of opalescent white that stretched almost a half-mile high, with other lesser spires surrounding it, extending half that height, melding in with the bulkhead on one side and stretching out to the lake in the middle of the ring. Low structures were arranged at the base to create a walled courtyard of green that ran the whole length of the palace, and waterfalls fell into the courtyard from big jagged rocks that melded into the bulkhead beside the towers there.

  But the Summer Court's palace? It 'was' nature. It looked to have grown out of the forest, covered in trees and moss and ivy, spires that looked to be made of impossibly huge tree trunks spiraling around each other reached over a half-mile high. The bulkheads were impossible to distinguish from the living wooden towers.

  Colorful, large Fae birds flew in great flocks all around the palace, through the mist from a great waterfall that looked to be coming out of the walls of the ring itself, crashing down to blue shimmering lakes that completely surrounded the palace, preventing approach from the ground. I could spot hidden Elf and Fae lookouts and guards hidden all over in the canopy as we passed over.

  If anything, I'd say that Verd'real was even more fortified, deceptively so than Ha'real.

  Then I muttered as we approached a wall shimmering in my vision, “Oh shit. Graz, get against me!” Nobody else saw the massive dome of magic, the wards the Summer Lady had placed around her domain.