by Terah Edun
Even Rivan’s focus was drawn to the glowing trails appearing and disappearing all up-and-down her arms. Mae saw his eyes flicker to them more than once, and she took full advantage when his concentration was broken enough that she actually managed to nick the corner of his eye with a fast fingernail.
His eyes hardened as he drew back and a single drop of blood trailed down to his cheek. She felt immense pride then. It was something. Besides, now that she knew he could bleed, she wanted more. More blows, more pain. But he narrowed his focus then and went back to parrying her every blow. His eyes never flickered back to the orange lines along her arms, although she did see his pupils widen when some of the brightest rivulets made their appearance. Flashing here and gone in the next moment. Just as she was beginning to wonder if the thin rivulets of glowing orange disappearing and appearing just under the layer of her skin had a purpose, she and he saw something extraordinary.
One particular rivulet was daring.
It darted forward along the path of her arm longer and stronger than the others.
Reaching her index finger with a burst of energy, Mae felt it when the orange rivulet burst out of her fingertip and became something other than just a pretty glow.
It became fire.
Beautiful, glowing flames that emerged from her hand like extensions of her digits.
Burning her pain away and promising to invest it in others.
4
Together they watched startled, as the flames seemed to feed and increase in size. The glow of the flames reflected in his wide eyes as they watched them grow, at one point as long as her longest finger.
But they didn’t stay burning bright to her disappointment. The flames were longest on her index and ring fingers but those were spluttering and dying, as if the fuel they had found in the air wasn’t enough to keep them going.
Mae desperately wriggled her fingers, trying to get it going again.
“Interesting,” Rivan said dryly as they both watched her trick disappear in an ever diminishing trickle.
Mae glared at him, distrustful. He didn’t seem inclined to act on her momentary return to vulnerability, instead, standing back and letting her work through her problem. Not that she had the slightest idea of what went wrong and how to fix it.
Mae licked her lips slowly and took an uncertain step back as she dropped her now malfunctioning hand.
“Oh don’t stop now,” Rivan said dryly. “That was highly entertaining.”
“I’m not a puppet for you to watch and goggle at,” Mae snapped, highly irritated.
“Of course not,” he said while waving a lazy hand. “But I haven’t seen a baby mage this incompetent since well…I emerged newborn.”
Mae gasped in shock. Not really at the bite in his words but that at the fact that he could be so flippant when her world was falling down all around her.
“How dare you,” Mae managed to choke out.
“You’re sparking,” Rivan murmured with curious look.
Mae snapped at him, “If that’s your best effort of distracting me, I’d say you need to practice some more.”
She knew that all she had at the moment was her fingers and her fists as her weapons.
No weapons in sight and her flaming trick seemed to have deserted her.
No matter, Mae thought to herself firmly. He’s just one boy. I can handle him myself.
She resolutely squared her shoulders and ignored the itching sensation around her fingers. It was probably just a residual twinge resulting from having her flesh actually on fire for some time. She even wondered if she would need to find some ointment to splash on her digits later.
But that was not her concern at the moment.
She was focused on her opponent who even now seemed to view her as nothing more onerous than a brief distraction.
As if to confirm everything she thought in her mind, Rivan said then in a voice with a taunting lilt, “Come on show me your little flames again.”
Mae sucked in a harsh breath before she screeched, “I’ll show you little.”
The anger surged within her again and with it…the fire that seemed to feast not on the air but rage itself. She didn’t care how it came to be; she just knew that it was back.
This time she didn’t wait to go for his eyes.
She just balled her fists and aimed for his chest.
When her hand came up to her eye-level, even she was surprised by what she saw.
An entire ball of flames encased her fist burning bright and ready.
Of course, having your hand on fire didn’t guarantee that you would be able to hit your opponent even with the element of surprise in your favor. Although in this case Rivan looked more fascinatingly shocked than anything else.
Mae herself was a little stunned. Because where the glowing flames had been nothing more than rivulets running underneath her skin before, now they grew and blazed as they emerged in a powerful blast around her knuckles and hands.
The more punches she tried to throw; the more Mae saw something that she cherished grow in her opponent’s eyes in response.
Wariness.
For the first time in a very long while, her opponent was on the defensive and she had the upper hand.
Not wanting to diminish the fire that encased her hand like a glove, Mae focused on all the pain and anguish and fire in her heart. She reveled in the rush of the flames and in the feeling of physical pain that died away almost instantly. She hadn’t really processed it before, but the fire itself, seemed to be numbing the pain in her mangled hand. She no longer felt aching bruises and bones arching the wrong away through torn flesh. Instead, her hands were fire and they burned with an intensity that pushed her on.
She was so infuriated that she began moving faster, dancing across the floor quicker. Her mind and her heart alive with the power that emerged from the darkness. A darkness she couldn’t control and didn’t want to. As the power spread and not just her fists were encased in fire, but all of her upper arms she began to feel a bit disoriented.
Not dizzy, but faint, as she tried to land a punch on Rivan.
With each thrust of her closed fist, she felt a corresponding clench about her heart.
On the third clench, she actually had to stop and back off with heavy panting. Mae raised her other hand to rub over her chest bone before she remembered that that hand had suffered damage and it was broken. Letting that limb fall back uselessly at her side, Mae tried not to let her discomfort show but it felt like a small vice was forming around her heart.
She wasn’t sure what it was or what to call it. She just knew it was making her feel like she was ready to collapse.
The fire around her fists wasn’t doing anything to diminish that feeling either.
It seems while her hands were numb, her heart was increasingly feeling the stress of pain in return.
Some of her confusion and even fear must have communicated itself on her face because the next thing she knew Rivan was speaking to her in an almost gentle tone.
“Take it easy,” Rivan cautioned. “You keep drawing on your core like that you’ll be finished before you’ve even begun.”
“I’m fine,” Mae muttered as she stumbled back.
She was trying to keep her fist up and wanted to go back on the attack but that was hard to do when you felt like you could drop to the ground unconscious at any second.
Rivan scoffed. “I know the look of a mage who has drawn too much on a new gift in an incredibly short period of time. Your core is straining to adapt.”
Mae was stumped. She didn’t want to rely on him for anything, much less information, when her greatest desire was to kill him.
But she couldn’t help it. She had to ask, “What do you know about it? What core?”
He sighed exasperated and shook his head.
“Have you ever thought that Donna Marie sought you out not just because of the allure of that tattooed collar on your chest but what its cage represented for what was underneath?�
�� he asked in a harsh voice. “We didn’t come here unprepared.”
Mae set her jaw in an unforgiving hard line as she listened to him to recall the events which had led up to her anguish this day. Not caring that she was unwell and her heart was threatening to fail, Mae resumed her attack with a harsh yell.
Flame or no flames. Stamina or no stamina.
“Hey!” Rivan only had time to yell before she was aiming her fingers in a claw-like manner straight for his eyes.
If the fists wouldn’t work, she was more than willing to go back to her original strategy. It didn’t matter if she scraped them out or burned away his vision, she would get some measure of revenge either way.
Rivan’s surprise at the renewed might of her flames didn’t last long.
In fact, she was in for a surprise. He slipped to her side and raised his hand as she was going for his eyes. Out of nowhere, the wind that had braced her fall earlier was knocking her back. Helpless she looked around for a source and saw nothing but him with his hand outstretched. As he narrowed his fingers a concentrated funnel seemed to hover inside his palm, then he blasted her with the air and she was thrown back by the winds again. Then it bracketed her from the left and the right and Mae squirmed in fury as she tried to free herself, to no avail.
She couldn’t believe her eyes.
Neither could he apparently.
The air was moving at his will and direction but it had somehow swallowed her flames. So she was surrounded by a wall of twisting, living fire. Mae supposed she was lucky that just like the flames she was surviving rather than being snuffed out.
But these flames weren’t responding to her control.
At least not all the way.
Perhaps because part of the magic that made them came from him and his winds.
Perhaps because she had never really had control in the first place and now that they were bigger, it was becoming clearer that she had just hosted their fury and not been their mistress in return. Either way the flames were rapidly growing out of control.
Spurts of fire blasting out in spirals towards the room before dying down and reappearing a second time. Then a third.
Even Rivan looked wary as he stepped back and raised his forearm to shield his eyes from the glare.
Mae felt what little control she had left, leaving her as the flames grew greater and even more out of control.
“Mae,” Rivan quickly said. “You don’t want to do this!”
She gave a choking laugh. “You’re wrong, this is all I have.”
He kept shaking his head as he said, “You need to relax. Let them die down before they claim you for themselves.”
“I’m not a child,” Mae snapped at him.
“Then I’d advise you to stop acting like one,” he said with actual stress in his voice.
Mae stiffened for a moment. She could drop her flames but they were the only thing keeping his winds away and she knew that by the rapid beat of her heart she wouldn’t be able to hold this up for long.
It was now or never. She briefly thought about backing down. Following his advice. But there was little reason to do so and every chance that this would end in his favor if she followed his advice. So Mae took a leap and she did something she’d been too afraid to do all along.
She took the darkness inside of her and flung it outward.
And it didn’t disappoint. As Mae’s eyesight blurred and she felt joy in the release of the burden that had hung over her for what seemed like too long, she watched as the inferno took over the entire room, including Rivan who couldn’t escape its flames.
For a moment it was beautiful, the entire room a glowing orange as a wall of fire and flames emerged from her tiny form but Mae realized then that she was never meant to endure such intense heat. She began to feel the fire burning not just on the inside but on the outside.
As she looked down curious, she saw the flames begin to consume her clothes and even her.
In that quick moment she gave a small smile, because Maeryn Darnes had achieved what she wanted.
The death of an enemy…even if it came at the expense of herself.
5
As death claimed her, she thought it was worth it.
This was her penance for betraying her family and bringing chaos down upon them.
She didn’t particularly envision taking Rivan with her as the pinnacle of success, but she would take what she could get at the moment.
As the flames licked her skin and the fire began to consume her Mae had the thought, the foreign woman would have been better.
It amused her to think just how much better her death could have been given the option, but she was here in this place now and as the fire’s smoke had long ago filled the entire room, she couldn’t even see Rivan to watch him die. Instead Mae focused on keeping herself strong and showing no fear as the wall of living fire which had previously been held back by a buffer of fierce winds came crashing down on her.
A small tear slipped down Mae’s face just as the fire consumed her, regrets for what might have been rather than what was going to happen to her now.
But death wasn’t coming for Maeryn Darnes as soon as she expected.
Instead out of the wall of living fire emerged a beast with a roar.
Mae flung herself back with a scream as she couldn’t really see what was coming. Just heard the challenging call and saw dark limbs emerging from the smoke and fire around her.
Something gripped her about her waist with a razor-sharp edge but when she looked up into the smoky clouds that rose two stories into the ceiling, where the chandelier still partially hung by its last remaining anchors, all she saw was a shape moving amongst the inky smoke.
She could neither make it out fully nor did she have the eyesight to see any further than a few inches in front of her. She was already squinting as it was to keep the smoke from burning her eyes. Which is why she didn’t see whatever it was that enveloped her in a suffocating cloak until it was too late, and she began to cough in protest.
Growing faint with lack of fresh air, Mae felt herself being picked up by the same thing which had gripped her waist. She felt the sharpness of whatever they were using to carry her, but the touch was light enough that she wasn’t cut in the process. They left the room, at least she thought they did, but they didn’t stop once they’d moved into the hallway and Mae felt a lethargy taking over her.
Before long however she found herself drifting off and just as she did, she looked up and blinked wearily. Trying to catch a glimpse of whatever had saved her and left Rivan to burn up alone in the flames.
She couldn’t blame them, not if the person or the mage had witnessed what he and the mercenaries had done to her family. Though it was wishful thinking to hope this new entity was an ally. Her family were neither powerful enough to conjure such a feat nor wealthy enough, despite Donna Marie’s insistence that there were fields of wealth somewhere in their greater holding forests that no one had been told about, to summon another mage caster to do it for them instead.
If we had either the conjuring or the summoning ability, we would have done something to save ourselves first, Mae thought wearily.
Whatever it was that had carted her up and she thought, saved her, was not from around here that was for certain. The further it walked though, the less dense the smoke around her became until Mae could blink her weary eyes in wonder to see that they were moving rapidly through the stone halls. Too rapidly for normal human movement. It was quite strange in fact; all she saw was a blur of grey stone moving past her and then steps as they climbed them but she was either too high up or too overwhelmed to make out any bodies on the ground or their location.
Minutes later she felt the sharp grip about her waist ease and she was lowered from where she had floated mid-air in a cloud of smoke that kept a permanent haze about her face and refused to allow her to peer more than a foot or some around her at any time. The first thing she noticed when the haze disappeared was that it was nigh
t and they were outside.
The stars were winking and the greater holding grounds were silent.
Not a word floated on the winds. Not a sheep’s soft bleat. Not a cow’s bellow.
Only the whisper of air curving around the stone walls and silence.
She turned around then, uncertain as to what she would find, as the smoke which had been hovering so close to her body gradually retreated and dissipated entirely, as if it had been recalled by a hand greater than her own.
It wasn’t long at all before a form began walking forward through the darkness of the night and Mae was squinting to see what manner of beast would confront her this time.
She was still weary and practically unconscious on her feet. But she blinked her eyes in determination and never wavered. If she was going to be eaten by some great mythical beast, she at least wanted to see what had decided to snack on her before she went.
But the form that walked out through the darkness was no beast.
It was a young man she knew all too well.
“Rivan?” Mae asked in astonishment as she looked around, sure the creature which had saved her for mysterious purposes was lurking around a tower or just out of eyesight in the sky above.
But nothing and no one else appeared and she was left to blink in disbelief at the young man before her.
“How are you alive?” Mae demanded aghast.
She was sure she had killed him. Heck, she was sure she had killed herself and look how that had turned out. But as the moon rose high in the sky and its night ray’s fell on him in a gentle sweep, she knew that he was just as alive as she was.