Fireborn

by David Dalglish

  “Nice shield,” she said. “Your wings aren’t exactly Weshern issue, either. Where’d you get them?”

  “Johan.”

  “I have a feeling that answers my next question. Last I knew, you were being held prisoner at the holy mansion. Did he rescue you?”

  Kael nodded. “They were taking me to the Crystal Cathedral, to join you in that cell, I’d wager. Johan and his disciples ambushed them on the street and took me to his hideout in New Galen. Clara overheard Marius telling her brothers about your capture, so she found us and told us where you were. We set up the rescue immediately after.”

  “Remind me to thank Clara as well, then,” Bree said. “Thank God your rescue attempt went better than mine. I was trying to convince Argus to launch an attack on the holy mansion when Center’s troops ambushed our camp.” What little good mood she’d felt quickly drained away with that memory. Bree glanced to the ice, preferring to watch it instead of Kael’s reaction. “Have you heard anything about that? About who might have survived, I mean?”

  “No,” Kael said.

  Damn it.

  “It was awful,” she said. “While running...me, Brad, and Saul, we were trying to get out when a bolt of lightning hit Brad in the chest. He’s...he’s gone, Kael.”

  A long period of silence.

  “Are you sure?” Kael asked.

  Bree swallowed down her sorrow, fighting against the haunting image of Brad’s face locked still, eyes wide, jaw unhinged.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure.”

  More silence. Bree dared look up. Kael sat at the edge of their ice island, fist pressed against his lips. His entire upper body was shaking.

  “He shouldn’t have been there,” Kael said with a sniffle.

  “Kael, don’t...”

  “He wanted to leave the academy,” her brother continued. “He wanted to leave, and I convinced him not to. I told him he was going to stay. He was going to make his parents proud.”

  Kael’s tears were infectious, and Bree clenched her jaw as she wrapped her arm around his shoulder and held him close. She let him grieve, let her own tears fall. Brad wasn’t the only one. Others had died, many she didn’t even know. But Brad was the one who made it real. Brad had been the only one impervious to all the ugliness around them.

  The ocean rocked their island, and together they rode the waves.

  “A shame he never got to fight,” Kael said, long minutes later. He’d splashed water across his face, cleaned his tears, and collected himself well enough to speak. “We had a goal, you know? He’d score a kill in battle, and then we’d rub it in Instructor Dohn’s face. We’d show him just how well fat could fly.” He shook his head. “This sucks. This fucking sucks.”

  Bree hugged him tightly.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  They fell silent again. High above, the sun continued its crawl toward the western horizon.

  “The theotechs tried to capture both of us,” Kael said. “They got you, and they almost had me. What do they want with us, Bree? What were they planning to do to us inside the cathedral?” He glanced at her, worry painted all over his face. “If you’re able to talk about it, of course.”

  Bree waved off his concern. Instead, she lifted her right arm to show him the gauntlet still attached.

  “They wanted me to unleash fire from this modified gauntlet,” she said. “It’s...Something is special about my blood, Kael, and I have a feeling I’m not the only one.”

  Kael frowned.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’ll be easier to show you,” she said. “Remove the light element from your gauntlet.”

  Her brother didn’t follow, but he did as instructed, popping the prism out from his gauntlet. It was gray and cracked, thin veins of black running throughout. Bree took it from him, then gestured to his sword.

  “Cut your palm,” she said. “Just like when we had our affinity tests.”

  Kael’s uncertainty grew. Carefully he pressed the tip of his sword against his palm, then cut. Blood pooled in his hand. Before Kael could ask why, Bree pressed the light prism into his hand and closed his fingers about it. A question was on his lips, but it died as his entire body stiffened. His eyes widened, his jaw falling open. A soft light grew in the center of the prism, shining brighter and brighter until it spilled through his fingers. The cracks and veins steadily vanished.

  Bree pulled the prism from Kael’s grasp, and immediately he relaxed.

  “You felt that, didn’t you?” she asked. “Like it’s draining something out of you, making you weak?”

  “I feel like I just ran a mile,” Kael said, and he stared at the prism with a mixture of elation and horror. “This is it, isn’t it? This is why the theotechs always treated us like we were special.”

  “Seems like it.” Bree twirled the prism in her fingers as she stared at it, letting her mind slip to the past. “There’s a needle jammed into my arm, along with a tube allowing my blood to drain into the compartment holding the prism. When I fired, I drained it in a single shot like always, but moments later I could fire again, the prism once more glowing with light. And they made me keep going, Kael. Over and over again. I think it was six times, maybe seven, before I passed out.”

  Bree’s mind flashed to the eyes in the furnace just before unconsciousness took her away. What she’d seen, it couldn’t have been real. She’d been so exhausted, it had to have been her delusional mind imagining things. Dismissing the faint memory, she handed the light element back to Kael. He slid it into the compartment of his gauntlet, flashed his harness off and on. It was as if he still didn’t trust it to be true, that his blood could replenish the prism.

  “I wonder if Mom and Dad were like this,” he said, staring at the cut on his hand. “Like us, I mean. Their blood. When Center took all those people during the ghost plague, maybe they were looking for people like them.”

  Bree thought of the clinical coldness in Jaina’s voice as they strapped her to the table and forced her to release fire from her gauntlet.

  “Or making people like them,” she said. “What if our parents were the only ones to survive whatever it is the theotechs did?”

  “We’re just guessing now,” Kael said. “Sure, it’s possible. But why let them go if they succeeded? This changes everything we know about the elemental prisms.”

  “No,” Bree said, shaking her head. “We don’t know that for sure. We don’t know how they’re made. We don’t know what this means, not entirely. Center’s still keeping secrets from us, and we’ll have to keep prying them out into the open.”

  Kael nudged her side.

  “Well aren’t you a killjoy. Here I was hoping we’d made progress.”

  His cheer didn’t last. A change had come over her brother, and he slumped his shoulders as he rested his head in his palm, staring into nothing. Bree watched, waiting. Years together had taught her that if she kept silent Kael would reveal whatever he was thinking on his own, without need of prodding.

  “Bree, when you were in there, did...did you see what was in the furnace?”

  Bree hesitated. She’d been so exhausted, she didn’t believe it to be true. But what did it matter if she told Kael? The worst he would do was laugh at her, and given her circumstances at the time, she doubted he’d do even that.

  “I thought I saw something in it watching me,” she admitted. “It was right at the end of their experiments. I’m sure I just imagined it.” She looked to her troubled brother, horror licking at the edges of her consciousness. “Unless I didn’t. What did you see, Kael? Why even ask?”

  He tapped the ice with his fingers, looked away.

  “I saw it, too,” he said. “Something inside, watching me. A creature, small, humanlike, yet not. It was...it was made of fire, Bree. Coal and fire. And when it saw me watching it, it drew its claws, flicked its tongue at me, and...laughed.”

  Kael rubbed at his eyes.

  “Tell me I’m crazy,” he said.

>   “I wish I could,” she whispered. “That’s the same as what I saw. I never thought it could be true. How could it? What could that thing possibly even be?”

  “The stories of the Ascension,” Kael said, glancing up at her. “Of angels warring against demons. What if they’re all true? What if that...thing...was one of the demons we fled to the skies from?”

  “Then why haven’t we ever seen them before?” Bree asked. “All that’s left of the world is the Endless Ocean.”

  “Is it?” Kael asked. “How do we know?”

  It was a simple enough question. Bree started to retort with the obvious, how everyone knew in all directions there was only ocean, but then paused. She didn’t know. The theotechs always insisted that was the case, but since when did she trust them to speak the truth?

  “We don’t,” Bree said. “Maybe no one’s flown far enough. Maybe in some faraway place, there’s land. We’re in the dark, as we always are. It’s a position I’m pretty damn sick of.”

  Kael chuckled.

  “Amen to that,” he said. He looked to the west, to the far distant brown speck that was their island home. “So what do we do? With my light element charged, I can easily get us to Weshern. They might still be looking for us, though. The knights may not know what our blood does, but the theotechs likely do.”

  “Then we wait until dark,” Bree said. “We’ll fly low along the water. With the midnight fire’s reflection rippling on the water, I doubt anyone will see us coming.”

  “Good enough for me,” Kael said. He armed his gauntlet, added another chunk of ice to their little island, then slid over to it. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to close my eyes for a bit. You weren’t kidding about how it feels to refill an element. Wake me when the rolling darkness comes. That, or our little ice island needs another layer.”

  Bree pulled her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms about them for warmth.

  “Will do,” she said softly, and watched the sun fall.

  * * *

  Bree shook Kael awake from his slumber as the darkness complete rose from the east, and she pointed with a hand as she stared at the sky.

  “What?” Kael asked, sucking in a deep breath as he looked about in confusion.

  “The crawling darkness,” she said. “It’s...wrong.”

  Kael frowned, and he blinked rapidly as he gazed at the sky, searching for whatever it was she meant. After a moment, he saw it, too. It had begun when the inky darkness reached overhead. Normally it rolled along as a solid line, but as it neared, it was curling inward as well as moving at a far more rapid pace. It felt frighteningly close, like a wave crashing down directly atop them.

  “What does it mean?” Bree asked, the last light of the sun fading behind the horizon, bathing them both in absolute darkness. She felt Kael’s hand touch her own, and she held it, her mind transported back years ago, when they caught a glimpse of a single star prior to the battle that claimed their parents’ lives.

  “I don’t know,” Kael said. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

  The midnight fire erupted, and Kael and Bree watched its progress across the sky in silence. Bree noticed even the rippling fire looked wrong from their perspective on the water. In the vast emptiness of the ocean, she could clearly see the dividing line between fire and shadow, and it wasn’t perfectly even as it approached. Instead it curled to the far north and south She pointed that out to Kael.

  “Strange,” he said. “Maybe it looks different because we’re far from Weshern, or we’re watching from so low?”

  Bree didn’t believe it was that simple. With much of the sky consumed, the crawling fire swarmed downward, again like a sharp wave to bury the eastern sky.

  “It looks so close,” she said. “Like we could reach out and touch it.”

  Kael watched the fire seal off the eastern horizon, the two of them bathed in red. His eyes narrowed.

  “Grab hold of my neck,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I think you’re right,” he said, rising to his feet. “I think we can reach out and touch it.”

  Bree swallowed down her apprehension, wrapped her arms around her brother, and held on as he flooded silver light into his wings. Kael curled his right arm around her waist and gently raised the throttle. They flew into the air, leaving their little island of ice behind. The wind whipped through her hair, and though they flew at a gentler pace, it was still enough to flood her ears with the sound of wind.

  “I see land!” Kael shouted.

  Bree’s eyes widened. It couldn’t be. Land, amid the ocean? But how? Their speed lessened as they descended. Twisting to see, she scanned the distance for this supposed land. She saw only fire, a pure wall of it blocking star and sky, but she searched too far. Kael slowed their descent even more, and glancing down, she saw it, a strange island of bare earth less than a few feet wide. Its length, though, seemed to stretch for at least a mile toward the north and south. Water lapped the western edge. Blocking the other, a massive wall of flame.

  The two landed. The ground sank beneath Bree’s feet, wet and muddy. Side by side they stared at the rippling fire before them. The dirt rose toward it, as if pulled out of the water, but then halted upon contact. Despite their proximity, the raging fire made not a sound and cast no heat.

  “What is this?” Bree asked. Her insides trembled. It was too much. First the burning creature within the furnace, and now this. The implications were beyond her understanding. Kael looked equally shaken. Despite standing on somewhat solid ground, he refused to shut off his wings, and their soft hum was the only sound of the night.

  “It’s the midnight fire,” Kael said. “It’s here. Right here. We’re at its very edge.”

  “But that can’t be,” Bree said. “It’s supposed to swallow up the heavens. No one can reach it. No one could ever fly to touch it.”

  Kael took a step closer to the fire.

  “Then it’s another lie,” he said. “So strange. There’s no sound. No heat. Almost as if...”

  The flame rippled before them, strangely distorted. Bree tensed, her breath catching in her throat as Kael pushed his fingers toward the fire.

  And stopped as he touched a shimmering wall. It was translucent like glass, shining a faint white at his contact. Kael’s mouth dropped open as he slid his fingers across it. The rippling effect increased, spreading out as if he were disturbing the surface of a pond. Bree neared, and she dared to touch it with her own fingers. Just as Kael said, she felt no heat. Though she’d expected something cold and smooth, like stone, instead her fingers tingled with the faintest hint of electricity.

  “How far does it go?” Bree wondered aloud.

  “I don’t know,” Kael said. “We’re not that far from Weshern, maybe a few hundred miles.”

  Bree looked up and down the wall. Now so close, it was much easier to see its gentle curve, a dome stretching high into the sky holding back the flame, and a thin cropping of dirt where it sank deep into the earth.

  “It’s like we’re in a giant cage,” she said.

  “Or a shelter,” Kael said, pushing harder against the barrier. “See how we’re protected? Outside this...dome rages a tremendous fire. Yet inside here, somehow, we’re kept safe from...”

  The image shimmered, far worse than ever before. The silence broke with a rumble, tremendous and terrifying. Both Kael and Bree fled from the wall, Bree sinking up to her ankles in water. White light sparked like spiderwebs across the image before them, and the protective dome thinned. The fire behind the barrier thickened, brighter, louder. And in the heart of the rippling formed eyes and teeth. Several implike creatures clung to the other side, fire dripping off their bodies like water. Their claws dug into the translucent barrier, the spiderwebs of light focused where they touched. The creatures grinned, and seeing those obsidian eyes, there was no denying it was the same being as what Bree had witnessed laughing at her from within the furnace.

  “Kael,” Bree said, reaching
for her brother.

  “It’s all right,” Kael said, eyes locked on the creature. “It’s all right. Just listen. It’s already fading.”

  Sure enough, the rumble of the fire was but a murmur, and diminishing still. The spiderwebs of light softened, the fire rippled, and the creatures faded away, hidden behind the resurging flames. And then all was silent once more but for the hum of Kael’s wings and the pounding of Bree’s heart in her ears.

  “They lied,” Kael said softly, eyes locked on the fire. “They lied like they always lied. Every story says the Endless Ocean washed away the demons during the Ascension. But they’re not gone. They’re outside waiting, while we’re stuck in here, behind this...” He gestured to the massive fire. “This barrier. What other lies have we been told? What’s out there, Bree? How much of the world remains while we’re locked inside our dome?”

  “I don’t know,” Bree said. “I’m not sure we’ll ever know.”

  Kael stared at the towering inferno, as if wishing his eyes could pierce through to the other side.

  “The flickering,” he said. “The change in the midnight fire that no one can explain. What if it’s this barrier breaking after all these centuries?”

  Bree put a hand on her brother’s shoulder.

  “If it is, then there’s nothing we can do,” she said. “It’s time we go home.”

  “You’re right. It is,” he said, and he started unfastening the chest straps of his harness. “Buckle in, sis. It’s a long flight back to New Galen.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  The entire flight made Bree uncomfortable, not that she told her brother so. It wasn’t distrust in his abilities, nor how the wind blasted through her hair and face since she lacked the protective loop that Kael wore around his neck connected to the harness. It wasn’t the endless waves of the ocean below, cold and dark and eager to swallow her whole. No, what set her nerves constantly on edge was how she lacked any control over their flight. Wearing a set of wings always felt freeing to her, but now she flew with a decided lack of freedom. She was little more than a package Kael carried to safety. It was maddening, to say the least. Every twitch and shift was magnified, and no adjustments of her own body would offset them.