Smoking Hot: The Diary of a Fire Demon

by Amy Mah

  What they now saw on the screens was a Mind facing a two part Cloud: one a pillar of Fire and the other a mass of small electrical discharges that hid whatever was inside, and it was moving closer to the pillar of Fire.

  “Oh, blast it! Three more of my eyes have gone down. I am pouring everything I have into the last remaining eye; I think I may need some help here.”

  The last remaining window they were all staring at flickered and lost color. Poisen saw that the Light Moa standing next to her was visibly struggling to hold the vision until the Mind held up her hand. The window sharpened and gained color once again but still flickered. Now the Mind decided to make a comment about what was happening.

  “As soon as the two parts of the Cloud physically join, that stupid female in there will be as good as dead. Did I not say there would be problems with trying to cull a Cloud with a Battery at the center? We can see on this screen, but she is stupidly going about it in all the wrong ways.”

  “She is still using a Mind kill to put out the Fire, which would have worked instantly on a single Fire Demon but not a Battery Fire, as it would be like trying to put out 100 Fires at the same time. Yet that is what she is still doing, and all that it has done is hold back the Fire but not stopped it building up.”

  “She should have worked this out as soon as the first attempt failed, but she has carried on. Now she cannot stop or all the power will be released at once. She is now planning to wear the Battery down; she will have to place a powerful blast wall and climate control. But she is not just fighting a Battery/Fire Demon but a Cloud, which means more than one person, and the other person is an attack element. That adds more problems, as she cannot stop what she is doing, and half the Cloud is still in play. So she is dead unless she has help.”

  Poisen knew that sort of help was beyond both her and the Light, so she aimed her question at the Mind. “Are you going to help?”

  A strange look that could have been disbelief in having to answer such a question crossed the Mind’s face.

  “Help? Of course not! That would be a grave insult to her, and she would have to cull herself out of shame. I may not think much of her, but I would not do that to her. I am surprised you think me so callous!”

  The Mind chose to ignore her again, so all three stared into the magic window without comment.

  This was the first time she had seen a Light-created window powered by a Mind. She did not know it could be done, but that was not what surprised her. Watching a magic window explode did surprise her, but not as much as seeing the speed at which a Moa Mind could run down a corridor, followed by the Light with her head down and the hope of overtaking the Mind. Poisen was no Mind or Light, but the idea to follow came very quickly.

  When the light bending invisibility began to fade, Pink decided it was time to join Alyce. She had planned to attack the Moa from behind but found that she could not control the power build up to be able to aim. She had never felt so much energy try and burst from her, and she expected it must be a Cloud thing. There was no point in thinking as an individual; she would have to physically link with Alyce, and that female was extremely hot. She hoped that her Cloud membership would offer some extra protection, as even being naturally fireproof had its limitations. Looking at the floor around Alyce, Pink knew the best she could hope for would be severely blistered feet.

  “What the frigging heck do you think you are doing taking on a Moa without talking to me first? We are a Cloud, you idiot! Everything you do affects me! Plus you are charging me up so much that I have such a headache you would not believe. You are so going to owe me big time for this! Now, grab my tail before I explode!”

  Alyce did not say anything, as her full concentration was on trying to stay calm and keep her inner Fire under control. She did not notice what happened when they touched tails, as all the eyes in the room had now burnt out. The only ones that could still see were the members of the small group that had been helping Pink to hide, and of course the Moa Mind, who was still trying to put Alyce’s Fire out and hold a blast shield at the same time.

  It was not enough, and Pink decided it had to be more intimate. Her tail intertwined with her friend’s, and this time Alyce reacted by gripping it with her own. She let her hand go. It was the correct move, as the world suddenly went dark; her headache vanished, as did the feeling of wanting to burst.

  Alyce looked at her in surprise.

  “What happened? I don’t feel like I am going out anymore, but my flame is still getting stronger. And I can’t stop it! What is going on?”

  Pink could no longer see the hall and also knew she was floating, as her feet felt less like they were about to melt. Even in the dark she could see the face of her friend along with its puzzled look.

  “Well, unless I am mistaken, this is our version of an Ice Cloud. I don’t think we have moved, but we are in a Cloud of our own making: by the looks of it, a Storm Cloud, which has automatically absorbed our essence. I expect we are still being attacked, but our Cloud is somehow defending us. I just wish we could see out.”

  In answer to her request, a window appeared in front of them. It showed their attacker about 50 feet away in some sort of protective semi-transparent shell. Another screen appeared next to the first, and this one showed the whole room. They could now see a large black Cloud filling most of the hall and guessed that it contained them. It was not just a black Cloud but truly a Storm Cloud, as the blackness looked to be more like the billowing smoke created by a flaming heart. At the same time, a constant barrage of lightning bolts was randomly sticking out at different parts of the hall, and each one caused a vibrating rumble as it hit.

  From the Moa a blue light appeared and traveled towards them, making them shiver and causing Pink to comment.

  “Just how the dying Sun do we attack that bitch?”

  As if to answer her, the random lightning discharges stopped. When they started again, they all were a lot stronger, now sticking to the Moa’s shield.

  “Owwwww! I can feel that. These bolts are mine, and each is the strength of a battle bolt. Wow! I’m a single-person strike force! I just can’t… oh, burning Suns! No wonder Snowflakes spend so long learning Cloud control: this is frigging impossible! I have just blasted a table behind us. I’m bursting with power but have no aim!”

  Alyce was not listening. She was trying to relax; Take deep breaths and relax. Frag! This is more like childbirth than fighting, she thought, except when she let out the air it was on fire. She was getting hot and angry, and she felt that it was all a balance. If she could just not get upset, it would be fine. Not being upset failed as a blue light in a tight beam touched her. It burned. She let out a scream and lost control of the fine balance she was maintaining.

  Alyce was very angry, and if anger made a sound, it would have been whoomp. Anyone outside the Cloud would have heard that sound as all the oxygen ignited, and flames filled the hall. They continued to fill the hall. Upon discovering the hall was not big enough to contain it, she built up the pressure to seek any weakness in the stone container that held its prisoner. Upon finding doors, it removed them and ate the air that was hiding behind them. This flame was not a thinking thing; it did not care that the doors were stone, just that they were weaker than the walls and were in the way. And if a door did not melt, it would crack or explode. The only thing it could not do was hold them back.

  Annoyance replaced the feeling of anger for Alyce. She was not annoyed over anything in particular, just generally at everything. That, in turn, changed to something she could not put into words, but whatever Armageddon was, it was a good name for her current emotion.

  Smoking Hot: (31)

  Moa Poisen stopped just behind the Mind and stood next to the Light, feeling the power build up in the very air that surrounded them. The Mind was casting high-level magic, and she could even see it form, looking like a blue-tinted transparent shell around them. The Mind looked a little worried, and that made Poisen very worried. Her ears now started to ri
ng, and she found it hard to breathe, which meant what she was standing in was a very high-magic, pressurized defensive blast shell. Due to the color, she expected that it would be burningly cold to the touch.

  Then it started; first, it was like small little earth tremors, which only stopped when the stone door at the end of the corridor was blasted off its hinges. It crumbled as it hit the opposite wall followed by a wall of flame, which, having found the large hall too small to hold it, was now filling the corridors surrounding the hall and at the same time hitting their protective shell and sending it along with the occupants another 50 feet further down the corridor.

  The three Moas stood up as the magic shell faded, and they coughed due to the smell of burning and the presences of more smoke than air to breathe. The Mind was the first to speak, and from the look on her face, she would also be the last to speak.

  “I have sent word to my sisters, and they are sending a few Air students to clean this area up and some Lights to help with the wounded in adjacent corridors. I have also just received communication from one of my sisters currently controlling the Infirmary, and she has made it very clear that the two girls we have been watching are under medical observation and therefore in her ownership. She also mentioned something about writing a book, which for some reason means she will personally terminally remove any other Moa who puts this Academy in danger by even thinking of attacking them again in an enclosed space. She also suggests we take a look at the remains of the stadium when we have the time.”

  “Well, I don’t know why she is so interested in them, but she gave up a position in government to play with her medical hobbies. She is extremely clever, so I expect there is a logical reason for all that she says. So far, she is correct; it is not a good idea to attack an outdoor battle Cloud indoors.”

  “Now, as I am already here, they suggested that I am the best one suited to deal with the current mess of a situation. Now that it is agreed, send some eyes into the room so we can see what has happened!”

  Within seconds, several windows appeared in the air and a very smoky hall came into view. As they watched, the smoke slowly cleared. The Moa Light spoke.

  “That is about the best I can do, but I see that other eyes, not my own, have also appeared in there, and several are here looking at us in this corridor.”

  The Moa Mind flicked a finger in the air and spoke again.

  “I am not some side show for entertainment of bored Lights to view, so what about now?”

  The Light did not just see the eyes go out but felt them silently explode, which would give the viewers a nasty headache to say the least and a strong hint that it was not a good idea to spy on a Mind.

  “All gone from viewing us, but you may get complaints.”

  The Mind completely ignored the idea of any possible complaints and intently watched the screens.

  A scorched but otherwise unharmed Pink was shaking Alyce, who now knelt on a solid floor that was no longer trying to melt under them.

  “Are you okay? Speak to me!”

  Alyce looked up at her friend and smiled.

  “Wow ……………………..”

  The first to leave the hall were a couple of Lights and an Earth dragging out two unconscious Airs and a Light who was having problems walking. The Light Moa cast a look to the Mind and said:

  “You can have the Storm Cloud; I will deal with this group. I will just make them think it was all a test.”

  The Light was all smiles when she reached the soot-covered mixed group.

  “Well done! You have now finished your last exam and passed with a merit, meaning you have all passed the 10,000-life point mark. So as I said, well done!”

  Two of the Lights shook their heads, trying to clear their minds and work out how it had all been an exam. It had to be, as that is what they were all doing at the moment. It had been tough, but they had passed! Yes, passed, and with a merit that would be rewarded to their family for excellent breeding achievement! They could now go home for the yearly hibernation with their tails held high.

  “Very creative, yes! Very creative! If you have not done so yet, make sure you all know who everyone is and record their names, as I will need the listing to go with the recording made on your new dual race shielding techniques. I suggest you spend the remaining part of the term getting to know each other, as next term you will be working permanently as a mixed team.”

  The Light Moa now led them away towards the Academy sick bay, as she said they could not lose any members of such a winning team. They all knew the idea of forming a group or team had been a good one. No one could remember who had first suggested it, but they all had agreed and therefore all deserved the praise.

  The Moa Mind looked at the parting group and stopped playing with their minds. It was easy now, as they would all reinforce the idea she had placed in their minds. The more they agreed with what they were told had happened, the more they would believe that was what actually did happen.

  The same could not be said about the two members of the Dark Cloud that were leaving the room. She gently touched on their minds, the gentlest of touches, and she could feel a black curtain form to block her touch. However this strange Cloud worked, her stupid cousin sister had taught it to know the touch of a Mind and to get ready to attack those with the touch without even consulting the other Cloud members.

  She did not know if her cousin sister had survived or not. She hoped not, as her position here was now untenable. It was better that she had died in a fight than at the hands of her sisters for bringing such shame down on their caste by being beaten by two 4 year olds.

  She was a Mind: the elite of all the casts. She did not need tricks like mind bending to handle this situation. The Cloud members were looking toward her and knew what she was, which would save some time. She smiled towards them.

  Pink was the first to stop; she nudged Alyce. Even though she had stopped saying “Wowwwwww,” she was thinking it loudly and very often to herself as her body tingled and small flames danced across it. Her hair appeared to be on fire unless you looked closely, in which case you would see that each strand of hair was a thin flame trying to play at being hair.

  “Please do not worry. I am just here to tell you that the match was all perfectly within the rules. The ones listed down for culling were able to come up with a unique shielding technique that so impressed one of my colleagues that they have all been given sufficient points to attend the Academy next year.”

  “After analyzing the power in your Cloud, it has been agreed that you could pass any of the remaining exams. If you then gave away your points to any student falling short of the 10,000 life points, it would make their tests pointless. The tests and exams will, of course, continue, as they are designed to help train, but we will accept that all students will have sufficient points to be spared culling this end of term. We may also look into the idea of cancelling end-of-term culling in the future, as I, for one, consider it very wasteful on resources.”

  The Woowwwwwing had stopped, and Alyce was trying hard to catch up with the current state of normality before it changed again. It seemed that you could get into real trouble for not cleaning up after eating in the refectory, but killing a Moa and burning down a large section of the Academy somehow did not raise a comment.

  She wondered if she should bring it up herself or if no one had noticed, or perhaps they were trying to forget it. If given a choice, forgetting it was looking to be a good idea. For all she knew, it was covered under a rule saying you could destroy one room per term as long as you helped clean the plates after eating.

  As Alyce was digesting the situation, Pink took on the lead.

  “Thank you, Moa Mind. We are sure the whole Academy will join us in thanking the life-giving Sun over the Queen’s wisdom in appointing such great Demon Minds as yourself to help shape us to best serve the Queen.”

  “We hope that our impolite behavior in challenging the rules will be put down to our youth and the post-exam tension
s of the coming dark days, and not any idea that we would normally question our obvious superiors.”

  The Moa Mind controlled her face. She was good at not showing emotions, and now was not the time and place to burst out laughing at the most well-spoken bucket of crap she had ever had the misfortune to hear. She had been correct in believing that these two were special; that trash sounded like something a 6-year-old Air would come up with and not a hatchling spark. Then again, she had never heard of any 4 year old from the energy caste who could help create a High Plains Storm so deep underground.

  “I perfectly understand your youthful energies as well as your standard youthful total inability to listen to what is said, so I will repeat. I said no rules were broken, but my sister in the infirmary tells me your lack of Cloud control means that you will not be going home for hibernation. You will need some special tuition between now and the dark days. I expect my sister will have that arranged, along with booking you a dark days sleep chamber on campus, so now go and get cleaned up!”

  They walked back to their room in silence until Alyce could no longer hold back the questions. Pink had never talked like that before, and it had been creepy. True, she was top in deportment and picked up the crazy five-dimensional magic theory like it was nothing. But to come from a fight and then blurt out such waffle? It was definitely odd, if not creepy.

  Just as she opened her mouth to speak, Pink turned on her.

  “Don’t you dare say a word until I have calmed down! Just what were you thinking? No, of course you were not thinking. Take on the whole frigging system, why don’t you, and then drag me into a fight with a Moa Mind? And don’t you frigging say anything stupid like I did not have to join in, as frigging being part of a Cloud makes such choices irrelevant. What affects one member of a frigging Cloud affects all members of it, and now I can’t even go home to hibernate with my sisters! If you ever, and I do mean EVER, do something like that again without discussing it with me first, so help me I will strangle you in your sleep with your own frigging tail! Now leave me alone!”