Running into Fire: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Magic of Nasci Book 3)

by DM Fike

  “Oh, things are going to change,” I muttered under my breath. Then I stalked off, back toward the wilderness.

  CHAPTER 9

  I RETURNED AT dusk to the homestead. The meeting at the lodge had already broken up. I expected Guntram to pounce on me the minute I showed myself, furious that I’d left the grounds without notice. When he didn’t manifest in a tirade, curiosity got the better of me. I noticed a glow coming from the slightly ajar library door. Peeking inside, I could just make out Guntram’s cloak hunched over a stack of books at one of the desks.

  As I slowly backed away, I thanked my lucky stars that Guntram was distracted. Hot flame still threatened to explode out of me when I thought of Vincent, and I really needed to decompress. I took my alternating depressed and enraged self down to the hot spring to soak away my misery.

  While the waters did wonders for my physical weariness, it did little for my overall mood. I couldn’t shake the vicious cycle of thoughts that ran like a hamster in a wheel through my brain. It started with betrayal. How could Vincent lead me on, up to almost kissing me in his apartment? But then I reminded myself that I was the one who’d showed up unannounced at his door. He hadn’t been pursuing me. Sure, he’d texted me for weeks, but he never strayed into concrete romantic territory. I’d made sure of that. That’s when I berated myself for acting like such an idiot around some guy. Then my mind focused on the brunette. She obviously knew Vincent well. Were they dating? How could I, a secretive forest rat, compare to someone Vincent could call up at a moment’s notice? A familiar stirring of longing surged in my chest, only to be replaced by the scene on Vincent’s futon.

  And so the cycle continued.

  By the time I trudged out of the pool, night had completely fallen, bringing a chill breeze that forced me to expend pith to stay warm. The last thing I wanted was to deal with other people, which is why of course my path had to cross Tabitha and Darby. They had created an enormous bonfire in one of the homestead’s many fire pits. Darby stood in the center of it, surrounded by a fading white-hot aura. She kept her eyes closed, lips trembling as her fingers drew shaking crosses to keep the blaze from consuming her.

  “Steady!” Tabitha barked from the sidelines. “Don’t let up, not even for a second!”

  Poor Darby. She’d held her own against the khalkotauroi, and yet here she was, overworked under the strict hold of the worst tiger mom in all the Talol Wilds. The way Darby’s motions came out, stiff and erratic, she wouldn’t hold up for much longer.

  “Can’t…” she wheezed, and by doing so, paused long enough in drawing sigils that her tunic caught on fire. She yelped, fingers jerking to douse it. I could see bits of smoke coming off her skin, a sign that she barely had the blaze in check.

  “You will!” Tabitha yelled back. “Or you will die!”

  I couldn’t stand there and watch, especially not in my current mood. I raised one hand toward the flame, sucking in some of the fire pith. The flame sizzled to two-thirds of its original size.

  Tabitha noticed immediately. She swirled to her right, then her left before she found me absorbing fire pith.

  “What do you think you’re doing, haggard?” she demanded, face furious and bathed in bonfire light.

  “Helping another shepherd in a fight.” I raised my chin in defiance. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”

  Tabitha stomped toward me, halting in front of my face. Given our height difference, she towered over me. “This is training, not that you would recognize it,” she hissed. “And you have no right to interfere.”

  I released all my anger at finding Vincent dating another woman. “I do if you’re killing her!”

  I expected some sort of reaction but not the intensity of what happened next. Her nostrils flared in her battle-hardened face as she upended the very ground beneath my feet, sending it flying upward in one swift strike. I flew up along with all that dirt, easily six feet off the ground. I didn’t have the wits to soften the blow as I slammed down hard on my left side, debris half-burying me as it fell due to gravity.

  Spitting out muck, I could only see Tabitha’s toes as she spat out, “Don’t you dare accuse me of harming my eyas!” Then, before I could stand, she manipulated the ground so that it shifted beneath me and rolled me away. I felt like I was on a conveyor belt made of muddy rolling pins as I spiraled helplessly along the upturned sod, my fingers unable to get a solid handhold anywhere.

  Tabitha whisked me halfway across the field before finally relenting. In one final insult, she softened the ground to quicksand up to my waist so that I became stuck in the ground. By that time, I was yards away from the bonfire. I yelled at Tabitha’s tiny stick figure in the distance, but she’d never let me loose. It took me fifteen minutes and a ton of earth sigils, but I eventually pulled myself out of the ground, covered in a thick layer of soil.

  I could have gone back to the hot spring to clean, but I’d had about enough of today. The lodge stood not far off, so I stalked toward it, ready to fall asleep for a month.

  I found out I wasn’t alone inside the building. Azar boiled water for tea in the kitchen, stopping only for a second to give me a polite once-over before removing a kettle from the stone oven.

  “Good eve, Ina,” she said, not indicating she greeted a shepherd who looked like she had just lost a mud wrestling competition.

  I mumbled something incoherent as I made my way to the pool area. I threw myself in, boots and all, not caring that dirt flaked off absolutely everywhere. It would all settle out quickly. Sipho had enchanted the entire lodge so it would stay clean no matter what we dragged in. Muddy particles detached from my clothes and slowly drifted up to the surface of the water, scooting toward the open floor, and finally spreading themselves out with the rest of the dirt. I floated on my back, clean again, and let out a long breath.

  The kettle whistled and Azar poured herself a cup. “Would you like some too?”

  My natural instinct was a sarcastic response, but I managed to bite it back. Dumping my frustration on Azar was unfair, and besides, she hadn’t done anything to me. She was being polite. A distant kind of politeness, maybe, but it sure beat the derision I regularly received from the Sassy Squad.

  “Sure,” I answered.

  Azar brought over a clay mug, placed it on the stones next to me, then moved to the other side of the pool to sit with her back to the fire, legs crossed beneath her. Rings of fire glistened in her dark hair as she took a few precise sips.

  I couldn’t help but ask, “Don’t you want to know what happened to me?”

  “I heard enough to hazard a guess.” Her reply held no judgment, a simple statement of fact.

  But I wanted her to be judgmental. I hauled my butt out of the pool and unlaced my soggy boots. “Doesn’t it bother you how hard Tabitha trains Darby?”

  Azar did not so much as bat an eyelash. “Training strengthens the shepherd.”

  “And pain is just weakness leaving the body, right?” I threw my hands up in disgust. “It’s really hard to toughen up if you’re dead.”

  Azar maintained her matter-of-fact tone. “Tabitha would never allow another one of her eyases to perish. This I believe with all my spirit.”

  It took a second for that sentence to sink in. “Are you saying that Tabitha has lost an eyas before?”

  That managed to crack Azar’s emotional armor. She shifted slightly on her haunches, a little uncomfortable. “I merely state fact.” I guessed by her stiff shoulders she wouldn’t give me any more details.

  My already heavy heart sank further. It seemed like the longer I stayed a shepherd, the more tragedy I encountered. “Guntram’s told me about losing shepherds before. Is it common?”

  “Common enough.”

  “Have you lost someone?”

  “I have experienced the death of fellow shepherds, but I cannot feel it. Not the way normal shepherds do.”

  This stoic response took me aback. “Why not?”

  Azar paused, choosing her w
ords carefully. “Like it or not, Nasci has given me a talent for fire. Fire allows for few emotions. Too much anger makes fire pith hard to control. Too much sadness weakens one’s grip on it. If I am to become an augur as a fire shepherd, emotion is a luxury I can ill afford.”

  My mind reeled. How does someone repress their feelings so much they can’t grieve? “That’s bonkers. You’ll go insane holding all that garbage in.”

  “Nevertheless, it is what I must do.” She paused to give me a long, pointed stare. “It is something you might consider, Ina, shepherd of lightning. The only element I consider more erratic than fire is the electricity that lights the skies.”

  My face warmed. “You think I’m too hysterical to wield lightning?”

  “Not at all,” she said quickly. “I do not even know if emotions play a role with that element. We understand so little about lightning. Anything is possible.”

  “I hope it’s not,” I grumbled. “Because I can’t stop feeling things. It’s not in my nature at all.”

  Azar took a final sip from her cup. “Nasci only gives us gifts that we have the capacity to handle. She would not give you lightning if you did not have the inner strength to control it. But given’s its raw capacity, I doubt wielding it effectively will be easy.”

  I thought of Guntram taking me on all our lightning training excursions. I had a long way to go. “So, what would you do, if you were me?”

  Azar tilted her head thoughtfully. “Given lightning’s rare and undocumented nature, you alone will be forced to discover this answer. It is a lonely path, even lonelier than fire. And if there is one thing I can guarantee from my own journey—” she paused as she stood, empty cup in hand, “—is that there is always a price to pay for our gifts. Deciding now that you are willing to pay that price will help bring you peace.”

  And on that cheery note, Azar wished me good night and retreated to her room.

  CHAPTER 10

  GUNTRAM RETURNED TO mentor mode at the crack of dawn the next morning. He smacked his fist on my door, threatening to douse me with water if I didn’t get my hiney out of bed. It’s not that I particularly enjoyed the straw-filled mattresses of the lodge (I didn’t), but I did value sleeping in, something that Guntram and I never saw eye-to-eye about.

  Guntram had laid out two very bland breakfasts of dry toast and tea, which would satisfy basic hunger but didn’t make me jump for joy.

  “You know,” I said as I approached the counter bleary-eyed, “your racket could wake up Sipho’s mountain lions.”

  “Everyone is awake save you, Ina. There’s no need to be dramatic.”

  It didn’t surprise me that everyone else was already awake, but glancing around the lodge, I thought I’d run into more people. I’d passed Darby tidying up her bedroom, but I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Tabitha or Azar.

  “Where’s everybody at?”

  Guntram took a long sip from his cup, his signal that I should pay attention to what came next. “They’re out on fire patrol.”

  I pushed back from the counter. “There’s another fire?” I exclaimed louder than I meant to thanks to fuzzy morning brain. I lowered my voice a notch. “We don’t have time for this nasty breakfast. We should get—”

  “They’re not evacuating the animals,” Guntram cut me off. “They’re simply on the watch for more fires in the area we protected yesterday.”

  This did not compute in my brain at all. Unlike the forest service, shepherds don’t monitor for forest fires. They’re a natural part of a forest ecosystem. We merely swooped in after the fact, save for one extreme example.

  “You think there’s another fire vaettur out there running amok?”

  “The Oracle ordered it,” Guntram said, as if this explained anything at all. “I sent Fechin to consult with her last night. She wants all of us to keep watch over the region for the next few days and note if other odd fires crop up.”

  “Why would there be more ‘odd fires?’ Correct me if I’m wrong, but vaetturs don’t come in batches of elements like in some video game. Banishing one generally solves the problem.”

  Guntram folded his arms. “It’s simply a precaution. There may be nothing to it at all.”

  I wanted to pull my hair out with all this vague crap. “Guntram, you gotta let me in here. First the bizarro breach, then the confused khalkotauroi acting like it had mad cow disease, and now we’re suddenly on fire patrol ‘just in case?’”

  A new voice interjected into our conversation. “For once, can you accept an order without complaint?”

  Darby entered the common area looking like I felt—dark circles under her eyes, limp hair, and rumpled cloak. While that may have been normal for me, Darby generally gave underwear models a run for their money. Finding her disheveled genuinely shocked me.

  “Yikes, Darbs,” I said without thinking.

  Darby’s nose turned up in disgust. “Not another word, haggard. After the little stunt you pulled last night, Tabitha put me through an additional hour of fire sigil training.”

  A twinge of guilt stirred in my gut. “Sorry.”

  “Next time, don’t do me any favors.” Darby plopped down on a stool next to me, eyeballing the second uneaten breakfast.

  I nudged it toward her. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

  She hesitated to touch the food now that I’d indicated I wanted her to have it. “Don’t you live for trouble?”

  “For myself, absolutely.” I couldn’t help but grin. “But not for others.”

  “You mean others like Jortur?” she snapped.

  Ah, so she blamed me for the deer dryant’s death too. She’d witnessed the whole terrible slaughter firsthand. Even though I wanted to be angry with her, I couldn’t.

  I decided on one last peace offering. “You know, Darby, I was really impressed with how you took on the khalkotauroi. You just stepped right up through the flames and faced it head-on. It was really impressive.”

  Guntram paused in between sips from his own cup to say, “Darby could be given her Shepherd Trial any day now. She has a solid mastery of all four elements under her belt.”

  “I can believe it after seeing some of it firsthand.” I paused with self-reflection. “I always thought we were kind of neck-in-neck in abilities, but you’ve clearly pulled ahead.”

  Darby broke through my praise with a sneer. “Has it ever occurred to you that I’ve progressed because my augur pushes me to my limits? Because I’ve been at this longer? And that you might do well to take your own training more seriously?” She decided to emphasize her point by bumping my elbow, causing me to spill drops of tea on my hoodie.

  “That’s enough,” Guntram said. “I’m tasked with escorting Darby to Tabitha’s location this morning, and I will not tolerate bickering between the two of you. Is that clear?”

  “Crystal,” I said. For her part, Darby gave a curt nod.

  Silence enveloped the room as Guntram finished packing supplies for the trip. I finished my own breakfast, and although Darby hesitated, she eventually went to town on the breakfast plate. It gave me the slightest glimmer of hope.

  I guess I didn’t completely ruin her appetite after all.

  We remained quiet on the trip back to the Siuslaw National Forest. I used the time to wonder why we were going at all. Guntram loved to lecture that because shepherds never knew when a vaettur might appear, we always had to be prepared. I could not for the life of me figure out how the Oracle could possibly predict more vaettur-based forest fires.

  We aimed for a rendezvous point with Tabitha near remote Pyle Creek. It turns out we weren’t far from a clearcut logging operation. While we couldn’t actually view it from our vantage point in the valley, you could hear the distinct sounds of machinery pushing over trees, beeping to back up, and generally crunching over everything in its wake. This kind of operation always puts a shepherd on edge, like listening to nails running down a chalkboard. Although mankind is technically a child of Nasci like all other animals, humans
exploited nature for their own use way too often. That didn’t exactly mesh with shepherd code.

  Darby wrinkled her nose in disgust as we waited near a bend in the creek for Tabitha. “Humans. Such disgusting creatures.”

  I snorted. “You’re one of them.”

  “Hardly.” Darby tossed her hair behind one shoulder. “I’m a shepherd, loyal to Nasci. The things over there—” she motioned toward the general direction of the noise, “—are as good as vaetturs, killing animals for their own personal gain.”

  I scoffed at this. “All forms of life depend on killing other forms in order to live. Heck, we even eat meat on occasion. Isn’t that all part of the divine cycle?”

  “Tearing down an entire forest isn’t exactly in the spirit of the divine cycle,” Darby countered. “How can there be balance when humans can reshape the entire world in their image, like a god?”

  I mean, on one level, I agreed with her. As a shepherd, I hated how people did not value preserving a natural world untouched by their own hubris. And yet, shepherds hating regular people seemed like the height of hypocrisy. It’s like when adults claim to hate children. I get that not everyone wants to have kids, but don’t they realize they were once kids too? Isn’t hating them kind of like hating yourself?

  Tabitha arrived then, surrounded by a pair of black-tailed deer. Like the skittering bucks beside her, she grimaced at the sounds of the vehicles.

  It put her in an even worse mood than normal. She dug right into Darby. “Are you finally recovered enough to do your job?”

  I took a step forward to say something, but I remembered Darby’s request to leave her alone. So I actually kept my lips zipped.

  Darby proudly lifted her chin. “Ready.”

  Satisfied that her charge reacted appropriately to her demands, Tabitha then focused her attention on me. “Try not to mingle with your little friends back there.” She pointed toward the source of the noise. “Remember the goddess you swore to serve.”

  I bristled at this accusation. “I’m as loyal to Nasci as any other shepherd.”