El had already leapt off the edge of the chasm before her brain caught up to what she was doing, flaming blue wings igniting as she dove. To her right, three sets of orange wings flashed in her peripheral vision, but then she turned her full focus to the falling bodies.

  The bear on the far side, well, she wasn’t going to try and save it. Stupid, burning bear. The seven falling people, on the other hand, were the more difficult part.

  “Standard spread,” was all El had time to say, hoping the others would figure out what she meant, then she flared her wings. Air rushed past her as her speed tripled, covering half the width of the chasm in a heartbeat. Six of the seven people flashed past her while she reached out for the seventh, furthest man. With how annoyingly persistent gravity was, she didn’t have a lot of room for finesse, so she extended her entire arm to hook around the upside-down man’s waist.

  A grunt of pain and air blasted out of his lungs as she basically clotheslined him in the gut, then flared the heels of her boots and completely cut her wings. The grunt turned to a shout of shock, El and her passenger flipping completely around for her feet to land against the far stone wall. For the poor man, without the protection of her frost armor, it would make for a bumpy ride, but she didn’t have time to be gentle.

  Knees barely bending from the contact, El pivoted her angle slightly down, then flared her wings again. Blue flame washed out across the stone behind her, launching her off towards the next closest person. The man in her left arm had gone quiet—Hopefully just from the shock and not a broken neck…—but El couldn’t afford to take her eyes off the woman in front of her.

  Reaching out with the right arm that’d failed her only a long moment before, the pair’s eyes met. Panic etched across the woman’s face, her mouth spread in the soundless shout of somebody who was too surprised to completely understand what was happening, but just aware enough to know it was bad.

  El’s fingers flexed in anticipation of what they’d need to do as she closed the distance, small spikes of pain still running up and down her arm. No, it didn’t matter if it hurt or not. Pain wasn’t anything new. She could deal with pain. Her arm would do what she wanted—needed—it to.

  I will NOT drop you!

  She hit the woman around the chest, El’s shoulder shrieking in pain and her hand convulsing, but hooked her wrist in the woman’s armpit. Whole arm going numb almost instantly, El ignited her wings to wrestle back control of her flight, curving her back as the opposite wall approached far too quickly.

  She wanted to tell the woman everything would be alright—or maybe just to hold on—but she couldn’t unclench her teeth from the pain radiating out of her shoulder. Instead, she settled for making sure they didn’t splatter across the chasm wall, flexing her stomach to pull her feet in line and flare the soles of her boots. So close they could’ve reached out and touched it, El and her passengers swept in then shot straight up the chasm wall to practically eject out the top. People who’d rushed to the edge in worry for their fallen friends leapt back with cries of surprise to get out of her way.

  Cutting the flare at her feet, El reduced the power of her wings, turning her launch into a gentle arc that landed her thirty feet from the surprised crowd. As soon as her feet touched down, the pain in her arm charged its way to the front of her mind, and she dropped to her knees to put the two Pilish people down. Both groaned in relief at feeling solid ground beneath them, and she gave them a quick once over to make sure nothing looked horribly broken.

  Their arms and legs were in all the right places, and neither of them was gasping like she’d shattered their ribs.

  Probably just some bruising.

  That done, El forced herself to her feet, left hand going to her right shoulder. Her fingers found torn leather, along with something warm, wet, and tacky. Oh that can’t be good. First things first. Putting the injury out of her mind for the moment, she turned to find her friends likewise depositing the people they’d rescued.

  “All accounted for?” she asked them.

  “Got them all,” Laze said.

  “Barely,” Nidina added, giving the woman in her arms a flat look. For some reason, the woman blushed and looked away. “Imagine being ticklish when…”

  “El! You’re bleeding,” Laze interrupted, rushing over to get a better look at El’s shoulder. “Oh, that’s not pretty. Dayne, you must’ve seen this.”

  “I did,” the man agreed evenly.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “And you didn’t say anything?”

  “We were busy, and she wouldn’t have stopped anyway.”

  “Yeah, but…” Laze trailed off as a series of metallic clicks sounded from around the group.

  El looked up to find the four Firestorm surrounded by almost a dozen of the Pilish men and women with their strange weapons raised. Almost immediately, Nidina, Dayne, and Laze moved to shield El, but she wasn’t having any of that, and pushed through to look at the nearest Pilish man.

  “Seriously?” she asked, letting her left hand drop from her shoulder. Crimson dripped from her fingers to tap, tap, tap on the stone beside her feet. “We just saved your lives, and this is how you thank us?”

  “We know who you are,” the man in front of El said, straightening his arm even further so the weapon was pointed right at her face. Getting a better look at the thing, it really was similar to one of Felps’s devices. It likely shot something out of the tube-like barrel above the trigger, and there seemed to be some sort of rotary chamber back near the top of the man’s hand. Apparently, her interest instead of fear at his threatening gesture just made the man angrier, though, and he took a step closer.

  “You’re going to want to back up,” Dayne said evenly from beside El without turning in her direction.

  “Or what, big man? What are you going to do?” the man with the weapon said.

  “Me? Nothing,” Dayne replied in his ever-calm tone. “It’s her you should worry about.”

  The man’s head swiveled back to look at El, and she just sighed.

  “Like I said before, we’re not here to fight,” El said.

  “You’re just saying that! It could be a trick to…” he started, but a gloved hand reached out and gently pushed the weapon down so it wasn’t aiming at El. Attached to that hand was the man El had carried across the chasm.

  “It’s not a trick,” he said. “Why would they even need to trick us. Or save us first?”

  “We didn’t need their help,” the angry man said, glaring between El and the newcomer.

  The newcomer actually rolled his eyes at his fellow countryman, then turned in El’s direction. “I’m sorry about Nilk’s behavior. We’ve had a… rough week. I’m Tassedim—though everybody just calls me Tas—by the way, and I most certainly appreciate the timely assistance.”

  “Why are you telling them our names?!” Nilk shouted.

  Tas slowly turned back to look at Nilk. “What harm could she possibly do by knowing our names?”

  “She… she could curse us!” Nilk said, and Tas rolled his eyes a second time.

  “She doesn’t need to curse us. Or trick us! Oh, for the love of the Seven Cinders, put your gun away. Actually, all of you, put your guns away,” Tas said, walking a quick circle around the Firestorm and swatting at anybody who didn’t sheathe their metal weapons. Guns, huh?

  “Maybe you missed it,” Tas went on when that was finished. “This little lady here got smacked by a scaled bear. Not a little tap. Not a nick. Not even a glancing blow. She got hit, full on, in the shoulder. I saw it myself.”

  “So?” Nilk asked. “Her shoulder is bleeding.”

  “When was the last time you saw somebody get hit by a scaled bear in the shoulder and still have a shoulder after that? Or even anything above the waist? She even killed one. It’s simple. If they wanted to hurt us, they could, and there isn’t much we could do about it,” Tas said.

  “Really, not here to fight or hurt you,” El pointed out, though it was getting harder to hold her temper with the pain in her shoulder.

  “See?” Tas said, that same mischievous grin splitting his face, as if her words alone proved his point.

  “You want us to just believe her?” Nilk asked.

  “No,” Tas said, the grin vanishing like it was never there. “I want us to stop fighting something for just a few minutes. It’s been non-stop between… well, you know, then the bears. We have a moment to catch our breath, let’s not start fights where we don’t need them. Especially ones we can’t win.”

  “We can certainly leave if you’d like us to,” El offered.

  “El, we need to do something about your shoulder,” Laze said.

  “Your friend is right,” Tas said to El, but glanced at Nilk as if daring him to argue again. “And we just happen to have one of the best field surgeons around with us. It’d be the least we can do for the people who selflessly saved us.” That last part came out at a much higher volume than the rest, and it had Pilish heads turning to look at each other.

  “Tas speaks true,” a woman said, pushing her way through the line of armored Pilish to stand in front of El. It was the lady from the bridge she’d saved. “I wouldn’t be here right now if she hadn’t saved me. And I bet a lot less of you would be too, if she hadn’t bled for us,” the woman added, holding up her arm to show her sleeve soaked through with crimson from where El had carried her. “The Seven Cinders taught us to pay our debts, and we owe one here.”

  More conversation erupted at the mention of the Seven Cinders—Whoever they are. I’ll have to ask Nidina—but it seemed to settle things. One person after another the Firestorm had rescued came through to offer their thanks, making a quick sweeping gesture along their open left palm with two fingers on their right hand as they did.

  “The gratitude and thanks portion of this could take a while. We should get you stitched up,” Tas said, stepping up closer to El and blocking her off from everybody other than him and the one woman.

  “You mentioned a field surgeon?” El asked, and Nidina slipped in close beside her.

  “Maybe one of us should…” Nidina started, but El shook her head.

  “A show of trust,” El said bluntly. “Who’s got the needle and steady hands?”

  “That’d be me,” Tas said.

  El eyed the man in front of her, then just shrugged, which hurt like the whole burning Pyre had made a home in her shoulder. “Yup, stitching would be good. Let’s get to that.”

  “Come on, we’ll find you a place to sit down. Guessing you don’t want anything for the pain?” Tas asked. “Actually… I don’t have anything anyway. Gotta tough it out.”

  “I’ll survive,” El said, sitting on a small outcropping of rock while the others awkwardly mingled.

  “I hope Nexin and Sol are doing okay,” Laze’s quiet voice said through the communication magic.

  “I’m sure they’re fine. Better than we are, in fact,” El replied as Tas took out a curved needle and some thread that was questionably sanitary. “Probably much better.”