“You can’t be serious,” Laze continued. “Frostwyrms, firewyrms—dragons—aren’t real. You can’t be fighting seawyrms.”

  “Part of that statement is true,” Tas said, pointing at Laze.

  “Which part?” El asked, patting the air to calm her friend down.

  “The dragon part. I know they aren’t real…” Tas said.

  “Actually,” Nidina interrupted. “There is evidence to suggest they might be.”

  “Oh no, not you, Nidina?” Laze said. “You can’t believe that… that conspiracy theory.”

  “I’ve seen some of my parents’ reports. It’s hard to dispute what they say,” Nidina countered with a shrug.

  “Reports and theories aside,” El interjected before Laze could continue. “Tas, are you saying the seawyrms are dragons?”

  Tas shook his head. “Not at all. It’s just a name.”

  “Why did you name them that, then?” Laze asked.

  “For starters, I didn’t name them. But,” he held up a finger. “The small ones are twenty feet long. Serpentine lizards with four clawed legs, long necks, and two wide fins on their backs. Wide enough they could almost be mistaken for wings. Then there’s the head with all the scary teeth, and the fact they can spit jets of pressurized water strong enough to cut a man in half.

  “They may not be actual dragons, but they’re the damn-closest things I’ve ever seen.”

  “Where did they come from?” El asked.

  “Uh… the sea… it’s even in the name…” Tas said.

  “Do I need to show you why we’re called Firestorm?” El asked evenly.

  “Preferably not tonight. I’m too tired to really appreciate it,” Tas said, his mischievous grin returning. “Seriously, though, they come from the sea. Where or why, no idea. They only started showing up in the last few months, but in such numbers, they’ve thrown the whole country into chaos. Their attacks are hitting every island, even the ones far from the coast. The capital has been assaulted at least three times, and we’ve lost contact with entire outposts. We’re assuming the worst. We just don’t have enough soldiers to protect everything.”

  “Which is why the civilians are running. There’s a draft?” El asked.

  “Exactly. We… my troops and I… we signed up to fight. No, that’s not right. We signed up to protect people. So, the seawyrms? Scary as they are, that’s why we’re here. But, when the higher-ups decided we needed more people on the front line? People who didn’t sign up, well, we couldn’t sit by and let that happen.

  “They’ve been searching high and low for volunteers, regardless of how much volunteering is actually happening. Young, old, it doesn’t matter. They just want… bodies,” Tas trailed off on the last word, like the thought of it disgusted him. “The population of whole towns has vanished overnight. They’ve claimed it was because of the seawyrm attacks—used that to justify their draft—but we know the truth. It wasn’t the seawyrms, it was our own people.

  “What’s the point of protecting a city if everybody who should’ve been living in it is dead?”

  “If it’s so bad, where are you running to?” El asked. “Doesn’t sound like anywhere is safe.”

  “Nowhere is, really,” Tas admitted. “But we’re not the only ones who feel this way. The seawyrms have been attacking almost since the thaw, but the attacks really picked up about two months ago. A month after that, the forced conscription started. Since then, there have been pockets of deserters—as you like to call them,” he said to Laze.

  “I don’t like it,” she replied softly.

  “Where are they going? Did they find somewhere safe?” El asked.

  “After the bears, we headed west. These seawyrms come from the sea, and you’re taking us to the coast?” Nidina said.

  “Beyond the coast,” Tas answered. “There’s a trade ship that comes from Wirock…”

  “Wirock is the island nation in the center of the sea,” Nidina filled in.

  “It’s already taken some of our people across,” Tas continued. “We’re going to get on that ship and get out of Pili.”

  “What if something happened to the ship? Or… or this Wirock? How do you know they aren’t being attacked by seawyrms too?” El said.

  “Good questions, but anywhere is better than Pili right now. Between the seawyrms, the army, and the scaled bears…” Tas didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  “Okay, but still. How do you even know the ship will be there?”

  “Even it isn’t, we can wait. We have supporters in one of the towns near the coast. They’ll hide us until the ship arrives,” Tas explained.

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  “Sounds more than a little dangerous.”

  “We’re desperate.”

  El looked from Tas’s face—desperate wasn’t the only thing; he was scared—to Laze and Nidina. If what the man was saying was true, the whole nation was in bad shape. There could be more pockets of refugees like they ones they’d saved, but, no, that was thinking too small scale. The bigger problem was the seawyrms and the drastic measures the local government was taking to combat them. From the sounds of things, the army wasn’t strong enough to repel the monsters. If they were individually stronger, would they need to force civilians to the front lines?

  Laze met El’s eyes, then nodded at Tas. “I think it’s your turn to tell him why we’re here.”

  “Oddly hoping you’re the advance scouts for an invading army, honestly,” Tas said with another grin.

  El shook her head. “The opposite, actually. Like I said before, the world’s changing. We’re here to return the Ember Pycrin took all those years ago.”

  As El spoke, instead of relief on Tas’s face, the man went completely still, his whole body tensing. Slowly, his left hand inched towards the gun he wore on his thigh.

  “You can’t,” he said. “I won’t let you. Did you already…?” Gone was the easygoing field-surgeon, completely replaced by something that made the hair on the back of El’s neck stand on end.

  “Whoa, slow down.” El held up a hand slowly, her eyes darting to the weapon his hand was moving towards. “Wouldn’t this help you? It’d make your Sparks stronger. Let you fight back against the seawyrms.”

  Tas stared hard at El, then his eyes shifted to her side where Dayne had woken up. The big man was already getting to his feet, no sign on his face he’d even been asleep. On her other side, El could practically feel Nidina’s and Laze’s Sparks churning in their bodies, getting ready in case it came to a fight. And still, Tas sized them up like he thought he could take on all four at once.

  “Okay, everybody needs to slow down,” she said. “Tas, we haven’t returned the Ember yet, but do you want to explain to us why you’re suddenly so upset?”

  A breath passed between Tas’s lips, steaming in the cool night air—Or is that something to do with his Spark?-—and then all the tension washed out of his body like he’d sprung a leak. Back came the mischievous grin, and he purposely moved his hands to put his elbows on his knees, well away from his weapons.

  Leaning forward so his chin rested on his crossed knuckles, he tilted his head to the side. “Yeah. I guess I could do that.”

  “Dayne, we don’t have any coffee, but I think Nidina brought some tea with her. Why don’t you heat up some water for that,” El suggested without taking her eyes off Tas.

  “Sure thing,” Dayne said evenly, moving to get started on that.

  “Thanks. So, Tas, let’s hear it.”

  Across from her, the man didn’t answer immediately, as if gathering his thoughts. One quiet second stretched into two, ten, thirty as he watched Dayne get some water boiling. Finally, as Dayne sat back down, Tas spoke. “Having the Ember back wouldn’t change anything. At least, not for the better. From what I understand, we wouldn’t see an immediate boost in power, though please correct me if I’m wrong.”

  “Probably not,” Nidina agreed. “Your people might see their children grow stronger as they mature along with their reinforced Sparks. Or, it might take generations for the power to grow within everybody.”

  “And it’s that first possibility I’m worried about,” Tas said. “The people in charge—the bastards in charge—are already expanding the scope of their draft. If children are suddenly our best weapon against the seawyrms? I don’t know what lengths they’d go to.”

  “If the seawyrms are as powerful as you said, how could children fight them?” El asked. “Why would anybody…?”

  Tas leaned back where he sat and gently pinched the handle of the weapon on his left thigh in two fingers. His other hand patted the air to calm everybody down even as Dayne stood again. “These weapons—we call them guns,” Tas said, slowly drawing the weapon out of its sheath. “They use our Sparks to power them.”

  “Not surprising,” El said. “So?”

  Still holding the gun between two fingers, Tas used his other hand to pop open the cylindrical chamber near the handle. A practiced motion then pulled a much smaller, pointed cylinder out of the chamber. This one, maybe as long as two joints of El’s finger, didn’t look like much, but she still found herself leaning forward in interest.

  “We call these bullets. Really, they can be made of almost any metal, but we’ve taken to using a special… You know what? That’s not important. What is important is that we use our Sparks as an ignition point to fire these bullets from our guns,” Tas explained.

  “Kind of like a crossbow?” Laze asked.

  “A mix between a crossbow and one of Felps’s monstrosities, I’m guessing,” El added.

  “Or the Guldish weapons,” Nidina said.

  “Not sure what a felps is, but yes, kind of like a crossbow,” Tas said.

  “And the army is going to train kids to use these guns?” Nidina asked.

  Tas shook his head. “I mean, yes, but that’s not the… Ugh, I’m not explaining this well. Let me back up a step.” The man pointed at the handle of the gun, where thin lines of yellow, metallic wiring were inlaid. Electrum? “The gun pulls on our Spark—we don’t push it in—when we pull this trigger, here.” He pointed at a small extension of metal below the chamber.

  “The stronger our Spark is, the more ignition we get, which in turns makes the bullet fly further, faster, and hit harder,” Tas continued. “Bigger guns have a bigger pull on the Spark, and in turn do more damage. As you saw, pistols like this aren’t enough to punch through a scaled bear’s armor. We have a few rifles with us that might be able to, but we usually use oversized weapons if we know there are bears around. Their scales are one of the strongest materials in the country. Aside from their claws, which also fall into the categories of scary and sharp, along with hard.

  “Sorry, I’m going off topic. What’s important is it doesn’t matter who is holding the gun. The weapon doesn’t care, as long as there’s a Spark to pull on. My men and I, we’re only soldiers because our Sparks are strong enough to produce powerful ignitions, and because we can aim,” Tas flicked his wrist, spinning the weapon into his hand, then jerked his arm out to the side to point at something in the darkness. “Bang,” he said almost playfully, then seemed to notice how Dayne, Laze, and Nidina had tensed at his sudden movement.

  “The kids? How do they fit into this?” El asked. “The guns are all metal? They must be too heavy for children to use easily. And if size is important…”

  “Size is always important,” Tas said. “And our guns can get very big. Not sure how much you know about our cities, but they’re all basically massive, walled forts. And on those walls, we have cannons. Huge guns firing bullets as big as your leg, in some cases. These things take a lot to power, often using a literal chain of people to provide enough Spark to fire. Those people don’t need to do anything other than be there to provide a power source.”

  El’s eyes narrowed as she caught on. “You’re saying…”

  “Yes,” Tas said. “If you return the Ember, and our children grow stronger, I believe the army will start strapping kids to our larger weapons to power them.”