El groaned, blinked, and pushed herself up to her knees. She was still alive?

  The Ember!

  …was still in her hand, but it was different. Blue flame instead of angry orange flickered on the end of the torch, comfort radiating out in place of hatred.

  “You’ve defiled it!” a voice wheezed, and El broke her attention away from the Ember.

  Lhogan’s monstrous form stood not far from her, his arm regrown, but the cabin was gone. Only Sol’s wife and son remained in the crater with her, snow falling all around.

  “Well, it shouldn’t have been such a burning douche,” El said and stood, the pain in her body nothing but a memory. Actually, it was more than just the lack of pain. She felt… good. Really good.

  A flap of wings behind her, and El shifted to find Oril had caught up.

  Even in his new form, his burn-scarred face was apparent, and hatred seethed in his fiery eyes.

  “There’s nowhere left for you to go,” Oril wheezed. “And with no Spark, you can’t fight us. Hand over the Ember and we will make your death relatively painless.”

  “Relatively,” Lhogan echoed.

  “Oh, sounds like a great deal,” El deadpanned. “Let me make you a counteroffer.” Wings of blue flame burst out of her shoulders and stretched wide, tiny ice-crystals falling and sparkling from their entire width. “How about I make your deaths relatively… painful.”

  Oril and Lhogan both took a step back, hissing at her coldfire wings.

  The Ember in her hand, if it could even be called that anymore, pulsed in time with her heart, stoking the power that’d replaced her Spark. It wasn’t the same power as Sol’s; she wasn’t another avatar, it was something new. An impossible cross between the domains of two warring gods.

  El snapped her right wrist, and a coldfire sword sprung to life. “Let’s do this,” she told the two monsters, then leapt straight up into the air.

  Lhogan and Oril followed immediately on flaming wings twice as wide as they were tall, their bodies writhing like serpents in the air as they flew.

  Two hundred feet up in seconds, icy crystals trailing behind her like a comet’s tail, El doused her large wings and replaced them with four smaller versions, then twisted around the large tree at her back. The trunk extended up, up, up as far as El could see, and she spiraled around it while Oril and Lhogan chased her. Their larger wings prevented them from cutting the tight turns that kept El close to the bark, and they instead pulled further out and opened their mouths, spitting high-velocity balls of fire.

  El zipped close to the trunk, constantly spiraling up the tree, explosions tearing through the bark just behind her while Oril and Lhogan twisted and fired. Faster and faster she went, and as soon as she was hidden by the tree from both of them, she curled in the air and flared her wings.

  As Lhogan came around in his predictable arc, El burst straight at him, dancing around his fiery projectiles, and swung her coldfire sword.

  Flames burst to life in his hands, and a fiery greatsword came up to meet her attack, barely in time, and she flashed past as their weapons sparked off each other.

  El rolled, small wings pushing in the opposite direction of her momentum and briefly “landed” on the side of one of the massive trees. Lhogan was still reeling in the air from the collision of their weapons while Oril pivoted and continued up the tree.

  She launched with another flare at the off-balance Lhogan, but the Ember in her hand pulsed a warning, and El flared just her left wing. She flipped to the side as the golem’s greatsword cut through reality right where she would’ve been, then she touched down on another tree and bound right back off.

  Lhogan had found his balance and brought his sword around again to meet hers. Her strike deflected, El pulled back instead of shooting past, then dropped into Twins On Soaring Flames and lunged back in.

  Her overhead slash was easily blocked by Lhogan’s greatsword, his grotesque mouth twisting in a superior grin. “Not nearly as good as your brother,” he wheezed.

  Then she stabbed him just below the ribs with the blue-flamed Ember he’d ignored.

  “Two-weapon form,” she said, the blue fire catching on his paper-thin skin.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  A great beat of his wings jerked him away, but the flames didn’t simply vanish, and ice crawled across his chest. “What did you do?” he asked.

  El didn’t answer and instead charged back in, Sea of Snakes and Flames darting around his too-slow defense. Left shoulder, left wing, and right bicep; she landed three of six strikes before the Ember again pulsed in her hand, and she flared her wings.

  The golem’s flaming greatsword cut through reality just below her feet as she rocketed up.

  And straight through Lhogan.

  He hung in the air, top half burning blue as the flames spread, while his severed legs and tail fell out of sight. Still he didn’t die though, his eyes rotating on the side of his head toward her.

  Worse, Oril came roaring back in, wings burning bright as he swept down at El with a flaming sword in each hand.

  She brought her coldfire sword up to block one while the blue Ember intercepted the other, but he was already following up. His weapons blurred, and hers did in response to keep up with his volley of lightning-fast strikes. The difference between Oril and Lhogan was astronomical, and he pushed her back in the air as she struggled to keep up.

  Was this how he’d beaten Nexin? And that was before he’d gained the advantage of arms twice the length of a regular person. They whipped the swords around to crack against her defenses with uncanny strength and speed, and from angles normally impossible.

  El and Oril spun around each other in the air like a top, each vying for the better position as their weapons met and sparked, but Oril was definitely gaining the upper hand. How could she…?

  Then Oril dropped out of sight like a rock, and Lhogan was right there, his maw wide and flames gushing out in a large cone.

  El’s right hand came up instinctively, her sword expanding into a wide shield as the flames washed over her. The fire had real weight behind it though, and she was thrown backward to crunch into one of the wide trees. The flames came on and on, crushing her between her shield and the side of the tree.

  The pressure and the heat built around her, flames clawing at the edges of her shield and trying to get through. Blue shimmered around her, like her flame armor used to, but instead of converting the energy to heat, the tree at her back frosted over.

  When the flames finally let up, El flared her wings and rocketed straight up the side of the tree, barely getting out of the way as Oril came in swinging. His blades sheared through her coldfire trail, and the tree, then his wings flashed and he was hot on her tail.

  He couldn’t keep up with the thrust of her flare though, and she easily pulled ahead. Shifting her shield to a new weapon, El rolled in the air, her boots skidding along the trunk as she slid backward and pulled hard the string of her coldfire bow.

  With the Ember acting as the core of the weapon, the arrow grew to an enormous size in a heartbeat, and El’s fingers released the string.

  The arrow roared down the side of the tree, bark ripping in its wake, but Oril barely managed to dodge out of the way, his eyes never leaving his prey.

  But El wasn’t focused on him. The Ember was still connected to the arrow, and as it shot past Oril, she jerked the bow to the side. Like a ball on a string, the arrow curved away from the tree and straight into Lhogan.

  The arrow exploded with a BOOOOOOM in a sphere of swirling blue fire thirty feet wide. The concussive wave slammed Oril into the side of the tree and threw El head over heels further up.

  El’s small wings quickly took control of her flight, and she glanced to the source of the explosion just in time to see Lhogan’s ice-encased upper-half fall out of sight.

  Would the ice heal Lhogan too? Probably not.

  Just one more, and El turned her focus to Oril.

  Like El, one of his bulbous eyes watched Lhogan fall away, then rotated back to look at her.

  “He was just slowing me down anyway,” Oril wheezed from where he hung on the side of the tree from his claws. “Now I can show you how much better I am than your brother while I enjoy the pleasure of ripping your arms off all by myself.”

  “Good luck with that,” El said, and moved the Ember to her right hand. If it worked with the bow…

  The blue flames of the Ember crawled down the wood of the torch, engulfing the entire thing, then extended and sharpened in both directions. Four feet of plasma-like coldfire spun from each tip of her double-ended sword as she rolled it in her hands.

  Oril “stood” on the side of the tree, his clawed feet anchoring him to the bark, and sinuous flaming swords ignited to life in each hand.

  Reality flashed as the Pycrin golem and the Stormbearer clashed, the falling snow dissolving for a moment and then reappearing.

  BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM of the titans’ weapons clashing, the world flashing like a slideshow around them, El and Oril locked glares.

  BOOM. Flash.

  Oril’s clawed foot shifted.

  El flared her wings and rocketed down at an angle. She twisted, hit a tree, flared again, hit another tree, another flare, another ricochet, and she was on top of him, faster than he could swivel to follow.

  BOOM. Flash

  The top half of her double-ended sword cut the air in an overhead slash, and she tucked her legs and flared her wings again, spinning her whole body like a rotating saw. Oril’s sword came up to block, but he wasn’t fast or strong enough to counter her momentum from that angle, and she blasted through his sword, his left wing, and the tree behind him before spinning past.

  BOOM. Flash.

  Without orienting herself, El cut her flare, straightened her body and flared again, rocketing away. Twist, duck, flare, and she was right back in, sword leading like a spear.

  BOOM. Flash.

  The coldfire blade slipped past his guard and through his right shoulder, while El brought her foot up to catch the wrist of his right arm, pinning it to the tree. Before he could bring his left weapon to bear, El broke off the bottom blade of her sword, leaving it embedded in his shoulder, and kicked off from Oril.

  BOOM. Flash.

  El spun in the air, her wings adding even more torque to her rotation, and flared the Ember as she swung. Blue fire filled her vision, and she brought the blade down across Oril’s shoulder, through his chest, and straight out the other side.

  “Bitch,” Oril wheezed, ice racing up his chest over his face, and down across his legs as he fell apart in two pieces.

  “You’re nothing compared to Nexin,” she said as she watched the pieces fall out of sight far below.