“Don’t just stand there,” Nexin’s voice shouted out of the flames. “I can’t do this all by myself.” A burst, like something exiting the flames, BOOM, one of the Ignitio hit the ground hard enough to bounce.

  “You sure about that?” El asked, but lunged forward at the two distracted Ignitio in front of her. The first didn’t even see her coming, too focused on the blinks through the air that had to be Nexin, and El’s coldfire sword drove cleanly through his back between his wings. A grunt of pain and surprise, then fear at the ice wrapping his chest, and he fell away.

  As El’s blade plummeted to the ground along with the ice-entombed body, the second Ignitio gave a predatory grin, thinking El unarmed, and lifted her sword above her head for a powerful two-handed swing.

  El almost shook her head. Weren’t they watching before? Didn’t they realize she didn’t need an electrum focus anymore? Whatever. El shifted her hand and simply reformed her blade. Straight through the surprised Ignitio’s exposed throat.

  The woman dropped out of the air in front of El, the top half of her body already cocooned in ice, and El flared her wings and shot down at the hammer-man she’d been engaged with earlier. Two of the four Ignitio were still on the ground with him, the others up in the air after Nexin, and El cut and twisted, skidding in between them.

  With her back to one, and a surprised look on the man in front of her, El flared her wings again and rocketed forward. A scream of surprise, then panic, as her flare washed over the man behind her, and El gripped the Ember in both hands like a focus, extending it into a long halberd, and attacked with Fire Rising to the Sky.

  Off-balance from her sudden, close-range attack, the Ignitio still managed to cross his dual swords low to block her rising halberd-strike. Just like El had expected.

  She cut her flare, let the momentum of the blocked attack carry her legs up and over like a pole-vaulter, then added another brief flare from the heels of her feet. With a thought, her halberd vanished and reformed as she cartwheeled above her opponent, then came down like lightning on hammer-man. This time, he didn’t get his weapons up to block in time, and her blow slammed straight into his stomach, shattering the stone beneath him.

  As ice spread on the Ignitio, El dropped to one knee, twisted her wrist and spun, adding a flare to the halberd. Doing a complete one-eighty, she hit the man behind her with At Sunset before he had time to turn, her coldfire blade passing clean through his waist.

  Unlike Oril, the man didn’t fall apart in two pieces, but ice did race in both directions and fully entomb him in seconds. On the other side of him, the man who’d been hit by El’s flare was likewise out of the fight.

  SLAM.

  Something hit the ground beside El, and she flinched back. Through the dust, a man in golden armor, a fist-print in his chest, began to stand on wobbly legs. A flick of El’s wrist brought a newly formed coldfire sword across his face, and he was out of the fight.

  “New look?” Nexin asked, landing in front of her.

  Despite the fight, and the need to get the Ember to the Pyre, El leapt at him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Thank the P… I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said after a small stutter. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Me too.” Nexin gave her a tight squeeze, then pushed her back. “Then I wasn’t. And a voice told me I needed to get here and help you.” He turned and looked up at the two wings of Ignitio that had come to join the fight. At least that many were already on the ground and out of the action, but El and Nexin had lost the element of surprise. “This isn’t going to be easy,” he said.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “You’re not going to ask why we’re fighting against the Ignitio?” El asked.

  “No. I trust your judgement more than I would ever trust theirs,” he said, like that settled it.

  Pride bloomed in El’s chest. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me until we’ve won,” he said. “Here they come!”

  Swords of glowing plasma erupted in Nexin’s hands, the heat and force of their appearance cracking the stone at his feet, and he launched at the Ignitio, six glowing wings on his back.

  “I need to get to the Pyre,” she shouted after him, igniting a coldfire sword from the Ember, and flared at an Ignitio too focused on her brother.

  “I’ll get you an opening,” Nexin responded, cutting through an Ignitio’s shield, and the man behind, then vanishing and slamming into a second. Even the elite of the elite didn’t compare to Nexin.

  El feinted and stabbed, her flare carrying her past her target, but a quick roll and flares from the bottoms of her feet had her back on top of the Ignitio before he had time to recover. Without the flame armor to protect them, all El needed to do was get around their parries, and she focused on light strikes the Ignitio would normally let their armor shrug off.

  The man fell away from her, one wing frozen and ice crawling across him from three other scratches, and El flared at the next.

  Expecting her speed to give her the element of surprise, it was instead El who was suddenly on the defensive as the Ignitio intercepted and slapped her aside with his shield. El rolled in the air, her frost armor absorbing the blow, and instead flared at the back of another Ignitio. No need to fight somebody who was ready for her when there were so many targets.

  El buried her coldfire sword in the woman’s back, rolling her over and using her as a shield to block a pair of flaming arrows that darted her way. Those deflected, she pushed off and bolted toward her next target. Just like that, eight of the Ignitio were out of the fight, and Nexin didn’t show any sign of slowing down.

  Three quick sword strikes, the final one parried wide, El ducked inside her next opponent’s guard and brought her knee up to the man’s face. A flare from her heel added nose-breaking force and then a subsequent flare from her knee sealed the deal. The man dropped away, blue flame and ice engulfing his head.

  Another one down. But where was the Pyre? El flared her wings and shot straight up. There! Not even four blocks away.

  “Nexin!” she shouted, and pointed at the Ignitio between her and her goal.

  “On it!” Nexin shouted back, a corona of pure power surrounding him and deflecting Ignitio weapons like they were children’s toys. “Be ready, I’m going to…”

  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

  The explosion behind El released a shockwave that hit her like a hammer to the side of the head. Dazed, she rolled in the air as she fell, limbs limp and unresponsive. She flipped, trying to regain control, but she couldn’t focus enough to…

  She hit the roof, went through it and the floor beyond, then came to an abrupt halt on what had to be the ground floor.

  Ouch. How much more of this could she take?

  Ice spread along the splintered hardwood around her while the eyes of a scared family stared wide from the corner of the room through the hanging dust cloud.

  The Ember? Where was it? Beside her. Good.

  “You okay?” El wheezed at the father, his arms spread as if to shield his wife and two kids behind him.

  “Are we okay?” the man asked, then looked through the hole in his house. “Are you okay?”

  “Been better,” El said and stood, picked up the Ember, and ignited the four small wings on her back. The family tried to take a step further back at the sight of her blue wings, but they were already against the wall.

  “Pretty,” the youngest daughter said, but the father’s hand pushed her further back.

  “I won’t let you take them like you took all my neighbors,” the father said.

  “I’m not here to take anybody,” El said, and looked up through the hole in the roof. All his neighbors? So Oril and his cronies took more than just the cadets. Burning bastards. “Stay hidden until this is over, and, uh, sorry about your roof.” She leapt into the air and through the two holes she’d made. What the Blaze had caused that explosion?

  Out of the roof and twenty feet up, she saw the pillar of smoke. It had to be more than a hundred feet wide, black as night, and billowing out of…

  WHAM!

  The smoke cleared in a sphere from the force of the blow, a projectile shooting out and into the street directly in front of El. Whatever it was, it hit the ground hard, leaving a ditch thirty feet long before it finally stopped.

  No, not an it. A who.

  Sol pushed himself up from the cratered ground, more than half his armor missing and the rest in tatters. Wait, if Sol was here…

  El turned and looked at the column of smoke as the Pycrin golem hovered out, flames burning like the sun.

  “I couldn’t stop it,” Sol said from his knees. “It’s too strong.”

  “NOW IT ENDS (Hi there, pig).”