El spun away from the golem, the sky empty except for them, and flared her wings. She just had to get to the Pyre before it caught her!

  But she wasn’t fast enough.

  Like it teleported, the golem was suddenly between her and the Pyre, its greatsword arcing around like a flaming tsunami.

  She couldn’t dodge in time, and flared the Ember into a shield on her left side. Please be enough she pleaded to the Ember, to herself, but strong arms wrapped around her waist, knocking the wind out of her, and carried her just above the unstoppable weapon.

  “Got you,” Nexin said and let her go thirty feet further up.

  “Thanks,” El said.

  CRAAAAAAAAASH!

  She glanced down and couldn’t help but gape as the shockwave from the golems swing literally cut a swath of destruction through at least eight city blocks. Blasted buildings and stone rained down in a wide arc hundreds of feet further away, multiplying the devastation.

  The family?

  “We need to get that monster’s attention,” Nexin said. “Or it’s going to kill thousands.”

  El shifted to look at the golem, the bulbous eyes on the side of its head already swiveling up at her, hatred rolling off in thick waves.

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” El said, then pushed Nexin to the side and flared in the opposite direction. A cone of flame shot between them, hot enough to trigger El’s frost armor and still singe her leather jacket. She wasn’t going to be able to just run away.

  El flared her heels and dodged a second cone of flame, the golem’s attention clearly on her, then flared again and climbed higher into the sky. As long as she stayed above the golem, the city was safe.

  Another cone of flame, another dodge, and El ignited a coldfire bow over the Ember. A flare from the palm of her hand, a narrow escape, and she drew back an arrow, the coldfire quickly spiraling to be as big as she was. One more…

  The golem opened its mouth, but it wasn’t a cone of flame that came out this time. Instead, like Oril and Lhogan had done, it spit high-velocity balls of flame rapid-fire.

  El lost the arrow as she twisted and weaved between the withering fire, flares jerking her around like a pinball and the task of evasion taking all her concentration. She swung around wide, but the endless stream of bolts cut her off and forced her in the other direction. It knew she wanted to get to the Pyre, and it wasn’t going to let that happen.

  She flared her wings again, barely dodging the latest volley, and glanced down at the golem, its head already moving to fire where she would be. It was learning from her movements! El doused her flare, extended her right arm and leg, flared them, and barely cut short before the balls of flame shot through the space in front of her.

  But the golem had expected that too, and its aim was already adjusted for where she hung motionless in the air.

  BOOM!

  Nexin’s punch slammed into the side of the golem’s head, twisting it off target as it released its next volley, the bolts of flame firing just wide of El.

  She flared her wings to get moving again and pulled back on her bow while Nexin hit the golem a second time.

  BOOM!

  The punch came from the other side, catching the golem in the forehead just above one of its huge eyes, and pushing its head down just enough to take El out of its line of sight.

  That second’s distraction was all she’d needed, and El released the arrow. It roared off her bow, kicking her back from the force of the release, and rocketed straight at the golem’s wide maw.

  “Let’s see you…” El started.

  The golem’s sword came around and batted the arrow out of the air like it was nothing. The flaming weapon didn’t even ice up in the least at the contact, and the golem’s eyes locked back on El.

  “We’ll need to work together,” Sol said, suddenly beside her on icy wings. His armor was gone, replaced partially by thick ice over his chest, feet, and hands. At least he still had his sword. Well, half of it. It was broken off in the middle.

  “Your armor?” El asked.

  “We’re too close to the Pyre,” Sol said. “This is the best I can do.”

  “We’ll get you an opening,” Nexin said, appearing on her other side. “Assuming he’s one of the good guys?” Nexin nodded toward Sol as he asked.

  “He is,” El said, saving explanations for later.

  “Be careful, El,” Sol said quickly. “If the golem gets the Ember in its hands, it may be able to purify the essence of my god. If that happens, the Pyre will be whole again, and His power will make the golem’s seem like a small drop in a bucket the size of the ocean.”

  “Great. No pressure.”

  “Burn it, looks like the Ignitio are back in the fight,” Nexin said as one of the armor-clad men rose into the air in front of the golem.

  The man gave a slight bow of his head in reverence to the golem, then ignited a large axe in his hands. “For the glory of…” he started to shout, but cut off as the golem’s hand snapped out and wrapped giant fingers around the man’s chest.

  Metal armor crumpled under the golem’s absurd strength, the man writhing in obvious pain. He froze, though, when the golem brought him directly in front of its face, its eyes swiveling down at him.

  “My lord?” the man wheezed, blood flecking his lips as he spoke.

  In response, the golem’s multi-jointed mouth spiraled open like some kind of horrific flower, rows of knife-like teeth lining its gullet. Then it seemed to breathe in.

  The man in the golem’s hand instantly flared like a bonfire, only to have the flames sucked into the golem’s mouth and down into its chest. It was over in a heartbeat, and only charred dust was left as the golem opened its hand.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  All around, like they hadn’t just watched the golem consume one of their own, Ignitio rose into the air on flaming wings. But something was different about these men and women. Even from a distance, their bodies were… limp. Lifeless. Like they were in some kind of trance. What was wrong with them?

  The golem leaned its head back, mouth wide, and let loose a tremendous roar, one that shook the sky and earth both. Buildings below rocked and bucked as the ground shook, screams echoing out as the few people who’d managed to hide panicked inside.

  Those screams were joined in earnest by the Ignitio. Each and every one, mimicking the golem, threw back their heads and wailed.

  Then their bodies began to twist and writhe. Shoulders widening, arms lengthening, jaws splitting, and actual wings bursting out of their backs. El had seen this before, in the In-Between. All of the Ignitio were transforming into monsters just like Oril and Lhogan.

  Not good.

  Worse, whether it was their proximity to the golem or to the Pyre itself, the transformation was near-instantaneous, and within seconds, an army of the grotesque monstrosities dotted the sky.

  “There’s too many. We can’t fight them all by ourselves,” Nexin said.

  “You’re not by yourselves,” a baritone voice said from behind them, as dozens, no hundreds, of flaming projectiles raced past to blast into the hovering Ignitio in a cacophony of explosions. Flaming, house-sized spheres of flame that could only come from Felps’s PICs lit up the sky in a line like a horizon.

  What the Blaze?

  El turned to find General Cannon soaring toward them, the sky behind him full of Firestorm wings. It had to be everybody who’d been deployed up north.

  “How…?” El asked.

  “Time for explanations later. We have a city to save,” Cannon said, then ignited a sword in his good hand and pointed toward the former-Ignitio. “Firestorm, attack!” he roared. A second wave, even bigger than the first, of flaming projectiles rocketed forward as the two forces crashed into each other high above the city.

  “Go. Now,” Nexin said to El, and launched himself straight at the golem. Sol was on his heels without hesitation.

  The three collided with a series of BOOMS like a drumline, and El flared her wings and burst toward the Pyre. Maybe ten blocks away, she could cover the distance in seconds if they could keep the golem distracted.

  It appeared in front of her—of course it did—sword coming down like a headsman’s axe.

  “Don’t stop,” Sol yelled, bolting in front of her and deflecting the falling sword, just barely, to pass her to the left.

  El rolled to her right and flared her wings.

  The golem’s left hand snaked out for her, but Nexin hit it with a battering ram of plasma from below, jerking it just up and over her head.

  Still, the double-forged electrum fingers snagged two of her wings, snuffing their fire, and suddenly El was spinning out of control.

  She rolled in the air, the seconds it took to reignite the lost wings some of the longest in her life. Finally, they burst forth on her back, and she curved toward the Pyre. Eight blocks now.

  A cone of flame from above. Sol blocked it with a disk of ice as big as a building.

  Six blocks.

  The golem again in front of her, a punch as inevitable as the setting sun racing straight for her. Nexin, appearing out of nowhere, intercepted the fist with a punch of his own. THOOOOOOM.

  El twisted and flared, skimming along and on top of the golems arm, and then bolted between its wings.

  Four blocks.

  Two blocks.

  El cocked her arm back to throw the Ember…

  “DON’T, OR HE DIES (Not so fast pig),” the golem roared behind her, followed by a grunt of pain.

  El’s fingers tightened around the wood of the torch, the Ember itself urging her to throw it. But, instead, she glanced back as she glided the remaining distance over the Pyre. All she had to do was let go… but…

  The golem had Nexin.

  “Don’t… El…” Nexin wheezed from within its iron grip.

  Where was Sol? Why wasn’t he saving Nexin?

  A crater below was her answer, Sol’s unmoving body at the center of it.

  “GIVE ME WHAT’S MINE (Hand over the Ember),” the golem roared, gliding toward her, then lifted Nexin in front of its open mouth.

  El’s eyes met Nexin’s. She couldn’t lose him again. It was too much. She wilted in the air as the golem drew closer. She’d missed her chance. Even if she let the Ember drop now, the golem was simply too fast. It would catch the falling torch before it went twenty feet.

  “Fine, you win,” El said, floating forward, almost close enough she could reach out and touch Nexin. “Let him go and I’ll give it to you. Just don’t hurt him anymore.”

  “WISE CHOICE (Too bad),” the golem said, now mere feet away from El, Nexin still in front of its open maw. All it had to do was breathe in, and Nexin would share the fate of the unfortunate Ignitio.

  “Let him go,” she said again, though her voice lacked any real strength, and held the Ember up in front of her.

  Fear and disappointment rolled off the blue flame in her hand, while the image of throwing the torch into the Pyre flashed in her head.

  I’m sorry, I can’t. Not while it has Nexin, she thought at the Ember. Whether it heard her or not, it didn’t show any sign.

  “You… can… still… run…” Nexin said, then gasped as the fingers closed another inch around his chest.

  “NO, YOU CAN’T (Now, give it),” the golem said, a glow emanating from deep in its throat as it began to breathe in slowly.

  Nexin’s corona of heat flickered as he fought to resist the pull, the drawn-out torture of the tear on his Spark meant to keep her from moving. He grimaced in pain as he fought the scream working its way up his throat. As the core of his being was slowly, casually, ripped out of every fiber of his being.

  But El wasn’t the only one who wasn’t moving. The golem had paused while it pulled on Nexin’s Spark, drawing her brother’s immense power… directly into its own. A straight path to the heart of the golem.

  Sol had said that the golem could purify the frozen Ember if it got its hands on it. What if…?

  No time for thinking!

  El flared her wings full power.

  Before the golem had a chance to break off the pull on Nexin’s Spark, El burst forward and slammed the Ember deep into its open mouth. Blue flames licked across its teeth and down its throat, sucked in by the golem’s greed.

  Still, it wasn’t enough. The blue flames held the mouth open, even as it tried to close, but the orange and red restrained them. Divine flames raged against each other, each vying for dominance, and just barely keeping the other at bay.

  Would the golem’s power purify the Ember before the blue flames had a chance to spread?

  Not if El had a say in the matter.

  Dousing her wings and focusing all her power on the Ember in her hand, El flared for all she was worth.

  Blue flame exploded out of the golem’s mouth, washing over El, and burst through the joints of its head and neck.

  She poured on the power, forcing it all straight down the golem’s throat to where its Spark had to be.

  “Die, you ugly son of a…”

  Something slammed into El from the side.

  Suddenly she was spinning through the air, falling, the golem flashing through her vision like a slideshow as it reached for its own face with both hands, blue flames jetting out of its shoulders and arms.

  Wait! Both hands? Where was Nexin?

  El ignited her wings—they came slowly—exhaustion spreading through her body, and she scanned the sky. There he was. Unconscious and falling!

  El twisted, but she didn’t even have the strength to flare. She pulled her arms and legs in tight, reducing wind resistance, and let gravity do its work while she pushed with what little strength she had. The distance shrank between them, but it wasn’t enough. She wouldn’t reach him before he hit the ground. Would his flame armor protect him, or had the golem destroyed it? Did he even still have his Spark?

  Twenty feet above the ground, and falling like a rock, she stretched out her arm for him, even though he was still more than five feet away.

  “Noooo!” she shouted.

  A pair of flaming wings streaked by below her, snagging Nexin out of midair, just feet above the ground, and flashed down the street. El’s eyes followed the wings so long she only barely managed to pull out of her own dive, the toes of her frost armor leaving a short trail of ice as she curved her back and shot after the other Firestorm.

  They landed on a high roof near the Pyre, and El wasn’t far behind.

  Who’d saved Nexin? Wait… that hair…

  “Laze?!” El asked, landing behind the woman who was gently putting Nexin down. “LAZE! You’re alive!” she said, then threw her arms around her friend’s back.

  “Better than alive,” Laze said, unwinding El’s arms and then turning around and wrapping El in a hug. “Did you see that? I totally saved Nexin. Me. Saved him!”

  “You did. Thank you,” El said. “I can’t believe you’re…”

  Above, the golem roared, interrupting the reunion, and El looked up as blue flames crawled along the golem’s wings, consuming the normal red-and-orange flames at every step.

  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? (No this can’t happen)” it bellowed as the flames crept down its legs. Finally, only the two sun-like eyes remained red, the rest of the body still and coated in blue coldfire. They spun and looked at El, hatred mixed with terror, then blinked out.

  With that, the golem dropped out of the sky.

  And straight into the Pyre.