El spun and flared her wings without a second thought, the burst ejecting her out of the hole in the ground like a comet. And not a second too soon, spears of flame shredding the terrain where she’d stood.

  Sixty feet up in a heartbeat, snow spiraled in the air around El as she twisted, angling herself back toward the ground, and flared her wings again. Twin jets of flame exploded out of her electrum wing nubs while gravity inserted itself in her little dance.

  THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM.

  Cannon fire lit the sky again, flaming lances as long as El was tall cutting through her fiery trail mere feet behind her while the snow-covered ground raced up to meet her. Igniting her wings, El arched her back and pulled up at the last second, her speed kicking up a loose cloud of flakes in her wake as she raced past.

  Explosions echoed behind her, flashes in her peripheral vision, but she couldn’t afford to spare even a glance. Snow fell thick outside the cone of sunlight, the path ahead of her clear no more than a block in any direction.

  Shapes materialized and vanished in the blink of an eye as she whipped past. A stone pillar straight ahead. El twisted, her wings vertical, and passed so close her toes grazed the stone. A second later, chunks of rock flew past her, the stone pillar obliterated by the cannon fire chasing her down the narrow street.

  And it was gaining on her, if the volume of the explosions was any indication. She needed to…

  A wall. Right in front of her. Too fast. Too close. She couldn’t avoid it.

  El doused her wings, crossed her arms in front of her face, and aimed for her only chance. Glass and wood shattered as she plowed through the window, bounced off the ceiling, wood igniting from the kinetic conversion of her flame armor, and then skidded along a faded rug on the floor. Orange bursts flashed as she rolled, and without time to pick a direction, El flared her wings for all they were worth.

  Through a closed door, ooph, and the bathroom window beyond, El flipped head over heels, carried by the flare of her wings and the concussive force of the exploding building. Rolling in the air, she glanced back, the air mercifully free of flaming death, and flared her wings to carry her back down to the cover of the streets.

  THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM.

  Pinpricks of orange grew terrifyingly fast as they raced straight for her, and El rolled when she neared the ground, flaring her wings yet again and hurtling herself down the street. Explosions like dominos falling raged after her, consuming the city in deafening flashes.

  The cannons definitely sensed her wing flares, but she couldn’t just stop. The peppering spray of cannon fire was annihilating entire blocks. She’d never get away on foot.

  So, she’d just have to outrun them.

  An intersection ahead. El cut her flare short and dropped her left hand into the snow, the sudden resistance jerking her shoulder, but also spinning her legs out to the side. She flared her wings before her legs got too far, and jetted away at a ninety-degree angle down the cross street as the fiery salvo continued on down her original path.

  Igniting her wings, she raced inches above the snow, gaining precious seconds while the cannons reoriented on her new position. As soon as the weapons roared their next salvo, El shifted to the left, wings vertical to the ground, and pumped her legs as quickly as she could, running along the wall.

  With one step she doused her wings, the next she straightened her back, and with the third, she flared her wings and launched down an alley across the street. Low buildings whipped past her, but the explosions continued on down the street the way she’d been going.

  El’s flare carried her through the alley to the next major street, and she ignited her wings again, cutting hard to the right. Any second now…

  THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM-THOOM.

  The opening salvo hit the street blocks behind where she’d ignited her wings. The cannons didn’t turn fast enough to keep up with her when she changed directions, but they were already catching up. Her regular wing ignition wasn’t going to get her away.

  Time for plan B.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  B for brotherly inspiration… if she could pull it off.

  El doused her wings and immediately flared them again, launching herself forward. Using the extra space between her and the cannon fire, El concentrated on the electrum nubs on her shoulders. She didn’t want full wings, just… yes! Four smaller wings sprouted from her shoulders, two on each side. They didn’t have the same raw power as her larger wings, and she moved noticeably slower, but the extra control would be worth it. Now, for the tough part.

  The end of the street suddenly appeared in front of her, and El only had one chance to do this right.

  Nexin had been able to sprout six wings, and she could’ve too, if she’d wanted. Time to actually do something better than him. With her four wings still sprouted, El flared her right nub, flipping her into a roll, then pulled hard back with all four wings and added another small flare for good measure. Her feet gently touched down on the wall of the building at the end of the street, the cannon fire racing to catch her.

  Not fast enough.

  El kicked off the wall, adding a flare on top of the speed of the smaller wings, and launched away several full seconds before the wall vanished in a collage of fiery explosions.

  As soon as the first flare faded, El added another, fine-tuning her direction through the use of her smaller wings. She whipped left and right past debris in the blink of an eye, under fallen columns and over piles of rubble like she was on a track, and down the street at speeds bordering on insane.

  She devoured city blocks, cutting corners at impossible angles and speeding away before the trail of cannon fire caught up. If the snow ever vanished, there would be one burning line of destruction following her escape, but that wasn’t her problem. No, her problem was the snow on her wings, weighing her down without melting. Even with the constant flares, the devasting impacts were getting closer. Every sudden change of direction bought her an extra second, but she was losing that lead every time she bolted straight ahead like an arrow.

  An arrow. That was it!

  El flipped and spun, changing her angle and powering off at another ninety-degree angle, and grabbed an electrum hilt from her belt. The street she was on, no it was too narrow. It wouldn’t be a main route. She needed... there, ahead! She cut and turned, stuttering the flares of her right-wing nub to spin around and line her up, then jetted off down the middle of the wide street. It had to be a main thoroughfare, easily wide enough for one of the new golems to comfortably walk down.

  Now all she needed to do was… pull this off without dying.

  El angled gently up, no more than ten degrees, and flared her wings to full power while simultaneously igniting the bow in her hand. She pumped power into the arrow for the full two-second duration of the flare, then held it and twisted in the air until she was soaring sideways. At the height of her arc, she completely doused her wings, and let the arrow fly.

  The arrow continued down the street while the force of the release shot her in the opposite direction and out of the blast radius of the cannon fire that chased the arrow down the street away from her.

  Not going to be able to do anything to soften this…

  Without her wings to guide her, and the full force of the recoil behind her, El flew uncontrollably through the falling snow. She’d angled up to get over the nearby roofs and away from the explosions, but that also meant she had further to fall. Literally.

  She hit the far corner of a roof hard enough to knock the wind out of her and scorch the stone before pinballing off it into the wall of the next-door, and taller, building. Without the air in her lungs to even grunt, she soundlessly dropped straight down into the waiting snow below. It practically swallowed her in welcome, and she simply lay there coughing until she could breathe again.

  When the coughing subsided, and her lungs didn’t feel like razorblades were carving them from the inside out, she pushed herself up to her knees. The cannon fire had stopped. Her distraction had worked. They thought she was dead.

  El pushed herself to her feet and immediately toppled over. Her whole body hurt from that maneuver. “Didn’t stick that landing either,” she said, then her mind flashed to the memory of Laze’s face.

  What had happened to her friends? The fortress was still standing, which meant the Firestorm attack hadn’t worked. And that column of sunlight was still there, which meant the Ember probably was too. That didn’t explain where her friends were though.

  Had they been caught in the same explosion she had? Or did they manage to get away?

  “Hey, can anybody hear me?” she asked, trying the communicator, then spun toward where the cannon fire had come from. Was the communicator enough to attract the weapons’ attention?

  El crouched, waiting, ready to flare her wings and get the Blaze out of there… but the roaring cannons stayed silent. She was safe… for now. But what about her friends? Should she try to go back to where she’d dug herself out? They could be buried, just like she was.

  No, that was a terrible idea. The cannons had spotted her immediately. As long as she didn’t get too close or use her Spark, she’d be invisible in the snow.

  “Anybody?” she asked again into the communicator, one eye in the direction the fortress was. Either there was nobody around, or, more likely, the snow was blocking her.

  What was she going to do? Go, on foot, to look for her friends? Or try to get far enough away from the fortress she could use her wings and get back over the mountains? Somebody needed to get back to stop the Church from using the cadets to fuel Felps’s golem. And warn the city about what was waiting for them if they decided to try for the Ember again.

  El lowered her face into her hands, blocking out the ever-falling snow, and shook her head. No matter which choice she made, she’d be letting somebody down.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to her friends, even though they likely couldn’t hear her. “I can’t let the Church have its way anymore.”

  She leaned back, the stone rough against her back through her leather Firestorm jacket, and looked up at the falling snow… and the treetops?

  “What the Blaze?” she asked and turned to look at the rough bark of the tree she’d been leaning against.