El hovered a foot above the snowline, watching as the sky lit up like fireworks, most of the snow falling as a mist from the heat of the onslaught.

  Just how hot does it have to be to melt this magic snow? She looked at the few flakes settling on her arms, then back at her wings. Hot enough I don’t want to be close to it.

  While the lazy mist didn’t make it any easier to see, it meant all the action was high above. The golem must be staying up there, so she’d need to go low. Where was that street Dayne had mentioned that led straight into the temple? The one likely filled with deathtraps and extra cannons. South side.

  Where was she now? Impossible to tell in the snow, but at least the source of the cannon fire was obvious.

  Enough stalling, El, go get this done.

  She cracked her knuckles and instinctively reached for her weapon belt. Except it wasn’t there. If only she could form the weapons without the electrum foci like her brother did. Maybe she could find a dropped focus from one of the Firestorm or…

  El’s head turned and her eyes landed on one of the wings extending from her right shoulder. She wasn’t completely without a focus. Could that work in a fight?

  A blue flash interrupted the orange disco, a shockwave quickly following and blasting the hanging mist aside. Like a painting by a master artist, the fortress sat in the pillar of sunlight, guns blazing, while the horror of Pycrin’s golem clashed with the Stormbearer in the air above. All too quickly, the mist reappeared, and El’s view was blocked.

  But she’d seen it! She was already on the wide street leading straight into the Guldish house of worship, the guardian cannons focused on the aerial battle, with the Ember sitting in its sacred spot at the pinnacle of the temple.

  El leaned forward and raced down the street, her four smaller wings keeping her low and steady just above the snow. It’d probably be too much to ask to hope for the cannons to completely ignore her, but she’d already proven she could outrun them. Once they…

  The air directly in front of her tinged orange.

  Here they come!

  El twisted up and flared her wings, bursting out of the confines of the street as the fiery javelins flashed by beneath her. Like an endless stream, the cannon fire angled up behind her, hot on her trail. She couldn’t run away like last time, so she rolled in the air and flared just her left-wing nub, spinning her down and to the right, away from the rising stream of blasts.

  As the cannon fire shot up and past her, she pulled out of the roll just in time for her boots to skid across the roof of one of the few buildings left standing. The cannon fire above was already angling down toward her again, and she dashed across the roof back toward the street, then leapt off, flaring her wings and bursting into a nearby alley.

  She cut her flare almost immediately, spinning in the air and flaring her wings at the first intersection. Even with the practice she’d had, the narrow alley made for a tight turn, and she sparked along the black-stone wall, flame armor melting rock as it converted the energy to heat.

  The building to her right shuddered, and El arched her back, cut the power to her right-wing nub and flared her left again, rolling up and just barely over the line of fire as it tore through the buildings below her.

  And then she was out of the snow, sunlight all around.

  The image of the Stormbearer and the Pycrin golem battling in the air far above to her right flashed through her view as she spun, but she had no time to figure out who was winning. The cannons were already changing their line of fire to home in on her again. But a few hundred feet more and she’d be past the outer batteries.

  El completely doused her smaller wings and focused all her power into an all-out flare. Tucking her arms at her side, she bolted forward at maximum speed, a wide cone of flame roaring behind.

  She flashed past the turning cannons, far faster than they could keep up with, and through the archway leading to the temple. Her small wings ignited to life, and she darted down to fly just above the ground, eyes scanning the walls for threats. For troops. Hidden weapons. Anything.

  Nothing. Why isn’t there anything trying to stop me? Is there nobody left?

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  She looked straight ahead, barely in time as a wide golem materialized out of thin air, its massive fist swinging down to squash her like a bug.

  Just like Nexin.

  El screamed and flared her wings again, squeezing under the fist that fell like a headsman’s axe and through the golems spread legs. No sooner had she passed it than she cut her wings and somersaulted in the air, flaring her wings after she’d rolled almost two hundred and seventy degrees. Her forward momentum fought against the thrust, but it couldn’t win, and she shot up at the back of the golem’s head.

  This better work!

  She twisted in the air and pulled on the flames roaring out of her electrum nubs, shaping them like she’d shaped her wings. But she didn’t want wings. Instead, the flames reached out like a second set of arms and coiled around her fists, flexing and extending in wide claws that she swept up at the back of the golem’s head as she rocketed past.

  Heavy electrum parted in a shower of sparks beneath her razor-sharp claws, four long gouges, almost a foot deep, running from neck to the top of the golem’s head. Then El was past it, already cutting her wings, but keeping her claws out, rolling over and flaring her wings again.

  Before the golem even had a chance to dislodge its fist from the crater it’d left in the street, El was already back in its face. Literally.

  Igniting her four smaller wings, she twisted in the air and landed on the equivalent of the golem’s collar bone. Then, like some kind of fiery dervish, she tore into its face. Sheared metal flew off in large chunks as the golem staggered back, the metal groaning like a cry of agony.

  Its other hand came up to protect its face, but El flipped up and over the head, running her claws down the length of the golem’s back as she dropped. The heavy electrum of the golem’s body didn’t even slow her descent, and the moment she touched the ground, she leapt at the back of its knee. Maybe it didn’t have the same tendons or muscles a person did, but those pistons and gears looked important.

  With a flash of her claws, the golem suddenly listed into the fortress wall as its knee gave out. Its right hand, finally free of the ground, came up to steady it, and El rolled between its legs then launched herself up at the exposed armpit. With her wings to keep her in precisely the right place, she tore into the vulnerable mechanisms, and almost through the arm, before it fell limply to the side.

  The golem twisted around, its limp arm swinging like a flail that smashed through the fortress wall to its right, but El was already above it. Seeing it off-balance and vulnerable, she dove back in one last time, landing on its right shoulder and tearing into its armored neck.

  With no weapons to bare against her, the golem stood on its good leg and then turned and shoulder-tackled the wall beside it, trying to crush El between its body and the wall. She was too quick for it though, and scurried to its opposite side. The fortress wall, meanwhile, crumpled under the golem’s strength, metal pieces raining to the ground from the collision.

  Still, despite all the damage she was doing to it, it wasn’t enough. She needed something more… dramatic.

  “This is for you, Nidina.” El leapt straight up while the golem brought its one good arm up to extricate itself.

  Forty feet above it in an instant, El flipped upside down and put her hands together, cupping her fingers like she was holding the hilt of a sword. The flames, servants to her will, extended out in a wide, glowing blade.

  Focus!

  The flames condensed, intensified, a corona of light expanding around them as they collapsed toward the plasma state.

  One more push. Hope this works…

  She flared her wings and the sword at the same time.

  What was a flaming sword four feet long and a foot wide exploded into a plasma sword ten times that size. It only lasted a heartbeat, if that, as El crashed down like a lightning bolt.

  The golem’s back flashed by, and El slammed into the ground, her flame armor melting a crater ten feet wide from the force of the impact. Even then, the air blasted out of her lungs and the world spun around her.

  Shoulder aching, she pushed herself to her hands and knees, her weapon and wings doused. She couldn’t stay there though. There hadn’t been any resistance to her blade. Had she missed?

  El rotated her head and looked up. Was she going to see a giant fist come crashing down?

  Oh. Guess not.

  The golem “stood” where it had been, except now it was in two pieces, metal melted and drooping where it had been cleaved cleanly through.

  Is it dead?

  In answer, the golem’s right knee bent, and El fought to ignite her wings.

  She got two of the smaller wings out, it would have to be enough, rolled over on to her stomach, and half stumbled half flew toward the temple.

  Need to put some distance between us so I can catch my breath.

  CRAAAAAASH.

  El spun… and then dropped to her knees in the middle of the road.

  The right half of the golem lay unmoving where it had collapsed. It hadn’t been turning to continue the fight; the leg simply couldn’t support it anymore. Still, it was good she’d gotten out of the way, for the golem had fallen right on her little crater.

  El took a deep breath. She’d actually done it. Beaten a golem by herself.

  An echoing collision high above reminded her that her victory wouldn’t mean a burning thing if she didn’t get that Ember.

  “Up we go,” she told herself, found her feet, and ignited her other two smaller wings, though they sputtered and died almost immediately. That trick with the plasma sword had really taken it out of her. How did Nexin do it so effortlessly?

  Uh, because he’s Nexin, El’s mind reminded her in Laze’s voice.

  Two small wings would have to do for now. El turned and looked up the long flight of stairs leading to the Ember’s resting place. It flickered and glowed at the top, barely visible from her angle, but she hopped into the air and glided up the stairs. No other golems appeared, nothing else shot at her, and she reached the apex without further incident.

  There, in a wide dish-like altar, sat the final Ember Pycrin hadn’t collected. A piece of divinity left in the mortal realm. Power incarnate, and the key to ending… or saving… the world.

  So why did it look like a burning stick?