El hung in the air a moment longer, eyes where Oril had vanished in case he had any surprises left. Nothing came roaring up at her through the falling snow though, and she turned her attention to the Ember.

  Gone was the malice of the Pyre, replaced instead by a sense of comfort, like a mother’s arms.

  BOOM. Flash.

  The burst of reality snapped El’s mind back to more important matters, namely finding the doorway back to Balacin. Where could it be?

  “How am I…?” she started to ask, but a pull on the new Spark in her chest made her trail off. She could feel the door back to the capital? No, it wasn’t just that door; there were dozens of them. Hundreds. Spread out through the In-Between, and she could sense them all. Even where they would lead.

  She could run away from it all, hide deep in the storm far from Balacin and the Church. The Ember gently tugged her attention, and El nodded. “Don’t worry,” she told it. “I know what’s at stake.”

  With that, she twisted and raced to the door leading back to Sol’s amulet.

  BOOM. Flaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaash.

  The In-Between warped around her, bending like someone had grabbed a curtain and was pulling it aside.

  “Hurry! It’s found a way in,” Sol’s voice danced on the wind.

  “On it,” El said. There, between those two trees! She dropped straight down and then flared her wings. “Hope I’m aimed down the hall and not right into a wall,” she muttered, then passed between the trees.

  Gone was the falling snow, instantly replaced with the wide metal hallway of the tunnels under Balacin. Her aim hadn’t been perfect, and she angled to the side to avoid crashing into the wall but still skidded along the metal, ice frosting a path behind her, then slowed to a stop.

  “What next?” she asked the Ember.

  The image of the great Church and the Pyre flashed in her mind.

  “You want me to throw you where?” she asked. That couldn’t be right.

  The same image flashed in her mind again.

  Another trick? Was the real Ember just trying to get her take it where it wanted to go?

  No, that wasn’t it. Like her Spark, the blue Ember would be able to influence the Pyre when they mixed, weakening its hold over people’s minds. Then they’d be able to separate the individual Embers again and return them to their proper places. Put the world back the way it was before.

  El just needed to get there. She turned back the way she’d come, zipped past the door to the In-Between, then up through the hole the golem had burned in the ceiling. As soon as she cleared it, she cut her wings and let gravity pull her back to the ground like she was jumping off a curb.

  Dozens of sets of flaming wings crisscrossed the sky, and El tucked the Ember in close to her chest and pressed up against a nearby wall. With all the Firestorm deployed against Guld, and the cadets sacrificed to the golem, those wings could only belong to Ignitio. The temple, and the Pyre, wasn’t far from her, and going on foot might let her sneak in. She just needed to get close enough for a good throw. The Pyre itself was bigger than an entire city block, so it would be hard to miss.

  Nodding at her own plan, El turned the corner and jogged down the street, her eyes on the sky overhead and her ears peeled for the sound of flaming wings.

  The Ignitio were swarming like hornets above, and the streets empty, so El had to move cautiously. Stick to a route where the roofs of the buildings could hide her from eyes above.

  Why was it so quiet though? Did people know what was going on?

  She reached the end of the alley she’d ducked down and glanced out, left then right. Clear in both directions, but it was a wide street. The alley across the way would be safest, but this street would be more direct. Another glance to the sky. Nothing but blue and the occasional cloud. The Ignitio were somewhere else for the moment.

  Faster was better, and El ducked out of the alley and dashed down the street, still sticking close to the wall just in case. Another left turn and then one more right and she’d be there.

  El glanced up, still clear, then ran across the street and around the corner.

  Right into Cardinal Scin.

  “Hello, my child,” he said, his arms lifting with his palms up in his flame-filigreed robes. “I see you’ve returned with the Ember, though I wonder why you’re sneaking around like a little rat? There is no danger here. Just us.”

  El turned around to go the other way, but half a dozen Ignitio crested the nearby buildings and landed in the street behind her. She wouldn’t be going that way without a fight.

  “Now, now, little one,” Scin said. “No need for that. The Ember may have been… corrupted in its journey home, but I can purify it. Hand it to me, and you shall have your glory. Your reward.”

  El slowly turned back to the man, the halos of his eyes glowing so brightly it was painful to look at.

  “My reward?” she asked, nodding, and stepped closer to Scin. “I can be the hero? The one who saved… the world?”

  “Of course,” Scin said, raising his arms above his head, hands to the sky, while three more Ignitio flanked him. “Your name will go down in the history books. You will be remembered alongside the greats who made this day possible.”

  “Like you?” El asked.

  “Well, my child, there will of course be some whose names are a little more revered than others, but you will never want for anything ever again. Everything you desire will be yours. You need but name it, and hand me the Ember,” Scin said, then extended his right hand.

  El stepped in closer, no more than five feet from Scin. The Ignitio didn’t even shift. Scin didn’t need their protection; they were just there in case El decided to make a run for it. “I want to be the one to give it to the Pyre,” she said, extending the Ember to hand it over to Scin. “I want the Pyre to know it was me who did this.”

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  Scin’s eyes narrowed. “No need to be greedy, child. The Pyre will know your contribution. As I said, you will get what you deserve.”

  “Oh, like General Cannon did?” she asked, tilting her head to the side, and brought the Ember back closer to herself. “I think it would be safer for me if I held on to this a little longer.”

  “Stupid child,” Scin snapped, eyes flaring and bathing her in a cone of light. “I offered you a place in history. A chance at being somebody, but my patience is DONE. Hand over the Ember or I will take it from your charred fingers myself.”

  “I… I’m sorry,” she said, bowing her head and stepping forward. “Can I ask you one last question?”

  “Make it quick, child. I am out of patience,” Scin said.

  “Did anybody ever tell you that robe makes you look old?” El asked, and looked up at his face.

  His eyes, and the eyes of every Ignitio around, widened at the direct insult. Then Scin’s face scrunched in anger and he pointed at her, his eyes like small suns in his head.

  “ENOUGH!” he roared. “Know the fury of the Pyre. BURN!” he screamed, his extended arm and finger quivering.

  Nothing happened.

  El looked down at her empty hand, held it up in front of Scin, then wiggled her fingers. “Were you trying for something more dramatic?”

  His mouth worked, but no sounds came out.

  “Maybe, something like… this?” El asked, then her coldfire sword formed in her hand—and straight through the center of Scin’s chest—before anybody could react.

  The suns in his eyes flared blue, ice crawling out of the sockets and down his face.

  El didn’t wait to find out how far that would go, and flared her wings, bursting into the air in a cone of blue flame that engulfed Scin’s body in the backwash.

  The wings of pursuing Ignitio roared below her, and she glanced back. Nine below. Nine! But she could outrun them. She had to. El ignited her four small wings and flared, cresting the roof of the building, then flared again to burst off at a sudden ninety-degree angle. There, just a few blocks away roared flames two stories tall; the Pyre.

  Of course, it wouldn’t be quite that easy though, dozens of flaming wings hovering in the air between her and the temple. More Ignitio, and they spread like a net to stop her. She might be able to get through them. No, she would get through them.

  El twisted and flared for the widest opening. Surprise them with speed and get through the gap before they realize what’s happening.

  Flames to her left. A flash of orange. Pain. Another impact on her right. Darkness.

  El coughed and groaned, the entire right side of her body sore. No, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t just the right side that hurt. At least the pain was symmetrical. But what the Blaze just happened?

  Her eyes slowly adjusted, a room resolving around her, and ice coating the wall and floor beside her. There was a hole in the wall to her left, frost rimming its edges, and sunlight streamed through. When did she get inside? She must’ve gotten jumped by one of the Ignitio. No wonder they were the elite of the elite. She wouldn’t be racing past them after all.

  Fighting it is.

  El pushed herself to her feet, her frost armor had protected her from the worst of… whatever had happened, and she ignited the coldfire sword in her right hand. Not needing a focus was pretty burning handy.

  An Ignitio lowered in front of the hole in the wall, orange-and-red plate armor glowing under the light of his flaming wings, and fiery hammers with heads almost as big as El was in each hand. Well, guess that explains what hit me.

  “Still alive?” the man asked, then glided in and touched down on the floor. “Let me rectify that.”

  El replied by flaring her wings and bursting forward, her coldfire sword swinging for his neck.

  Impossibly fast, the hammer in his left hand came up to block, and before El could react, the hammer in his right smashed into the side of her chest. Blue flashed around her as her armor absorbed the impact, converting the energy to cold, then she was through the stone wall, across the street, and into the second floor of the next building. The third wall she hit finally stopped her momentum, and she pushed herself to her feet again.

  “Okay, OUCH,” she said, staggering, and stretched carefully. Her ribs burning hurt, all of them, but it didn’t seem like anything was broken.

  The same Ignitio entered the hole in the wall just like last time, and looked at her curiously when he found her standing. The head of the hammer in his right hand was frozen solid, but he didn’t seem to particularly care.

  “Impressive,” he said. “Were you not a traitor, you might deserve a place within our ranks.”

  “Not interested. Thanks for the offer though,” El said to buy time while she caught her breath. “You know, I have to ask, why just you? Why not send everybody to make sure I don’t get away?”

  The Ignitio actually rolled his eyes at her. “I am more than enough to make sure you don’t ‘get away.’”

  El rolled her shoulders in response. “You’re going to regret that,” she said, then lunged forward in a Sea of Snakes and Flames.

  Again, the Ignitio’s hammers moved impossibly fast despite their size, and parried El’s thrusts from every angle.

  El didn’t slow though, blue and orange sparks flying at every parry, six thrusts turning to twelve, to twenty-four, and then one got through, past the hammers suddenly heavy with crusted ice, and into the Ignitio’s left elbow.

  He grunted in pain and took a wide sweeping strike with his right hammer, forcing El to disengage. Both of them looked at his elbow to see the damage; a block of ice locking it in place and covering half his arm. His flame armor hadn’t done anything to blunt her attack.

  The Ignitio may be elite, but she had the advantage.

  “A lucky strike.” The Ignitio flexed his left arm. The ice didn’t break, didn’t even crack, but his eyes widened.

  “Uh oh,” El said with a wink and lunged back in. His right hammer came up in time to block her high slash, but she hadn’t committed to the attack, and instead snapped her body around to slam her heel into his exposed side. For good measure, she also added a flare at the point of impact, blue fire erupting out of her heel.

  Roles completely reversed, it was the Ignitio who barreled through the wall and into the wide street, blue flames trailing behind.

  El was out the hole and after him without hesitation, the Ignitio lying on the sidewalk and swatting at the ice crawling up his side. A flash above her and El stopped short, barely avoiding the flaming spear that blistered past her face and impaled the ground below her.

  Four Ignitio swooped down to hover between her and the man she’d been fighting, while five more hung in the air above her, another spear forming in the hand of the nearest.

  “What happened to not needing anybody else?” El asked the man on the ground.

  He scowled at her through his open-face helm.

  El scowled right back. Ten Ignitio right in front of her, plus however many more were nearby. Her fight with just one had taken her further from the Pyre, and she hadn’t even been able to finish him off. To say she was in trouble was an understatement.

  “I could use some help here,” she said to the Ember, her eyes going from Ignitio to Ignitio, waiting for one to make the first move.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve sent somebody to help,” Sol’s voice said on the wind.

  “You can hear me?” she hissed.

  “Through our connection with the Ember, yes,” Sol said.

  “Great, then maybe you could send a whole army of ‘somebodies,’ because I don’t think one is going to be enough,” she whispered.

  “One will be plenty,” Sol’s voice said, and El could almost hear him smirking.

  “It better…”

  The Ignitio attacked.

  The first came at her from the front, a flaming whip snapping over her shoulder as she dodged to the side, right into the path of a swinging greatsword.

  Up came her own coldfire sword, deflecting the blow, and El countered with the Ember to the side of his head like a club. The man staggered in the air, ice cocooning around his face, but El didn’t have a chance to follow up.

  Two more swords darted in at her, a pair of Ignitio working in sync to push her back. She parried and dodged, her smaller wings giving her the advantage of maneuverability, but the two of them had obviously worked together for a long time. There were no openings and every time she thought to go left, they pushed her right.

  Just like they were trying to corral her…

  El glanced up, her back too close to the wall. The Ignitio who hurled the spear at her before stood with his arm cocked, the spear in his hand at least twenty feet long and three feet wide. Would her armor protect her from that?

  She parried two quick attacks from the Ignitio in front of her, but they served their purpose, pushing her against the wall. She had nowhere to go.

  Above, the Ignitio’s arm angled back.

  Here it comes.

  A flash across the sky, like a concentrated beam of light, and the Ignitio above was simply gone. Then the building across the street exploded. Debris shot into the air and rained back down, everybody turning to look at the fireball consuming the old warehouse.

  Everybody except El.

  El smiled, tears threatening behind her eyes. She couldn’t help it. She knew that flame as well as she knew her own.

  One will be plenty, Sol had said. He wasn’t kidding.

  He’d sent Nexin.

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