Through the blinding light, she saw Darcy, his brow glistening with sweat, fight to subdue the inferno. His magic was a desperate vortex, pulling the raging flames inward back towards himself.
But it was no use. The fire, born of the Concordance, was beyond any single individual’s control, even Darcy’s immense power.
It swept outwards from the epicentre of where they stood, a roaring, consuming wave of almost sentient destruction, devouring the dry, blighted ground, the lifeless trees, the earth itself with an insatiable hunger.
And then, with a horrifying lurch of her stomach, a dread that pierced even through her terror, Elizabeth saw it. The fire, moving with unnatural speed, directly towards the small unsuspecting village.
A cry of pure horror tore from Elizabeth’s throat. “The village! Darcy, oh God, the village!”
For a searing instant, he stood frozen, his face a mask of horrified comprehension.
Then, something in his posture shifted. The paralysis broke, replaced by a grim determination. She watched as he abandoned his efforts to control the wider blaze. It was too vast, too powerful, utterly beyond his or anyone’s containment.
Instead he launched himself forward into the smoke and chaos, directly into the wall of fire.
Elizabeth watched, petrified. The memory of her own earlier anger, her scathing words, and the fury she had poured into her magic came rushing back in a sickening wave of self-recrimination. It was not just the smoking ruins of the village before her, but the suffocating silence of an empty cradle and the searing light. The memory rose up to choke her. Her magic did not create; it only destroyed. It always had. This was her fault.
And while she stood frozen, a useless spectator paralysed by the horror within her, Darcy threw himself into the heart of the inferno, risking everything to pull life from the flames.
With every step, he cut a path through the fire, his power quenching the flames around him. A torrent of conjured water erupted over a smouldering roof, hissing into steam. A blast of air flung away a beam, one moments away from crushing a woman frozen in her doorway. When a house began to crumble, he drove a hand downward and fused the stones, granting the family the precious seconds to escape. She had known his power was considerable, but she had never conceived that he possessed an elemental mastery so absolute it was a second nature to him.
But his own courage was a greater force still. He pulled dazed, coughing people from collapsing doorways and shielded terrified villagers as burning debris rained down like hellfire. Above the deafening roar of the flames, even above the panicked screams of the villagers, his voice cut through the chaos, calm and commanding.
She saw him emerge from one already fiercely burning cottage, a whimpering child clutched tightly in his arms. He passed the child to a weeping mother, then turned, without a moment’s hesitation, back towards another threatened dwelling, a churning mantle of air and mist swirling around him.
It felt like an eternity, a lifetime compressed into a few terrible minutes, lived in a maelstrom of roaring flames, choking smoke, piercing screams of terror, and the crack of breaking timber.
And then, as suddenly, as inexplicably, as it had begun, the main, overwhelming force of the magical conflagration seemed to exhaust itself, its unnatural fury abating as the corrupted, overloaded ley line violently sputtered and died.
The roar of the flames lessened to a sullen crackle. The incandescent, blinding light dimmed to a smoky orange. Theheat began to recede, leaving behind a scene of almost apocalyptic devastation.
The village was gone, obliterated, all that these poor villagers possessed in the world reduced to blackened, smoking, indistinguishable rubble. The surrounding farmland was a scorched wasteland. All that remained was a terrified huddle of villagers, saved by Darcy’s desperate efforts, now left to stare in stunned horror at their world turned to ash.
Darcy stood amidst the ruins. His face was blackened with soot, streaked with sweat and grime, his fine clothes torn, singed, and smoking in places. Each breath was a ragged, painful cough that tore at his lungs. His magic, though clearly almost catastrophically depleted by the immense effort he had expended, was not entirely extinguished. It still clung to him, a faint, exhausted, almost invisible shimmer, like the very last dying embers of a fire.
But he was alive. He was alive. The simple relief cut through her like a knife, and she choked back a sob as she realised just how much of her terror had been for him, too.
But that relief was short-lived, for as Darcy raised his head, the full scope of the nightmare was written upon his anguished face. The devastating reality of the lives disrupted, the homes destroyed, and the terror inflicted crashed down upon them.
They had not only failed to heal the node, they had failed spectacularly.
Elizabeth felt a desperate urge to weep for the innocent lives they had so carelessly, so disastrously, destroyed.
Hours had passed since the disaster. Hours filled with frantic, morose activity that had done little to alleviate the guilt in her soul.
Darcy had moved with swift efficiency to make what little amends he could. He had conferred with the few remaining, shell-shocked local officials. Arrangements were made, directives issued, expresses sent. Temporary housing arrangements were secured for the villagers. Funds were to be drawn immediately from his London bankers for the immediate provision of necessities, and eventually, for the rebuilding of their shattered lives.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, had moved amongst the women and children. She offered what little comfort she could. She murmured a word of sympathy that felt laughably inadequate. She knelt before the small, huddled children, speaking words of reassurance to eyes that were wide and empty with shock. She offered water from flasks and laid a gentle hand on a weeping mother’s shoulder. Each act brought a fresh stab of guilt.
It was only when the first pale streaks of dawn began to lighten the sky that they had finally departed. The task of immediate relief was in hand, as much as it could be.
Elizabeth, slumped in her corner of the carriage, felt an exhaustion so deep it was a physical pain. She thought, with a vague, dreamlike detachment, that during the night, she might have closed her eyes for a time, might even have dozed fitfully. But true respite from the horrifying images that seared her mind had been an impossibility.
Darcy, when she chanced a fleeting glance at him, looked even worse. His usually faultless attire was a ruin, his dark hair matted and grey with ash; his face was pale, grimed with soot, and streaked with dried sweat. The lines of exhaustion were so deep they seemed carved into bone. His eyes were vacant. He had not slept at all, she was certain of it.
The air in the carriage was almost unbreathable from the caustic smell of smoke. They did not speak for there was nothing to say. They had not succeeded in their task; rather they had, with almost diabolical irony, accelerated the Blight’s destructive course.
When their carriage finally pulled into the courtyard of Pemberley, Colonel Fitzwilliam was there to meet them. He had clearly been about to ride out, his anxious expression making it plain he had been awaiting their return. But one look at them was enough to deepen that anxiety into outright alarm.
