Kresida lunged, her dark arm reaching for Lida as Ganmira’s wild blue eye landed on me. The Embodied twisted to where I stood, and her mouth stretched wider than it should. Her teeth sharpened into long, spear-like canines. My blood stilled at the sight, and I used the fear I so despised to reinforce the shield still standing between my friends and the sacred pups of Lotrennia.
Movement flashed across the clearing, but I didn’t dare look. Had there been true gods, I might have prayed for the safe retreat of my friends. Ganmira held her long arms back, her fingers lengthening into knife-like claws. She stretched her jaws open wide, and my hair stood on end as she bellowed an unholy cry, the sound akin to a thousand dying crows. Her mouth stretched too wide, the void in the opening somehow darker than her ebony skin and vacant left eye.
I gained my footing, preparing for a fight, when sharp claws wrapped around my arms. My pulse faltered as Renova’s stark white, clammy hands squeezed. The stench of undigested wolf huffed into my neck as she appeared behind me.
Terror snuck up on me as quick as Renova, and a scream ripped from my throat as her teeth stabbed into my shoulder. Pain erupted, my entire body reacting in panicked desperation as Renova pressed her snow-white lips to my skin. Ganmira surged forward, and my consciousness ebbed, my shield falling back. The Embodied pinned me between them, and Ganmira’s long teeth sank into the opposite arm.
I couldn’t move. My mind reeled, desperately seeking the cold, distant darkness that accompanied the numbness. I forced it to keep still, my arm and shoulder screaming in pain as I sent a desperate plea to Aquila and Bayne.
But I was dying, and they were doing more than killing me… They were pulling something from me… They were feeding off something…
They’d called the wolf pupspowers. Was that what they were doing? Feeding off their powers? Did the sacred wolves of Lotrenniahavepowers? They’d been gone for so long. Their image of strength and kinship was always more symbolic of power than tangible might… My thoughts ebbed and flowed, questions forming in crystal clarity before the answers fell into shrouded mist brought on by my own horror. I willed my mind to focus, but it seemed to flicker, like a lone, desperate candle beneath a spitting, cloudy sky.
My knees hit the damp ground, the ache distant, barely noticeable compared to the life the Embodied sucked from me. My body reeled, my struggles fruitless as my blood pumped unwillingly into their mouths.
A crimson pool surrounded my legs as dimming light spiked through the red and golden trees.
The clearing was empty…
Lida and the pups escaped with Kresida… Good. That was good…
I blinked against the fuzzy clouds appearing at the edge of my vision, memories beginning to arrive in front of my sight in some strange mirage. I’d been so close to death so many times. My years as the War Slayer commander for my uncle, my days onboard theEvectawith my family. The ashen. Daimos. Saros.
I’d always feared it—death.
But the unwelcome feeling almost always gave way to the fiery rage that burned deep within me, the flames I’d been born with. The flames that had claimed my brother and me.
Clammy black and white arms reached around my shoulders, the Embodied’s cold forms enveloping mine on the ground now. A sickening groan escaped their lips as they satiated themselves, and a desperate flicker of heat ignited in my chest.
I am War Slayer Commander Nerissa Ravindra of Lotrennia. I am the flame of light and life, and I am not ready for death’s silent embrace.
I bared my teeth and pinched my eyes shut as I fanned the heat…
Burn.
Burn hotter.
Burn brighter.
I commanded myself over and over again until finally, I erupted in white flames.
Ganmira and Renova’s grip loosened, and I screamed as fire blazed from every inch of my body. A horrid cry ripped from the Embodieds’ lips as my flames sizzled against their unnatural skin. The two of them fell back as I transformed into a living pyre.
I stood in the center of the clearing, in a pool of my own boiling blood, my arms stretched out to either side. A blast of transformative, golden light crackled from Renova’s blood-soaked arm, her Transcindiel power reeling as it landed on my flames.
She was trying to transform my power.
Renova bared her pointed teeth at the failed attempt, and in a gust, I shoved my power to the ground, drawing a tight circle around myself, the white flames slowly stretching and pushing the Embodied to the edge of the clearing. I caught my breath and forced my mind away from the blazing pain in my arms.
My hands shook as I tried to maintain the barrier between us, somehow much more effective than a regular shield. I sent a line of fire searing toward Ganmira, but a moment before I made contact, her body shifted into something silver. I blinked as the flames licked up her solid legs.
My gut sank as she smiled, the two of us realizing at the same moment what she discovered.
Renova transformed a moment later, her white body morphing into a sharp, silvery pewter, and they each took a step closer. Had they just transformed into… metal?
Renova held her silvery hand out to the yellow flames at the edge of my barrier, and I pushed harder, heating them to pure white.
Her strange, silver hands remained, and her smile widened.
