Immolation

“Evan, wake up.”

“No.”

Evan opens one eye a sliver, sees a blur of white, and closes it. Shimmying somewhat, he burrows deeper into his blankets. He’s not angry at Aelia, of course, but a body covered in bruises just wants to sleep.

“Evan,” she tries again, cut off by a grunt.

“I am tired and I am sore and I am sleeping in, Ellie. What’s so important?”

A long pause. “We’re here. And you need to see this.” Evan notices she sounds upset. “Like, right this minute. So come up to the deck, right now please.”

He opens both eyes now, smiles at her. “I’ll be along.” A big, dramatic yawn. “You are just so pretty in the morning.”

“Evan…”

“All right, I’m coming.” He fumbles for a shirt.

A minute later, more or less dressed, he shuffles behind her along the narrow corridor, past Kari’s open door and towards the ladder up to the deck. “Oh, good, Kari’s up.”

“Yeah, I’m up.” Kari calls from above, sounding bothered as well. What is going on?

The question is answered when Evan looks down on the plains of Providence. In the late afternoon light, this settlement ought to be a verdant, farm-covered paradise. A lot of it still is.

But the rest, to the northwest… a scar of gray, lifeless earth, nothing but bare rock and scourged dirt and swirling dust. It glitters slightly. The area forms a swaying path, carving into the green hills and growing wider. From here, the damage appears to extend several miles from the edge of a prominent cliff.

Joining Aelia and Kari at the rail, Evan peers down at the unharmed portions of Providence. Buildings, paths, white-winged people scampering about, all the signs of a population under a great deal of stress.

“What exactly has been going on here?” Evan asks, but before anyone can respond, the radio crackles. A panicked Seraphic voice, barely understandable, cries out a warning-

“Human airship! Drop--- titude and ------ evasive act----…”

Everyone looks at each other, confused, then a last shout makes everything clear:

“LOOK OUT!”

And Evan looks up, a sense of danger pulling his awareness skyward, to register the searing, tumbling balls of sickly green flame, streaking directly at the ship from Fallen’s sunset sky.

* * *

“Has anyone seen Sebastean?” Oden asks, emerging into the war room of Whitewall Retreat. “I’ve looked everywhere.”

Assorted channelers lounge around the room, slouched across armchairs, looking not at all like the army of death Sebastean’s made them into. Two days since the ambush in Halfmoon village, and already Oden’s closest friends are hard to recognize.

Predictably, the Seraphs had returned in force to avenge their battalion’s burning, dozens of boats arriving within hours, soldiers swarming the village and surrounding woods. And predictably, Sebastean had led numerous attacks, brutal and efficient, against small groups of Seraph warriors.

“Nope. Although I’d try the hangar, he’s been down there a lot.” The person who’s spoken, a black-haired woman who calls herself Valentine, returns to reading a book, ignoring Oden once more.

And nobody seems upset, Oden reflects, stalking down a wooden bridge, towards Sebastean’s carved-out cave area behind the Retreat. Like they don’t mind the fighting or the killing at all.

Channeling a sphere of firelight, Oden looks around the dark hangar for some kind of light switch. He’s never bothered to come here, since the vehicles they’ve been using for the assaults are all tied down outside.

Moving between dust-covered boats, peering into the shadows, Oden hears a small sound, like a muffled grunt, from somewhere up ahead. “Hello?”

Sebastean’s voice echoes back at him. “Oden? Over here. I’m just taking out some trash real quick.”

Oden brightens his channeled torch, raising the orb of fire to light a wider area, and what the light shows him chills his blood. Eleven Seraph soldiers, chained to the floor in a kneeling position, lined up against the back wall. And six more beside them, collapsed to the floor, sapphire blood pooling beneath their crumpled, feathery bodies.

And Sebastean, a casual grin on his face, standing beside the next living soldier, black conjured dagger in hand. Perhaps it’s a trick of the firelight, but his eyes seem different. Larger than usual… and the shadows in them seem to stretch a little farther down his prominent cheekbones than before.

“What the hell is going on here?!” Oden exclaims, taking an involuntary step back, looking in horror at the execution line before him. “Who are these people?”

“Survivors,” Sebastean chuckles. “Temporary ones, anyway. The scouts who managed to find our hideout. Or did you think they’d somehow missed Whitewall?”

Oden grimaces. He had thought that, actually, and counted it a stroke of luck. Of course flyers would have spotted the massive, crystalline coral reef, and the pure white cliffs behind it. And would have investigated. “So you brought them here? Why?”

Sebastean grips the hair of the next soldier, brings the knife down to his exposed throat. “Stress relief, to be honest.” And jerks the blade upward.

Oden leaps forward, far too late, and is rewarded with a hot splatter in the face. “Damn it, Sebastean! This is disgusting!”

“Want a towel?”

“You know what I mean! Keeping these people down here, executing them for fun! What’s wrong with you?!”

The larger man turns to regard Oden, and Oden sees now what’s happened to Sebastean’s eyes. Where once there had been metallic silver irises, just like those of the Seraph people, only empty blackness remains, like the space between the stars. Deep cracks in the skin around his eyes shine with the same darkness.

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong is I’ve got this irritating Fire-caster who keeps on questioning everything I do. I’m trying to protect us!”

Oden turns to remove the chains on the prisoners, casting a spark at a lock, but the conjured black metal just swallows the fire like it was never there. “I’m right to question you. You’ve lost your mind.”

“Don’t touch those chains. You know how hard it is to hold these idiots still?”

Sebastean roughly shoves Oden away, turning to murder another soldier. “Honestly. Sometimes I wonder what you people are thinking. You think I could just let these scouts report us to their leaders? Let them bring their ships down here and bomb Whitewall off the map?”

“Of course not, but-“

“But WHAT? This is a WAR, Oden! And none of you think of these things! None of you are ready to accept the realities of our situation!”

“You MADE it a war!” Oden shouts, failing to drown out Sebastean’s deep growl.

“I wasn’t willing to lie down and die for them! I fought because I value my life, Oden!”

Oden points at the ten chained Seraphs, all of whom watch the argument with desperate interest. “And what about their lives? You don’t think they’d like to live?”

Black eyes narrow. “I’m sure they do. I just don’t care.”

* * *

Evan’s eyes, widened in surprise, flame to life with blue-white light. “Kari! Get us down!” he calls, raising a hand to try and deflect the tumbling fireballs, but too late- one of the car-sized meteors smashes through the stern of the Seagull, and only a hastily channeled shield keeps chunks of debris from smearing Evan across the deck.

As it is, unfortunately, a large section of hull smacks him over the rail, and the now- falling boat is still a mile above the ground. Looking frantically around, he spots Aelia and Kari tumbling to the earth as well… and Aelia seems to be unconscious. Lucky her, he thinks morbidly. This isn’t gonna be a smooth landing.

He tries to twist in midair and avoid one of the fireballs, but with nothing to push off of he just wiggles impotently and the projectile catches him full-on. Blue fire crackles and storms above his skin, keeping the flames centimeters away, but somehow he can feel the protective shield weakening. Indeed, the light dancing on his body seems to be dimming.

Kicking at the tumbling ball, Evan spirals away through the air, trying to right himself somehow with his power. It’s no help at all.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Kari catching Aelia’s limp wrist, and suddenly both women cease their rapid descent, as Kari’s eyes light up with gray-white energy. Of course, he realizes. Light as a feather.

Now that they’ve started drifting rather than plummeting, Evan falls away from them with ever-increasing speed. Grimacing, angry at this twist of fate, he twists to see where the ground is-

-and it’s here.

Evan’s stomach churns, a strange numbness fills his limbs, and a terrible thought crosses his mind before his vision goes white-

I’m not ready…

* * *

Sebastean drags his knife across another Seraph throat, grinning all the while at Oden’s helpless expression. “There’s really nothing else that we can do with them, right?”

Oden, heart pounding, an expression of fury on his face, snarls. “This is disgusting! You’ve made our home into a slaughterhouse!” Almost out of his control, the familiar heat comes to life inside him. Living fire begins to course across his hands.

He wonders if he even stands a chance. He’s older than Sebastean, but only just, and nowhere near as powerful a channeler. Not to mention he knows basically nothing about fighting, other than burning things.

Can I bring myself to hurt my friend…?

There’s got to be some way to stop this without anyone getting hurt…

Sebastean looks up from yet another execution and notices the fire blazing in Oden’s eyes, and laughs. “Great! I’ll put them down, and you can cook them!”

And Oden decides his friend is truly insane.

Bringing his open hands up, channeling furiously, Oden looks past the inferno in his grip at Sebastean’s twisted face and sees an enthusiastic grin there, a look of welcome. Then he makes the mental commitment and the dark hangar lights up with an explosion of living fire.

* * *

Evan opens his eyes, which surprises him all by itself. Smoke billows around him, rising from the round, glassy ditch he’s landed in, shot through with crackling blue-white arcs of energy. He’s disoriented and it takes him a moment to realize it’s not a ditch, it’s an impact crater.

“I’ve never been a meteor before,” he grunts, dragging himself to his feet, peering through the smoke and slipping on the smooth glass underfoot. Everything in every direction seems to be destruction, either similar craters from the green fireballs, or just the desolate, blowing sand he’d seen from the air.

Looking up, he spots Kari and Aelia drifting downward, landing several yards away lightly. “She okay?” he calls, indicating Aelia’s limp form.

“She will be. Just stunned. You?”

“Apparently I’m impact-resistant,” Evan jokes, although he’s not in a laughing mood. Clambering out of the hole, he looks down into another one, trying in vain to see through the greenish fire and thick, dark smoke-

-and barely manages not to get impaled when a huge, long-clawed hand slashes from the pit, trailed by more glittering dust.

He tumbles away, reaching for his sword, and it isn’t there. Panicking, he realizes he isn’t really dressed, wearing trunks and a silk poncho and that’s about it. “That’s what I get for sleeping in. Damn it.”

“Evan!” Kari cries, and he looks over to see the small women surrounded by three of the most awful creatures he’s ever laid eyes on. The sea monsters were bad, sure, but at least they were alive…

These appear to be made of flaky, translucent metal and crystal, taking the shape of eight-foot tall, shambling humanoids. They’re obnoxiously broad in the shoulder, narrow at the waist, and hunched like long-limbed gorillas.

And worst, a mosquito-like face on a low-slung head, with a two-foot spike where a chin ought to be, pivots toward Evan and regards him with four identical, spherical eyes, like glowing marbles.

One of them raises a long-fingered, clawed hand to swipe at Kari, and she has to drop Aelia to draw her cylindrical sword and block at the last possible instant. “What ARE these things?!”

Evan tries to channel, hoping to drive the things away from the girls, hoping enough power comes to him to make a difference, and is shocked by the sensation that follows. Unlike his usual channeling, where it’s an active struggle to maintain the flow of energy from… wherever it comes from, Evan finds himself caught up in a raging torrent of power.

A natural reaction to the presence of these mineral-based things? Whatever the cause, Evan is inundated with more of the heat and pressure than ever before, and when he raises a hand towards the machine-things, two of them stop what they are doing and regard him with what could be panic.

“Away,” he intones, and a thick lance of blue-white fire explodes from his glowing palm, punching through one of the machines’ chests like wet paper. Sparks and smoke pour from the ruined hulk, and burning arcs of energy flash across its collapsing body as it tumbles to the ground.

Kari grabs Aelia’s wrist, rendering her body weightless, and leaps towards Evan, who destroys another machine-being with another burst of light. Evan feels like if he doesn’t release the energy every few seconds, he might explode.

Kari lands with a huff and wheels about, placing Aelia on the ground between herself and Evan. “Hey are you noticing something…”

“…funny about our channeling? Yeah.”

“Think it has anything to do with these metal critters?”

Evan blinks. “Critters? They’re eight feet tall and they wrecked our boat!” He casts another bolt of energy, shearing the arm off another machine, then follows up with a blast to the same creature’s torso. It hits the ground in a flurry of lightning and glittering dust.

Kari huffs and leaps straight upwards, looking around for anyone not made of powdery steel, finding no one. On the other hand, only a scattered few of the machine-things remain, staggering towards the crackling beacon that is Evan, far below.

“Almost done!” She shouts, landing again. “And then we can figure out just what the hell is going on here.”

* * *

Searing heat scorches the surfaces of the various boats in the hangar, even singes the feathers of the Seraph prisoners chained to the floor, but Oden stands among the flames and feels only comforting warmth.

He’s not much comforted. Pouring liquid fire over Sebastean, or at least the place where Sebastean had been standing, he slowly moves closer, increasing the intensity of his flames with every step.

His horror at what’s he’s done gives way to a greater horror- when he realizes it’s not working. Between gouts of living fire, he spots a flickering area of blackness among the inferno and realizes Sebastean must have channeled a shield just in time.

“I can’t let you keep doing these things, Sebastean!”

Lowering his hands, allowing the stream of fire to sputter out, Oden takes a few steps back, moving to release the prisoners. He fumbles with the chains for half a second before leaping out of the path of a shadowy tendril, cast from Sebastean’s clawed hand. The line of absolute blackness whips across the face and chest of the nearest Seraph soldier, ripping deep, bloodless wounds and slamming him against the wall.

Sebastean’s voice has become a strangely echoing snarl. “I was going to let you leave, Oden. Now, I don’t know if we can trust you.”

Oden rolls behind a crate, dodging another shadow-whip, and hurls a fireball at Sebastean. The tumbling blob of plasma vanishes into a black pit in midair, as though sinking into inky water. “I can’t leave! I can’t let you continue your crazy little crusade!”

“They tried to KILL YOU!” Sebastean screams, deep in the grip of rage. “How can you be on their side?!” He claws at the air, casting a flurry of void shards across the hangar, shredding Oden’s cover. Only a lucky jump and a badly-parked airship saves Oden from the second wave. “How can you doubt me?!”

Oden peeks around an engine turbine to see Sebastean conjuring a long, wicked blade, preparing to murder another hostage. Terrified but resolved, he spins out from his hiding spot and raises open palms, again summoning the stream of living fire.

Sebastean calmly buries his new sword in the chest of a Seraph, before wheeling around to raise a shield of pure darkness. Death-black light shines from his eyes and the cracks in his face. Fire splashes against the shield, flickering out almost instantly, doing nothing to keep the half-breed at bay. “I thought that might get your attention.”

“Someone’s going to hear us! You need to give this up, Sebastean!”

“No, I just need to finish it quickly.”

Oden panics a little more. “And you don’t think they’ll see what happened to me? We all know what your shadow magic does!”

The wall of blackness comes close, almost to Oden’s brightly burning hands, and an amused hiss comes from the other side. “You know, that had occurred to me. But as usual, I’ve come up with an elegant solution.”

Before Oden can react, the shield becomes solid and mirrored, and angles in such a way that a torrent of fire crashes off it- and across several of the remaining Seraph prisoners. Their screams bounce off the hangar walls. Oden ceases his assault immediately, staring at the twisting bodies in horror.

And Sebastean erupts from behind the shield, a Seraph soldier’s belt knife in his pale grip. Oden’s eyes burst into flame, but it’s already too late.

Resisting the urge to make a witty comment, Sebastean plunges the dagger into Oden’s heart, and the living flames flicker and die.