Chapter 24: 24. Wrathful Fire

Excerpt from Sivilyi’s ‘The Winged Sage’s Proverbs’.

“A response in wrath is given without thought or moderation.”

“Anger is kindling upon which all else can spark.”

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An unbelievable fire built up within Yenna. Some part of her mind desperately tried to reign it in, but the licking flames of dark thought barred it from interfering. With every passing moment, she was more certain of her anger, her overwhelming need to retaliate. That same, rational part of her mind pleaded that these thoughts weren’t natural, that the loosening of Yenna’s mental discipline had thrown her emotions into a fragile disarray, but it was all pointless. Right now, Yenna was consumed by Wroth.

The mage attacked without plan or art. Whipping out a hand she fired a spray of dark flame directly at the water elemental’s body. It gave a deep woosh as the magic in the air ignited, followed by a satisfying hiss of water turning to steam. Driving her other arm forward just as emphatically, Yenna sent another gout of flame straight at it, and the sphere of water bubbled and churned.

Her single-minded assault blinded her to the beasts around her, many of whom had turned to face her at the elemental’s command. A tangle of vines slithered at her like a snake, coiling around her legs to knock her over. Another beast, a smaller wolf with deep brown fur, rammed into her side—their combined efforts brought Yenna to the ground. 

This only seemed to infuriate the mage further—she kicked and struggled, even as more beasts closed in around her, then screamed as the wolf bit into one of her legs. Yenna’s vision filled with stars, and some primal instinct kicked in, taking over control of her body. For a moment she felt a somewhat nauseating lurch in her body, then a heat, followed by her conscious control returning. When she looked around, she saw the ground had been blackened with flame, and the beasts assaulting her turned to ash.

Meanwhile, Narasanha fought like she was performing a dance. With a weapon in each hand, she leapt from foe to foe, each swing incapacitating a beast. Her enchanted axe had been wreathed in a concerningly black flame, but it cut through the elemental’s tendrils as though they weren’t there—the flames around the axe were evaporating the water before the blade could even pass through. Each tendril destroyed freed one of the townsfolk from the creature’s thrall—those people collapsing to the ground, like a puppet with their strings severed.

The bodyguard’s dance had more art to it than merely slashing and stabbing at foes—she planned her steps to cut off those rushing towards her allies, especially Eone, who remained unconscious on the floor. She could barely get near Yenna, the mage’s incoherent shouting constantly followed by bursts of dark fire. While Narasanha did her best to prevent the mage from getting overwhelmed, she also made sure to give Yenna a wide berth.

Chime’s attacks were of a slightly less graceful kind. With part of their body encircled around Eone, they whipped their upper half around like a flail, crushing or swatting aside any beast too slow to get out of the way. Unable to do anything but swing wildly, Chime simply kept at it—if they could at least deter their enemies from coming near, then their work would be complete. All the beasts they had seen before had been spread out, but every single one of them was now pouring into the plaza at an alarming rate—like the elemental had pulled the plug in a drain.

As Yenna roared and raged, she began to make ground towards the elemental. Her hooves were glowing with heat, leaving black marks on the dirt of the dried stream bed as she advanced, and every beast that threw itself at her found itself incinerated or blasted aside by Yenna’s power. Flames crawled all over her, burning her clothes and skin, but ultimately protecting her from the elemental’s counter attack. The living liquid seemed to realise that it would not survive if the flame-coated kesh reached it and began to change tactics.

The elemental wobbled dramatically before spraying a fine mist in every direction—ejecting its outer layer to fill the area with a heavy fog. The party was blinded by it, unable to see barely more than a handspan in front of their own faces. The heat surrounding Yenna gave her some greater vision, and her burning determination to take down the elemental drove her forward. However, the elemental was not quite done. Using this cover of fog, it sent beasts to lunge out of the mists at Yenna. A wolf leapt out, destroyed by an arc of flame. A trio of birds dove down from above, only to be incinerated by a jet of fire from Yenna’s hands. Then, from where the mist was thickest, a shrouded form leapt out.

Yenna’s hand, wreathed in dark fire, swung out to grab the beast by the head—to turn it to ash, to get it out of the way. Something stopped her, just for a moment, some hunch or quick-thinking corner of her mind staying her hand long enough to process what was before her. It was a young woman, a yolm no older than her students back home. Yenna stood there, the moment stretched to eternity, as she realised what she had nearly done. The girl—for she was still yet a child—had been possessed, forced to attack against her will, but what could she even do? A flimsy punch was a mere distraction, and yet Yenna had been about to incinerate her.

It was like the fire within her had suddenly lost all its fuel. Her unguided rage was brought to a screaming halt, the flames surrounding her flickering out into mere embers as her mind became her own again. Yenna Bookbinder was back in control—and in unbelievable pain.

“Argh– damn it!” The kesh cursed as the pain of her burnt flesh suddenly registered. It was followed by another pain—the girl before her hadn’t stopped her assault just because Yenna had, though her fists were mostly aggravating the burns rather than causing any serious damage of their own. “I’ve got to focus… !”

Though her brain already felt like it had been put in the oven, Yenna wrangled her mental acceleration into action. She compartmentalised as much pain as she could—a dangerous maneuver, but necessary to prevent her losing focus entirely¹. Now with a slightly clearer head, Yenna could extend her sense of the magic in the area to get a better clue of what was going on. The elemental’s presence was fairly clear, even with such basic senses—it was just a big ball of water and magic, and every one of its tendrils was like an arrow pointing to it.

It was not necessary to burn away the tendrils to release the girl in front of her from the elemental’s control. In fact, all she had to do was disrupt the magic in the tendril to turn it back into regular water. Disrupting the magic within a magical creature was normally a difficult feat, as all magical creatures—including users of magic—had an innate defense against such interference². In the case of these tendrils, they had extended far beyond the elemental’s own defenses. Yenna wove a disrupting spell, commanding the magic in the tendril to dissipate—the water fell to the ground, along with the girl.

Yenna felt bad for leaving her there, but there was much to be done. The mist was starting to close in around her now that the fires were dissipated, though Yenna had a mind to repeat what she had done with the tendril. The disrupting spell was a deceptively simple thing, exploiting a rather obscure function of magic—it could be commanded to perform a function even if it was already part of a different spell. The will of the caster prevented spells from simply being dismantled like this, but spells that had been left to their own devices—like the mist all around them—were the prime targets for this spell. She channeled the insidious spell into the cloud and waited while it did its work.

The spell had three very simple parts. First, it commandeered the magical energies within, subverting the original caster with a kind of gentle assurance that there would only be some minor changes to the original intent. Then, it picked a part of the spell at random to alter slightly, before moving on through the flow of magic. In this manner, the spell caused the magic to suddenly become countless tiny, distinct spells that didn’t work together—the lack of cohesiveness made them all fail, and the spell would become undone.

In a wave, the fog cloud transformed and vanished. Droplets of water, tiny shards of ice or sparks of lightning appeared and disappeared as the plaza became visible again. As the wave of disruption passed through the fog, it was carried through the magical tethers that controlled the beasts—quite by accident, Yenna had broken the thrall the elemental held over the beast-march. Many began to scatter and flee, and several fought between each other—each had returned to being a singular individual, no longer bound as extensions of the elemental’s being. It felt somewhat ironic that it was the elemental’s own actions that had so fiercely turned the tables against it.

“Elemental!” Yenna’s body desperately wanted to collapse in a heap, but she held out—there was a possibility for this to end without further conflict. “Stop this, now! We have no wish to k-kill you, but you can’t win this! Go, far away from here!”

The sounds of fleeing beasts and groaning townsfolk filled the plaza, but Yenna could barely hear them over the sound of her heartbeat—it was all she could do to concentrate, and not let her emotions run amok again. Still, she opened her senses to let the elemental respond, bracing herself for its flood of thoughts–

I fear, and flow away. I become as mist, untouchable, safe. I flow away, away, far. I am weakened by battle. I need assistance. I need water.

Yenna shook her head and freed herself from the elemental’s thoughts. It felt clear—the elemental would leave, but it was too weak to do so now. The stream bed was still dry, though the dam would burst any moment now. While Yenna wasn’t exactly holding the spell with a lot of effort—part of the reason it hadn’t broken when she had been lost in rage—she could still cause it to weaken a bit faster. Sending her will down the vague tether of magic that was stopping the earth from falling apart under the weight of the water, Yenna let the stream flow again.

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As the water began to roll past them, the elemental dove in with a mighty thirst. Yenna watched as a smooth crystal, much like a river pebble, rose to the surface of the elemental’s body to absorb the water—the elemental’s core, the condensed chunk of magic that acted as the creature’s mind. Yenna began to relax, glad that this was all over with–

“Yenna!” She turned her head to see Eone, charging towards her. There was a curious feeling in her gut as the captain, sporting a nasty gash across the side of her face, ran with her sword drawn towards the elemental’s crystalline core. Looking down, she realised what it was—a lance of water had shot through her stomach. There was a feeling of something snapping in Yenna’s mind as the locked-away pain burst free, overwhelming her. The elemental had told her what she wanted to hear, regained its power, and then struck down what it thought was the only creature present that could stop it. As Yenna’s vision began to fade and her body fell to the ground, she watched as Eone shattered the elemental’s core with her blade.

—

“...enna! Yenna, stay with us…!”

“...by the…what…to her? Bring her… “

“I think she’s…”

Yenna felt herself flicker in and out of consciousness. She could catch snippets of voices, though she couldn’t tell who was speaking or where she was. There was the feeling of people all around her, of chattering voices and busy hands. It felt like she had been unconscious for moments, but also for days. When she finally came to, her whole body protested her attempts at rising.

Gathering her senses, Yenna realised she was lying on her side—a somewhat awkward position for a kesh to rise from if she is injured—and that she had also ended up in a tent. Her arms and much of her body was covered in bandages, especially around her upper half’s belly. A tingling, soothing feeling soaked into her skin through the bandages—likely some kind of salve. Yenna tried to speak and merely coughed, her throat dry. Someone rushed over with a bowl of water, and she allowed herself to be lifted up enough to drink it.

There was a sigh of relief as Mayi spoke. “Oh, you gave us quite a fright. I thought you just were going to sleep this whole thing off—could you stop collapsing on us?”

Yenna couldn’t help but chuckle, though it became a pained groan as the injury in her gut made its presence known. Instinctively bringing a hand down to touch her belly, the mage realised she was no longer wearing her robes—likely they had been in the way of dressing up burns. “Where did you put my clothes?”

There was a slightly embarrassed clearing of the throat, and Yenna realised Mayi was pointedly avoiding looking at her. After a moment, she recalled that most yolm weren’t as comfortable with nudity as kesh were.

“They’re quite burned, but we put them to one side. I-I had to take them off to get to your injuries you see, and–”

“It’s quite alright. It’s no bother for me. Help me up, will you?” 

After a few moments and a bit of effort, Mayi helped Yenna sit up. Once she was up, it was no problem to stay up—so long as she didn’t move too much. The mage looked over her bandaged body, marvelling at the lack of a hole through her gut.

“What exactly did you use? I’m pretty sure that thing shoved a lance through me.” Yenna prodded at the knot of bandages on her gut, hissing through her teeth at the predictable pain.

“Some rather rare regenerative herbs,” Mayi noted rather sharply, “So don’t go getting yourself beat up this badly any time soon. The burns are just being treated with a simple salve I have on hand, though you did use up quite a bit of it. What were you even doing out there?”

“There was a– oh, I should write this down while I tell you– crap!” Yenna’s thoughts were diverted to her journal, and then to the realisation that she had been coated in flames. “Is my bag damaged?! Is my journal intact?”

Eager to have somewhere to look that wasn’t the ground or the roof of the tent, Mayi reached under a burnt pile of robes and retrieved Yenna’s bag—slightly scorched, but largely untouched. Handing it back without looking, Yenna snatched it up and hugged it into her chest.

“Oh, thank goodness! If I lost this– ouch! Argh, my burns…”

There was nothing else for it but to laugh. Despite the chaos, Yenna had survived. Hopefully next time she could do so without massive injuries—she was well aware there was always going to be a next time.

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¹ - It is often considered a desperate maneuver to shut off one’s pain receptors. It is an intentional dulling of a sense that is designed to inform you if you have been injured, though its removal comes with the benefit of not being reminded so often or so fiercely. For a mage, reducing their pain allows them to focus more mental resources on casting, though they must still contend with the fact that it will all come back eventually.

² - With one’s magic unfettered, it protects itself in the same manner you might protect yourself from danger. Forcing back intrusion, the level of defense varies depending on the strength of the mage and their awareness of the danger. It is worth noting that those without magic are immune from such disruption for the obvious virtue of there being nothing to attack. In many cases, a user of magic is also partially protected from the negative side-effects of their own spells—Yenna accidentally experienced this with her out-of-control flames, but there are many magic users who exploit this personal defense for some rather harrowing purposes.

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