Hammers beat me back into the waking world. My first breath pummels its way in, landing like a punch to the chest. Gasping, I fling my eyes open and sit bolt upright.

Sweat sheens my face, hot and sticky around my nose and pooling in the divot of my lip. My tight clothes cling to me. My hair feels suddenly too thick and heavy, a jungle draped over the back of my neck and tangling wildly in front of my eyes. I watch the loose black strands sway with the laboured gusts of my breathing, heart thumping and stomach dizzily roiling, as I wait for the rest of my vision to sharpen. Right now, all I see is distant blurs of colour, pulses of light and shadow. Reality has harsher hands. Its long fingernails dig into my flesh as it presses in, desperate to keep me here lest I begin to slip.

I stay tense, half waiting for a fight. I should know that this is where I'm supposed to be, but part of me is still certain I'm drifting, that this remains a void or a dream. My thoughts crash and cartwheel.

"Nathan? Nathan!"

Her voice soars in, carrying with it a shimmering veil that sweeps in sound and sight. She crouches in front of me. Her rugged skirts cascade just past her knee, her right arm laid limply atop them, and her skin is lit in warm, ruddy pink. Dirt and dust mars her face and accents her bright eyes. Her golden hair is speckled with ashen silver in the odd, flashing light that frames her from behind, but it's her, real and alive and awake, her gaze pleading enough to latch a hook in my heart.

I rest a hand on the ground to steady myself, flinching a little at the coarse rub of fur, of carpet. Her presence pushes me into the waves and anchors me all in the same moment. "Sarielle," I breathe, partly affirming my own knowledge of her name.

Relief rushes out into her expression quick enough to flood, her grin shaky and wide. Glittering tears gather in her eyes. She bows her head, lifts it again, tucks a curly lock of hair behind her ear. "It's you?" she asks, tentative yet sure as sunbeams. "It's really you?"

"Yes." An unbidden smile pokes its way into place. Perhaps it is good to be me again. Air puffs from my nose as if I sink, as if now I fully settle, welcome to wriggle back into the nooks and crannies of my own skin. "It's really me." And me alone. I lay a hand on my chest, listening to the easy beat of my heart. Every sense, every taste and texture, folds out of the lively air and soaks in with almost overwhelming fervour. It's difficult to take in all at once, but I've dearly missed it. A strange spice tingles on my tongue and spreads warmth through my veins, lightening my head. I feel whole.

Is Shaula truly gone, for good? What does that mean for me?

Perhaps not. Her presence lingers like a dark imprint, a sketching of ink on the underside of my skin. Something sparks in my chest, an incline of warning, and I drag my thoughts into a somewhat straight line. "Fiesi," I say, tasting his name to lure back some urgency, the prickle of fear I felt from his proffered words. "I heard Fiesi's voice. Where is he?"

The line of Sarielle's mouth thins. Her gaze darts to the side in answer, and with a thread of trepidation wound around my throat, I follow where she looks.

All remaining air is cut from my lungs. Shaula.

She towers above them all with mountainous force, just as large as she was within the lake -- except now the vast waters aren't here to keep her submerged. Her scales don't glimmer in this dismal, dusty air. They look just as they should: blank slates of black, clacking against one another with raucous aggression as she moves, her enveloping hiss like stone rubbing stone, and her movements are anything but fluid. She moves in jaunty lurches, head wincing up and down, the long, thick ribbon of her body pulsing and rippling like it heaves with unreal breaths.

There's nothing inviting about her presence anymore. On the contrary, wrongness plunges a well in the centre of my chest, swirling and sloshing with a flinching kind of pain. Unnatural cold presses tight to my skin and prickles underneath. Truly, I can't look away from the forks of black fire that crackle around her, entirely disconnected from me but there, crackling, raking its claws through the thickened air.

Something bitter unfurls, souring the back of my throat and hardening into a heated ball in my stomach. It feels strangely like betrayal, and it sets my jaw. I push myself up and shove to my feet, but anger is a short-lived power with very little foresight, and the room is quick to continue spinning as if balanced atop an unsteady pillar. I stumble, snagging Sarielle's arm to keep myself anchored, but my eyes don't leave Shaula. Figures that must be other Tía weave around the many loops of her, glowing strips of colour thrashing as they throw blow after blow at her, yet to me it all blurs and winks into insignificance. They're like stars in the night sky. Bright, fierce, overwhelmingly hot, but infinitely small in comparison to the vast sheet of black that blankets them.

My thoughts race a full circle before they stutter, tripping over one another. I freeze.

Wait.

Sarielle's gasp comes a second before mine, but our eyes sprint the same track. Shock masks the candles of fear shining in her gaze. Her arm is stiff and straight beneath my touch. My touch. Her skin is warm, sleek and sticky and meltingly soft beneath my fingertips. It's as if I've grabbed one of my own organs, squeezing it just gently but enough to twinge, aware of its every shift and squelch.

My stomach drops sharply, stamped into my toes, and I let go in a rush, swaying a little. Cold swamps me, pinching my lungs. Of course I've felt skin on skin before. Even that was a shock at first, but I know what it feels like, know I can endure it. Yet this is new. New and raw and far, far too much. My hand jitters.

It takes me several dragged-out moments to realise she should be dead.

Instead she rolls her arm this way and that, blinking at her unharmed wrist as if it tears reality. The glance she shoots me is both wary and full of awe, entirely astounded. "You're..."

Planting my feet as firmly as they'll allow, I lift my hand, splaying it before me. My skin itches so much I dread even letting the fingers touch. Numb fists knead my stomach. Sucking in a shot of air through my nose, I dig for my core, fumbling for my flame, trying to banish the awful dizziness by simply beating it away. It's silly, and it will stop. It has to. And I have to know whether Sarielle's silent suggestion is true.

Where a tidal wave should glide through my veins, a stream resides, trickling reluctantly to my fingertips as I push until, finally, the fire sparks into existence. The sight of it billows out such intense shock I nearly fall.

Violet. My flame is warm, and it's violet, just like my father's. It casts a soft glow over my palm, conquering one small shadow of the many that hang over us.

"I'm free." The words drop as autumnal leaves, drifting in limp, breathless wind, crushed when I swallow. I'm free.

Sarielle lets loose a breathless laugh beside me. Her grin slides fluidly into place, so easy in comparison to the taut bunch of my shoulders. "I don't believe it."

Neither do I. My mind is broken, walking a wobbly line of two lives, jagged edges not quite meeting in the right spots. I remember Edrali shrugging a heavy cloak over my shoulders, calling it mine. I remember my father standing at the edge of a lake, gone to desperation, tempting his own destruction if only for a chance to live in light again. The pursuit of light, of freedom or purity or whatever else I may call it, has brought me only curses and ruin. Maybe that's why my joy is so muted as I watch the purple flame dance, lively and ignorant to the truth of the dark it so effortlessly sweeps aside.

Even my father paid the price of his life, in the end. This world of magic and flame is all about cost. I don't feel like I've given enough.

My fingers close over the small flame. "I have an idea."

"An idea?" Sarielle peers at me with rattled confusion. Her delight has been quickly chipped at by the ascending noise of battle around us, cresting into a tuneless din that roars only fire and chaos. Her hair sweeps violently to the side as a stale breeze rakes past us. She taps at the hilt of her blade. "Nathan, we have to go. There's nothing more we can do here."

I shake my head. The silver edge of my cloak flashes up in the corner of my vision as the black material flaps at my back, as if eager to shut me up and allow her to drag me away, to flee, but I stay where I am. My hand lifts, pushing back my hair as the heel of my palm presses to my forehead, eking out detail from my puzzle of back-and-forth memory. "Dalton," I say, summoning the beaten sight of him with the utterance of his name. "I saw him. He's locked in my old cell."

Dalton, shoved on the floor, my blade slitting a clean line through his eye. The blood and sticky fluid and screams. My mouth goes dry as sand.

"He's hurt badly," I add, words cutting as they escape. "He needs help. You have to go to him."

The shadows reflected murkily in Sarielle's eyes look so much like a crumbling castle. She sighs, and her tears reappear. "Just me?"

I don't know how to answer, so I simply stand there, holding her stare. Shards of dark and coloured light whip around us, tanging the air with smoke. This is a precipice. I wish she would leave right away so my heart would stop twisting at the danger of her tumbling into the depths below, but still I fear waiting here alone. How pitifully I love her. My yearning is a riptide, but I cannot let it whisk her along with me, will not let the rocks that batter me destroy her as well. She deserves better than that. She deserves something steadier than this.

Even as the first tear falls, she hoists up a smile. She smiles as if snatching up a tired horse's reins, guiding it on, resolve fierce enough to summon grace in the most exhausting of moments. "You're going to do something crazy, aren't you?"

I let my lips quirk upward a little. "I've always been a little crazy."

She laughs, just gently. She edges a single step back, then stops, lingering, hand lingering halfway into the air as if just barely in offering. A last chance. A final request. If only I wasn't so afraid to simply touch her again.

"I'm sorry," I say, fumbling the words together. I have so many apologies to give and not enough time. "I don't know how to--"

Her hand lifts, but this time in firm warning, a signal to stop. "Figure out what you want to say to me when we see each other again. Alright?" Another step, more decisive. She looks so weary but so strong, and it makes her as beautiful as ever. "Don't die."

That promise is a collar wrestled around my neck, but it's too late to wriggle out of it. With that final order, she turns on her heel and disappears, flickering as white and gold as the faded emblems all around as she rounds the corner of the archway. I'm grateful that she doesn't look back. If she did, my legs might fold beneath me.

She's gone. She's safe, and that is all that matters. Rather than forget her, I gather the vision of her close, cradling sun-warmed courage until it flares in the blanket heat of my flame. It dismisses the remainder of my exhaustion. Eyes narrowed, I turn.

That spiky hatred snarls in my chest again when I lay eyes on Shaula, so far above. I've never liked to hate, but this is a dark feeling even my brightened flame cannot resist. It burns, ravages, so blinding I have to peel back its edges to maintain my focus. The Tía are failing. Their light has shrunk, pushing back the wall they form. I recognise Ischyri's broad shoulders, but even they shake, his bear-like poise marred by an obvious limp as he stumbles back. The green-clothed woman beside him falls to one knee. Rosi has her face twisted aside while her hand pushes blindly outward, her feet skidding. A lurching flick of Shaula's tail severs her stream of pink fire, and she cries out, flinching back enough to lose her footing. Mira leaps into view, shying close to Rosi's fallen body with her hackles raised.

Only one of them outshines the rest. I struggle to recognise him at first, but the closer I come, the more I realise that bold shade of azure can only be his. If the others are tiny, distant stars, Fiesi is a full moon. Huge, broad wings spread from his black, feathered blue and ablaze, flared in a wide arch that turns the air around him to a crackling haze and blows his small frame many times larger than he really is. His hair is ruffled in a dirty brown halo. He looks strangely ethereal, and despite all of it, a flicker of fear stirs in my core. The excessive power rolling off him is far too twistingly similar to the feeling of Shaula snaking around my thoughts, her fangs and her venom in my blood, though their energies are very different.

Approaching quickly becomes a chore. Fiesi's wild heat fights me as much as the circling streams of darkness do. I have to grit my teeth and push through it, staggering through jarring waves of hot and cold, my flame flickering shallowly atop the skin on my arms. It whimpers at every blow. Rather ruefully, I find myself missing the unbridled reckless energy of my cursed fire, the fearless way it shoved aside all other magic. At least that hiss in my veins told me I could achieve anything. This flame is full of hesitation, buzzing with rejection and what ifs and sapping in its weakness.

I'm lucky that Fiesi senses me before I trip. His gaze wheels, snapping onto me with frenzied surprise. For a moment, I go stiff, but one look at his face stamps out any lingering fear. There's a certain genuinity to Fiesi's eyes, a soft edge to the crooked curl of his smile, that I couldn't imagine belonged to anyone else. Rigel has no claim on that look.

His flame dives and whirls, scraping through the air as it heaves itself out of my path, and I gain enough of a window to stumble close to him. He twists, one of his wings curling around to shield me from the worst of Shaula's bitter flood. Fire still roars at his back and licks at every bit of flesh I can see, but it's not too much to stand in his presence. My legs steady, breathing growing easier, though my mouth still tastes of soot and char.

"Nathan," he says, though I more see his lips move than hear the utterance of my name. His grin bounces upward, still unsteady with disbelief and rocky delight. "Your eyes, they..."

My eyes. If all scrap of black in my flame has vanished, it only makes sense my eyes would shift to match. Tiny wings flutter in my chest like my ribs cage in a cloud of moths. I can't work out what to think.

A ribbon of black squirms deftly through his shield, and he gasps as he swats it away, the split line of anxiety and focus cutting away his smile. He moves nearer to me. "You can't stay here. You have to go, Nathan. It isn't safe."

Twin azure feathers frame his face, grown seamlessly from spiralling locks of hair, and they brush his cheekbones with every jerk of his head. His ears have a pinched-in point to them. They're long enough to droop a little as he holds my gaze, as if the weight of his feelings hang from their thin tips, dragging them down.

"Please, go," he says. "This is my fight."

"No," I say, and his eyes fall, like he expected nothing else. I've been called stubborn enough times, haven't I? I certainly see the descriptor's truth now. No word nor blade could sever my resolve. "Your fight is over. I can finish this."

It's then I see a flicker of something inhuman in his eyes. They blaze when they flick upward, burning into mine with desire that isn't rage but feels just as heated. "I will kill her," he snaps. "I know I can, and I have to. Let me protect you."

That isn't just an order. There's a whine of need that penetrates his words, a strain to his voice that pulls sharply at my heartstrings. Fiesi is terrified. This is the same look I've seen in him before, more than once. It matches the glow in his eyes when he held a knife to my throat. Whether this is the same endless point of bravery or heroism he's trying yet again to prove, or some twisted yearning to pay a deeper, unpayable debt, I can't tell, but it resonates all the same. It costs me a second of hesitation.

I have to force my head to shake. A plea drips into my own voice. "Fiesi, you saved me. I'm free because of you." He did only the right thing, as he always does. It's all he can do. There's a surging, lightened goodness to Fiesi, chaotic and misguided as it too easily becomes, a blade I can only brush my fingertips against but never quite lift. "You don't need to protect me any longer."

His expression scrunches, like I've wounded him. "I don't think you can--"

"Shaula is my Synté," I say, decisively cutting him off. "I can destroy her, for good, just as Rigel can. But it'll be easier for me." That final lie nibbles at my tongue, sinks teeth into my throat, but I fight to keep it as iron. Maybe he'll sense it, but I find I don't care what he thinks of my reasoning. I just know it has to be me.

His flame presses hotter, flushing my face, painting our surroundings in glowing blue. His doubt simmers around him. "I can't lose you again."

"You won't." I fight to keep my voice even. As long as those words are laid out, flat and plain between us, I don't have to give them any further thought. "Gather the others. Get everyone out. Do not come back for me." My eyes narrow, desperate to drill that in.

Even his reluctant nod comes in time with a protest. "But if you don't make it out--"

"Don't come back," I repeat, syllables practically grating over one another. "I know what I'm doing. Now go."

His pointed ears twitch again. His mouth opens, shuts, presses thin with worry, but eventually he runs out of ways to stall. He's gone in a flash, flame sparking behind him as he dashes out of vision. I didn't ask him to run away, but that's what this is to him. He's fleeing.

I feel the moment his protection around me truly crashes down, and it snares every sense, pushing him and the other Tía into the far reaches of my mind. No snowstorm nor icy wind could prepare me for the death-kissed frost that suffocates my skin. It seeps in from all directions, horribly bone-chilling and too easily whisking the small flickers of flame at my fingertips into nothing. My vision tips, and for a moment I'm falling through emptiness, scrabbling for a hold upon a cliff too slick and jagged to cling to, feeling endless coils and coils of dark, dark power tighten around my very being. The split in my mind gapes wide as a chasm, loosing a scream.

Shaula's voice traces a circle around me, caging me in, and it's too late to choke on regret. How small you are now, she purrs. How pitiful. You should not have fought with me, Noli. Do you see now the value of the gift I blessed you with?

I shove my heels hard against the floor, finding steadiness in the tickle of carpet between my toes. Somewhere behind, I can hear Fiesi calling to the others, arguing or ordering or simply asking, the tangle of equally loud and brash whichever way their emotions stray. I'm grateful. The noise is real, and it's human. It drags me out of her cold clutches. The world settles back into place, and I gather the pieces of my glare.

"There's no such thing as a gift," I say, hardening my words. "All I've known is your curse."

With a little persuasion, my flame reignites in my palms, violet skeins of light spiralling around my wrists and arms. Even the small gesture pushes an ache into my core. This fire is that of a child.

Small. Pitiful. Powerless. She's right, but I don't let myself waver.

Her laugh echoes softly, smooth as silk, in my ears. And now you are free of the curse, you feel better?

My fists curl, nails digging into my palms. "I know what I want now."

And what is that?

Heat is a blade in my veins. Not dagger-like, not precise, but a broadsword, edges blunt and forceful, cold metal burning as scatterings of shrapnel in my blood. Focus yanks in my vision, funnelling it. That melting sword's hilt and sharper end slip like water through my grasp. I squeeze it tighter until I feel that liquid trickle into a river, into a few droplets that bead between my clenched fingers. I think of the sun's searing glare, of Fiesi's star-like aura.

I think of burning buildings. Echoes of seething panic burst around me, and brilliant light washes out a night sky above. Their fear is tasted with interest. The shadows warp and cloak me. A sickening memory, but in this second it unfolds before me, perfectly captured, thrumming with power. A smile flicks into place. Hate and pleasure and the dance they twine have always been my fatal flaw, but before that, they belonged to her.

We are partners because we are the same. A god to kill a god. A monster to kill a monster.

"I want to watch you burn," I say, just as the spark slips free.

───── ⋆⋅♛⋅⋆ ─────

Gotta admit, I missed Nathan. I've been deprived of him. So glad he's back and giving me the many much words and T^T

But anyway. It's murder time??

- Pup