I considered at first trying to recreate the birth of Aingeal, but I’m still not exactly sure what happened there, and I somehow know that if the compression doesn’t work, it could cause an explosion which would flatten everything I’m trying to save. But perhaps there’s a less risky option.

  I have no idea of how to do this from scratch, and separating my thoughts too much from the fire to theorise risks me losing the mindset which allows me to walk through flames unharmed. I will have to balance it carefully.

  Accessing my Inventory is difficult – I almost have to partition off a small fragment of my mind which acts ‘unconsciously’. It acts to summon a fire-aspected Energy Heart while the rest of me continues to flicker and consume with the fire I am part of.

  The moment the Energy Heart appears, it feels almost like the fire holds its breath for a long moment. And then I feel its naked desire. The sheer greed with which it reaches towards the crystalised Energy. More than consuming the wood of the ship, it yearns to consume this natural Core. It senses its own essence within the crystalline structure, and instinctively recognises that by consuming it, it will be transformed into something incredible – and disastrous for all else around.

  I carefully push away the fear that flares up in me at that – my logical mind might recognise the awful consequences, but indulging in the fear is more likely to see that scenario take place. A frisson of doubt goes down my spine – perhaps it isn’t a good idea to bring out a fire-aspected Energy Heart in the middle of an inferno….

  I push that thought away too and lean into my instincts – transformations go both ways.

  I start feeding the mana from the fire into the Energy Heart only to hit a barrier. The mana from the fire and the Energy Heart are not exactly the same. One has ‘lived’, consuming and spreading; the other was formed from Pure Energy itself. One is mana; the other is Energy. For a moment, they act like oil and water – touching, but never truly combining.

  For a long moment, the situation teeters on a knife’s edge. If the Energy Heart doesn't accept the mana….

  But all fire is the same fire, I crackle at them, willing myself to believe it beyond a doubt. Fire, fire, fire. One type of energy can become another – and Energy is where all other forms of energy converge. This is transformation! I roar.

  It feels like the world stands still, like the flames freeze around me. A consciousness that is utterly unlike any I have ever sensed seems to weigh up my statement, testing it for its validity.

  And then, as the flames resume crackling around me with greater ferocity than ever, the Energy within the Energy Heart grabs the fire mana. A pull becomes a vacuum as the Heart begins sucking at what I feed it with a force that sends me scrambling to draw more.

  The inferno around me dwindles as I hurriedly drag mana from it to fill the Energy Heart. I’m not fast enough – it’s a black hole in space or a whirlpool in an ocean. The more it takes, the more it desires. It’s not long before I stop even needing to direct the mana there – it starts dragging it in of its own accord.

  When the flames around me have become thin and cool, I once more leap to the next – and last – ship. The draw from the Energy Heart in my hand doesn’t decrease – if anything, it increases. The inferno on the ship is sucked into it with an alacrity which stuns and alarms me.

  The ship is stripped bare of its covering of flame, leaving only blackened and smoking bones behind – even though they are cool to the touch as all the heat of the fire has been ripped away with the flames.

  The Energy Heart continues to draw. With no flames left on the ship, it draws at those which are in the dockyards. Wide-eyed, I watch as a stream of fire is pulled towards me and consumed by the stone in my hands. Since consuming the fire that’s threatening the city is an excellent idea, I leap from the ship to the quayside and start running towards the nearest concentration of flames.

  The next while is spent running around from one fire to another, appearing on the scene briefly to suck all of the flames away from whichever building is burning, and then running to the next as soon as it’s clear. I slowly lose the mindset which allowed me to treat the inferno as an extension of myself, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The Energy Heart in my hands has got a taste for fire mana and seems determined to suck all of it dry. I’m starting to fear what might happen when we run out of flames.

  Once a gleaming ruby colour, it’s darkened to something more like garnet. The gleam inside has taken on a deeper lustre and I suspect that even without the flickering flames lighting it, the sparkles inside would dance. It’s also got significantly bigger – almost double the size. And its power to draw mana into itself has only increased as time has gone on. Have I created a monster here? Another one, albeit different?

  Well, at the moment, it’s helping, so I figure I’ll keep on going – once the fire’s under control, I can figure out if this transformed Energy Heart is dangerous or not.

  As I move further from the ships, I start encountering people.

  “By the gods, what is that?” I hear a soot-blackened man breathe from near me as he watches the stream of fire pull from the building in front of both of us. A bucket of water drops out of his suddenly nerveless hands as he stares.

  I give him a stiff smile – my own muscles don’t seem to want to work properly anymore. I might not have got baked while controlling the infernos on the ships, but since then my skin has definitely been a bit cooked by the heat I’m constantly running towards.

  “Just a bit of magic,” I croak out, my voice dreadfully hoarse. The man looks at me speculatively, then reaches down to grab his now half-full bucket of water. He holds it up.

  “Water?” I nod gratefully and he tilts it towards me. I gulp several mouthfuls of the life-giving substance, feeling it revitalise my parched tissues. I have no idea where he got it from – probably the river – and it may easily have any number of parasites or germs within it, but I can deal with those later. For now, those few mouthfuls have given me new strength. Even if I’m not using my own mana much, and my stamina mostly replenishes itself between desperate dashes to the next location, it’s still mentally draining to prevent the Energy Heart from sucking my own mana dry along with the fires around us.

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  The fire ahead of me is almost all consumed.

  “The ashes should be cool already,” I inform the man, my voice croaking a little less than before. “Just be careful when you go inside – the structure itself may be unsafe now.” The man nods; it occurs to me that he might know that better than I do if he’s been involved in the aftermath of a fire before.

  The last of the fire is sucked into the Energy Heart. I nod at the man again and turn to run to the next building.

  “Thank you, Ser,” I hear. I turn my head and briefly smile at him, and then I’m off.

  Most of the people I encounter are similarly grateful, whether soot-blackened fire-fighters, equally dirty civilians holding their children close and looking at the destruction with devastation in their eyes, or the healers already treating the injured in triage areas. Those are the hardest to run past – I know I could help out there even if my Flesh-Shaping works better on those with Bonds. But putting the fire out is most important. That way there will be no more injuries from it.

  “What are you doing?!” a voice demands as I pull flames from the umpteenth house. At least Sirocco has been able to confirm that we’re getting a handle on the spread – the Energy Heart consumes the fire faster than it can jump to another house and the cool ashes I leave behind prevent the fire from easily reigniting them.

  Tiredly, I turn to face the one person who doesn’t seem to be pleased about what I’m doing – because of course there’s always one.

  “Putting out the fire?” I ask with a tone to imply that I’m actually asking if he’s an idiot. I might be a little too tired to be diplomatic.

  The man, dressed in earth-coloured robes, bristles.

  “I was testing whether my earth enclosure might stop the fire from burning without destroying the house!” the man objects. I take another look at the house from whence the stream of flames is currently coming. It takes me a moment, but then I realise that the wall around the house is saturated with the brown of earth-magic – a new construction. There’s only one problem.

  “Exactly how long has it taken you to raise that much of a wall?” I ask him dubiously. I know from experience how difficult it can be to make the earth move fast – and that much earth would quickly drain my own reserves.

  “Less than a quarter-glass,” the man tells me proudly. I eye the house – it’s already half-burnt by my judgement – even as I watch, part of the roof caves in. His idea might work by starving the flames of oxygen, but by the time the man grew his earthen shell over the top of the house and sealed it off, the whole structure would be unsalvageable. At least his efforts have protected the houses around this one – none of them seem to have been touched.

  “Maybe test your idea on models first,” I suggest. The absurdity of the situation is getting to me. I urge the Energy Heart to work faster so I can get away. Otherwise I’m going to laugh, and with how I’m feeling right now, if I start, I won’t be able to stop.

  “Oh. Perhaps that’s a good idea,” the man muses. “It would use less mana, that’s for sure.” Still muttering to himself, he turns away and wanders off leaving me staring after him. I shake my head.

  Crazy mage.

  Markus. It feels like hours since I last heard Nicholas’ voice, but is probably only one, if that. The fire is under control. You’re at the outermost edge of it – there are only a few houses around there which are burning and the local communities are working together to put them out. Come and join me – I will have Lithos show you the way when you’re in the air. Nicholas presses an image of Lithos into my mind. He looks like a flying snake.

  If there are only a few houses still burning here, I’ll put them out, I object, already moving to where I can sense the nearest concentration of fire-magic is.

  The locals can do so perfectly well.

  But can they do it without risking injury or death? I ask pointedly. Nicholas is silent. I’ll be with you as soon as I can – after I’ve put the fires out, I tell him firmly.

  As you wish, he answers with faint annoyance, withdrawing from our connection shortly after.

  Sirocco helps direct me to the final five houses. When their flames have been consumed, I’m faced with the moment I was concerned about – what happens when the Energy Heart is starved of the resource it has been drawing so eagerly.

  The answer seems to be that it starts trying to draw on my own mana. I fight its pull, but it’s strong – very strong. Too strong. It reminds me uncomfortably of the Pure Energy – I wasn’t able to fight that either. And when I tried, it almost consumed me. This feels like the same kind of thing.

  I try to drop the Energy Heart, but it feels like it's stuck to my hand. My stomach swoops. Maybe I was a little hasty in implying that my methods don’t put me at risk of injury or death….

  But I’m no longer the person I was when the Pure Energy tried to suck me dry – and this isn’t Pure Energy anyway.

  The Heart hasn’t shown any inclination of sucking up any other types of mana – just fire. It didn’t try to consume the shell of earth around that house a little while ago, after all. It only drew the flames out of the house and then we needed to move on. The Energy Heart seems to love my fire mana, and is capable of pulling at my normal mana, but what about if I transform my mana into a different element?

  I hesitate for a moment between earth or water. Both counter fire in different ways – but there’s interaction too. Water extinguishes fire, yet together they become steam. And there are some flames which can burn even in water. Earth smothers fire, unless it is hot enough to melt rock into magma.

  In the end, I decide based on my competency with the different Shaping Skills – my Earth-Shaping is far higher than my Water-Shaping.

  I focus on the mana being drawn out of my channels through my left hand – the one holding the Energy Heart – and force the mana to align itself with earth. It fights me more than usual – I notice that the Energy Heart is actually forcibly transforming my mana into fire as soon as it leaves my channels, so I have to reverse that transformation first.

  But it’s my mana; it will follow my direction.

  I impose my will firmly and the wavering mana obediently transforms itself into earth-aligned. If I wanted, I could feed it into the earth and Shape something, but I don’t. Instead, I just leave it pooled in my hand like clay, creating a layer between me and the Energy Heart.

  It works. The Energy Heart is unable to pull more mana through the layer of earth, no matter how it tugs or sucks.

  The sparkles deep inside the garnet-red stone start whirling faster. I feel more pressure against my ‘wall’. But my will remains solid, and with it, the wall.

  The flecks of gold whirl even faster, and more frantically, like a fire that’s burning what little fuel it has left with abandon, existing in the present with no thought to the future.

  I resist its vacuum, my earthen mana incompatible with its energy.

  Finally, the sparkles begin to slow. They never fully stop, as I suspected, but they shift languidly in comparison – embers instead of flames.

  Tentatively, I begin reabsorbing the earth-aligned mana, allowing the Energy Heart to come into contact with my open channels once more. Relief goes through me as the Core remains inert and doesn’t try to draw from me again.

  I sigh, suddenly feeling more than exhausted – three days of hard riding followed by putting out multiple fires has taken its toll. I shove the Energy Heart into my Inventory – I’ll need to examine it more later when I have the energy. Hopefully whatever changes have happened won’t be damaged by being in my Inventory – at least I know that it can’t draw from me in there. The thought reminds me of another dangerous stone that’s still in there. I’ll deal with that – eventually.

  I push the thought away and grow my wings again. Time to join Nicholas.

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