The woman's head turned slowly, tracking Seraphina and Neila's emergence. The gray hood shadowed her features, but those golden eyes burned through the dim light like embers in ash.

  She lifted her hand up into the air.

  “Zenith of Gluttony, The Fire and the Thud, consume all.”

  Crackle.

  The air ignited.

  The air became fire.

  A wall of it, eighty feet high and twice as wide, roared to life between the pinned girl and the advancing rogues. The heat hit Seraphina even from the edge of the courtyard, a physical force that made her stagger.

  The rogues didn't even have time to scream.

  One moment they were there, three figures in motion. The next, they were ash, scattered on a wind that hadn't existed a second ago. The fire didn't consume them so much as unmake them, reducing flesh and bone into nothing.

  Then the fire immediately halted, turning into thin air.

  Seraphina's eyes widened as her body went frozen stiff despite the heat.

  “That’s crazy, I-I’m scared.”

  Neila’s eyes faced forwards, waiting for the warm air to dissipate.

  “Then why’d you even come here anyways? If you really want to help people then you should be ready to risk your life, unless you’re Sophia Miller.”

  The woman turned.

  It was a slow movement, unhurried, deliberate. Her hood shifted with the motion, and for just a moment, Seraphina caught a glimpse..

  Her eyes.

  Those golden eyes burned.

  She dashed towards them, crossing thirty meters of cratered courtyard in the space between heartbeats. Her hand extended, palm open, and the air between her fingers began to shimmer.

  Heat.

  The heat hit them like a physical wall.

  Seraphina's skin went red, then white, then red again as her mana flickered desperately around her in a failing shield. The stones beneath her feet began to soften, the edges melting into something that would have burned through her shoes if she stood still another second.

  "Bitch, move!" Neila's voice cut through.

  Seraphina moved.

  She threw herself sideways, rolling across ground that seared her palms through the fabric of her gloves. Behind her, the space where she'd been standing became a column of white fire that punched through the cloud cover and kept going, a pillar of annihilation that left afterimages burned into her vision.

  Neila snapped.

  The sound wave hit the woman like a hammer, should have cracked ribs, should have ruptured eardrums. Instead, the air around her rippled, the heat distorting space itself, and the attack curved around her body like water around a stone.

  "Sound magic," the woman said. "The Shaw family's technique. Did you not know that fire can refract sound?"

  She extended her hand.

  Not toward Neila. Toward Seraphina.

  The air between them ignited.

  Seraphina saw it coming, she saw the shimmer, felt the pressure drop and threw herself behind the shattered column with every ounce of speed she had. The fire caught her left leg.

  Just a glancing touch. Less than a second of contact.

  Her scream tore through the courtyard.

  The flesh of her calf didn't just burn. It melted, skin and muscle sloughing away like wax, exposing a glimpse of white bone before she slammed her palm against the wound and forced mana into it with desperate, uncontrolled urgency.

  "Vitae Core!" she gasped, grasping at her calf. The regeneration was slow and painful.

  [It hurts]

  The pain didn’t stop, but the wound still closed.

  “It hurts doesn’t it? Like a swine chewing away at your flesh.”

  Neila's attack caught her in the back of the head.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Not sound this time. A chunk of shattered fountain, hurled with enough force to crack concrete, accelerated by a focused sonic pulse that turned it into a projectile moving faster than bullets.

  The woman's head snapped forward. Blood sprayed from her lips. She stumbled, caught herself, turned-

  Neila was already there.

  Her small frame slammed into the woman's midsection, driving her backward across the cratered ground. Her hands found the woman's face, her thumbs pressing against those burning golden eyes.

  Flames erupted from the woman’s entire body.

  Neila immediately backed away, her thumbs charred black, the skin crisping every so slightly. She sighed, breathing in the little oxygen they had.

  “You must be a rogue from the Smiths. That family must really be dogshit for all of you to come running out like livestock running from a farm.” Neila's head tilted and looked back at Seraphina.

  “Seraphina, are you just going to keep hiding?”

  “We’re not winning!”

  Neila rolled her eyes, why do you think I’m here?”

  She grabbed onto a leg of a nearby table, throwing it directly at the woman’s face, boosting its velocity with a snap of her fingers to thrust it further towards the woman.

  Flame erupted from the woman's palm, reducing the wooden table to ash in seconds.

  “What was that supposed to-”

  Neila threw a pebble into her eye.

  “Bullseye, in this case, your eye.”

  The woman’s left eye oozed red, the rock leaving permanent damage to her iris.

  Neila recoiled, not at the sight but at her own words.

  “Aughh, why did I have to be so corny?” She pointed her finger towards Seraphina. “It’s all your fault.”

  “Come on! Be serious!”

  "I'm going to burn you both alive," she said. "Slowly. From the inside out. I'm going to make you feel every second of it."

  The woman’s hands bursted into flame.

  Not a fireball, not a stream. Just heat, focused and compressed into a lance of pure thermal energy that speared toward Neila's chest. The air itself screamed as it was superheated, leaving a trail of vaporized moisture in its wake.

  “Really?”

  Neila dove sideways, felt the thermal lance pass close enough to singe her twin-tails. The wall behind her didn't just burn. It vaporized, a meter-wide circle of stone simply ceasing to exist, leaving a perfectly smooth crater with edges that still glowed.

  "Hmm," Neila muttered.

  Seraphina's voice came from behind the woman. "Vigil Hexa!"

  Six translucent hexagons shimmered into existence around the woman, each one positioned to intercept attacks from a different angle. Seraphina's hands were clasped together.

  A cage.

  Six translucent hexagons materialized around the woman, but not floating, locked, interlocked, forming a perfect geometric prison that surrounded her on all sides. The heat inside the cage built instantly, the woman's flames reflecting off the mana-constructs, feeding back on themselves.

  The woman looked at the hexagons. Turned her head slightly, examining them.

  The hexagon shattered.

  “They’re rather delicate, don’t you know? Even the slightest amount of damage and they shatter.”

  The cage exploded.

  Not from the inside. From the seam. The feedback loop of heat became too much, the energy finding release through the weakest point, and the resulting blast….

  Seraphina was thrown fifty feet. She hit the ground and kept rolling, her body a ragdoll, her leg, her healed leg, snapping again with a crack that she heard more than felt.

  Neila was lifted off her feet and slammed into the fountain so hard the remaining stone crumbled around her. Her ribs went. Both arms. Her collarbone. She felt them go, felt the sharp bright pain of bones becoming shards, and then felt nothing at all as shock took over.

  “Neila, it’s going to be your fault if we both die!”

  The woman's hand came up.

  “Come on, what happened to that cockiness of yours!?”

  The woman stood in the center of a crater twenty feet wide. Her clothes were gone, burned away. Her skin was red, blistered, cracked in places. One eye was completely swollen shut, the other still burning with that terrible golden light.

  Neila snapped, focused and directed, aimed at the woman's exposed throat with enough force to shatter concrete.

  The woman's flames answered.

  It shockwaves rippling through the courtyard. Students and rogues alike stumbled, clutching their ears, as the air itself seemed to tear.

  "How the hell do you even plan to beat her!?”

  “I have my plans.”

  “OK Neila, I totally trust this non-existent plan.”

  “I’m still seeing how I can work on it without revealing any kind of information to her.”

  The woman was walking toward them now. Not hurrying. Not chasing. Just walking, with the patient inevitability of something that had all the time in the world, one eye still bleeding.

  Her hood had fallen back.

  The face beneath was young. Younger than they'd expected. Maybe twenty, maybe less. Dark hair, pale skin, golden eyes that burned with an inner light that had nothing to do with her flames. Beautiful, in the way a blade was beautiful.

  "You're the ones who woke early," she said. "Interesting. The Zenith should have held you longer."

  “I’m rather smart after all.”

  "Who are you?" Seraphina demanded.

  The woman tilted her head. Considered the question.

  "May, name’s May," she said, "I was a student here. Like you. Like all of them." Her gaze swept across the courtyard, taking in the chaos, the fighting, the dying. "Then I learned what this place really is. A factory. A tool shed. They train you, use you, and when you're broken, they throw you away."

  Her hand came up. Fire gathered in her palm, white-hot, hungry.

  "So I joined a group of people who felt the same. And we decided to burn it down."

  Neila smiled.

  “Good idea burning the students as well, that will help your cause.”

  “They’re just a miniscule sacrifice, without any more pawns under the government’s control, they won’t have any weapons to fight against us!”

  Seraphina’s brows furrowed.

  “The corruption doesn’t warrant all of this! You killed all of them! In FACT you’re no better than the corrupted!”

  The fire grew.

  "Pyrokinesis huh," Neila breathed. "Elemental control. But that much heat, that's not normal is it? Drugs? Is that what you’re producing? Is that what’s funding this operation?"

  “Come on, I know you want it! You want to overtake them don’t you? We’ll do it together!”

  Neila crossed her arms.

  “I don’t like listening to anyone.”

  May raised her hand higher.

  “Then I’m just going to kill you all.”

  The flames answered.

  Radiating outward in an expanding sphere that turned stone to slag and metal to liquid. The fountain behind them began to melt, its carved surface running like wax.

  Seraphina grabbed Neila's arm. "We have to run."

  "Run? Who’s going to run? Run where?”

  The heat was building. Unbearable now, pressing against their skin like a physical weight. Seraphina's mana shield flickered, struggled, failed.

  "Neila!"

  Seraphina had crawled despite the heat. Dragged herself across thirty feet of burning ground, using her elbows, her chin, anything that would move her forward. She'd picked up a handful of sand and threw it at May, blinding her temporarily.

  "Fuck... you..." Seraphina gasped. “Just do the plan..”

  Neila stood.

  Not slowly. Not dramatically. Just stood, in one motion, facing May and her flames with nothing but her small frame and her fading mana.

  "Hey."

  May paused. Her golden eyes narrowed.

  Her flames flickered. Just slightly. Just enough.

  Neila snapped her fingers.

  Except no large flashy burst of power came out.

  The large ember was extinguished.

  “What the hell!?”

  Neila smirked, as she stuck out her tongue, mocking her.

  “I’m a genius, you think someone like you can stand up to me?”

  Every single time she tried to ignite her hands on fire, Neila snapped her fingers, immediately extinguishing the flame.

  “What the hell are you doing!?”

  “I pushed the oxygen away.”

  “That’s impossible! Only using sound?”

  Neila shrugged.

  “I just remembered something from the internet, NASA does the same thing to extinguish fires, I did the same thing, I disrupted your combustion process by using low frequency bass.”

  “You.”

  She dashed towards Neila full speed.

  “Oh right, I also learnt that-”

  Neila pointed her fingers at the approaching woman, a large burst of sound started to focus onto one spot of her body, the friction of the sound waves rubbed against her body.

  “That sound can also start them.”

  Neila smiled

  “You’re only immune to your own fires aren’t you?”

  The woman ignited.

  Not from her own technique but from the pressurized sound.

  Fire crackled.

  Smoke rose up from her body like a campfire.

  Neila collapsed onto her knees, sweat pouring down her face, her breathing became heavier like an anvil sat neatly on her back.

  “I ran out, I’ve got no mana left.”

  Seraphina hoisted her onto her back, Neila’s sweat dripping onto Seraphina’s shoulders.

  “Told ya I had a plan.’

  “Yea yea.”

  May stood up from the fire, her face half burnt, and her arms charred black.

  “The hell!?”

  Neila’s eyes widened at her, who had just been burnt.

  Her hands were ruined. Blackened, cracked, the fingers bent at wrong angles. Her face was blistered, one eye swollen shut, her hair reduced to smoldering patches on her scalp.

  “I’m…still…alive.”

  “Not for long.”

  A flash of orange.

  “VIta Nova.”

  A woman with long brunette hair and eyes that glowed a deep unsettling yellow, her mana flowed through the air like a potent poison,

  Sarah gripped onto May’s darkened neck, what was left of her skull caved inwards into a cloud of black smoke, her flaky flesh melted into a puddle of black. The woman’s mana settled into Sarah’s body, her eyes glowing an unsettling amber.

  She looked over towards the courtyard, at least what was left of it, the ashes of the burnt bodies wafted through the air.

  “You overcooked them a little bit, but I guess I can still feel the mana in the air.”