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She exited into a night that glowed orange from the inferno. In that eerie illumination, she tried to make sense of what she saw.
People ran amok, clothing smoldering, hair afire, which explained the shrill cries. She waved a hand in the direction of a woman, stifling the flames dancing on her night dress.
“It’s coming back!” someone yelled.
The statement sounded odd until Fionna noticed an intensely bright orange shape slinking into view. Her eyes widened at the sight of the lizard, much larger than she was accustomed to seeing, not green either. Oh, and the reptiles she knew from the swamp didn’t spit fire.
The woman she’d extinguished turned into a shrieking torch that ran off, heading into the hamlet. She wasn’t the only one. Then again, they had good reason to flee as the monster who started the fire appeared in the mood to burn everything in its path, including Fionna.
It flicked its tongue in her direction before spewing a jet of flame. It spattered harmlessly against Fionna’s shield.
She arched a brow. “Naughty lizard. Where did you come from?”
Ulkruuba, a country of sand and heat, was many miles away. She remembered the fire salamanders from her studies of their history. Add in the rumors coming out of Ulkruuba that mentioned their return and she had to wonder why it had strayed so far from home.
Didn’t matter, really. It didn’t belong in Acca.
The lizard skittered in her direction, four legs pumping, its jaw opened wide to hiss. Fionna raised her hand, seeking threads of moisture in the air only to find nothing. The fire hadevaporated it all. A good thing she knew not just water could put out a fire.
Her hands moved, forming an intricate design as she pulled threads, threads only someone gifted in magic could see. She wound the ones for air around herself first, then the people she could see in the vicinity. As she withdrew all the oxygen around the lizard and its environs, its orange glare dulled. The fires around it extinguished, choked out by the lack of air to feed it.
An enraged salamander uttered a cry and charged, somehow sensing who caused its flame to go out. Fionna didn’t lance it with a lightning bolt or freeze it into a statue. She chose to preserve her strength and pulled her long dagger. When it got close enough and readied to bite, she jabbed down, spearing it through the skull. The salamander dropped dead at her feet.
One problem handled.
She whirled and sighed as she beheld the many fires cropping up. People in a panic had spread them while running through the village. Removing the oxygen over such a large area would be difficult and dangerous. Luckily, the clouds overhead held promise.
Fionna titled her face upward and reached to the sky for the threads of moisture in the cumulus layer. Straining to grab, she bound them together until they grew heavy and fell as rain. The downpour doused the flames with a sizzle. As people coughed in the resulting thick smoke, most of them sobbing and wailing, she sighed again.
While her mission was of utmost importance, she couldn’t leave them to suffer. She delayed her travel for a day, providing healing to those who would benefit from it while at the same time ending the suffering of those too far gone by having them slip into a painless sleep they wouldn’t waken from. Cruel? Nay. Kinder than to let them live a short life of agony.
By the time she’d finished dealing with the villagers, night had fallen again, and she slept at the magistrate’s home where a grateful wife thanked her for all she’d done.
Fionna left just past dawn with a loaf of fresh bread, a hunk of soft cheese, and an embarrassing amount of praise. At least the people in Acca appreciated the skills of a witch. That wouldn’t necessarily be the case elsewhere.
The wooden statue she’d tucked into her bag swelled with her simple spell of growth—which to the curious involved her expanding the threads of its structure. She took flight, bleary-eyed and exhausted from the magic she’d expended in a short period of time. While the elements she manipulated came from the world around her, the act of using them could take its toll.
As she neared the massive mountain range dividing the lands, she decided to rest. She landed before twilight, this time choosing to camp in the boughs of a tall tree. She woke only once to see a bear sniffing at the base of the trunk. A jolt of electricity to its nose sent it bolting.
She set off at dawn on her wooden bird, flying high as she dared above the tall mountain. So high the shining sun didn’t warm her, and the cold altitude frosted her bird, affecting its flight. It resulted in her having to expend magic to keep them both warm.
She made it over the border into Srayth, a strange country of barren plains, pockets of forests, and hills that could almost be mountains.
On her journey she spotted a few aerial shapes in the sky with her, specks in the distance that could have been birds or something else. She didn’t investigate. She was already behind schedule. Most likely Amelia told the warlord when to expect her. Would he be the type to have a fit because she’d paused to help those villagers?
He could bluster all she wanted. She was doing him a favor.
It took her almost four days to cross Srayth and reach the capital, one more than planned. She’d had to land and take cover from a massive storm with winds too strong to control. It spun her wooden bird around and around until she almost puked. During that layover, she dealt with an oversized bug with snapping pinchers that stank when she exploded it with a well-placed fireball.
By the time she reached the mighty citadel of the warlord—an impressive structure of stone surrounded by a sprawling city—seven days after she’d left home, she found herself grumpy, bedraggled, and in no mood to deal with the sentries standing guard outside the citadel’s main gate, closed due to the late hour.
“I’m here to see the warlord,” she stated to the grizzled men on duty. She wore her cloak and had her things shrunk and tucked into her bag.
The bearded one to the left squinted and spat. “Come back in the morning.”
“I’ve travelled a great distance at his request to be here,” Fionna grumbled.
“Should have arrived earlier. Gate’s closed for the night and everyone is abed.”
