Fragmented Flames [Portal Fantasy, Adventure, Comedy]

Pyra was first to react—orange flame erupted around her hands, spiraling up her arms in a corona of crackling energy. Her grin could have powered a small city as she launched herself at the nearest construct, leaving scorch marks on the stone floor.

"Come to mama, you oversized marionettes!"

Her fist connected with the construct's chest, a blow that should have shattered it to splinters. Instead, a shield of magical energy absorbed the impact, flaring bright blue at the point of contact.

The construct staggered back two steps, then immediately countered with a sweeping kick that Pyra barely ducked.

Across the arena, Cinder faced her own attackers with far less glee. Her flames burned a concentrated amber, channeled into twin daggers of heat that extended from her fists.

Unlike Pyra's flashy approach, Cinder moved defensively, dodging and parrying the construct's coordinated strikes. She sliced through the magical shield of one construct, leaving a glowing gash in its wooden chest, then pivoted to block a strike from another.

"Hey! Their magic shield thingy's adapting to our fire!" she called out, flames intensifying as she parried a flurry of attacks. "Sustained contact weakens them, but they recover quickly."

Ember had already discovered this. Her crimson flames formed a protective barrier around her body as she moved in a defensive spiral, gradually tightening the circle around her three opponents.

Each time a construct struck her flame barrier, she redirected the energy back at them in controlled bursts. It was working—until a flash of gold from across the arena caught her attention.

Kindle had taken to the air, propelling herself with jets of white flame that erupted from her hands and feet. She soared above her attackers, raining down arcing bolts of fire that forced the constructs to scatter.

It was spectacular, effective—and completely at odds with Ember's containment strategy.

"Watch your coveraaaAAHH!" Ember's warning morphed into a yelp as one of her constructs broke through her momentarily weakened barrier, landing a solid blow to her ribs that sent her tumbling.

Meanwhile, Ash approached the problem from an entirely different angle.

Rather than direct confrontation, she had surrounded herself in a cloud of silver-gray smoke shot through with embers.

Her constructs hesitated at the edge of this obscuring fog, unable to track her within it. Every few seconds, she would emerge like a wraith from an unexpected direction, strike with surprising force, then disappear again.

It was all very impressive. Individually.

The problem began seven seconds into the assessment, when their shared consciousness created the first feedback loop.

Pyra, locked in close combat with two constructs, sensed Kindle's aerial strategy and instinctively adjusted her flames to create an updraft. Except Kindle had already changed tactics, dropping into a diving attack—directly into Pyra's suddenly intensified fire column.

"Yeowch!" Kindle yelped, tumbling off-course and crashing into one of Ash's constructs, dispersing the carefully maintained smoke cloud in the process.

Ash, suddenly exposed, reached for more power—pulling energy from the same mental reservoir Cinder was drawing from for her precise flame daggers. Both their fires sputtered momentarily.

"What the—" Cinder's momentary confusion created an opening. Her construct landed a hit that should have been easy to block, sending her staggering sideways—directly into Ember's path.

Ember, who had just regained her footing, twisted to avoid colliding with Cinder, inadvertently sending a wave of flame toward Pyra's position.

Pyra, sensing the incoming heat, automatically amplified her own fire to match it—creating a feedback resonance that exploded in a spectacular fireball, singeing eyebrows and sending constructs flying like wooden bowling pins.

"Time out!" Kaelin's voice cut through the chaos. The constructs immediately froze in place, their eerie blue eyes dimming to a subdued glow.

The arena fell silent except for the soft crackle of flames and five sets of slightly labored breathing. Smoke curled upward from several points of impact, and the acrid smell of scorched wood filled the air.

Kaelin surveyed the scene, her expression hovering somewhere between exasperation and bemusement. "What... was that supposed to be?"

Five identical faces turned toward her, each wearing a distinctly different expression of chagrin.

"Would you believe a coordinated attack strategy?" Kindle offered hopefully.

"No," Kaelin replied flatly. "I would not."

"We're still calibrating," Ember explained, brushing soot from her sleeve with as much dignity as she could muster.

"Calibrating what? Chaos?" Kaelin gestured at the smoldering arena. "You have the individual combat skills of elite warriors and the group coordination of cats on a hot tin roof."

Cinder opened her mouth to object, then closed it again. The comparison, while unflattering, wasn't entirely inaccurate.

"Um, group huddle!" Pyra called, waving the others closer. They gathered together, arms intertwined.

"This is a disaster!" Ember whispered. "They're going to throw us out if we keep interfering with each other."

"We should've just used our super speed and plowed through them," Pyra suggested. "Bam! Pow! Smash!"

"That lacks subtlety," Ash pointed out. "And finesse. We possess an unprecedented opportunity to synergistically multiply our abilities, if only we could properly attune..."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Can the mumbo-jumbo, Ash," Cinder said. "We need a game plan, not a philosophy lecture."

Kindle rubbed her temples, her golden flames flickering in an unusual pattern. "Does anyone else feel... different? Like our connection is somehow louder than before?"

Four sets of eyes turned to her.

"I thought it was just me," Ember admitted. "Every time I try to move, I'm not just sensing what you all are thinking—I'm feeling your reactions before you even make them."

"It's like echo chamber feedback," Cinder agreed, her expression darkening with realization. "We never had this problem before. Against the Cinderlings, the bandits—we moved like a well-oiled machine."

Five pairs of eyes drifted inevitably toward Pyra, who blinked in wide-eyed confusion.

"What? Why are you all looking at me like I grew a second head? Do I need to remind you that we're all Abigail here?"

"Things have been different since you... came back," Ember said carefully, placing a hand on Pyra's shoulder. "The connection between us feels stronger, more immediate."

"Like mental tinnitus," Ash murmured. "The resonance of your essence, once dispersed among us and then reconstituted, has fundamentally altered our quantum entanglement."

Pyra's face scrunched up. "Is that good or bad? And can you say it in fewer syllables?"

"Your resurrection rewired our brain-share," Cinder translated, flames darkening with frustration. "Before, we'd sense each other's thoughts. Now we're feeling each other's responses in real-time, creating—"

"Feedback loops," Kindle finished, snapping her fingers with a shower of sparks. "That's why we keep overcorrecting! I feel Cinder about to move left, so I go right, but then she senses my adjustment and moves right too..."

"And suddenly we're playing an interdimensional game of chicken," Cinder concluded grimly.

Pyra puffed her cheeks out. "So what you're saying is, I exploded, became part of all of you, then un-exploded back into me, and now our brain telephone has too many people on the line?"

"That's... surprisingly apt," Ember conceded.

"It's also possible the city itself is affecting us," Ash suggested, her smoky tendrils curling thoughtfully. "Amaranth contains more ambient magic in a single street than entire villages in the countryside. Perhaps this magical saturation is amplifying our connection, like sound in an echo chamber."

"Great," Cinder groaned. "So we're magically louder to each other, in a magically loud city, trying to perform magic loudly enough to impress people, but not so loud we set everything on fire. Just perfect."

"We're overthinking this," Kindle insisted. "In the forest with the Mistfangs, during the bandit attack—we weren't trying to coordinate. We just acted, and it worked."

"Because we were facing actual danger," Ember realized. "Not trying to demonstrate skills in controlled conditions."

"So we need to... not think about it?" Pyra's face lit up. "Hey, that's something I'm actually good at!"

"Keep it stupidly simple," Kindle suggested with a growing smile. "STS."

"STS," Ember repeated, the acronym oddly comforting in its directness. "Minimal planning, maximum instinct."

"I could have come up with STS," Pyra pouted. "If only I'd thought of it!"

"The irony of creating a complex strategy to achieve simplicity doesn't escape me," Ash noted with the ghost of a smile.

"Alright, STS crew," Cinder said, her grin a touch feral around the edges. "Let's show them what we can do when we stop trying so hard."

They broke their huddle and faced Kaelin, who observed them with folded arms and a bemused expression.

"Are you finished conspiring?" she asked drily.

"We're ready," Ember said. "Let's reset and restart."

Kaelin shook her head. "You're done with that trial. "Let's try something simpler."

She moved to another crystal embedded in the wall.

The chamber shimmered as the combat arena reconfigured itself. The constructs sank into the floor, replaced by a series of wooden posts topped with targets of varying colors and sizes. Some were mere inches apart, creating a complex matrix of potential strike points.

"Flame control assessment," Kaelin explained. "Light only the red targets. Leave the rest untouched. Demonstrate your accuracy and restraint."

"Child's play," Cinder murmured, exchanging a confident glance with the others.

"Ready?" Kaelin asked.

Five heads nodded in unison.

"Begin."

For approximately 1.3 seconds, the exercise proceeded perfectly. Cinder sent a thin stream of amber fire toward the nearest red target, igniting it cleanly. Ember followed with equally controlled crimson flame, lighting a target on the opposite side of the arrangement.

Then Kindle, sensing an opening, targeted a red marker positioned precariously between two blue ones. At the exact same moment, Ash directed her attention to the same target, creating a momentary collision in their shared mental space. Both adjusted, overcompensated, readjusted—

The resulting flame jet went wide, catching a blue target that erupted in a chemical reaction, turning its fire bright purple and twice as intense.

Pyra, sensing the escalation and misinterpreting it as a change in the exercise parameters, decided to "help" by targeting all remaining red targets simultaneously. Her enthusiastic barrage caught at least three non-red targets in the conflagration.

"I was aiming for the red one!" Kindle protested as an entire row of targets blazed merrily.

"I was aiming for the blue one!" Pyra countered, then caught herself. "I mean the red one! The red one that's now...very clearly yellow. And on fire."

"I sensed your adjustment and compensated," Ash explained, silver flames curling around her wrists in agitation. "But then you adjusted to my compensation, creating an exponential error cascade."

"In simple terms," Cinder translated, pinching the bridge of her nose, "we're overthinking this. Again."

Kaelin watched the targets burn with the resigned expression of someone who'd expected disaster but had still harbored a faint, foolish hope for better.

"That," she finally said, "was... not ideal."

"We'll get it," Ember assured her, smiling sheepishly. "We just need a few rounds to, you know, calibrate."

Kaelin eyed her with a look that indicated she was not buying what Ember was trying to sell. "We're moving on."

The third trial involved a speed coordination course—moving platforms, swinging pendulums, and obstacles that required precise timing. It should have been simple for five women who could move faster than normal human perception.

Instead, it resembled an elaborate slapstick comedy routine.

Kindle, sensing Cinder about to leap to a platform on the left, instinctively moved right—except Cinder, sensing Kindle's intention, had already changed course to the right. They collided mid-air with a spectacular crack of skulls, tumbling onto a pressure plate that released a cascade of sand bags from above.

Pyra, moving to avoid the falling bags, accelerated directly into Ember's carefully plotted trajectory. Their attempt to avoid each other resulted in both overcorrecting into Ash's path, creating a three-body pileup that sent them rolling into the course's water hazard with a spectacular splash.

"We're trying!" Pyra shouted from the pool, her flame-orange hair plastered to her forehead.

"That," Kaelin replied evenly, "is what concerns me."

By the fourth trial—tactical decision-making under pressure—Kaelin had developed a new facial expression: polite horror masked by professional detachment.

The five women had fallen into competing strategies, with Ember trying to create a unified approach that Cinder immediately picked apart for flaws, while Pyra suggested increasingly outlandish alternatives, Kindle attempted to merge everyone's ideas, and Ash provided philosophical commentary on the inevitability of failure.

The fifth trial—a team exercise requiring them to achieve different objectives while supporting each other—never even got off the ground. They spent ten minutes arguing about who should take which role, only to discover they'd exceeded the time limit before any action was taken.

Kaelin looked ready to either laugh or cry, possibly both.