Fragmented Flames [Portal Fantasy, Adventure, Comedy]

The forge stank of burnt scales and old blood.

Ember descended the stone steps into Ardleby's lower levels, following the acrid scent that cut through damp and mildew. Cinder and Ash flanked her while Pyra and Kindle remained above, drilling with coalition scouts in the courtyard.

Heat hit like a wall when they reached the bottom.

Someone had converted the old smithy into a makeshift laboratory, and three Magisterium researchers hunched over tables that should have held horseshoes and plowblades. Instead, crystallized blood samples sat in glass vials. Dragon scales the size of dinner plates lay arranged in careful rows.

And in the room's center, suspended in a framework of iron chains, hung what remained of Cryax's skull.

The bone gleamed white as winter, bigger than a draft horse. Empty sockets stared at nothing. Teeth longer than Ember's forearm jutted from jaws frozen mid-roar.

Valerian Cross stood beside the skull, one hand resting against bone that radiated cold despite the forge's heat. His fingers traced patterns Ember couldn't decipher, and his lips moved in silent calculation.

"Remarkable." The word came soft, reverent. "Absolutely remarkable."

A younger researcher, woman with ink-stained fingers and spectacles that kept sliding down her nose, looked up from where she measured a scale fragment. "Archmage Cross? The Fragmented Flame are here."

Valerian's attention shifted. His hand dropped from the skull. "Ah. Come to see what your victory yielded?"

"Curiosity." Ember approached the skull, feeling its presence like a weight against her chest. Even dead, even stripped of scales and flesh, the thing demanded acknowledgment. "What have you learned?"

"That dragons are as much magic as they are flesh." Valerian gestured to the arranged samples. "Every piece we've examined shows arcane integration. They don't use magic. They are magic made manifest."

The younger researcher held up a scale fragment. Light passed through it, casting blue shadows across her face. "The suppression effect originates here. In the scales themselves. Each one generates a field that dampens external arcane energy, and when thousands overlap on a living dragon, the cumulative effect creates that three-mile radius we documented."

"So killing them eliminates the suppression in that area." Cinder moved closer, peering at the crystalized blood.

"Temporarily." A third researcher spoke up—older man with burn scars covering half his face. "The effect persists in the remains for approximately six hours post-mortem. After that, the arcane integration begins breaking down and the suppression fades."

He pointed to the skull. "This specimen has been dead eleven days. The field it generated is completely gone. We can work with it safely now."

Ash circled the suspended skull, her gaze tracking the geometry of fang and socket. "You said they are magic made manifest. Does that mean they're not truly alive? Not in the anatomical sense?"

"They're alive." Valerian's correction came gentle. "But their life operates on principles that transcend natural philosophy. They don't age the way mammals age. Don't require food in the same quantities. Can enter dormancy for centuries and emerge unchanged."

His hand returned to the bone, fingers pressing against the orbital ridge. "Nethysara slept beneath the glacier for over two thousand years. When she woke, she was exactly what she'd been when she entered hibernation. No degradation. No entropy. Just patient, perfect preservation."

"How is that possible?" Ember heard the question leave her mouth before she'd decided to speak.

"We don't know." The admission clearly cost him. "The mechanisms elude us. Dragon anatomy intersects with arcane theory in ways we've never encountered. They exist at the boundary between natural and supernatural, and studying that boundary reveals how little we truly understand about either."

The younger researcher set down her scale fragment, moving to a table covered in diagrams. "Look at this. The suppression field doesn't just dampen magic; it fundamentally alters how arcane energy behaves in the affected area. Spells cost more. Effects diminish. But the energy doesn't disappear. It's being absorbed."

She traced lines on the diagram showing energy flows. "The dragon feeds on ambient magic. Constantly. Pulling it in through those scales, incorporating it into their fundamental structure. They're less organisms and more living arcane vortexes that happen to wear flesh."

"Which explains their power." The scarred researcher added. "They don't just suppress our magic. They strengthen themselves with it. Every spell we cast in their presence makes them marginally more potent."

Cinder stared at the diagrams, trying to trace cause and effect amidst the tangle of sigils and formulas. "So they win no matter what. Cast spells and make them stronger. Don't cast spells and face overwhelming force while bound by our own weaknesses."

"Effectively, yes." Valerian's fingers continued their exploration of bone, tracing sutures where plates joined. "Conventional magical assault is worse than useless. Which makes your abilities invaluable and unprecedented. You defeat not only their physical strength and ferocity, but also circumvent their magical superiority. In many ways, you are what the dragons cannot counter. Not directly, at least."

"Lucky us." Ash's dry observation drew faint smiles.

The younger researcher returned to her scales, measuring thickness with calipers that clicked softly. "We're trying to understand the conversion process. How Nethysara rewrites human minds. The mechanism has to relate to this arcane integration somehow, but the connection eludes us."

"Perhaps it's not arcane at all." Ember said it before she'd fully formed the thought.

Valerian's head snapped toward her. "Explain."

"Corwin said our abilities are psychic, not magical. Natural phenomenon rather than arcane manipulation. What if Nethysara's conversion works the same way? Not magic, but some form of psychic domination that happens to be powered by her nature as a living arcane vortex?"

The three researchers exchanged glances. The scarred man made a note, his stylus scratching rapid shorthand.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"That would explain why standard mental protections prove insufficient." Valerian's voice carried the particular tone of someone reassessing assumptions. "We've been approaching the problem as if she's casting enchantments. But if it's psychic influence amplified by her arcane nature..."

"Then Corwin's approach is correct." The younger researcher finished. "Mental static rather than magical barriers. Disrupting the psychic connection rather than blocking arcane energy."

Papers rustled as all three researchers began making notes, their attention fracturing between different implications. Ember watched them work, struck by how similar they looked to Corwin hunched over his diagrams—same intensity, same focus that pushed aside everything except the problem at hand.

"You'll win this war with thought rather than spells." Valerian spoke without looking up from his notes. "Your flames. Corwin's wards. The coalition's determination. Magic will play its part, but the decisive factors will be will and fire and refusing to accept her logic."

He paused, then added one last thing. "We'll need to kill her. That's the only solution that ensures our safety and sovereignty."

They left the researchers to their work, climbing back toward daylight and air that didn't taste of ash and old death. The skull's empty gaze followed them up the stairs.

Theron stood alone on the eastern rampart, his silhouette sharp against afternoon sky. Wind pulled at his cloak, and his enhancement runes remained dark against skin gone pale from too many nights without sleep.

Ember approached slowly, her footsteps deliberate on stone. He glanced over, nodded once, then returned his attention to the landscape beyond Ardleby's walls.

"They're drilling well." His voice carried across the wind. "Your sisters and the scouts. Building coordination that might actually matter when things get messy."

"Kindle's enjoying it. Pyra less so—she keeps wanting to race ahead and show off." Ember joined him at the wall, their shoulders almost touching. "Ash is probably overthinking every movement."

"Sounds familiar." Something almost like humor colored his words. "Senna used to do that. Analyze every tactical decision until she'd mapped seventeen different futures, then freeze trying to choose between them."

The name settled between them like fresh snow.

"She saw her death coming." Theron's hands gripped the stone, knuckles white. "In that courtyard. Before Cryax's claw swept down. She had time to save herself, but she chose to shove that soldier aside instead. Saw what would happen and decided his life mattered more than hers."

Ember waited. Wind filled the silence.

"Daven broke every ward he'd ever built." Theron continued. "Poured everything into one attack that barely scratched that dragon's scales. He knew it wouldn't be enough. Didn't matter. He tried anyway because that's what he did—throw himself against impossible problems until something broke. Usually him."

His fingers flexed against stone. "Lysa burned herself to nothing. Flames so hot they should have been impossible under that suppression. She forced it anyway, trading her life for seconds of distraction that let you close the distance. Seconds that mattered."

"They saved us." The words felt inadequate.

"They died for strangers." Theron's voice cracked. "For soldiers they'd never met. For a mission that wasn't even theirs. I led them into that trap and they paid for my mistake with everything they had."

"It wasn't your fault."

"Wasn't it?" He finally looked at her, and his eyes held something raw. "I'm the one who chose to investigate Ravenshollow. I'm the one who led us into Cryax's ambush. Every decision that put them in danger came from me."

Ember wanted to argue, to offer comfort that would ease the guilt carved into his features. But she recognized the weight he carried. Had felt it herself every time one of her sisters dispersed into flame and ash, even knowing they'd return.

"They followed you because they trusted you." She settled for truth instead of comfort. "Because you'd proven yourself worth following. You can't command people like that without accepting they might die for the decisions you make."

"I know." Bitter acceptance. "Doesn't make it easier."

They stood in silence, watching soldiers drill below. The sun continued its slow descent toward the horizon, painting everything in shades of amber and blood.

"Senna left something for you." Theron pulled a small object from his pocket—a silver ring set with threads that caught light wrong, bending it into colors that shouldn't exist. "She made it herself. Said if anything happened to her, I should give it to someone who'd understand what it meant."

He pressed it into Ember's palm. The metal felt warm, almost alive. "It's a focus. For divination. She wanted you to have it. All five of you."

Ember closed her fingers around the ring. The threads pulsed against her skin, showing glimpses of futures that branched and merged and scattered like light through prisms.

"Thank you."

Theron nodded. Returned his attention to the horizon. Ember stayed beside him, sharing the silence until duty called them both elsewhere.

Captain Morse sat in the infirmary's far corner, away from the wounded who groaned on cots or called for water or stared at ceiling beams with eyes that saw nothing.

His hands shook when he lifted the cup to his lips. Water sloshed over the rim, darkening the bandages wrapped around his left wrist. He set it down, tried again, managed a swallow before exhaustion forced him to stop.

Ember pulled up a stool. "Mind if I sit?"

He gestured toward the empty space. "It's your keep. Do what you want."

"How are you feeling?"

"Like someone cut out pieces of my brain and stitched it back together wrong." The words came flat, clinical. "The memories don't match. I remember eight days of desperate defense. Remember believing Duke Casric was sending reinforcements. Remember writing letters to my wife that I knew she'd never receive."

His gaze fixed on something beyond the infirmary walls. "But I also remember months in the servitor camps. Remember choosing conversion because the grief was too heavy to carry anymore. Remember thanking Nethysara for taking the weight away."

"Which ones are real?"

"Both." His laugh scraped like broken glass. "That's the problem. The false memories feel true because I lived them. My mind generated emotions, made decisions, created meaning around events that never happened. And the real memories feel distant because I spent months not thinking about them, not feeling them, just... existing in perfect cold where nothing hurt."

He finally looked at her. His eyes held fractures. "Do you know what it's like to remember begging for slavery? To recall the relief I felt when she took my will away? I was grateful. Genuinely, completely grateful to stop being myself."

Ember had no answer. The silence stretched.

Morse fumbled for the cup again. Water spilled down his bandaged arms, drops falling onto the bed linens. He drank anyway, desperate, fingers white-knuckled with need.

"Valerian says it gets easier." His words carried the particular irony of a man recalling a lie. "Says the mind knits itself back together. False memories fade while the real ones grow stronger. But that's the problem, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"The false ones don't feel false. They're still part of who I was. Part of how I survived. So how am I supposed to let go of that when it's all I have left?"

Ember reached for the water jug, pouring him a refill, then a refill of that, until he signaled he was sated, his hands trembling. She considered her response.

"The only way out is through." She kept her voice calm, gentle, hiding the pain she felt on his behalf. "Those memories are part of you. So is the strength that got you this far."

Morse nodded, accepting what she'd said. He drank again, his cup running empty with a sharpness that broke the silence.

She left him there, moving between cots where other freed defenders struggled with similar contradictions. Soldiers who'd died heroically in false memories and lived shamefully in real ones. Men and women whose sense of identity had been shattered, ground under the weight of Nethysara's conquest, leaving them grasping for pieces of self that might not fit together anymore.

Ember touched the ring in her pocket—Senna's final gift.

"Get better." She whispered it to the infirmary as she left, closing the door behind her.