Spark of War (Progression Fantasy)

El groaned in her throat while blowing air out her nose, then opened eyes she didn't remember closing. She couldn't see anything. Everything was white and hazy. Was she blind? Had the explosion…?

No, idiot, it's the fog.

That scare over, she struggled to sit up—she was on her back somehow, somewhere—but winced as pain lanced up her left arm. Looking down, she found her glove and sleeve of her jacket up to her elbow completely missing, and the arm beneath horribly burned. The skin was black, and almost oily, red visible beneath sections that looked like it would flake off. And the smell, burn it, the smell made her stomach simultaneously rumble and want to heave. A memory of General Cannon rolling on the floor as Cardinal Scin ruined his arm flashed through her mind, and looking at her own arm, burn it, it didn't look much better.

Her fingers were still attached—there's a plus—but they crooked outward in all the wrong directions, broken in so many places, she couldn't even bring herself to count. Despite her stomach churning, she tried to move them. Tried. Nothing happened except pain. Panic blossomed in her chest—would she ever be able to move them again? Could she still fight?

Movement to her right. El brought her injured arm in close to her stomach and forced herself to her feet while igniting a coldfire sword in her good, right hand. The blade leapt to life, blue illuminating the fog all around her, but she didn't immediately see anything.

That didn't mean nothing was there, though, the mad scramble before the explosion finally filtering its way back to her attention. There had been something in the fog with her. Something fast, big, and strong. Another movement, this time to her left, and she dove forward, something swooshing right where she'd been standing. A second later, SMASH, it hit the stone wall she'd apparently bounced off earlier. The ground shook from the impact, causing El to stumble to her knees.

Both hands went out instinctively to catch herself, but her left arm completely failed as pain shot up to her shoulder and made her gasp. Without the support, she toppled to the side, tucking the arm back in and rolling over her shoulder to land on her back. An action that probably saved her life as that same mysterious something clobbered the street right beside her. Again, the impact shook the ground enough to throw her further to the side, chunks of stone bouncing off her frost armor with small flashes of blue.

Can't stay here, she thought, then rolled up to one knee. As soon as she was mostly upright, El flared her wings. Blue flames filled the space around her, something gasping in surprise or pain—a surprisingly high-pitched sound considering the size it had to be—and then she was gone. The fog parted as she burst free, though it had to be almost fifteen feet deep now, and she continued into the sky, spotting Laze and Nidina already hovering up there.

"… re you okay?" Laze's voice reached El's ears, cutting in like the woman had been halfway through speaking.

"Been better," El gasped through the pain. The frost armor was numbing some of the pain—that part of her magic really did a lot—but it wasn't enough to completely ease it. "You two?"

"We stopped the pulses," Nidina said. "Then we saw the explosion below and… burn it, El, what happened to your hand?"

"Apparently, fire hurts. Who knew?" El forced a crooked smile as she spoke.

"We need to get that treated, or at least cleaned," Laze said, hovering over while the fog shifted far below them. "I'm sure the doctors back in Pycrin can fix this, your Spark is strong…" She trailed off, eyes widening.

"Yeah, don't know if they can use my Spark anymore," El said. That could be a real downside to her blue fire if the doctors couldn't use it to speed her healing. Then again, her shoulder was already better, and it'd only been… Jeez, how long ago was that? Feels like forever… and only yesterday. Whatever. She'd worry about it later. "That's not the problem now. Any more pulses?"

Nidina and Laze both looked at her like they weren't quite as ready to change topics as she was, but thankfully, Nidina stayed on point.

"I think we destroyed three of the four approaches with your blue arrows," Nidina said. "And, while you were down there taking care of that third one, Laze and I bombarded the fourth with arrows for good measure. Not sure if we got the tubes, but we did the best we could."

"Good thinking," El said. "When you were down in the fog, did anything attack you? Anything… big?"

"Seawyrm?" Laze asked, then shook her head.

"I don't think so. There was something else in there with me, and it hit hard," El said. While she spoke, her eyes ran across the surface of the thick, white mist. Something as big as what hit her couldn't hide that easily. And yet, she couldn't see it. Is it lying down? Hiding in a building?

"I think we should get out of here," Laze said. "We stopped the ring, at least for now, but we can't destroy it. Nothing else we can do here."

"Laze is right," Nidina said. "We're worried if we fire an arrow at that thing, it'll suck the power out of it to charge the gate. The longer we stay nearby, the riskier it gets. We need to get back to Dayne, then get into the In-Between and back to Pycrin."

"Can you open the In-Between?" Laze asked El.

"I'll manage," El said, though she was pretty sure she'd be in a world of hurt when the adrenaline faded—frost armor or not.

"Wait… what's that?" Nidina asked, pointing back towards the west side of the city. "Is that a pulse in one of the tubes? It's… huge."

El followed Nidina's extended finger, and her eyes widened when she spotted what the other woman had. The glow almost looked like a small sun speeding through the fog, so hot and bright, it was actually burning the mist off as it went. Hangnails it passed spontaneously combusted, going up like wicker dolls that ran panicked off into the fog, spreading the light like a swarm of fireflies. Even the seawyrms couldn't stand the heat, their durable sapphire scales warping and popping from the sudden change in temperature.

Despite the carnage caused by the passing pulse, though, it didn't seem like any of the monsters were trying to move away from the tube. The closer the pulse got, the more creatures seemed to be practically right on top of it as…

"They're shielding the tube so we can't destroy it," El said. "Did I miss one?"

"Doesn't matter, we can't let that get through." Laze ignited a bow as she spoke, her other hand already back and forming an arrow in the same instant. Nidina wasn't even a heartbeat behind her, and just like that, the two Firestorm began launching arrows at the street near where El had just been.

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Instinctively, El started to extend her own left hand to ignite a coldfire bow, but even that small movement sent agony up her arm. Part of the skin that'd managed to stay together split open, steam rising out from the heat still within, and she had to clench her teeth shut not to scream at how much it hurt.

"El, we got this," Laze said, eyes glancing in El's direction while arrow after arrow pelted the street below.

"Yeah…" El groaned, focusing on the scene below to take her mind off her arm. Each arrow from her friends erupted in a small explosion about five feet wide from how they glowed in the fog. But, by the silhouettes appearing with each, monsters were stacked like logs down there, protecting the tubing.

Did I really miss one?

"Are we getting through?" Nidina asked.

"Don't know. Keeping shooting," Laze said.

El's eyes went to the closing pulse of Sparks. It truly was massive compared to the others. It'd left a trail in the fog where it had passed and was already halfway to them. Fifteen seconds, at most, was how long they had before it reached the ring. And if size equated to power, and the small pulse had been enough to almost open the door, this one would kick it right down.

She had to help, but there was no way she was forming a bow.

Stop thinking like you need to use a focus, she cursed at herself, thoughts moving sluggishly due to the distracting pain.

Holding her right hand out to her side, she pushed more flame into her sword, but forced the shape to change. Extending in both directions, a seven-foot spear of fire spiraled to life. Like other Firestorm, she couldn't really control flames she wasn't touching, with the bows being an exception. The electrum foci had been designed to help them do that, kind of like those powerful weapons Felps had created—the Personal Incendiary Cannons.

But… El had still been forming and shooting arrows after she stopped using the electrum foci for any of her weapons—or even her wings. A spear like this could work… couldn't it? Only one way to find out.

Still holding her wounded arm against her chest, El twisted in the air and hurled the flaming spear with all her strength towards the road below. The spearpoint was a spiraling mass of sharp fire, the whole thing lancing through the air alongside another pair of red-fire arrows.

WHOMP, it hit the street and burst outward in a different kind of explosion than the arrows. Where they erupted like fireballs—spheres of flame—the fallout of El's spear rolled to the sides, like the blue flames had too much weight, almost like it was liquid.

Blue spread in a forty-foot radius under the hanging wall of thick, white fog, freezing the hanging vapor as it went. Monster bodies didn't do much better, dozens of hangnails dying with how thick they were packed, and even the seawyrms suffered from the biting cold. Most importantly…

"The tube! There," Laze shouted, turning her bow towards a metal pipeline that looked intact.

El immediately started igniting another spear in her hand—the process was definitely slower than arrows—while Nidina and Laze both launched their own attacks. Hangnails and seawyrms that'd survived El's initial attack burst out of the hanging fog to the sides as it rolled back in, throwing themselves in front of the attacks to protect the tubing.

Fiery explosions hurled the bodies aside, but they bought precious seconds, the pulse getting closer with every heartbeat. The two Firestorm wouldn't be able to cut through the monsters in time.

"Hold your shots," El instructed. "Charge them up and wait for when my spear hits."

"Got it," Laze said.

Beside her, Nidina's arrow was already growing in strength, quickly going from normal, to arm, to leg size. Laze was right behind her, and within another second, all three were ready.

"Here we go!" El said, cocking her arm back to throw. The flames beat in her hands along with her pounding heart, the weapon almost ten feet long this time, and snapping like a barely contained wild beast. If she could've brought it to the plasma state, it would've assured the tube's destruction, but no matter how she pressed, she couldn't make it. The fatigue from the previous three plasma arrows, then the pain—physical and emotional—of her left arm kept the condensed power just out of reach.

This will have to do.

Just like before, El began to twist in the air, hurling the weapon forward, while Nidina and Laze tensed to release.

Unlike before, the fog below them suddenly rushed in from the sides. Not monsters storming out of the mist, but the fog itself. It rolled together like a sea pouring into the empty space, thickening as it went, and then within the blink of an eye, swirled to form a street-wide face looking up at them. The proportions were different than a person's, the forehead more angular, the eyes deeper, and the mouth wider, filled with sharp teeth.

That mouth spread in a silent roar, while the face—the head—launched up and out of the fog. A neck, shoulders, and arms followed, three-fingered hands bursting out like this huge monster had been hiding underground somehow the whole time. A narrow torso with a fin running down its spine came next, and the thing made of fog—though El could hardly call it a monster; it was somehow beautiful—quickly grew past the roofs of the nearby buildings.

It was huge, and getting bigger with every second.

Too bad the three Firestorm were high up in the sky.

"Go!" El said, hurling her lance of flame straight toward where she'd seen the tube before the emergence of the fog-beast. One small part of her mind told her that it had to have been what had smacked her around earlier, but she pushed that thought aside. At the last second, as her fingers were just about to completely release the spear, El pushed a flare into the weapon.

The barely controlled flames roared with chaotic power as the weapon doubled in size and shot towards the ground like a meteoric lightning bolt. Straight through the fog-beast's roaring mouth, the blue flames carved a path, freezing the mist as it passed, and collapsing the trunk of the titan's body.

The huge beast faltered as the torso holding it up—and the crouching legs beneath it—collapsed in a network of thin, icy webs. Its clawed arms went from stretching towards the distant Firestorm, to scrabbling for the nearby rooftops to hold it upright.

Then the two flaming arrows followed. They punched through the beast's eyes as it stumbled forward, mist evaporating so quickly, it was like they'd drilled two holes clean through its head.

All three bolts struck the ground a heartbeat later.

Blue and red flames burst, spreading destruction as they went. Monsters screeched in pain, their bodies freezing and burning at the same time. Across the wide street, the fire raged and sought more to consume, as if it was alive. As if it was hungry.

And it had plenty to feed on.

"Did we do it?" Nidina asked, another arrow already forming on her bow.

All three of them ignored the fog beast as it fell back into the mist above the street, their eyes glued on the pulse racing in their direction. They couldn't see if the tube had been damaged, but it had to have been. Right?

"We're about to find out," Laze said as the pulse reached the blast zone. If they'd managed to do it, there should be a…

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The explosion was like nothing else they'd seen that day, a sphere of flame so pure and hot, it really was like the sun had appeared on the street below. It spread in an instant, consuming fog, monsters, and buildings alike. An entire block simply vanished, and the sphere wasn't done yet. Even hundreds and hundreds of feet up in the air, the heat washed over El, shimmering the air and causing her frost armor to flare in protection.

The power of it was terrifying, but El still smiled. An explosion meant they'd stopped the Sparks from reaching the…

Streamers of energy suddenly stretched from the glowing sun even as it seemed to reach its size limit. Like something had cast a fishing line and caught them, the ribbons snapped out. Stone walls, blocks distant, simultaneously exploded and melted as the streamers whipped into them. The air itself to seared and burned, leaving scars hanging like tears in reality.

El's eyes only had a single blink to react before one of the streamers seemed to twist in the air, completely changing direction before it lunged skyward to slam into the center of her chest. Every nerve in her body lit up like they were on fire, the world around her whiting-out, and the Spark in her chest compressed than bloated. Even the pain in her arm vanished for a moment—her senses overwhelmed by the new agony in her chest—and then it faded.

Gone. Just like that.

Her breath came out in a ragged gasp that literally steamed in the air, and her mind turned to the question of—What the burning Blaze just happened?

She didn't get the opportunity to figure that out, though, as her eyes locked on the streamers still whipping through the air—and shooting straight towards the ring.

The pull! They'd gotten caught in the pull! And just like that, the script inside the electrum ring lit up.