Fyre Fly: Chapter 30 - Playing With Fyre

My stomach is cold with dread. I don’t know who these people are, but they’re clearly not supposed to be here—and I wasn’t supposed to notice anything was wrong. What do they want? Are they Jorrian? I need to get them away from everyone else. If something happens, I can’t let anyone get hurt.

“What’s going on?” Mirzayael asks, picking up on my fear. “What is it?”

At the same time, Ollie bursts into my mind. “FYRE! ECHO SAYS YOU’RE IN DANGER.”

A chill runs through me. “Ollie, stay where you are. These people aren’t what they seem.”

Lisari laughs, draping her arm around Blair. “Now, now. Let’s not be hasty. I brought you here to meet her, not smite her.”

Smite? The chill crystalizes into ice.

Blair glares at her. “Enough of your games. She was not fooled. The time for passive observance has expired.”

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Lisari says. “Surely you see there’s no harm in chatting? It’s not like she’s going anywhere. How did you figure it out, by the way?”

I unstick my tongue from the top of my mouth. “I could see…” I stop myself before I say anything else. They don’t need to know about the Dungeon Core or Echo, and my explanation wouldn’t mean anything to them anyway.

Or would it? I Check them again, and again it seems like Echo hesitates for a fraction of a second before responding. My alarm is mounting. Are they related to the System in some way? Are they able to trick or alter what Echo knows? How is that possible?

“Our stats?” Lisari suggests when I don’t finish my sentence. “That’s odd, I thought we had them locked.”

And for a moment, for just the briefest second, her numbers change. It happens so fast, I almost think I imagined it, and though I couldn’t take in all of them at once, I did manage to glimpse one change: her level briefly flickered to 100.

A pit sinks in my stomach. Between Lisari’s amused indifference and Blair’s cool scrutiny, from all the clues they’ve already let slip, what they are seems as obvious as it is unbelievable.

“You’re… gods.”

It would be a ridiculous conclusion in any other circumstance. But at this moment, my instincts are screaming at me that I’m in danger, and faced with the presence of these two, the idea suddenly doesn’t feel so far-fetched.

Lisari grins, snapping her fingers as she points at me. “Got it in one.”

And then their stats change—permanently, this time. Their HP and Mana skyrocket. Their levels flicker and are replaced with 100. Their classes change—and Roles appear. The only thing that stays static is their names.

My stomach falls through the ground. I feel frozen in place.

“Mirzayael, stay back,” I hurriedly tell her. “Stop!”

“What?” she asks. “Why? Fyre, tell me what’s going on!”

“FYRE, WHERE IS IT? WHERE’S THE DANGER? I CAN’T FIND IT!” Ollie’s voice is starting to sound panicked, and my heart squeezes.

I’m suddenly and keenly aware of all the people around us. Everyone so vulnerable and exposed. I need to get the gods away from everyone. From Mirzayael and Ollie.

“Please,” I say, keeping my voice steady. “Can we move somewhere more secluded? No one else has to know.”

Lisari pats Blair’s arm. “See? We can still be civil. It’s just a chat!”

Blair holds my gaze for a long moment. There’s a calculating look in her eyes. It’s not hard to guess which one of them is triggering Ollie’s Role Requirement. But if this goes on any longer, he’s going to suffer.

“I have someone dependent on me,” I try again. “If I’m endangered, it causes them pain. Please, I don’t have time to explain, but—”

[Your Role has been identified,] Echo abruptly says.

Blair glances around the dock. Her gaze lands on Ollie a moment later. “The dragon. I see.”

She shrugs Lisari’s arm off her shoulder and shakes her head with a sigh. “Fine. We may speak somewhere more covert.”

“OH!” Ollie says. “IT STOPPED. THAT WAS WEIRD!”

Mirzayael reaches us, spear drawn. “What’s going on?” she demands.

“Don’t,” I tell her, holding out a placating hand. “Put the weapon away. None of us need to escalate anything.”

Blair’s gaze flickers over Mirzayael and almost as quickly glances away, as if her presence is inconsequential.

“This is getting a bit crowded.” Lisari reaches out, and even as I’m taking an instinctive step back, her fingers brush against my shoulder.

The sky vanishes. I’m inside the palace. Disorientation washes over me as I stumble away from Lisari. She and Blair are standing exactly where they had been before, as if we haven’t moved, but rather the world shifted around us.

“Fyre!” Mirzayael’s voice cries in my head, panicked. “Where are you? What did they do? Are you alright?”

“I’m in the throne room,” I reply, heart nearly beating out of my chest. Mirzayael didn’t come with us. It’s only me, Blair, and Lisari. At least they didn’t bring Mirzayael along; if something happens to me, the city still has Mirzayael. I try to hold onto that nugget of comfort.

“I’m coming,” Mirzayael promises.

“No!” I object. “Stay away. Don’t let anyone near.” Even as I tell her this, I’m speaking with the Dungeon Core, asking it to seal the room’s doors and windows. It joyfully complies, and rock slams down in every opening.

Blair glances at the nearest door that’s now become a wall of granite. “If you think this will contain us, you have sorely misjudged the situation.”

“It’s not to keep you in,” I say. “It’s to keep others out.”

Lisari laughs, spinning away from the two of us. “I told you she was smart, didn’t I?”

“Fyre, what are you doing?” Mirzayael demands. “Talk to me!”

“I don’t know what—” I try to hold myself together. “I’m sorry. I need a moment to think.” Panic and fear threaten to well up inside me, but I fight them back down. These are gods. Actual gods. What do they want? Are they here for the Fyrethians? Will they attempt to destroy everyone I care about?

Could I even stop them? I’d have to try.

There’s too much to parse, too much I need my complete focus for, to be distracted by secondary conversations. “I’m going to throttle my connection with you and Ollie so I can focus,” I tell Mirzayael. “Please don’t let anyone attempt to reach me.”

“Fyre, don’t—”

“I’m sorry.” Guilt squeezes me as I tune her out. I don’t have much time to dwell on it, however, when I realize Lisari is heading over to the throne. A growing pressure is pressing at me the closer she gets. The Dungeon Core can feel it, too. Actually, I’m the one feeling it through the Dungeon Core. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s… unsettling. It’s making the Dungeon Core agitated.

“Stop,” I say, taking a step her way. Blair moves between me and Lisari. But she does stop.

“You can feel it?” Lisari asks. “Interesting. I didn’t think a Pact would be enough.”

Blair speaks over her shoulder. “We should take it and be done.”

“No!” I object. Fire licks at my fingers with the beginnings of a Blaze, but I snuff the flames out. The last thing I need to do is antagonize them. “It’s keeping this city afloat. Without its control, we’d fall. Everyone would die.”

“You’re able to harness its power for such things?” Blair asks.

“Yes,” I hurriedly reply. Anything to keep her focused on me. Anything to keep her talking. The more time I can buy, the more time I’ll have to think of a solution. “All the spell circuits in this city operate through magically conductive ore. By regulating the amount of mana that is stored in the cloudstone, we can control its lift. We also use it to monitor all the control surfaces in order to manage our heading, pitch, yaw…”

“You can monitor so much information at once?” Lisari asks, sounding genuinely curious.

“No.” I try to keep myself steady. Calm. Focused. “I set up self-correcting feedback loops in the spell circuits.”

Lisari barks out a laugh. “This is wonderful! How did you have the time to design such a complex spell network?”

Despite her laughs and smiles, I still feel as tense as a compressed spring. Blair continues to watch me with that appraising look—not a glare, exactly, but like she’s trying to decide something about me. I hope I meet whatever standards she’s judging me by.

“I didn’t,” I reply to Lisari. “The vast majority was already built into the kingdom. I just plugged some new hardware into the computer.”

“Computer?” Blair asks.

“Oh, um. It’s like a complex system of logic gates.”

Blair turns to Lisari, and despite her shaded glasses, they seem to share a look. I try not to react. What? What did I say? What part of that was significant?

“You worked with these computers in your world?” Blair asks.

My world. How much do they know? “I did,” I say carefully.

“See?” Lisari is addressing Blair. “That’s at least one good reason not to partition her.”

I don’t know what that means, and I’d love to not find out.

“But your world doesn’t have magic,” Blair continues.

How does she know all of this? “No, it didn’t. I’ve leaned on the knowledge of others since… arriving here.”

“Dizzi, right?” Lisari says. “I like that girl. Sharp as a needle. She’ll do big things one day, mark my words. Why, I’ve half a mind, too…” Blair shoots a look at her, and Lisari holds her hands up with a laugh. “Calm down! It was just a joke. I’ve already got plenty on my hands as it is. I tell you, these Travelers can be more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Is that why you haven’t already recruited this one?” Blair asks.

“What, Fyre?” Lisari asks. She waves a dismissive hand, turning away from Blair and I to curiously circle the throne at a more respectful distance. “She’s too measured. Not really my type. You might like her, though, if you stopped posturing like some kind of Lorata-wannabe.”

Blair bristles, and I’m overcome with an abrupt sense of impending doom. But the tension gradually leaks from Blair’s stance, and when she returns to considering me, it’s with less hostility and more curiosity.

I take a steadying breath, mind racing as I attempt to assess the situation. These are gods. But they don’t seem to view Lorata with high regards, and she was the one who ostensibly attacked Fyreneth all those years ago. An enemy of my enemy?

Too soon to tell. I try to pull everything else I know together.

They know about me and Ollie. They know about Earth. They took me, but not Mirzayael.

A small piece of the picture abruptly slides into focus.

“You’re not here for the Fyrethians,” I realize. “You’re here for me.” They didn’t come after me because I was a leader, they came after me because I’m from Earth. But–no, that can’t be all of it. They’re ignoring Ollie.

For now, at least.

“Another excellent deduction,” Lisari says. “You’re on a roll. Make it three in a row, and I’ll give you a prize.”

“Ah, no thanks,” I object before I can think better of it.

Blair snorts, a faint smile pulling at her lips. That’s the first positive reaction I’ve gotten from her so far.

Luckily, my response summons another laugh from Lisari and not her ire. “Rude! But wise. See, Blair, this is what I’m talking about. I don’t need that kind of energy in my life.”

Lisari really does seem to be treating this all like a game, or at least some form of entertainment. Blair worries me, but she also strikes me as more direct. Yet, they both appear to not be entirely aligned with the head of the pantheon, and I’m not sure if that should worry or reassure me.

If nothing else, it presents an opportunity to peer behind the curtain.

“How many more are there?” I ask, taking a chance. I don’t expect Blair to reply, but Lisari appears to have loose lips. “People like Ollie and I. Are they alright?”

“We’re in the process of cataloging them all,” Blair says, surprising me, and also managing to not answer either of my questions.

Lisari, of course, is more than happy to fill me in. “One hundred and seventy-two others,” she says. “Well, one hundred and seventy-three, technically. Do you know someone named Kanin?”

“Who?” I ask, baffled.

Blair shoots her a glare. “Shirasil, enough.”

“What!” Lisari throws her hands in the air. “It’s a fair question. And it’s not my fault you hate fun.”

“This is important,” Blair says, glowering.

“Fyre.” Lisari points to me. “Are important and fun mutually exclusive?”

“Um. No?” I say, perplexed by the current exchange.

Lisari turns to Blair. “Hah! See? And she’s smarter than you.”

I’m not thrilled to find I’m being positioned between the two gods, and decide to maneuver the conversation back onto safer ground.

“You said you came here to talk to me.” I glance between the two in an attempt to gauge reactions. “Was there something you wanted to address specifically?”

Lisari sighs. “Getting back to work, are we?”

Mentally, I feel a distant sort of tinnitus—it’s Ollie or Mirzayael trying to reach me, I think. I try to ignore it for now.

“There wasn’t anything specific I wanted to speak with you about,” Blair admits, watching me. “Rather, I wanted to see how you would speak to us.”

That’s cryptic. “And how have I spoken to you?”

“Well enough. At least, in current circumstances.” Blair turns away from me, also heading over to the throne. I tense as she approaches it, getting closer than Lisari had. The tension builds again as she reaches out for the Dungeon Core, embedded in the top of the throne.

“What are you doing?” I ask, my voice tight. I try to not make it sound like a demand, but some of my anxiety slips through. The Dungeon Core is also getting jittery. What’s this? What is this feeling? Is it something it can eat? It wants to eat it. Can it try?

You can’t eat living things, I tell it, but I falter even as I think the words. The Dungeon Core doesn’t qualify as living, but it is still a thinking… entity. Are gods alive? Can something that is immortal be considered living?

No you can’t try to eat it, I add to the Dungeon Core. At least, not yet.

Blair, hovers her hand before the jewel, as if warming her fingers before a fire. Then she lowers her hand and turns back to me. “I want to see you use it.”

I don’t move. I don’t know how, but this feels like a trap. “I already did. When I closed the doors.”

“You control it remotely?” she asks.

“I can communicate with it remotely, yes.” So they haven’t noticed me talking with the Core. That’s something.

“This is a result of your Pact?” she asks.

I hesitate, wondering how much I should reveal. Every sliver of information I hold that they don’t has the potential to be leverage. Yet, lying or holding something important back might be just as dangerous.

[Your magic has been identified,] Echo abruptly speaks.

“She has psionic spells,” Lisari says. “That must be how.”

I resist the urge to scowl at her. And I’d started to think she was on my side. “That’s correct.” At least they don’t seem to know about my connection with Mirzayael and Ollie, yet.

“Interesting,” Blair says. She points to the jewel. “Still, I want to see you wield it—while you’re wearing it.”

It’s not a request. But I’m not sure I can. “Will touching it work?” I ask her. “I don’t think I can wear it right now. If I remove it from the throne, it might interrupt the spell circuit it’s interfaced with, and since the Fortress is dependent on the spells to stay aloft…”

Blair doesn’t appear pleased by this, but thankfully she doesn’t press the matter. She steps away from the throne, gesturing me forward. “Physical contact should be sufficient.”

I cautiously approach, wracking my brain for why she’s asking me to do this. She wants to see me wield the Dungeon Core. Even though, according to legend, the Core is what drew the gods’ ire in the first place. Not to mention, the gods’ presence seems to be unsettling the Core in some way. Making it jumpy… and hungry. So if it poses some threat (why else would they have wanted it buried?) then what motive do they have for wanting to see me wield it, and at such close proximity to them?

To measure my control.

That has to be it. They are judging not just the Core’s danger, but what level of threat it might pose in my hands. Then I’ll have to show them it’s benign. I’ll show them that I have complete control over it.

Even if I’m not sure either of those things are true.

Okay, Core, I think, reaching the throne. I nervously keep an eye on the gods as I rest my hand on the arm. You’re going to need to listen to me, alright? Listen to me completely.

Okay. Why wouldn’t it? It hears me all the time. I think so much, it astounds the Core! Why, the Core can go for years without having a single thought—

I mean, you’re going to need to do exactly what I say, I tell it. I reach up and touch the Core’s jewel, embedded in the throne. We’re just going to do a small demonstration.

The Dungeon Core gives me the mental equivalent of a shrug. Okay. But then can it eat the tasty thing in those people? It knows they would be delicious.

No, I tell it, try to keep my expression level. What is it talking about? I can’t see or sense whatever it is the Core has latched onto. Absolutely not. Now, we’re just going to move a bit of earth around.

Oh, well, alright, it supposes it could do that, too.

I have it summon a random cube of stone from its Inventory, which falls to the seat of the throne. At the same moment, the room shakes. I jump, glancing around.

Blair raises an eyebrow. “Was that—”

The room shakes again, and a scattering of pebbles falls away from the sealed balcony. Outside, I can hear muted voices. The mental tinnitus has gotten worse. Cautiously, I crack open my mental connections.

Mirzayael and Ollie burst into my mind.

“—S OKAY, I CAN HIT IT ONE MORE TIME,” Ollie is saying.

“Aim here,” Mirzayael replies.

My chest feels tight, and blood rushes in my ears.

“They’re trying to break in,” I tell Blair and Lisari. “They’re worried about me. Please, don’t hurt them.”

Lisari turns to Blair with a disappointed sigh. “See what all your posturing has done! You’ve scared her.”

As if I didn’t find Lisari just as terrifying.

“We can leave,” Blair says. “I’ve seen enough for now.” She fixes me with a look. “I would recommend you don’t disclose our nature to the residents of this city.”

“I think that would be wise.” I agree. Are they really leaving? Just like that? My hand trails off the throne, and I find it’s trembling.

“Oh well,” Lisari says. “I suppose the fun had to come to an end at some point. But don’t worry,” she tells me with a grin. “I’ll be sure to visit again soon.”

That feels more like a threat than a reassurance.

Blair is still holding my gaze when the two of them abruptly vanish.

I stand there for a moment, too mixed up inside to process how I’m feeling. Then another impact shakes the room, and I quickly have the Dungeon Core dissolve all the barricades I’d previously formed.

Ollie and Mirzayael spill in from the balcony.

“FYRE!” Ollie cries. “ARE YOU OKAY? WHO WERE THOSE PEOPLE? MIRZAYAEL WAS REALLY SCARED!”

I let out a shaky breath, and my strength seems to leave me. I wearily lower myself to the ground at the throne’s side.

“Fyre!” Mirzayael sprints across the room. She moves so fast, I distantly realize she’s been holding back during our sparring sessions. She skids to a stop at my side, going down to her knees. Her legs cage me in like a defensive circle of spears. “Are you alright? What happened?”

Her fear is overwhelming, spilling over into me. Or perhaps I’m finally acknowledging my own. She grabs one of my hands, and I lean into her as she pulls me into a hug.

“I’m okay,” I assure them both. “They’re gone now.”

“Who were they?” Mirzayael demands. Now that she’s confirmed I’m safe, her fear is crystalizing into a fierce protectiveness.

I want to feel safe in her arms, but now that the adrenaline of the last several minutes is wearing off, dread is settling heavy in my gut.

“They were gods.”