FSE

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The smell of cooking roused her from her slumber. Meat. Or something that smelled like it. She lifted her head from where it had rested on her arm and peered over her shoulder at the fire. Roasting above the flames was a skinned and almost burnt looking rabbit. At least, she hoped it was a rabbit. Groaning, Alcmene sat up and brushed her hair from her eyes.

“Good morning,” Manawyhn greeted her with a grin. “I trust you slept well?”

She scowled at him and dug her heels into her eyes, rubbing away the drowsiness that remained. “You are not allowed,” she grumbled behind her hands, “to be so cheerful in the morning.”

His light chuckle made her frown. “Not a morning person? That’s alright. I’ll be happy for both of us.”

“I’d rather you weren’t,” she said, dropping her hands into her lap. She sighed heavily and started to tightly roll her simple bedroll. Once it was contained, she dumped it unceremoniously into the cart beside his own then set about preparing her big horse for travel.

“Don’t you think you ought to eat before we go?” her friend asked. “You’re going to need your strength. We have a long day ahead of us.”

She shook her head, looking back at him. “We can eat while we ride. Hurry up, please. The longer we wait, the farther ahead they’re going to get.”

“Our horses aren’t built for speed,” he reminded her. “Even if we leave now, they’re going to get farther away in any case.”

She nodded at that, patting her horse’s neck gently as she scowled at her friend. “They cant know that. They will assume we have fast horses and will want to get back to the desert as quick as possible.”

“You know I wont let that happen.”

She sighed and leaned forward, pressing her forehead against her big animal. She wanted to yell and scream. She took a calming breath and looked at him. “If they get to the desert, they are going to disappear. We’ll never find them. Your power, that black magic is a selfish magic. I know you cannot give it to someone else. You may be able to use it to give yourself more energy when you’re tired, but the same cannot be said for our horses.”

Slowly he nodded then shrugged his shoulders. “I was hoping you wouldn’t give it so much thought.” He hauled himself to his feet, both rabbits-on-a-stick on his hands. “We’ll eat on the way.”

She nodded in agreement and held her hand palm out toward the fire. The tongues of flame leapt from the pit into her hand and dissipated almost instantly, leaving the fire pit cold. Without another word, she leapt up onto the back of her horse. She had to use her wings in assistance, but once comfortable on the beasts back, she took the reins in one hand and an offered rabbit in the other.

Then they were off. Alcmene ate her rabbit in silence, despite Manawyhn’s many attempts at conversation. She still needed to finish waking up. It was only when she’d picked most of the meat from the animal’s bones and discarded the remains in the bamboo that she finally began to feel alive enough to talk.

“Why did you take the mule?” she asked, looking down at her companion sitting in the cart with a smile on his face. “I would have thought, being a man, you would have wanted the big horse instead.”

The human smirked up at her and shrugged. “The air up there is way too thin for me. You’ve got wings, I’m sure you’re used to it. Me, I like an altitude rich with breathable air!”

Her brow furrowed and she pondered that. It was of course a joke, but she had to admit, she didn’t understand the humor. It really didn’t say anything at all about any reason whatsoever for him not wanting to ride the horse. Height wasn’t that much an issue, even if her feet were almost eye level with him and-…

She blinked as the realization hit her. She turned to stare at him again then grinned. “You’re afraid of heights!”

“What?” he asked, shaking his head and looking anywhere but at her. “I never said anything about being afraid of heights. I don’t know what you mean.”

“You are!” she said with a mirthful whoop. “You’re afraid of heights!”

He tried to protest again, albeit halfheartedly, but she didn’t hear him over her laughter.

“This is going to be fun. I am going to torment you endlessly if you ever do anything I don’t agree with.”

“Wait till I find your ticklish spot,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

“I’m not ticklish,” she said with a grin. She waved a dismissive hand then looked forward at the bamboo clusters all around them on the road. “If I were on my own, I could catch them…” she thought aloud.

“If you caught them on your own, they would skin you alive.”

She didn’t want to admit it, but he was right. Especially without her scepter. If they had it, then they had an advantage over her, even with her own innate power. “I could fly ahead, find them and track them until you caught up.”

“And if they caught you?” he asked, shaking his head. “Trust me, Alcmene. I wont let them get away. We’re going to get your scepter and go home. They aren’t going to get away with this.”

She harrumphed and nodded. “Fine.” She hated leaving it out of her own control. She wanted to be hot on their heels. She wanted to pressure them until they slipped up. She wanted to watch the life bleed out of their eyes with her hands at their throats. She wanted to watch the thieving bastards burn. “I really hope you know what you’re talking about.”

“Have I ever let you down?” he asked. “I promise, everything is going to be fine. I’m going to help you make sure of that.”

She nodded her agreement at that, though she didn’t want to believe him. She did, but she wanted to feel bitter. But ultimately, he was right. He’d never let her down and she trusted him implicitly. She opened her mouth to retort, but an acrid stench filled her nostrils. She winkled her nose and stared down at Manawyhn. “Do you smell that?”

He nodded slowly, casting his gaze slowly around. “It smells like fire. Wood and burning flesh.”

She lifted her legs and set her feet squarely in the middle of her big horse’s back then leapt into the air. Her wings spread wide and slapped powerfully downward. She soared up through the canopy above and saw the source instantly. Ahead of them, around a bend in the road, a large plume of smoke reached into the heavens above.

“Manawyhn!” she called down at her companion. She pointed in the direction of the pillar of inky black smoke and added “Something’s on fire! Something big!”

Without waiting for a confirmation from her friend below, she rushed forward, beating at the air with her wings. Her eyes teared as she rushed into the cool morning air, but she blinked them clear. As he got closer, she saw that the ‘something’ was a small village.

Every single building was engulfed in flames. Just outside the scorching perimeter, a few dozen people stood shielding their eyes and their faces from the intense heat and light of the flames. Alcmene landed nearby and rushed forward. “What happened? What’s going on here!?”

All eyes turned on her and a wrinkled old woman pointed. “Men! Dark men! They set fire to our homes! All of them, for no reason!” She lifted her hands, shielding her slanted eyes once again. “Help us! There are still people in there! Good people!”

Alcmene squinted toward the fire. The heat was intense, but she didn’t feel any danger from the flames clawing at the structure. Even without her scepter, she felt at one with the flames as much as she did with the clouds beneath her wings.

“Where?” she asked, shaking her head slowly. It would be pointless to try to find all of them by going house to house.

“Third house down,” the woman said, pointing at a narrow passage between two infernos.

She took a breath then sprinted forward. As she reached the gap between the fires, the sweltering heat assaulted her, beating down on her and making it hard to breathe. She coughed at first, then glanced down at her arms. The red-laced fabric she wore did not char or burn. Of course, the alsilrite laced in the fabric.

More than that, her skin was equally unscathed. Good, suppose she was still tied to her scepter then, even without it in her hands. She hoped it would last long enough for her to save the people in question.

She stumbled through the burning street, squinting against the blinding light of the fires. It was hard to make buildings out in here. Each fire bled into the next. Faintly, she could make out shapes in the flames. Hard angles that didn’t belong in the fluid world of the inferno.

She counted each structure as she shambled past. The first set of buildings were easy enough to identify. The second set were staggered. It was only then that she realized she didn’t know on which side of the street she was supposed to be looking. When she came to the third pair of buildings down, where the old woman had directed her, she froze.

Right or left? She turned her head this way and that. Which one was the right one? “HELLO!?” she bellowed, but she could barely her herself over the roar of the flames. If anyone heard her or answered her, she had no way of knowing. Her heart hammered in her chest as panic began to set in. Right or left!?

Finally, she turned, bolting into the structure to her left. There was no door as the structure was very nearly completely consumed with flames. She rushed from room to room on the bottom floor, bypassing the stairs up completely. If anybody was up stairs, it was too late for them.

When she came to the kitchen, she was sure all hope was lost. But there in the corner, there was another shape, a perfect circle that didn’t belong in the chaos of the fire. She peered at it for several moments, then knelt down and gave the ring a tug. The metal clasp lifted away from the wood, but the trap door itself collapsed inward.

A shrill scream touched her ears and her heart leapt. “Hello!?” she called. Down below, the stairs were unconsumed, though the wood was black and charred. A pair of faces appeared They stared up at her, laced with terror. She waved toward them, a new worry setting deep in her belly. “Hurry! Climb up and I’ll get you out of here!” she yelled.

The older of the two faces, a woman covered in soot and fear, shook her head and said something, but she couldn’t hear it.

“Hurry! Before the house comes down on all of us!”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then the woman turned and urged the smaller of the two up the stairs. The child climbing quickly toward Alcmene couldn’t be more than ten or eleven years old. She helped the child up into the raging inferno and hugged her close against her ruby traveling clothes.

A moment later, the woman had climbed up and was crouched down, clutching at her daughter tightly. Alcmene knelt with them and leaned in close. “Stay beneath my wings!” she yelled. “I can protect you from the fire, but you have to stay close!”

As the woman nodded in understanding, Alcmene stood up and wrapped her big black wings around the two humans, hugging them close against herself. She held them with her arms, keeping track of them by tactile feel as she began to shuffle toward the door. It was awkward at first, but as the will to escape settled over the humans, their feet found a pattern.

As they neared the front door, the supports around the doorframe gave way and the wall and some of the floor above it came crashing down. All three of them yelped, screaming in terror as their exit was blocked.

Alcmene’s eyes darted left and right. Somewhere nearby, another loud rash signaled that more of the house was coming down around them. They were trapped. She could get out, but her wards couldn’t without suffering serious injury and burns.

She was not about to let that happen.

Ducking her head beneath her wings, she pressed her face close to the woman’s ear and yelled “HANG ON!”

Both pairs of arms wrapped tightly around her waist and Alcmene spread her wings wide. Both humans immediately began to scream as the fire and heat assaulted their unprotected bodies. Not for long, she wanted to assure them as her wings flapped downward powerfully. Up and out of the hole created by the collapsing wall, Alcmene carried her human wards into the inky blackness filling the air above the fire. She had to guess which direction was out, but since she had been facing the front door, she could guess fairly accurately that they needed to go to the right.

She flapped hard, speeding them out of the smoke and into safety. As she landed beside the crowd of displaced humans, the woman and child collapsed. Their bodies had endured a great heat, but their clothes were only faintly charred and their skin appeared none the worse for ware.

Before she could kneel down to see to their well being, a pair of arms wrapped around her. “ALCMENE!” her friend’s voice called. “What in the hells did you think you were doing!?”

She tried to push him away so she could tend to the humans she’d rescued, but already the crowd had enveloped them, crying in both joy and shared horror at what was happening. She’d saved the woman and her child, but their homes were all gone.

In a stupor, she turned to stare at Manawyhn and shook her head. “I couldn’t leave them there. I had to save them.”

The human shook his head, looking past her to the people huddled nearby. He was at a loss for several moments, but then she felt his hands on her wings. “Goddess, Alcmene… what you did was stupid! Your wings! Look at them! You’ve burnt all of the feathers and the ones that aren’t burnt are covered in ash! Each and every one of them is black!”

She turned, staring at her feathered appendages for several moments, trying to figure out how he could tell that her wings had in fact suffered that kind of damage. Her feathers were always bla-…

She blinked and began to laugh lightly. “Very funny…” she said, then turned and looked back at the fire consuming these peoples’ livelihoods. “They did this. Those bastards with my scepter. They set the town on fire to delay us.”

Manawyhn nodded, patting her shoulder gently. “We’ll get it back. I promise…. Why are you smiling?”

Alcmene turned her attention back to him and shook her head with a sardonic laugh. “They’re afraid,” she said. “They’re afraid because we’re catching up.”

He blinked at that then looked back the direction they had been travelling. Slowly, a grin blossomed over his lips and he nodded slowly. “I believe you are right…”

The old woman Alcmene had spoken to before hobbled up to them, tears streaking her wrinkled cheeks. “You saved my daughter! My granddaughter! Thank you!”

Alcmene nodded, pressing a hand to her chest. “It was the least I could do. I cannot sit idly by while innocents are in danger.” Especially not when that danger is because of her.

“Thank you all the same,” the woman said.

“What will you do now?” she asked the elderly soul. “There is a town a day’s ride toward the shore. Saril. The people there are kind.”

The old woman shook her head slowly, a heavy sigh on her lips. “We will return to the capital. We will return to Ken-qi and start over. All we have…” she turned her slanted eyes toward the fire.

Alcmene nodded slowly and reached out to draw the old woman into a hug. “I understand. Send word to the doujin. The Wardens will send what aid they can.”

The old woman gently pat her cheek, shaking her head again. “Oh, sweet child. The Wardens do not concern themselves with the likes of we simple folk. They are only concerned with the affairs of kings and countries.”

Before Alcmene could protest, the old crone had disappeared back into the crowd. She turned, looking at her companion, searching for any sort of reassurance.

“She’s not wrong,” he said sadly. “The Wardens don’t care about a village burning down until the lord of the land reports it, and even then only if it is an act of aggression by a large gang or rival kingdom.”

She wanted to deny it, but deep in her heart she knew he was right. She tried to justify it with numbers. There were far too few Wardens to allow them to worry about every crime in Aslennor. There was barely enough of them to maintain the peace between the multitude of races in the continent.

“I know, but…”

“Let’s be on our way,” Manawyhn said, urging her toward the mule and draft horse. “There is nothing more we can do for these people. Besides,” he said as he climbed up into the cart, “let’s show those thieves that they’re right to be afraid of us.”

Alcmene cast one last look at the group of displaced innocents. She wanted to stay and help them, but the sooner they got her scepter back, the less chance there was that this would repeat itself farther down the road.

“Alright,” she said. She climbed up onto her horse and nudged him into a heavy trot. Even as they rode away from the hellish inferno, she couldn’t help but wonder. How many souls had been lost in the fire? How many poor innocents had burned because she couldn’t keep track of her own responsibilities? Did she even deserve that responsibility any longer?

She cast one last glance over her shoulder at the pillar of smoke behind them and sighed heavily. Maybe she didn’t deserve the power and responsibility that came with that scepter, but the men who took it from her deserved it far less.