A Deadly Bite

43.1 || The Weight of Wings

At first, it blisters. Fire eats its way through Fiesi's flesh and runs rampage, soupy heat flaying his limbs until he's swimming amongst it. Hot pokers stitch fragments of taut skin to cracking bones. He melts, comes apart. His core grows claws that scoop great crevices from all directions, fumbling on emptied vials of energy, carving a bottomless ache into his stomach. Heart and lungs and liver clink and rattle with the fragility of porcelain. His breath evaporates.

A trickle of regret pools stiffly amongst the pain's chaos, though it's quickly swept away as the flame backtracks, remembers who it belongs to, recalls how to soothe. For a moment, he loses track of his feet on the ground, drifting into breezy clouds. He has to grapple with himself to yank those sensations back. He stumbles, catching himself on a wall as air rasps in and out. His skin is doused and left feeling like wet volcanic rock.

He cracks open an eye and then slams it shut. The world still glows, painfully bright. Forehead resting on blissfully cool stone, he pats at his chest, thumbing his ribs and his stomach with a rocky kind of relief. It probably shouldn't be this surprising to merely find he hasn't been ripped in half.

Something whirs and crackles in his ears, and he gives his head a sharp shake. "Rigel," he manages, battling out the name. "D-did it work?"

See for yourself.

Fiesi flinches, spine snapping straight. Rigel's voice has never seemed so loud. It resonates, thrumming in his chest, skating over his bones, encompassing everything. There's a splashed delight to it, flicked out in perfect clarity as if it were Fiesi's own. A grin he didn't call for stretches his lips.

He wipes at his mouth until it obeys him and droops into a more cautious frown. Fear skips across stepping stones, hovered above a deep, sightless pit. Combining flames in this way is so rare and so dangerous that it hasn't been fully understood for generations, and as boldly as he spoke of the concept only minutes earlier, he was clueless as to what to expect. He anticipated bearing a Synté's full power would simply feel like a rush of hot adrenaline, the way it's felt before when Rigel has lent a fraction of his flame in order to add speed and force to Fiesi's abilities. This is something wholly different. He can't twitch a finger without feeling as if there are stars buried in his blood. He can hear his father muttering somewhere down the corridor as he gives chase, and scent every mote of dust, and taste the sulphuric texture to the inside of his mouth. It comes in disorientating waves.

Welcome it. The glittering thrill dancing through Rigel's voice isn't exactly helpful. It whirls in a gleeful storm. He's never sounded nearly this happy in all the time they've known one another. Fiesi can practically picture him with chest puffed out, all smiles and pride, beak tilted like he's on top of the world.

A rod of heat pierces his back -- two, in fact, drawing parallel lines that dizzy him equally. He shakes his head again, hair tickling his ears. It's not feeling particularly welcoming.

Like an outstretched hand left hanging, the warmth of Rigel's beaming smile falters. Then simply relax. Gentler warmth lays over him with the softness of a blanket, peeling away the sharpness of the air until awareness blurs. Allow me to take over. You may rest.

"Wait." He shrugs the blanket off with blind haste, and his feet slam into the ground, knocked out of rhythm; they've already begun to run of their own accord. "I'm fine," he adds, ducking away from Rigel's internal flutter. He regains his balance and picks up speed until the blade-like sound of his father's footsteps finally fades.

If we're going to do this, he tells Rigel, then we do it together, and I get to be in control. I'm not your puppet.

His feet practically float. The effortlessness of it is stunning; despite the overload of flame streaming behind him in a sweating cloak, his exhaustion has vanished entirely. Flame wraps him in its strings, a much-needed crutch. It's a struggle not to lose himself within it and force his eyes to see past it, though its blue glow bounces off every flat of dewy stone.