Into the Fire (The Elemental Wars, Book 1)

Chapter One

October 23,2002 — Transition Year Nineteen

The bomb broke over Lyarne's valley, smoke and debris flying through the blue,cloud-smudged sky like pieces of grit blown across paper. By the time Mieshka Renaud snapped her head up, the explosion had spread like a gritty gray hand, its distended fingers hugging the slight curve of the city's mage-powered defense shield. The sound concussed through the backs of Uptown's skyscrapers a few seconds later, loud enough to make her skin and bones feel the vibration.

Few in Uptown reacted to the raid. It was, she'd found, a point of pride for them. The war had been going on for the better part of a decade now—most of Mieshka's sixteen-year life—and Westray, her country, was not winning. Outside of Lyarne's shield borders, only Terremain, the next city over and the one that guarded the mountain valley's mouth, remained unoccupied. Barely fifteen percent of what had once been Westran territory.

But Lyarne's shield was unbreakable. Nothing got past. And everyone knew that.

Which meant it was easy to pick out the refugees in the crowd. People who, like her, couldn't quite ignore the raids when they came.

Pressing her fingers into the straps of her backpack, she watched the smoke spread.

Down in the valley, the buildings of Lower Lyarne glittered in the sun. The lower city was less developed than the busting, metropolitan-esque Uptown,full of residential burgs and big box warehouse outlets. She'd been down there only once in the few months she'd been here. A lake, its waters gleaming in the distance, straddled the farthest, eastern most point of the mountain valley, surrounded by cul-de-sacs on one side,a cookie-cutter suburban settlement on another, and a mix of forest and farmland where one part of the mountain range bent the land up at its east. Most of the reason Lyarne was still free, and so defensible, were the mountains. Young, steep, and sharp, Westray had exploded the fifteen roads than had once led through them, makingt hem impassable except by air. And anything coming in by air was repelled by the shield.

A glint flashed tothe left of one of the taller peaks, a tiny fleck of light that mighthave been the bomber returning to its base.

Mieshka repressed a shiver, closed her mind to it, and swiveled away.

Her friend waited next to the subway stairs. Robin was a new friend—anew friend who insisted on calling her 'Meese' instead of Mieshka, a move that the rest of the class had been quick to echo. A couple inches shorter than Mieshka's five foot eight, the two shared the same pale skin tone but were otherwise opposite. Robin had black hair to Mieshka's orange, blue eyes to Mieshka's brown, and a loud attitude that sometimes steamrolled right over Mieshka's small voice.

She didn't lookup when Mieshka joined her, only turned toward the subway stair, her attention still glued to the screen of her phone. "I see the war's still on, hey?"

Mieshka winced. Even after two months here, it still hurt to hear about the war, and Lyarne's blase attitude toward it chafed at her emotions—which was stupid. They'd come here to escape the war, not have it follow them. They'd wanted the attitude.

But some pain was just too hard to push back.

Perhaps sensing something, Robin glanced up from her phone, eyes bright and alert as they found Mieshka's face. She hesitated. Then, still hesitant, she lifted an arm up and put a hand on Mieshka's shoulder. "Don't worry. Nothing gets through the shield."

Mieshka's fingernails bit into the palm of her hand. Images flashed at the edge of her mind, memories from Terremain of news stories and snippets of video when the bombs did get through, the percussion of hundreds of bombs testing the weakening shield all at once, exploding so close to the city center that it took thirty minutes for their smoke to clear, the tense,huddled waiting in her school's underground shelter.