An Ember Bright

Chapter 6

Ayo. So instead of listing my chapters as "a, b, c" and stuff, I'm going to start making them as standalones. The chapters that are updated together will technically all belong to one, but they'll be labeled as their own. I'm going to go back to my previous chapters and tweak them to make those standalones as well. Okay enough of my excuses, onto the chapter.

The sound of spindling ice forming a cage around me fills my ears alongside the crackle of flames. My hands stay glued to Kaya's body, attempting to staunch the never ending flow of  blood. How can someone who will never take another breath bleed so much? I begin to shake, and for a moment I think it's an earthquake.Then I look down and realize it's my own body trembling, rattling against the wretched combination of ice and fire.

My gaze travels to Kaya's face. The sight of her eyes that will never open again wrenches a scream of anguish from me. A gaping chasm tears in my heart and my grief pours in as my chest heaves with sobs. A torrent of fire echoes my agony as flames leap around the ice. I bend over her body, shielding her face from the sparks. The ground smolders beneath me as the heat dries my tears, scorching my sorrow.

A piece of ice slams into me, sending me sprawling away from Kaya's corpse. I scramble back towards her but my hands and feet a jolt of freezing cold blankets them. The sudden stop nearly tears my shoulders from their sockets. The memory of the same injury resurfaces, from another moment in time where someone I loved was snatched away, hits me with such force that a cry, so inhumane it can't possibly belong to me, reverberates through the smoke-choked air.

Layers of frost begin to encase my body, thinner than the ones grounding me but thick enough to remain solid. My arms are roughly grabbed and I'm heaved further away from the body. I shriek and try to return to her, but it's too thick and too strong and too cold.

The web of ice melts in on itself and shrinks away from Kaya, slithering around me and reforming. The flames advance on the body and lick at Kaya's corpse, singing her hair and torching her skin.

"No!" I writhe in the ice, screaming at the fire to cease, to recede, to stop incinerating the lifeless body that holds so much of me. But with eah cry, with each struggle, the heat only intensifies and burns brighter, destroying everything before it.

"Stop it! Leave her alone!" This shouldn't be happening, this can't be happening. Fire doesn't exist here. It can't. Aurelians can't wield it. No one can, not since...

I whip my head around, fury blazing hotter than the fire surrounding it. "You," I whisper to Valentina standing by the carriage,her hands outstretched. "You stole it from him!" I lunge at her, but the ice and hands encase me and her brow creases. "You wicked, selfish -"

Something cool collides with my head and the world goes black.

*                        *                        *

A jostling sensation of wheels stumbling over rocks jolts me awake. My body is twisted to fit into a metal frame dangling above the ground.. A rough black tarp covers me and smooth wood rubs against my back as I bounce in the metal. Through the gaps in the wiring below me, the dirt trail of the forest speeds by. I try to move only to find ice imprisoning me from the neck down. Only then do I feel the freezing cold leaking into my back from the carriag.

My eyes travel down to my frozen hands, to the blood staining the ice there and I'm struck with a sharp cascade of desperation and anger. I slam against the back of the carriage repeatedly. "Let me out!" I yell, praying for someone to hear. But even if they did, who would help? No one would dare involve themselves in a captured Standard. No one would risk their lives to save their own family if they were arrested, let alone a stranger. Still, my screams continue and I pound against the wood. Cracks web through the ice and I throw myself against the back harder.