They attracted many curious stares but no complaints as they walked through the crowds of villagers down the mountain. Still, as the groups of people started to thin, they moved parallel to the slope away from them before descending further. Celeste claimed that moving sideways was less suspicious than backwards, and James could see the logic in that.

He turned to them just after they were out of eyesight.

“You don’t have to come,” he said to Celeste.

“I know,” she said, tightening the laces of her shoes. She stood up. “So. We doing this?”

He gave her a flat expression, then turned to Tor.

“Uh. Not sure if you can understand me, but we’re heading towards the fire to try and stop it. You don’t have to come. It’ll be dangerous.”

Tor cocked his head, looked up the hill towards where Kiri had been, then back at James. There was a firmness in his eyes. James didn’t know how much Tor understood, but he could tell that the creature was determined to stick by their side.

The trip down the mountain was much quicker, though much harder on the legs. James pushed the pain to the back of his head. He didn’t have the time to slow down, not with Kiri still suffering behind him. His pace was quick. Celeste would have called it reckless if the circumstances were different, but today he only heard the occasional curse when she stumbled.

As the hours passed, the orange glow started to take up more of their view, lighting up the clouds like a wall of color. James heard it before he saw it. Faint crackling like twigs breaking. He immediately slowed, nearly causing Celeste to run into him. Tor, for all his attempts to stop, did run into Celeste, sending the three of them tumbling forward. They all came to a stop after several rotations. James felt the heat before any pain that the fall had caused. Looking up, a glow brighter than any tree started to peek through the gaps in the trees. The three of them waited, holding their breath, but the fire didn’t advance. Slowly, James approached. Celeste grabbed his arm, but didn’t hold him back, instead walking cautiously beside him. Tor approached as well, though his back was hunched in what James assumed was a sign of aggression. The sound of the fire became clearer as he approached, but so did another noise. Water? James emerged from the tree line to find himself at the river that they had passed on their journey up the mountain. In all the chaos of the trip, he had almost forgotten his near drowning. What scared him more than the water, however, was the wall of flames on the other side. It was like he was back in the Divers’ training room watching them scorch one of the walls while he hid behind shelving, only a thousand-fold. The heat made him sweat, and the crackling of the forest sounded like screams to him. It roared in his ears, seeming to come from all around him. It took him a few moments to realize that it was coming from all around him.

James yelled at Celeste and Tor to run but was too late. The fire circled them with a vengeance, as if it had a will of its own. They had only made it a few steps back towards the forest when the flickering of flame became visible through the gaps of the trees. The fire must have jumped the river—something James didn’t even know was possible—and spread around them without them knowing. Smoke filled the air making James’s eyes burn. Celeste went into a coughing fit next to him, and Tor made a high-pitched noise that James assumed was a whimper. They slowly backed away from the tree line until they were pressed up against the edge of the river, which roared behind them despite the chaos that surrounded it.

Celeste looked at James and he saw true fear in her eyes. Tor nudged him to get his attention, then wagged his head in the direction of the river.

“We can’t swim!” James said. “We’ll die if we go in there.”

Tor bit onto a piece of his clothing and tried to pull him closer to the river. James resisted. Celeste couldn’t even speak through her coughing. As James turned to check on her, he felt something large hit his body. He tumbled backwards and caught a glimpse of Tor’s body looming high above him. Something didn’t hit him; Tor had pushed him. In a moment of sheer panic, he realized that he was falling into the river. His mind flashed back to the last time he had greeted this river. The visions of spinning water. The desire to reach the surface only to be pushed back down again by the current. The feeling of weakness.

He hit, feeling the cool, dangerous embrace of the water once more—a sensation that he would have been fine never feeling again. After a split second of stillness, the chaos began. His body spun, pushed by the current and unable to find purchase on anything. Just as he was about to fear the worst, a set of paws grabbed him, twisting him above the water. James grabbed Tor in a death grip and was surprised to see Celeste doing the same. Either he had knocked her in as well, or she had jumped in after him. James felt a spike of anger rise through him. Not only had Tor endangered him, he had endangered his sister. If he wasn’t the only thing keeping them alive, then he’d… well he didn’t know what he’d do. Maybe yell at him a whole bunch. Regardless, he was angry. So angry, in fact, that he hardly realized when the smoke began to thin and the heat began to dissipate. The river had begun to curve downhill, taking them behind the edge of the burning fire.

Light lit up the sky, stunning James momentarily. He almost thought that it was just the fire intensifying, but it was much too bright for that. He vaguely saw the outline of something in the sky, but it vanished as quickly as it came, leaving James with only the sight of the fire shrinking behind him.

He was still fuming when Tor dragged them to shore, but all complaints died on his lips as he looked out over the river bank. Ash. An entire field—no—an entire valley of it. He looked down at his feet, noticing they were submerged in the ash. It clung to his shoes and clothes but that didn’t very much bother him. His clothes had long ago passed the point of being ruined. He followed the layer of grayness out in front of him for several dozen feet before it all just turned to blackness, the wall of flames that simmered behind him didn’t shed enough light for him to see further than a couple dozen feet in front of him. With all the plants and trees burned away, he saw nothing but darkness. There were specks of light from pieces of bark or trees that were only half burned, but their light amounted to that of a distant star—noticeable, but not enough to light up the world.

James felt a deep sense of emptiness, as if he had lost something that could never be regained. Tor came up beside him letting out a grinding metallic whimper. James scratched his head.

“I know, buddy. I know,” he said, staring out into the darkness.

“We’ll stop them,” Celeste said, coming up beside him. It would seem that her coughing fit had passed, though she looked exhausted.

James wanted to agree, but he suddenly felt small, the vast valley of emptiness putting his own place in all of this into perspective. He was just a kid getting involved in something much larger than himself. This didn’t frighten him as much as he thought it should. Instead, it simply brought a sense of reality to him. Perhaps it was futile, but regardless he was still going to try. His parents gave everything they had to fight against Captain Shamran, and James felt content knowing he could do the same.

“What do we do?” Celeste asked, her tired eyes turning to James.

James pondered that question while he stared at the darkness and its glowing dots.

What, indeed? James thought to himself.

It was likely that Shamran had people working with him, so a frontal assault wouldn’t work. They would have to be sneaky, which meant they had to find Shamran before he found them.

Easier said than done, James thought, looking out into the sea of darkness.

The speckled lights seemed to taunt him, emitting just enough light to show themselves to the world, but not enough to shed any light on their surroundings. James glared at one in particular—bright, white, and... moving!

“Get down!” James hissed, pulling Celeste down with him as he ducked.

“What is it?” Celeste asked, crouching to the ground.

“One of those lights is moving.”

Celeste popped her head up enough to see what James had spotted. A small yet bright light danced in the distance before disappearing into the void. Celeste squinted, making out the faint outline of a hill, and, scanning the field, she spotted several others as well.

“It disappeared behind that hill in the distance,” she said, pointing. “What do you think it was?”

James Shrugged. “Let’s find out.”

He figured it was better to approach the mysterious light in a wide arc, rather than in a straight line. James nearly tripped several times, unable to see the changing slope in front of him. It would seem that Celeste’s eyesight was a fair amount better than his in the dark because he heard her constantly whispering warnings to him of approaching inclines or drop-offs. Tor trotted along beside them, seemingly undisturbed by his current situation. His tongue hung loosely towards the ground, jostling about as he walked.

Celeste froze at the top of one of the ridges that swept through the valley. She motioned for James to stop and pointed off into the distance. James squinted in the direction she indicated and spotted the same dancing light as before. It was stationary now, and he could see the occasional silhouette that passed in front of it, one of which wore a large tri-corn hat.

Captain Shamran, James thought with a growl.

James felt his heart quicken. He looked down, more confused than scared. He thought he was past fear, but it would seem that fear was an emotion that wasn’t easily left behind.

James found that it was becoming more and more difficult to see them, even despite the light being present. With a surge of hope, he realized that the flames burning the trees were beginning to weaken. Despite their distance from the wall of flames, it was clear that it had been contributing to their visibility, even if only slightly. But James wasn’t complaining. He’d gladly be left in pure darkness if it meant that the fire was out. However, any hopefulness he had gained slipped away as he heard Shamran’s voice from below.

“The fire is dying out! Get off your lazy rears and start it up again! I want those kids flushed out by the end of the hour!”

“Well considering the flame thrower has been running all day and is prone to blowing up when overheated, I’m not too keen to strap it to my back just yet, Mr. Captain,” Sven’s voice said through the darkness. James could almost picture the nonchalant smirk that he was sure was painted across his face.

“He’s right. We’ve already used all the fuel that the other two flame throwers contained. We need to make this one last, which means not blowing it up,” Charlie said. His voice was dry and hollow.

“You both worry too much. They’ve blown up on my back on several occasions, usually when I get a bit too carried away. Only left me with a few burns though. Nothing crazy.” James narrowed his eyes at the sound of Duke’s voice.

“Yeah, and on each occasion, we had to spend weeks fixing the flame throwers. We wait,” Charlie said, forcing command into his voice.

“I’ll be giving the commands, boy!” Shamran said, anger rising into his voice.

James and Celeste sat tensely as a deafening silence lingered in the air.

“And what is your command, sir,” Charlie asked, using sir as more of an insult than anything.

“We… we wait thirty minutes, then start burning again! I don’t want her slipping away from us!”

“Yes, and burning her alive is such a better alternative.”

James’s eyes widened, and he found himself standing up. He knew that voice. It was… It was Jarl’s voice. A thud reached his ears, followed by a grunt.

“Shut it. You’re lucky to be alive traitor,” Shamran said. “Besides… I’m fairly certain that girl can’t even be killed. If she can make a dead seed grow, then she can survive a fire.”

A harsh, labored laugh made its way through the air.

“The Shamran that I knew was never so foolish. What if your wrong? What if the forest goes dark?”

“It is a necessary risk for our people,” Shamran said after a few moments of silence. “There is no other way. We must survive.”

As if to highlight his words, a bright flash of light shot through the sky. The valley lit up as if the sun had finally won its war against the clouds. In that nearly blinding light, James saw it—the flamethrower, resting against a charred stump of a tree a distance to the right of the group. He also spotted something much more frightening—Duke staring directly at him with narrowed eyes.

“The boy is here!” Duke yelled. There was glee in his voice.