40 – My Flame

Smulknefire unhinged his jaws, and a blinding white beam streamed out as a single, concentrated line of plasma, silent and surgical in a way that made every previous torrent feel like a mere warning.

Ashley acted on pure instinct. With the vial still clenched tightly in her other hand, she drove the staff directly into its trajectory, unleashing an [Arcane Lance] from the diamond tip in a bolt of piercing blue light.

The two forces met dead center, but there was no blast, no burst of released power. They drove into each other and held, compressing into a single point of unbearable brightness.

The air around the impact point caved inward, dragged out of shape by the pressure of the collision. The staff bucked in Ashley’s grip hard enough to wrench her wrist, sending the recoil up her arm and into her shoulder like a hammer blow.

“So this is your real fire?” she said, baring her teeth against the pressure. “I knew you could burn hotter.”

She drove her wings down again and again, fighting to hold position while the backlash shoved against her whole body and tried to tear her out of the air.

Smulknefire pressed the assault, and the point of impact began to creep toward her.

Stray lashes of white and blue energy snapped out from the collision, carving bright scars across the floor and ceiling wherever they struck.

One bolt tore into a ledge and split it open. Another whipped sideways into the Eternal Flame, and the formation answered with a deep vibration that ran through its whole impossible height, turning the red light inside it uneven for the span of a heartbeat.

Ashley forced another surge of mana through the staff, but the dragon’s beam kept advancing inch by inch.

It forced her backward through the air, the glare of the Eternal Flame flashing at the edge of her vision. She strained against the overwhelming pressure, every beat barely enough to keep her from being driven into the glowing mass behind her.

Then she saw the angle.

Smulknefire was not only overpowering her. He was steering her. Each beat of his wings carried him a fraction to the side, forcing the locked beams to turn with him, narrowing her path until the Eternal Flame filled more and more of the space behind her.

He was pinning her between the fire and the crystal.

Ashley’s jaw clenched.

“Oh, that’s dirty.”

Ashley stopped fighting the push.

Folding her wings for a single heartbeat, she let the sheer momentum of the beam drive her backward, surrendering just enough ground to reach the crystal far faster than Smulknefire anticipated.

His amber gaze sharpened as she rocketed toward the crystal, the brilliant white energy still locked against the blue light pouring from her staff.

Then Ashley twisted sideways.

The beam tore past her, striking the Eternal Flame precisely where she had been a breath before.

It shuddered under the impact, its inner illumination flaring in chaotic, uneven pulses.

“Do you think my fire can wound the Eternal Flame?” Smulknefire asked.

The crystal pulsed behind her, answering him in slow, uneven waves.

“It is what feeds it.”

Ashley did not answer. She was already moving, the vial clenched tight in one hand while two fingers of the other snapped toward the undulating surface.

She pulled.

Where Smulknefire’s fire had struck, the surface of the Eternal Flame was still oscillating, rolling in slow, heavy ripples. Ashley caught those distortions before they could settle and tore them outward.

Shards of crystallized flame broke free from the Eternal Flame and whipped around Ashley in a widening arc, each one pulling thin threads of light in its wake before rocketing across the chamber.

They struck Smulknefire’s chest and wings in rapid succession, too small to truly wound a creature that vast, but dense enough to break the rhythm of his flight. Wherever they hit, the scales blistered and smoked, seared by contact with the Eternal Flame itself.

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Smulknefire’s nearest wing buckled. His entire bulk lurched sideways under the uneven impact, and the white beam swung with him, cutting away from Ashley before vanishing into the cavern’s distant recesses.

Smulknefire righted himself with a slow, grinding sweep of his wings. When he turned his head back toward her, the incandescent glow behind his teeth had gone dark.

“Clever,” he rumbled, and the word carried no praise at all.

“You deceive my eye with lies,” Smulknefire said, his voice cutting through the air like a blade. “That horned thing you call servant turns its blade upon me.”

“What? I didn’t—”

“It carries a weapon it should not possess.” His head swept toward her, low and fast. “A weapon that has tasted my blood before. Do not waste my patience with denial.”