I See Fire | Wattys 2021/22 Shortlist | ✔

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The rest of the field passed in a blur. I was numb to it now, barely lifting my gaze from Tochtli's back as she trotted onwards. My mind turned over an endless stream of images, snippets of words, and half-formed thoughts that dropped before they got to finish. Something about seeing my fears beginning to materialize blunted their edges. Or maybe that was my doing. We had already suffered losses. We were going to suffer more. The more times Xochi's body-less grave passed through my mind's eye, the more I turned to a grim tally of wins and losses. We would not save everything, or everyone, in this war. We would save as much as we could, and brace for the rest.

It occurred to me that this may not be the healthiest way to think about things, but the alternative—all that fear, all that uncertainty—was unbearable. I took a deep breath and pushed it all aside. We would get through this. If the gods died, I would save Emma. If Grillo Negro died, I would save Tepepia. If all were lost, I would at least save myself and my friends, and if they died... no, that wasn't an option. I tore down the faces surfacing over my thoughts of Grillo Negro, threatening to remove my removal from that fear. We would not lose it all. I would reach the gods and support them, and they would win.

My fingers bore a near-constant tingle now. How many times could I use this magic before Fuego did more than just scorch my hands? And what could I do with it? It was close enough to regular magic to allow summoning, which meant I could probably teleport objects, too. Maybe even myself. Chal said that making, disappearing, and moving things was the most a god could do without spellcasting, small exceptions like shapeshifting and spirit forms aside. Each god had specialties, too, to go with their particular magic. Moving wind or water. Abolishing light to create darkness. Summoning energy in the form of lightning or fire.

The tingle in my hands intensified. Fuego didn't like to act like a normal magic. It didn't like to make or move things. It wanted one thing: to find what it was told to find, and burn it.

What if I was to let it do that?

I plucked a strand of the wind-cropped grass and held it in my palm as I walked. I could feel my magic straining towards it, eager and hungry. Didn't Fuego avoid plants? Or was this me and my toxic grounding again? The grass crumpled into ash at the slightest thought. No blisters on my palm, no unbearable heat. I ripped up a larger clump and tried again. Compared to summoning, burning was easy. Fuego might only want one thing, but it did that one thing frighteningly well.

If burning was easy, maybe I could use more of it before I reached my limit. I had already broken my vow not to use my magic at all, but that vow had been made under very different circumstances. If letting Fuego burn things in a more or less controlled manner got me to the gods faster, I could let it burn. Once I reached them, after all, I would be able stop using it again. Then I could shelve it until I had a grounding that would give me control without the risk of it finishing what it had started, eating my own body from the inside out.

It was only as a sickly sweet, iron tang seeped into my senses that I realized we had reached the end of the field. I lifted my eyes, then had to blink twice and rub them to confirm what I was seeing. Ahead was a river, if it could even be called it that. Sluggish, carmine waters more oozed than flowed between banks caked with brown. The smell left no room for speculation.

It was blood. Completely blood. I had killed and drained large game before—deer, antelope, coywolves—but this was on a whole other level.

Tochtli stopped some ways up the riverbank, and I stopped with her. I kept my breaths shallow, trying to breathe through my mouth only to block out the sheer magnitude of the stench. In the middle of the current, a foot and the curves of a chest and head peeked above the surface. It was a dead soul, dressed in the long-stained clothing of the world before. How long had that person been floating? I retched as it moved. It floundered slowly, trying to move towards the opposite bank. It slowed back to stillness as it drifted out of sight.