Coughing, eyes streaming from the smoke, Thalia pushed deeper into the burning structure.Visibility was poor, the smoke twisting and coiling like living shadows, obscuring everything beyond a few paces.She moved by memory, counting rows, tracing the path toward the center where the tribunal's platform had stood.
A thunderous crack split the air as a support beam gave way, crashing down mere feet from where she stood.Embers scattered across her uniform, tiny points of searing pain as they burned through fabric to the skin beneath.She batted them away, forcing herself forward despite the growing certainty that this mission was suicide.If Roran still lived, he wouldn't for long.Neither would she, if she remained in this firetrap.
Then, through a momentary thinning of smoke, she saw him.Roran knelt where she had last seen him, still shackled before the tribunal's platform, his head bowed as if in prayer or exhaustion.The dais where the instructors had sat was empty, the high-backed chairs toppled or consumed by flame.But Roran remained, abandoned to die in the conflagration.A death by fire, rather than ice.
"Roran!"she shouted, surging forward.
His head snapped up at her voice, eyes widening with shock as she appeared through the smoke."Thalia?"His voice was hoarse, disbelieving."You came back?”
She dropped to her knees beside him, hands going immediately to the shackles that bound his wrists.They were crafted from ice-metal, engraved with runes meant to suppress his storm magic.The metal was warm to the touch, almost hot from the surrounding fire, but the cuffs showed no sign of weakening.
"I’m getting you out," she said, examining the restraints.There was no lock, no visible mechanism—the cuffs had been sealed with cryomancy, the metal fused seamlessly closed."Can you break free?Use your magic?"
Roran's laugh was hollow, edged with bitterness."If I could, don't you think I would have?"He nodded toward the runes etched into the cuffs."It turns out that Virek’s anti-magic runes do work, after all.Hell of a time to learn that."
Another section of the roof collapsed behind them, sending a wave of heat rolling over them.Sweat streamed down Thalia's face, dripping into her eyes, mingling with tears brought on by the thick smoke.
"Then we need to get these off," she muttered, turning the cuffs in her hands.The runes were intricate, a complex pattern of symbols that seemed to shift and flow beneath her touch.Or perhaps that was just her vision, blurred by smoke and exhaustion.
She closed her eyes, focusing instead on her other senses—particularly the one that had served her so well in the forge.Current-sensing, the ability to detect and interpret the flows of energy within metals, plants, everything that came from the earth, and would return to it.It had made her a natural at metallurgy, at understanding the properties of different alloys, at knowing exactly where to strike to shape a blade or reinforce a shield.
Under her fingertips, the ice-metal cuffs hummed with a subtle energy.She traced the flow of it, following the currents as they wove through the metal, channeled and directed by the runes.The pattern was complex but not unfamiliar—similar to the protective engravings she had studied on advanced ice-forged weapons.
Every pattern had its weak point, its fulcrum.In the forge, she had learned to identify these points by touch, to know intuitively where pressure or heat would cause metal to yield.Virek was the continent’s best cryomancer, but he wasn’t a smith; there had to be a weakness in this metal.
There.A nexus where multiple currents converged, where the runes formed a tight spiral of energy.If she could disrupt this point, the entire pattern might unravel, and the storm within Roran would be free.
Thalia opened her eyes, fixing her gaze on Roran's."This is going to hurt," she warned.
His mouth quirked in what might have been a smile under different circumstances."More than burning to death?"
She shot him an aggrieved look, then positioned the jagged remnant of her sword over the spot she had identified, angling it carefully."Ready?"
Roran nodded, his jaw set.Thalia brought the hilt down in a sharp strike, putting all her strength behind it.The impact jarred her arm to the shoulder, but she felt something give beneath the blow—not the metal itself, but the energy pattern within it.A hairline fracture appeared in the cuff, a flaw in the otherwise perfect surface.
"Again," she said, repositioning the hilt.
The second blow was harder, more desperate.This time, the crack widened, spreading along the contours of the runes.Roran hissed in pain as the edge of the cuffs dug into his wrist.The air around them seemed to vibrate, charged with released energy.
"One more," Thalia gasped, her arms trembling with effort.The heat was becoming unbearable, the smoke so thick she could barely see Roran's face inches from her own.
The third strike hit true.The cuff shattered, fragments of ice-metal scattering across the wooden platform.Immediately, she moved to the second restraint, working faster now, her fingers finding the weakness in seconds.One blow, then another, and the second cuff split along the same fault line as the first.
Roran's hands were free.He brought them up before his face, staring at his wrists where the cuffs had left angry red marks against his brown skin.For a moment, he seemed not to comprehend his freedom, his expression blank with shock.
"Roran," Thalia urged, tugging at his arm."We need to go.Now."
He looked up at her, and something shifted in his eyes—a spark igniting, a banked fire roaring back to life."Yes," he said, his voice stronger than before.“Right.”
He rose to his feet, swaying slightly before finding his balance.Smoke swirled around him, curling in strange patterns as if responding to his presence.Despite days of imprisonment, despite deprivation and the smoke's assault on his lungs, he suddenly seemed taller, more substantial.Power radiated from him in waves that Thalia could feel against her skin.
"What are you doing?"she asked, though she already knew the answer.
He raised his hands, palms upward, fingers splayed as if reaching for something only he could see.The air around them changed, pressure building like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks.Thalia's ears popped, and her skin prickled with gooseflesh despite the inferno's heat.
Above them, visible through the gaps in the burning roof, the storm clouds began to rotate, forming a spiral centered directly over the amphitheater.Wind rushed into the structure, fresh and cold, momentarily clearing the smoke.It circled around Roran, lifting his unevenly-chopped curls, making his tattered clothes billow like sails.
Thalia followed as he strode through the burning amphitheater, moving with newfound purpose.The wind continued to build around him, creating a barrier that pushed back the flames and cleared a path through the smoke.It wasn't safety, but it was survival—for now.
