“Well, at least we’re dry now,” says Seth as he scrambles away from us.
I sit up, preparing to pull my aching body from the ground when a flame passes within an inch of my head.
“Fire! Get down!” yells Quinn.
“Run!” yells Ronan.
Oh,fuck. Fire flashes across the room, coming from the walls at all angles, exploding completely at random on the floor, the walls, the ceiling. The room is long but relatively short and narrow, giving us little room to dodge the flames.
Quinn and Seth, both fire-born, can’t be burned on their hands, but the rest of their bodies are nearly as vulnerable as the rest of us. They’re able to stop some of the flames, but they move so quickly it’s difficult to see them coming.
The sickle’s shadow is no more effective than their control. Everything is simply moving too fast. We all take hits, keeping close to pat each other out when our clothes ignite.
“I’ll heal us with the torch when we’re through it. Just keep going,” says Ronan.
At the end of the hallway, we turn a corner.
Quinn stops immediately, and I panic as I nearly crash into her.
“Fuck!” yells Seth, stopping just short of what Quinn saw.
From the floor, a wall of flames appears. It burns for a few moments, and then it goes out.
Beyond it are several more traps just like it, coming from the walls or the floor.
At least the area we’re standing in now doesn’t seem to be reached by any of the flames.
“This is going to be tough for me,” says Quinn. “I’m not the fastest anymore.”
“I should have stayed back at the wind tunnel,” says Seth, leaning against the wall. “If I had known the culmination of a lifelong obsession would be this fucking death trap, I would have taken up knitting instead.”
There’s a soft clicking sound. A button being pressed.
The flames cease in both rooms.
“Oh my gods, Seth. You’ve done it. You’ve actually done something useful.”
“Hey, I also found the lever in the sand room.”
Also by accident, and Ronan had to pull it to get us out, but I let him have this one.
“Let’s go,” I say, and I’m halfway over the grate where the flame wall was before when Seth lets go of the button, and the traps turn back on.
Flame engulfs me, my entire world going bright and unbelievably hot.
“Sylvie!”
Ronan pulls me out of the flame and drops me to the floor, rolling me to extinguish the fire consuming my hair, my tunic, and the satchel.
Holy fuck, ithurts. It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Everywhere the flames touched aches and stings immediately,my flesh screaming. I shriek in agony, my mind narrowing to nothing but the pain.
“Oh gods, Sylvie,” says Seth from a thousand miles away.
“Get back on that switch!” bellows Ronan, as furious and deranged as I’ve ever seen him. “Quinn, the water.”
I hear the satchel scrape on the ground as Quinn fishes for my waterskin, but my mind can’t focus on anything but the pain.
“Fuck!” yells Ronan, trying to summon his light but failing. “Sylvie, sweetheart, hold on. It’s going to hurt, but I have no choice.”
