Wyaro’s face twitched. For a moment, I thought he would charge straight at me, as his son had. Then, flames shot from beneath his feet, and he hurtled into the air. He flew out across the arena and landed on a nearby rooftop.
“This isn’t over!” he called out. “Hamon, where are you?”
“Father!” Hamon croaked from the stands. My punches had left his face a pulpy mess, and he could barely stay upright while clutching the wound in his side.
“I’m sorry to leave you, son,” Wysaro said. “But here’s a parting gift.”
He took a deep breath, then exhaled sharply, as if he was blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. Instead of putting out fire, this breath created a torrent of flame that hurtled down to his son.
The fire exploded as it hit Hamon. I shielded my eyes against the blinding flash of light. When I looked again, Hamon’s body was almost invisible amid a raging inferno.
“What the fuck?” I stared, incredulous not just at the power but at what Wysaro had done. His son might have survived this battle, but he was burning him alive. Didn’t he care for his own family?
The flames rose and fell as they writhed around the place where Hamon lay. The dark shape of his body faded from view, consumed by the raw power that Jiven Wysaro had unleashed. I had no love for Hamon, but seeing him die by his own father’s hand was brutal.
Xilarion seemed indifferent. He straightened his robes and watched Wysaro as the clan leader rose into the air once more, robed in flames.
“How could he do that?” I trembled with fury at what I had seen.
“Jiven Wysaro has always been ruthless,” Xilarion said. “He will do what he must to win.”
“But this…”
“I must go after him.”
He closed his eyes. Fire sprang from the ground around his feet, rose up his legs and across his body until it completely surrounded him.
“I’ll come with you, Master,” I said. “I can follow on the ground, and—”
“No,” he said. “You can’t keep up that way. I need you to stay here and deal with this.”
“With what?” I asked.
But Xilarion had taken off, lifted by the power of fire as he shot after Lord Wysaro.
I looked around the arena. Had he meant for me to help the wounded? I knew some first aid and what Faryn had taught me about using herbs. But after a long and bloody battle, the people here needed far more help than I could offer.
I knelt beside an injured initiate. “Show me where it hurts,” I said for lack of anything better.
He moved his hands to reveal a vicious cut down the outside of his leg. The flaming weapon that had injured him had cauterized the ends of the wound, but blood still ran from the middle.
I tore the bottom six inches of cloth off the initiate’s tunic and bound it around his leg to staunch the flow of blood.
“Don’t move,” I said. “We don’t want to make that worse before a real doctor gets here.”
Next to him lay a Clan Wysaro foot soldier with a bone jutting from her broken arm. Her face was pale with shock.
“That probably needs straightening,” I said. “You should get an expert to do that.”
“You… You can’t help?” she asked fearfully, and I realized how young she was—16 at most, too young to have fought in any sane world.
“I’ll stop the bleeding. That should buy you the time you need. Okay?”
She nodded.
“Hey!” the Radiant Dragon initiate said. “Why are you helping her?”
“Because she’s hurt.” I looked around for something to bandage the wound with.
“But she’s one of them.”
I thought of the flames erupting around Hamon as his father breathed fire at him, thought of someone destroyed by his own family.
“Them or us; sometimes, that’s not what matters,” I argued as I grabbed the tabard off a dead body and tore it into strips. “Sometimes, what matters is who we are.”
“What’s that?” the initiate asked in alarm.
“Compassion!” I snapped. “Maybe you should try it.”
“No, that!” he said as he pointed past my shoulder.
I turned to see what had drawn his attention.
At the edge of the arena, the flames around Hamon’s body had grown in intensity. But now, they weren’t just flames. They flowed in unnatural yet familiar shapes, forming first the pattern of fire channels through a human body, then the shape of a body itself. That body stepped away from the ashes where it had formed and became more distinct. It had slender, delicate features and hair tied back in a tight bun. Even made out of fire, I recognized the arrogant sneer of its expression, the disdain for everyone else in the world.
Now, I knew what Master Xilarion had left me to deal with.
Hamon Wysaro still lived.
Wearily, I raised the Sundered Heart Sword and prepared myself to fight Hamon again.
“Why don’t you give up now?” I asked. “We’ve already proven that you won’t win.”
“That was then,” Hamon said, his voice crackling like a thousand flames. “Now, I know your tricks.”
“I have more of them,” I said. “And I have my sword.”
“A sword?” He picked up his own swords, and flames spread out along them to form two great, glowing scimitars. “And you think you can make me bleed?”
He flashed a devilish grin, and the parting of his lips revealed an even brighter blaze inside him.
For all my play at confidence, I feared that he was right. Fighting him would be like fighting fire itself. I couldn’t cut a part off, couldn’t make it bleed. Did he even still have organs that I could damage? Would he grow weary or could he fight forever?
But I’d faced fire beasts in the past. I’d beaten them on their own turf. I could do it again. As long as I was master of my own skills and my own body, I was willing to take on the world.
“Bring it on,” I said.
Hamon strode across the arena and picked up speed as he went. With
