Vincent

To seize and will the flame was to become it. The will commanded it, certainly, but not in the way Captain Dremora commanded his soldiers. Closer, perhaps, was the way Valen commanded his sword during his demonstration duel with both the captain and Sergeant Porter. But even that skill, of a master with his chosen weapon, wasn't quite enough to explain what wielding the flame was to a Crafter.

Vincent was the fire he commanded. He could see through eyes that gave off their own light, hear through the vibrations in the air as surely as if that sound buffeted his own ears, feel the cold and heat of the air even as he cast his own power into it. He could flex, twist, bend, and manipulate the fire just as much as he could the fingers of his hands. More, even. With his power, he was strength enough to slag stone, rend the air, and tear apart even something as solid as the hundred-foot wall in front of him.

But the most potent truth of his power — and its most addictive aspect — was how much more a Crafter could become when they wielded their power. With training, a Crafter could command the flame as if it were only one more limb of their body, like writing with one hand while the other held the paper steady. With extensive training, like what Vincent's master had put him through, he could take a Craft and send it miles away without missing a beat in his conversation with Sergeant Lorec.

So that even as he channeled a lance of fire and bored into the stone in front of his hand, even as he was fully present at the wall, he was also flying. Fire taken form, moulded into the shape of a bird, he now rode the winds of the air he rent with his power. And from half a mile in the air, watched the Rangers marching through the Gloam.

Forty soldiers in a wide circle, spread so thinly apart the Gloam might creep between them if they split any further. He could see the distinctive bulk of Captain Dremora in the centre, accompanied by two soldiers who kept pace a step behind. The lieutenant, Neveah Volenski, was up front with Valen's squadron, the face of the torch that now carved its way through the Gloam. Mackaroy to Valen's right, young Roderick holding the torch just behind him. Gwendolyn to Valen's left, Fauth beside her with a torch in his hand, Cameron and Hendricks in front.

But it wasn't the Rangers' march Vincent wanted to follow. Up ahead, just a couple of miles, there was smoke. A bonfire's plume had grown into a wall of black, nearly as tall as the causeway it ran parallel to. The Gloam parted around it, and with the orange fire beneath the smoke, looked like an open wound on a corpse.

A wound that bled smoke and fire. Life beneath the pallid grey.

Vincent flapped his flickering wings, explosive life carrying his Craft, this piece of himself, up and over the smoke. He circled its southernmost fringe, churning the black air as he passed through it.

On one side of the smoke, a hundred people dashed about, manic in their frightened intensity. Some were cutting down trees and bushes with knives or small tools, or even ripping them apart by hand. Others carried the dedicated plants across to the wall of burning brush, piling it up higher. Their piles rose as tall as the workers, and the flames towered above like the battlements on the wall.

Plunging through the smoke to the other side of their makeshift wall, Vincent could see their success. A mob of creatures, emaciated, surged and ebbed like ripples on the shore. The mob listed and mulled in place, immobilized by its own mass, a deathly grey field of the dead eerily similar to the Gloam they had been enshrouded by.

Vincent paused, his breath held in his body miles away, as he stared down at the Gloamtaken in their hundreds. He realized, in that moment, that he hadn't actually seen the creatures before. The others, Valen and Gwendolyn in particular, spoke of them as frightening things, to be wary of alone, and to run from in mobs. A frightening and relentless enemy that they had barely survived during their first encounter.

But fear wasn't Vincent's first experience. His fire held above them, Vincent was profoundly aware that he was more than flesh and blood. Against his flesh of fire and light, those hundreds of hands and teeth would only burn themselves. He had only to stretch his will, like reaching out with a hand, and he could wipe them from the field.

But too close, and he might set the wall of burning brush to burning too quickly, undoing the work of the people Vincent was trying to help. Instead, he wheeled about, looking at the fringes of the wall, where a dozen people were still scrambling to make it longer.

"Vincent?"

The question, asked barely a dozen feet away, felt like it was miles off. Vincent shook his head, his flesh and blood head, and turned to sergeant Lorec, miles away from where his thoughts were. "Sorry, sir. Lost in thought."

Sergeant Lorec frowned, and the sapper's pockmarked face somehow seemed to defy the easy evasiveness of Vincent's response. "The trouble for those of us who can't Craft, is we have to be unflinchingly honest around fire," he said. "We either know exactly what we're doing, or we get burned."

Vincent sighed, and turned his focus back to the wall. Miles away, he wheeled about again, and looked through his Craft. To the sergeant, he said, "I guess it helps this kind of job, being able to stick my hand in the flame without being burned."

"A metaphor for your whole coddled guild, Crafter."

"I'm not a Crafter."

"Which means the message might stick." Which, surprisingly, sounded kind from the hard soldier.

Vincent pointed at the wall, and even as he wheeled about miles away, examined the stone. "The composition of this part of the wall is different from the stone at the bottom."

"The walls are made with whatever stone they find in the Undercity," Sergeant Lorec said, and he tapped the closest blocks of stone. "We don't have the luxury of being able to pick and choose what we make the fortifications out of. And the melting temperatures could vary by a hundred degrees."

"Six hundred," Vincent replied, as he willed more of the flame into existence, at his fingertips, and pressed it into the stone. "The power I need to melt even a thin strop into this part of the wall would turn the bottom twenty feed into sludge."

"I was afraid of that," the sergeant said.

Even as they spoke, Vincent's sight was turned on the edge of the wall of burning brush in the miles to the north. The tide of the Gloamtaken was rushing south, dozens of the creatures heading towards the edge of the fires.

There were people at the edge, but asides from a single soldier, all of them were preoccupied with their work; carrying brush and debris to lengthen their barrier. As if the Gloamtaken all heard a signal, they broke from their shuffling march and into a sprint.

The soldier fired a shot, brought the closest ones down. Jittery hands still deftly snapped the gun open and emptied the spent shot. Another flash of red light, a second one went down. The third closed, and the soldier dropped the gun, his sword flashing in the sunlight. Chopped hard into the creature just under the arm.

Too hard. The Gloamtaken stumbled and grabbed the soldier's shoulder, pulling him off balance. The motion freed his sword, but he was flat-footed, unprepared for the next one leaping at him.

Vincent dove. Faster than falling, ripping through the air like a Salamander shot. He started diving just as the Gloamtaken lunged, and reached it before its hands closed on the soldier's arm. Vincent twisted, pushed his burning self forward, and with a swiftness a swallow would envy, tore through the creature's chest.

Another heartbeat later, he punched through the other dozen creatures, and took back through the air, following the smoke up.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Vincent pointed with his hand, and forced his awareness back through his eyes. "So if we shift any of the stone more than fifteen feet up the wall, I'll need to slag some of it to reinforce the ceiling we make."

Sergeant Lorec frowned, and tapped his chin. "Not unless you can mimic the pressure of a mile of rock. Most of it will evaporate first."

"Evaporate," Vincent said, his thoughts churning. "I think I can work with that."

"How?" Sergeant Lorec asked.

"Evaporation might actually work for us. I can make the tunnel without having to account for too much of the stone," Vincent explained.

"Even a doorway-sized hole might be too much for the wall, if things shift," Sergeant Lorec pointed out. "Especially at the front of the wall, which is where the pipes are."

"And we can't lose the pipes," Vincent nodded. "I can melt the rock on the bottom, but it will turn into volcanic glass when it cools. I can melt it using a controlled implosion. And once it's obsidian, it can act as a frame, when I melt the rock in the upper wall into a space above it, using it as foundation pillars and a frame to shelter the tunnel I'll carve afterwards."

The sergeant rubbed his hands together. "I can't believe we build anything without a Crafter around."

Miles away, Vincent was above the smoke, and could see just how large the crowd of people making their barrier of brush and debris was. Vincent had seen only four people in a soldier's padded coat, thoroughly outnumbered by civilians in work clothes or overalls. He couldn't be certain, not on a quick pass over the landscape, but he counted nearly three hundred before he wheeled about in the air, and turned his Craft to find the other end of the wall of burning brush.

And that was when he heard the howl of an explosion.

And heard it again a few seconds later, from his own ears. As did Sergenat Lorec, who stopped dead at the noise, and turned his head to the north. "That was a Valkyrie," he said.

"Someone's firing a cannon out there," Vincent mused. "And it isn't anyone from the Rangers."

"You're oddly confident of that."

Vincent hesitated for just a moment, considering his response. The idea of not admitting that he could see and hear in the miles apart was tempting. But that concern seemed like such a small thing, when weighed against everything they were doing. "I'm watching, through the Craft," Vincent admitted.

Sergeant Lorec's eyes widened, and he crossed his arms. "You had seemed a little unfocused. But not so much that I wouldn't have believed it was just nerves."

Their eyes met, and the sergeant gave Vincent a long, searching look. If something had tumbled off the rails on their maintenance car, it would have hit the ground before the sergeant said anything again. "What do you see?"

Vincent turned his attention back to his Craft, and the sights miles away from where he stood. "First platoon is about half a mile into the Gloam. Four miles further, there's a couple hundred people. Perhaps eight soldiers, but hundreds of civilians. They're making a wall of burning brush, running north to south. The line ends near the wall, where a few of the soldiers..."

Vincent's burning wings pumped the air, as he followed the brush wall to where it ended. Near the wall, at the far end of the field, a half-dozen people were working frantically around a single Valkyrie. One of them, one of only three soldiers, was shouting orders and waving frantically at the burning fields behind them.

The burning field, littered with fallen Gloamtaken.

"Their brush barrier ends almost at the wall, where there's a half-dozen people working on a Valkyrie," Vincent finished.

"Can you pass them a message?" Sergeant Lorec asked.

"Yes," Vincent admitted.

"Good. First, leave a message with the cannon crew. Tell them help is coming. Then, get to Captain Dremora, if you can, and tell him what's going on. You're going to get a burning earful from him, since you were supposed to be focusing on your task," Sergeant Lorec said, his voice unnecessarily loud, carefully enunciating each syllable as if he were teaching children.

"I can do that," Vincent said.

"You're in dereliction of duty during a combat operation, and you're part of the army. People do get lashed for this sort of thing," the sergeant warned.

"Like you said, we need to be unflinchingly honest with fire," Vincent said. "Or we get burned."

"Also, like I said, you might actually heed the lesson," Sergeant Lorec acceded, with a pleased smile as he pointed over to the wall. "So if you can multitask so well, let's go over what we need to do to reinforce the lower third of the wall, so you can tunnel through it."