Vincent

The rock bright red as he pushed hands as bright as the sun against it, and clung to the unmelted stone only because the air in their tunnel expanded and heated by his will. Deep red, as the stone desperately tried to cast off the heat he drowned it in, until all at once Vincent let go, and the tunnel went from the bright white of a furnace, to the dark red of a sunset, and finally, black.

Wind rushed past Vincent and into the tunnel he had bored into the wall. The sudden cooling contracted the air inside, and the rush of cold wind that flowed inside to claim the space made him shiver.

"How long until we can take a look inside?" Sergeant Lorec asked.

"Another minute," Vincent replied, taking a few deep breaths to reorient himself. Letting go of the Craft was difficult at times. More than a few candles in, and letting go of the flame felt as unnatural as trying to not see out of an eye. And this work was quite a bit more than a few candles.

First, the Craft to evaporate the stone. To bore the tunnel deeper, Vincent has to become the heat of the rocks within the wall, and gather it into the shape he wanted. But before he could rend that stone he had to not only melt it, but sublimate it, and transforming a solid into a gas was a fiercely violent process.

To counter that, another Craft, all across newly made obsidian, the rock slagged by his will that now former the tunnel. The opening was slightly smaller than an apartment entranceway; just wide enough for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder, and high enough that most adults wouldn't have to stoop below the ceiling.

He had also carved vents, fist-sized holes, straight through to the top of the wall. Which was only just beginning to spew the vaporized rock into the air above them in clouds of thick, tar-black smoke.

"How deep does that put us?" Sergeant Lorec asked.

"Thirty feet," Vincent replied immediately. He knew the distance as clearly as he knew his own height. Because until he let go, that distance and the fire he used to carve his way across it, had been a part of him. "The walls are holding up well. Your trick of slagging small pillars inside the wall seemed to do the trick."

The sergeant walked along the front of the entrance, and tapped the stone with his gauntleted fist. "You can see the signs of strain, though. Hairline fractures in the rock around where you slagged it. There's no reinforcing in these walls, nothing to add tension strength. We can't make this damn tunnel any wider than it is."

"You were right."

"Wouldn't have minded being wrong," Sergeant Lorec said. "Not this time. This also means we need to rethink how we plug the hole once everyone is through. This stuff will crumble as soon as you drop it, even with this low ceiling you've made."

"Only if I drop it on something solid," Vincent said, as he let go of the last of his Craft. Hot air rushed out of the cavern he had carved into the wall, as cold air mixed inside. After another moment, he stepped inside the cavern to test the air. "Okay, the air's clean. It's just a little warm."

Sergeant Lorec flinched as he stepped inside. "A little warm," he spat. "Crafters. You could walk into the Spire and just call it toasty."

Vincent flinched, and turned around to face the sergeant. "For those of us who can Craft, sergeant, that's a nightmare that slowly turns into a dream."

The sergeant made no reply. There was little that could be said, after that. Instead, Vincent held his hand up, and willed a small flame into existence. "How does the tunnel look, sergeant?" he asked.

"Nice and smooth. It means whatever you did to the lip of this cave is holding up, I don't see any fractures. Captain will be relieved to hear we don't need to resort to plan 'b'."

Vincent frowned. "What was our backup plan?"

"A four mile march to the causeway access, trying to shield twenty thousand people who can only go forty feet from this wall," Sergeant Lorec explained.

"Spite the abyss, that's a bad plan," Vincent said.

"Hence, having you work on this plan instead."

"No, that's a bad backup plan," Vincent disagreed, louder than he intended. "If this tunnel didn't work, I could have just blown this part of the wall apart, and then held it for as long as we needed."

There was surprise on the sergeant's face. Wide-eyed, open mouthed. And it wasn't until the veteran soldier, this sergeant even among the Rangers, took a small step backwards, that Vincent realized it was something deeper.

Fear.

"I probably shouldn't have said that so casually," Vincent said.

"You could do that? Blast your way through the wall?"

Vincent nodded, and tried to sound more solemn than he felt. He was still slightly elated from the thrill of wielding the Craft. "I could. If I seized the fires in the pipes, I could blast a section of the wall open. We'd have to fill the hole in the ground I'd make, but there's twenty thousand people we could draw volunteers from."

"Burn me. No wonder your master took you to the wall," Sergeant Lorec said, and he stared up at the ceiling without really looking at it. "But knowing that is all the more reason we shouldn't let you breach the wall and hold it. The captain probably wants you to save your strength."

"You're saying our situation isn't dire enough?''

"I am," Sergeant Lorec said, and the certainty in his words left Vincent cold. "Frankly, I think if we didn't have this tunnel option, the captain would choose marching Barleybarrel's people across the field to a causeway access, before he'd risk you."

"That sounds brutally cold," Vincent said.

"And it is." The sergeant finally looked away from his inspection, and tapped Vincent on the shoulder. "Right now, you're the only thing keeping the captain from having to make choices like that. Now, like you did last time, get a message to Captain Dremora and tell him we're half an hour from having a tunnel through the wall."

"We still need to set up the block, don't we?"

"All you need to do is cut between the vent holes you made, and a ten foot long chunk will drop into the tunnel. Go let the captain know."

Vincent turned and held out his hands. Between them, fire flickered and flared to life, and he once again saw with the astonishingly clear, vivid eyes of the flame. He let his hands drop to his sides as his wings of orange light threw his tiny, blazing self out through the tunnel in the blink of an eye, and was soaring above the wall in the time it took him to draw a breath.

His first few seconds of flight took him over the train station, the only thing that lay between Barleybarrel and the wall. The train hugged the wall closely, at the edge of the forty feet the pilot lights would ward the Gloam. The pipes feeding the flame from the wall to Barleybarrel had been cut open, and there was a wall of bright fire nearly ten feet tall that now extended across the tracks, flanking each edge of the town.

The Rangers had been busy, even the ones who held the town while the others relieved Corporal Varnell. Two lines of fire, those barriers were so secure that no force of Gloamtaken could breach it. The fire piped from the Spire was hot enough to turn stone into gas, which was why it was piped in ceramics. The flesh of the dead had no hope of smothering it.

Vincent only wondered for a moment why that firewall wasn't extended further, to encircle all of Barleybarrel. The pilot lights that bordered the town were dim, little more than sputtering tendrils that struggled to climb over the rims of the exhaust pipes. There wasn't enough fire running through those pipes to make more of a barrier than they had already managed.

But as Vincent looked for fire, he found something he wasn't expecting. Pinpricks of fire, packed into the buildings at the edges of the town. Pinpricks similar to the Valkyrie charges. Curious, he dove swift as the glint of sunlight reflecting from a passing train, and landed at an open window.

Inside, near the foundation pillar at the corner of the apartment building was a single glass cylinder, identical to the charges fired from the Valkyrie in the field. The glass glowed orange with the faint fire trapped inside, ready to mix with the blasting chemicals packed around it. The explosion that would result would easily smash apart the support pillars and topple the building.

Barleybarrel would have its own walls. Captain Dremora had made sure of that.

Vincent took flight again, straight up into the air, and scanned the town again. He could see the bulk of Barleybarrel's citizens packed near the train station, the mass of twenty thousand souls stretching well into town, and only terminating close to the fountain in the town square.

But at the north end of the town, the only people Vincent could see wore white scarves.

Flying a little lower, Vincent managed to pick out Valen and his cohort, the eclectic squad of field-picked soldiers made from caretakers, shadows, prisoners, and soldiers of the watch. His squad, the group of misfits in which he, strangely, fit in with.

And with them, the woman from the field, the young corporal left to command a rescue of hundreds of civilians, and somehow succeeded. She was speaking to Mackaroy, of all people, and at the edge of his awareness, just when he began to hear their conversation, he could feel something drinking at he heat he felt through, like ice held just beyond the skin. And that feeling came from her sword.

Only then, did Vincent recognize the weapon. Saval's sword, one of the weapons she had transported with her.

Vincent wheeled away, and soared up above the nearby building. One of the apartment towers near the square, the tallest tower in Barleybarrel, where he could now see Captain Dremora, holding a spyglass and staring out at the breach in the wall.

Vincent plummeted down, and let his craft land gently in front of the captain's feet. Dremora smiled, folded up his spyglass, and reached into his pocket. "Go ahead and report, Mister Hearthsward."

It was a small notebook in his hands, turned to an empty page.

Bad news first?

Captain Dremora nodded. "It's how I prefer news."

The tunnel will be narrow. Barely larger than your average door. You'd have trouble fitting three people next to each other inside. The wall isn't structurally sound enough to survive a larger opening.

No reaction, not even a flicker of emotion crossed his features. "How deep in are you?"

Forty feet. Another twenty to go.

"And how much longer until we can start sending people through?"

Less than an hour. Thirty minutes until I'm through, another ten minutes for the stone to cool, and twenty to set up the section we want to drop in the tunnel.

"That's good. Getting twenty thousand people through a doorway sized tunnel will take some time, so let's give them another hour to manage it. So, we can expect Barleybarrell's people to be safe in two hours."

I believe that's a reasonable projection, sir.

"So your orders, and pass this on to Sergeant Lorec, are to get back to work. Make the tunnel, check to make sure the far side is safe, then prep that section of wall you'll use to block the path after we pass. Once our way is ready, start sending civilians through. And Vincent, you are to remain with them. You are to be the last Ranger standing between them and the Gloam."

Sir?

"Once the civilians begin evacuating, you are to act as the rearguard. Our reserve. Should we fail, you must not," Captain Dremora said, his voice nearly a cannon's roar.

Vincent didn't answer right away. Shame and rage bubbled in his stomach like a sickness, and a half mile away from where he looked at the captain, he clenched his fists. But he remembered what Sergeant Lorec said, and considered the position they were in.

Our first action against the Golems failed because neither the Lord Captain, nor the Guild, trusted you. Neither of them trusted the army.

"And you do?"

I have had the benefit of seeing the Rangers in action. I'll get back to work, sir.

"I have one more task," Captain Dremora said. He pointed over his shoulder, towards the breach in the wall. "Go scout for me. Take a trip to the breach, and tell me if they're up to anything. Part of me is hoping the Gloamtaken don't care much for Barleybarrel and are waiting with the Golems that are still standing. But I don't trust that hope."

I will, sir.

Vincent raised a wing, and cast off a bit of flame. His will, his awareness, who he was expanded, as he took the flame and moulded it into another bird. He took off, more punching through the air than flapping wings. He marked time by the slow, distant metronome of his heartbeat, as his Craft soared over the fields, and began circling the plumes of smoke from burning crops.

"What do you see?" Captain Dremora asked from right in front of him. From miles away.

It didn't take long to spy an answer. Four heartbeats, as his Craft-enhanced senses now measured time. By now he was looking at the breach in the wall, and behind it, the ruin of the Golem.

And up to a mile south, Gloamtaken.

In their thousands. A mob nearly as large as the the mass of people Barleybarrel's population now made was marching slowly south, a mob that didn't end at the enshrouding Gloam that was still held just past the breach in the wall.

They're coming.

"How many, and where?" the captain asked.

Coming through the breach. Some are a mile south. Coming at a march. Spread thin, two per square yard. They might outnumber Barleybarrel.

Captain Dremora, startlingly, smiled. "I might pass Valen yet."

Permission to engage, sir.

"Denied. You know your task."

But sir!

"Trust us, Vincent. And make sure Barleybarrel's people can get through the wall."

Too many thoughts churned through Vincent's already beleaguered psyche. He knew he could do more, he knew his power. He could turn the tiny bird now circling over the Gloamtaken into a whirlwind of light and fury, dropping heat enough to turn the clay beneath those creature's feet into baked ceramic the City still made some buildings with. Ten thousand meant little more than ten to the fury he could unleash.

But he suspected the Captain knew that. And like Sergeant Lorec said, Dremora was not willing to spend Vincent's strength on Barleybarrel.

Not while he felt the Rangers would be enough.

Two hours, sir. That's all Barleybarrel needs. I'll see it done.

Vincent didn't wait for a reply. He let go, let his Craft disappear in a brief puff of smoke, and pulled his coat tighter.