“Well, we just gotta deal with it. Some people have to burn up for the flames we get. Better that a few get cooked than we all freeze to death, right?”

“They could ask for volunteers or something though couldn’t they?”

“Maybe they did. Bet they ran out early on though. Who would volunteer for being burned alive?”

“I would. I would have volunteered if it would have saved Mela.”

“Well, don’t worry. You’ll get your turn. We’re always going to need more people to burn.”

“Yeah, nothing we can do about that I guess.”

– a conversation repeated in endless variations among residents of Mt. Gloria without ever reaching the most obvious question.

I couldn’t see the look on people’s face as I lifted the globe of fire over my head, and that sucked! With the globe radiating enough heat to warm the entire street, I knew they had to be impressed, but seeing their expressions would have been priceless. The audible gasps I heard conveyed their surprise pretty well but it it just wasn’t the same. These were people experiencing a wonder which we should have lived with long enough for it to common place, and I wanted to share in that wonder, even if only vicariously.

Instead, I felt a whole new ball of rage being stoked inside me. Rage at Vaingloth for yet another thing he’d taken from us. As it turned out, I really didn’t seem to have an bottom to that particular well. There were always more things to dredge up which could make me want to murder him again.

Especially, ESPECIALLY, when I considered that for all their amazement, the people around me weren’t understanding the truth about the fire portals yet.

“Little?” Zeph asked, probably wondering why I was creating a miniature sun on a random street and, more importantly, what I planned to do with.

I couldn’t kill Vaingloth again despite how much I very definitely wanted to. Somehow even feeling him being torn apart bit by bit and then being corroded into nothingness didn’t seem sufficiently awful. He’d planned to kill me, resurrect me, and kill me again and, unfortunately, I could understand the appeal of that all too easily.

“It’s okay,” I said. I’d had my vengeance but of course it hadn’t been enough to fill me up. That wasn’t what vengeance did. I knew that even if I didn’t feel it. Knowing it was enough though. It meant I wasn’t going to look for proxies to seek further satisfaction from.

Yeah. Looking. Hard to get that out of my vocabulary.

The important point was that I let the star I’d been holding ascend into the sky above Mt. Gloria rather than turning it on the bound and gagged minions of Vaingloth. They had a reckoning coming, most certainly, but it wouldn’t be one I decided on alone. It shouldn’t even be one I had much say in. 

The people of Mt. Gloria had freed themselves. All I’d done was remove one overgrown parasite that was standing against them. They deserved to be the ones who decided what they were going to do with the freedom they’d fought and died for.

My job, hopefully the last job I had left for a while, was to make sure the lie we’d been shackled by since the Sunfall was finally brought to light.

Literally.

“What…what was that?” the orc we’d stopped to talk to said.

“It’s…” the dwarf near him wasn’t able to find the words to describe what they were witnessing.

Which, again, sucked. What I’d done was so simple. It shouldn’t have been so awe inspiring.

Imagine if I was able to take my proper place again? Sola said and shared a memory with me of a sky clad in a brighter blue than could ever possibly been true with a flame atop its dome that was so bright even looking near it hurt too much.

Maybe it’s good we’re starting off small, I said. It sounds like they’re losing their minds at that little thing.

Not losing, I think, Sola said. Finding, I would say. 

She did something then that I didn’t quite understand. I still couldn’t see the people around me anymore than I’d been able to a moment earlier, but I could feel them. Their warmth. Their life.

It was a lot to take in and I stumbled under the unexpected weight of it there, but I didn’t even fall an inch. Zeph was there.

“Should we keep going?” she asked.

“Yeah, that,” I gestured upwards with my chin, “should show people there’s an alternative to the bonfires coming.”

Inside me, that alternative blazed so loudly I missed the next few things the orc and dwarf said. Zeph was closer though so I heard her response clearly enough.

“There’ll be a gathering called in a few hours to explain all this and make plans for where we go from here. At the moment, I need to speak to Xalaria though. Do any of you know where she is?”

We didn’t need Xal specifically, but where she was we would probably find the other leaders who’d stepped up to make the rebellion happen.

What I needed more than that though was to get to the highest point in Mt Gloria. Which was, as I recalled, on the tallest parapet of Vaingloth’s castle. Which was on fire, from Zeph’s reports.

You’d think that would have dissuaded me. I would have thought it dissuaded me. Vaingloth’s castle has never been a place I’ve wanted to visit and it being on fire really shouldn’t have made it more appealing.

But it did.

The fire thing meant I wouldn’t have to deal with too many people interrupting me, and, important bonus, I wouldn’t have to worry about incinerating any of them myself! 

“Wait!” the dwarf woman called as Zeph started to lead me onwards past them. “Who is she? How did she do that?”

That was a little annoying, to be honest. I mean, I was standing right there, and I had just spoken to Zeph, so I obviously wasn’t mute or anything. They could have asked me either of those questions.

Not that I wanted to answer them, so maybe they’d picked up on that?

Ask me your questions, but don’t speak to me? It’s possible that I had a somewhat complicated relationship with people (in general). Working out the hoard of contradictions that were all tied up inside me was one of those “hobbies that’ll last you a lifetime” sort of things too so it wasn’t like I was going to unravel all that, instead I just had to live with it.

Happily, while Zeph isn’t overly talkative either, she was willing to play translator for me.

“She’s got something we took from Vaingloth. We need to let people know so they don’t burn anything they don’t need to,” Zeph said, understanding why I’d made a display of the fire I was carrying earlier than we’d originally planned.

Of all the blessings Sola had given me, Zeph was clearly the best, by far.

“I think…Xalaria is the crazy War-Lady right?” a new voice asked. Kobold maybe? They sounded small but with a more gravelly pitch to their voice. So probably a Kobold. I think.

It was going to take a long time to get used to identifying people by their voice alone. I was guessing it would leave me inclined only to be around people I already knew. Oh wait, that’s how I was already. 

Was anyone even going to notice I was blind? Given my history, probably not, since it wasn’t like they noticed any other part of me. Was I feeling whiny and sorry for myself when I had far more important things to think about? Important life lesson: there is always time to feel whiny and sorry for yourself. If you put it off, then you just wind up being whiny, sorry, and unreasonable later on, and I, at least, had plenty of ‘be unreasonable’ already scheduled so fitting more in was going to be challenge.

“Crazy War-Lady, yes,” Zeph said with just a touch of mean-spirited delight, “yes, that’s her exactly.”

“I heard she was leading a group against the Inquistor’s bastion over in the Hillmount Precinct,” the kobold said.

I am a deeply broken person. I know this because my first instinct, despite every other rational thought and impulse, was to ask Zeph to bring us over to Hillmount so I could join in the fighting.

Mostly that was just the thirst for more vengeance piping up, which some side cheering from the impulse to handle things myself so no other idiots would wind up getting hurt. There was a not insignificant voice that wanted to see Xalaria in action too, especially when her aim would be to absolutely ruin the days for a whole bunch of inquisitors.

Reigning those in one by one, I reminded myself that I wasn’t going to be seeing anything, that Xalaria was in fact more capable than I was of making sure the idiots didn’t get hurt, and that I needed to go on a vengeance-free diet for a while for the sake of my own sanity.

“Can you have someone get a message to her,” I said, apparently surprising people that I was capable of speaking to them, despite the fact that I spoken to them a few times already. Throw one little star into the sky to light up the whole city and people start treating you really strange I guess?

“What is the message Holy One?” the orc said.

Oh. Oh that was not good. I needed to put a stop to that right away.

“I’m not…” I started to say but Zeph cut me off.

“Let her know that we have the stolen portal key and we’re going to put it in its proper place,” Zeph said.

“So, we’ll have fire again?” the dwarf asked.

“Who will feed it first?” the kobold asked.

“No one,” I said, standing up straighter and turning to face where I could feel the crowd.

Sola’s most recent gift left me able to all but taste the mix of fear, confusion, reluctant acceptance, with the barest hint of a sliver of hope hiding somewhere in there too. When I spoke, I wasn’t speaking to the people as strangers anymore, I was talking to those slivers to fan them into brighter flames of courage and strength.

“People were never burned for the fires we were given. That’s not what they were needed for,” I said. “Fire wants nothing more than to spread. It doesn’t crave people. If it craves anything it craves the air we have. We’ve burned people up for one reason and one reason only; to feed Vaingloth more and more power.”

I’d figured that one out of my own, and I felt really proud to have done so.

Of course, it hadn’t been that hard to work out when we were sitting in the Factorum enjoying light, heat, and food in a city which hadn’t had anyone living in it for longer than I’d been alive. 

No living people, no people to burn up, and yet plenty comfortable? Yeah, I’d had what one might call just a few tiny clues to work with there.

Also Helgon had confirmed my guess, which had been one of the cornerstones of the plan I’d put together.

Taking Vaingloth out and leaving the city to die without his support wouldn’t have been much of a victory. Knowing that we didn’t need him and had never needed him though? Oh, that had definitely changed things.

Of course no one believed me.

And I couldn’t blame them.

I hadn’t questioned the “fact” that the flame portals were just a cost of living. That without sacrifice, it would be impossible for us to survive in a world as broken and cold as the one we were born into. 

I mean, burning people for fuel wasn’t a new thing. It was how it had always been. There’d been lots of people before us and if there was a better option, they would have found it. Clearly the system we had was the best one and trying to change it was either doomed to failure or going to destroy everything we’d worked so hard for.

It couldn’t be the case that the whole structure of our society was designed for the benefit of the one at the top of it. Right? The things we were taught not to question weren’t things that served the interests of the few people who actually benefited from them? Right?

The edges of my whiskers caught fire the more I heard the crowd mumbling in denial of what I’d said.

I knew they didn’t want to believe it, because it was too horrible. A part of me wanted to believe that maybe things had been different right after the Sunfall. Maybe resources had been too limited. Maybe there hadn’t been another option then, and maybe it was our fault since we’d accepted what we had to do then and just stopped looking for a better answer.

Except for the part where the answer we’d found was, as it turns out, the best possible answer for Vaingloth, and a perfectly acceptable answer for his inner circle, the patrollers, the inquisitors, and everyone else who fervently believed in him.

I wasn’t going to convince people with words though.

I had to show them.

There was a light that, even blinded, I could see calling me forward. 

My new tomorrow was going to be everyone’s new tomorrow, and the whole world was just going to have to deal with that.