Minerva wished she could summon a flame to warm her hands. If one rule had been hammered into her, it was to never use fire at night. But as they shook, slick with sweat, she worried that they wouldn't do as she wanted. Her hands had obeyed her on instinct, but that didn't mean she wouldn't freeze when it came time to kill Arsen.

And she had decided to kill him, not paralyze. Arsen was a traitor and if he managed to return to camp alive, her life would be forfeit.

She mulled over her decision as she jogged back to where she'd left him. On her way, she spied the Terron Arsen had incapacitated. After serving under General Kavighn for so long, was he really capable of betrayal? What if she'd heard wrong? This could all be a mistake.

Arsen still knelt in the fortress' shadow, muttering to himself. A crate lay open at his side, full of pouches and other materials she didn't recognize in the semi-darkness. Since he hadn't had the crate before, Minerva assumed Sol had brought it to him.

An acrid smell pricked her nostrils as she approached.

"Everything go alright on your end, kid?" he asked, his hands never ceasing to tangle with some dark ropes.

Minerva licked her lips. He wouldn't suspect her, not yet. The truth would be her ally. "I accidentally killed one of them," she sobbed.

"Ah, that's why you took so long," he said distractedly. "Hand me that fuse, would you?"

"What's a fuse?" Minerva asked, sniffling. She crouched down a cautious distance away.

"Never mind then." The Pyro soldier kicked out a leg and pulled the crate closer with his foot. He stuck one of the ropes in his mouth while he fished in the box.

Minerva didn't know whether his nonchalant attitude broke her will down, but she started crying in earnest. Holding her knife in one hand, she mopped her face with the sleeve of the other. She stuffed her sleeve into her mouth. Stop crying. Stop.

"Battle shock, kid," Arsen murmured. "First time's always the worst."

"I—I don't," she blubbered and gasped for air. "I don't feel so good."

Arsen stopped fussing with the pile and looked at her with pity. "You can throw up if you need to. At least it won't be straight bile since you ate."

That's what that good dinner was for? Minerva shook her head and tried to calm down. As chilled as she felt, it wouldn't be a surprise if she caught Fire Fever.

While Arsen continued to tinker with his mysterious project, Minerva warred with herself over whether she could deal the first strike. It was one thing to kill an enemy, but another to commit murder in semi-cold blood. Was he or was he not planning to "get rid of her"?

A thought came to her mind unbidden. If you used it, you could know.

Minerva glanced behind her, half-expecting to find a shadow taking form. Auntie Dina called her ability a gift. She said that what she was capable of at present only hinted at something greater.

Even now, leagues away from home, Minerva knew that Auntie Dina expected her to use it—to embrace what it offered. Because much as Minerva trusted her aunt, she hadn't been able to verbalize her fear of it.

She hated touching the hollow place and the weakness it left her with. She hated knowing.

Most of all she hated the shadow that watched her. Waiting. As if her fear drew it like a moth to flame.

When Arsen rose to his feet, Minerva knew she'd run out of time to think. Whether it was lack of strength or fear that drove her, she pushed the hollow place out of reach, as if it were tangible.

Arsen could be planning to kill her. He could be innocent and had only pretended to agree with Sol.

Minerva decided that she wouldn't know which.

"Well, we're all set," Arsen said, dusting off one hand on his pants. In the other hung a black string that connected to the strange pile. It looked like he'd dug away some of the earth so that the mass rested partially under the wall.

"What's all that for?" Minerva asked as she stood. She kept her knife-hand still. Enough venom still coated the blade that she didn't want it touching her clothing.

Arsen grinned. He looked happier than Minerva had ever seen him. "We're gonna blow this place to smithereens and watch it burn," he whispered.

He's joking. She listened in numb anticipation to Arsen's enthusiastic explanation on how lighting the string—the detonating cord—would begin the countdown for a highly flammable explosion. He's not joking.

"All it takes is a spark," he concluded. "C'mere, kid. I'll let you set it."

The pyrotechnic only had eyes for his masterwork.

Minerva stepped forward and sliced the back of his hand.

He had a moment to look at her. A moment that was both too short and too long. Too short, because it held such an array of emotions that it would take a lifetime for her to interpret. Too long, because she knew that look would be branded into her memory and she'd never forget the pain that pierced her chest.

His descent into dreamless sleep was silent, as the others had been.

"I'm sorry." Minerva knelt over him and wept. "I'm so sorry," she repeated, though his senses would be stolen from him by now.

She could not linger. Besides the risk of discovery, every second that ticked by could chime the hour of the general's death. Scrubbing the tears from her face, she unsheathed Arsen's wakizashi from his belt. Shorter than a katana, the sword was a manageable length for her to wield.

It felt like the ultimate betrayal, to kill a warrior with his own weapon. She raised the blade, once, twice. Each time she lowered the wakizashi, it stopped short of the prone Pyro's neck as if an invisible force stayed her hand. Minerva held back a scream of frustration.

Her gaze fell on the detonating cord. An explosion should be lethal enough. She snatched the cord up and held a shaking finger to the tip. The wind had picked up again, blowing out the flame whenever she managed to light it. It whipped through her hair and nipped at her tear-stained cheeks.

After huddling over the fuse like a dragon with an egg, Minerva finally got the flame to take. She set it on the ground and watched it inch at a steady pace toward the pile.

Minerva grabbed her two acquired weapons and took to her heels, praying she wouldn't be too late.

Once she entered the forest and its leafy canopy, she found evidence of the betrayal sooner than she expected.

With the Terron patrol exterminated, the traitors within the Pyro ranks had turned on their companions. Such a conflict could only be filled with blood and panic.

And fire. So much fire.

Scarlet flames licked their way up the grey trunks of trees and ate through the forest floor. They spread like a rash, a gnawing blight on the land—ever hungry and never sated.

Then she heard it behind her, a loud boom. Minerva paused and looked back, her feet balancing on a thick tree root.

The sky was on fire. Golden sparks floated like stars over the burning fortress. The trees obstructed her view enough that she could only spy the very tips of the flames dancing on the wall.

Beautiful. Arsen was right. But it was only beautiful until she considered the people inside and the fact that her hand had been the one to light the fuse.

She could mourn later. Right now, she had a mission.

Find General Kavighn. The rest could be figured out later.

Minerva's legs took a pounding for the second time that day. On the uneven terrain, with massive rocks jutting out of the earth and slippery patches of rotting leaves, she sometimes needed to use her hands to steady herself or make it up an incline.

She'd sheathed her kaiken, but the wakizashi proved cumbersome and she almost left it in a bed of moss. Though she heard screams and glimpsed flashes of fire, she never let them deter her from her course.

Finally—when she thought her aching ribs would punch holes through her heaving lungs—she reached camp.

He wasn't here. She kicked around the ashes of the cooking fire from that morning, trying to catch her breath and figure out what she should do. Plumes of smoke rose from the woods.

A shadow appeared at the border of the trees.

Minerva's hand tightened on her sword's hilt.

"What are you doing out there, child?" Sol's voice called.

Some of the tension released in Minerva's shoulders, but not all. "Lieutenant Ueda sent me back here," she yelled in answer.

"Come to me," Sol commanded.

Too tired to oppose the woman, Minerva limped to her.

"What happened to you? Where's Arsen?" Sol questioned.

Minerva glanced at the blood staining Sol's sword and the paint on her face. Two red lines dripped down from the points of her eyes closest to her nose, like tears of blood.

"I think I cut my foot on a rock, ma'am," she lied.

"And Arsen?"

"I don't know where he went. He didn't tell me." Minerva's throat tightened as she struggled to not cry.

Sol crossed her arms and chewed on her cheek. "Well, it seems he's at least doing half of what he was supposed to," she muttered. The shadows accentuated the sharp angles of her cheekbones.

Minerva shrunk under Sol's critical eye. Her dirt-smeared, windblown state unfavorably contrasted with the woman's spotless uniform and tight bun of hair. Not a strand was loose, not a speck of ash rested on Sol's shoulders.

"Follow." Sol turned on her heel and entered back into the forest.

Minerva fell into step like a trained dog, pausing only for a moment to look at the camp again. She didn't have a better choice than to obey Sol for now. If she was lucky, the treacherous soldier could lead her to the one she'd betrayed.

Sol didn't speak and neither did Minerva. It was all she could do to keep up, feigned injury or not.

When they reached a clearing surrounded by moss-covered stones, Sol gave an abrupt hand signal to halt.

Minerva acquiesced, spreading her feet to stand at silent attention several paces away.

Two cloaked figures dropped from the trees to confer with Sol. Though they began soft, their whispers turned harsh, the words intensified as the forest fell into an eerie hush.

"Ueda would know where he is, but where is he?" one of them said, their voice rising.

Sol hissed for them to be quiet. "Come," she barked to Minerva.

Stumbling forward, Minerva kept her eyes on the ground. Her hands shook behind her back, the wakizashi still clasped between them. She didn't recognize the two male voices as they questioned her.

"Which direction did he take?"

"Did he have a message for you to pass on?"

Words tumbled from her mouth, but even she couldn't make sense of them.

One of the soldiers straightened. "She's hiding something, Sol."

Startled, Minerva glanced up at Sol's accomplices. Beneath their hoods, red lines of paint streaked two lines over their brows before meeting in the center, reminiscent of the shape of a bird in flight.

"What's she holding behind her back?"

Don't pretend anymore.

Sol grabbed her shoulder.

Stand up and give it your all.

The unexpected contact snapped something in Minerva. Her enemies' intent had already taken form—suspended in that existence between body and mind—before she realized her fingers had dipped into the hollow place.

"She has Arsen's kirukkan blade!" one of the Pyros bellowed. Fire leapt into his hands.

It was as if Minerva saw the world through a dream. A dream she controlled.

As she spun away from the flames and slashed with the wakizashi, a shadow trailed her—a dark silhouette that mimicked her motions a split second slower. Her sword shattered Sol's thin breastplate and cut the woman's stomach open.

A feral shriek tore its way out of her throat. Someone save me from myself. "General Kavighn!" she screamed.

She met the soldiers' swords with her own. Merciless heat burned at her skin and clothes, but she couldn't feel pain. An emptiness sucked at her, making room for a ravaging hunger only the kill would satisfy.

The element of surprise aided her. Her blade sheared through one of the men's arms, severing flesh and bone alike. He cursed at her and cried for Phoenix's favor.

But the whisper of favor tickled her ears alone.

They are traitors. No one deserves mercy, the shadow murmured to Minerva. Kill them.

She screamed. Fear squeezed like a vise around her heart. "Matsudo!"

Two kills became five and she wondered if she'd ever stop.

When the fight ended, he found her. Red from the fire, from the blood that hung like a sheer veil over her eyes, painted the world crimson. Her head pounded with the beat of a war drum and her eyes stung from the smoke and her crying.

The trees parted before Matsudo as if he was their king. Or she was still dreaming. Please let it be a dream. Let it be over. Dazed, she only heard the general's voice as if they were both deep underwater.

He picked her up as if she weighed no more than a feather. "You've done enough ... she was right after all."

Minerva's eyes drifted close to shutting, but movement at the corner of her eye made her force them back open.

Sol shifted and pushed herself to her knees. The woman held one hand to her bleeding abdomen and the other clutched a vial of golden fluid. "We're not finished here, Kavighn." She downed the liquid in a single gulp.

When Matsudo set her back on her feet, Minerva almost fell. "Run," he said. The green of his eyes glowed as writhing tree limbs shot towards Sol.

Streaks of black laced Sol's neck as she burned them away and fired three quick blasts of flame at the sky.

"More of them will be coming! Matsudo shouted. "Go. Now!" With his full body of plate armor and the wild look of murderous intent in his eyes, Minerva pitied his enemies. But even the general could not fight an army alone.

For the first time, she defied orders.

She opened the conduit to the hollow place. Not merely touching it, as she'd done all the times before, but letting it rush in and take her over. Crimson filled her eyes like blood. The voice of the shadow met her, but she ignored it.

I will not fight for the kill. I will not fight for honor. I will not fight for justice.

"Mamoritai," Minerva whispered. I will fight to protect.