You take a deep gulp of air- and lift yourself, diving into the currents from that slippery, icy rock--
[20][20] Emma screams again behind you as the ground rises to meet you-- and you're afraid. Your back aches painfully- it burns, and your senses do nothing to get rid of the pain, but you don't shut your eyes. Your willpower coils around you like a snake as pieces of yourself drift away from you. Just as you're about to hit the ground, your willpower rips through you.
Heat. Warmth. Comfort.
You turn your downward momentum into upward momentum as fire blooms from your back in your peripheral vision. It spreads forth into the night with a blinding flash. You nearly clip the castle wall, but instead only leave only a faint trail of sparks.
The fear fades as comfort fills you, buoying you up into the cold skies. Hovering, you find, is a little challenging to do in your intoxicated state, having to pump more energy into your wings of blue fire. So instead, you soar over the mountainous landscape, mimicking the birds of prey you saw in the air when you were younger. As you drift over the fields, restlessly, the world changes beneath you-- shifting back into the dark void.
Then, fire blooms across it, flashing at one another. Suns grow, competing for hydrogen. Plants bloom, competing for sunlight. And finally, across the plains march machines of war--
Arrow and sling shot twist into lead, then into the bright glow of las-fire. Stones turn into mortar shot, and finally into nuclear armageddon. But across the wreckage, the war still wages. However, you are not alone, not anymore. Six, seven-winged entities of pure, white-hot fire emerge, following behind you, six wings sprouting from their backs, with a seventh rising from the middle, curling down and behind.
Your skin peels away into dust, into ash, until you're consumed by the fire, becoming nothing more than pure willpower. You and your brethren rain fire down upon the battlefield, great blasts of thermo-nuclear energies ripped from the very water in the air. Below and behind march great soldiers in gleaming gold and black, twisting the earth into savage spikes, impromptu barricades or massive armor that destroys tanks and men alike.
From their ranks emerge creatures of darkness with sharp barbed wires, and spears emerging to slash and impale.
Others come too, a multitude of living weapons made from willpower alone. And at the center of it, leading these weapons from the front is a massive eddy of willpower that hurts you to look at, even in memory, and pure, inky blackness. A pale figure stands within, a man or a woman, its androgynous features twisted not into hate, not into fear or loathing.
But one of remorse. Of sadness. Of pity.
The creeping heat of morning awakens you, fighting back against the snow and cold that covers the ground. You look down from your perch on a patch of green on the side of the mountain, to the Thornton villa in the distance. You swiftly realize that you are still naked- you reach back, touching between your shoulders to find a healing scar. Beneath you is a Thornton village, tucked into a valley.
The smell of freshly baked bread rises from the village, and your stomach protests.