SWNOVELS Chapter 57
An uncontrolled explosion took out the front of the nearby pub, it’s no doubt not-one-hundred-per-cent-authentic front collapsed into a smoke of fire. Not all of Atlas’ minions had full control of their power – that one had pretty much imploded himself. In the moment before it happened he looked very much like he was straining – as though attempting to take a dump.
Sandy fought hard and fast, moving through the battlefield of the square with furious intensity. A punch here, a fireball there. Boil the smugness of a water-based minion over there. It was a simple dance, flow and rhythm that felt oddly familiar. The last being in thunder, lightning and rain in Piccadilly Gardens. Now it was not the same but also not radically different.
Her flames burned hotter than ever, she knew from the way she was wreathed like a phoenix and scorching the very ground she walked on. But she felt calmer than she had ever felt in her life before. The fury with which she summoned the fire seemed less important, less effective. Somehow it was clarity, serenity which focused everything. A simple pure feeling that she wanted to go on another day.
And her friends too.
She also felt like nothing could touch her. One particularly stupid gentleman decided to fire his rifle rather than use any power he may have had. The bullet melted in mid-air as it came towards her she was burning so hot. Then she saw him – Cyvus, a man of metal standing in her way. He seemed so pathetic like this, so filled with anger. God, she knew what that was like.
He rushed at her, trying to ignore the baking heat she was giving off. He swung one fist when close enough to her and she simply held up her hand. His fist stopped, pushed back by the force of her flame. Without meaning to she pushed hotter her flames almost blue, licking around the surface of his closed fist.
It began to bubble and peel. The metal in his hand went white-hot, molten with the flames. As he stared incredulously on, fury turning to fear, his hand began to melt away, dripping to the floor as though it had never been there. He roared with pain, falling to his knees, holding onto the remaining bit of his arm. From hand to mid-forearm was gone. The metal winked from his body and became rosy pink flesh again, the stump already cauterised. He howled, a man who once casually told a car into a café full of people to commit the cold-blooded murder of one whistle-blower, mewed like a baby.
Sandy didn’t have to turn to know the crack of lightning which shot at her was from Stacey. She’d been waiting for her to find her old enemy in the middle of the fray. It did nothing, bouncing off her protective shield of heat with ease. She turned her head to see her standing twenty feet away, looking dumbstruck.
She lashed out with her foot, her boot leaving a scorched impression in the vulnerable flesh of Cyvus’ chest as he was flung back onto the ground. She then turned all her attention on Stacey, who began to look afraid. She backed away clearly trying to figure out her next options.
“What are you?” she asked, as though not confronted by the person she hated most in the world, who she blamed for everything that had happened to her but instead confronted by a demonic being. A force from the nightmares of devils, that which would have Satan himself shivering into his electric blanket.
Sandy had to admit she knew for a briefest of seconds what the appeal would be to Atlas of all this power. She felt connected to every speck of fire around her, every lick of flame, every spark. They were in perfect alignment, meant for one another. She wondered if the Dominion of Fire had felt like she was in that moment – or whether there were places beyond which she had yet to imagine.
“You spent a long time telling me what I am, Stacey,” she reminded her, “A killer. A bitch. Anything you could think of I suppose. Only some of those are true but I’ll simply say I am what I am. And give you one thing.”
“A headstart.”