“He threw himself headlong at a soldier. He was like a fury: reached him in an instant and started pounding him with his fists. The others were so surprised that when we charged them, they reacted too late. It was a good thing we avoided a firefight… our weapons were soaked with water and mud, who knows if they would have fired properly.”

  “All right, but what was that explosion?”

  “The boy… at one point he… well, it looked like a mayea of fire. He created flames in his hands and hurled them at a soldier. Properly roasted him: he was still alive, but I don’t know if he’ll survive with burns like that.”

  “So he’s a mage?”

  “So it would seem.”

  It takes me a while to recognise one of the two voices: it seems to be Sisoes’. The other, though, I don’t know whose it is.

  I feel myself lying on damp, uneven ground. My eyes are closed, and I’ve no will to get up.

  I sense a hand resting on my cheek.

  “He’s got warmth back.”

  Dawn’s voice.

  “Good. When I picked him up, I’d have said he was dead, he was so cold,” asserts Sisoes.

  I open my eyes. I see Dawn standing near my head. She immediately realises I’m staring at her.

  “Ethan!” she exclaims. “How do you feel?”

  “I…”

  I’m soaked through, freezing, aching in many places. Still, my sight is no longer red. Also because of that, I realise I can see mostly thanks to a brilliant symbol of the universe created by the girl.

  I try to lift my head, and suddenly feel water spill down my throat. I cough, spitting out the liquid, probably gathered in some sinus cavity during my time underwater.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  Above us is a roof of leaves: we are in a thicket. Water drips heavily from the branches above, so perhaps it’s still raining. In truth, there’s too little light to judge. It can’t just be the clouds; considering how many hours we remained underground, it must have turned to evening, or night.

  And yet, when we were in the ruins, even that faint glow managed to draw the rebels towards the fissure that had opened in the ceiling. Now I realise it must have formed from the collapses caused by the weight of the water. It truly saved us.

  “In the woods near the ruins,” Samuel replies.

  I check who’s present. I see all the Sanders, as well as Sisoes, Hilarion and Kendeas. And then there are two other men I don’t know.

  Clearly, I’ve missed something.

  “I’ll explain,” says Dawn. “We put the soldiers out of action, then ran here. There were more troops on the way… they’re probably looking for us.”

  “And that’s why we have to leave at once,” Antony cuts in. “Pack up… now.”

  With some effort, I start getting back on my feet. Meanwhile I ask Dawn:

  “How long was I unconscious?”

  “A few minutes,” she replies, helping me up.

  I nod towards the rebels who have joined the group.

  “The men who were guarding the ruins while we explored them… are these them?” I ask.

  “These were in the village,” she shakes her head. “They couldn’t warn us of the soldiers’ movements, so they stayed here the whole time keeping watch, and helped us when we fled. The guards… weren’t there. Since, while we were underground, we heard gunfire, I don’t think they…”

  “I understand.”

  I try to focus on what happened before I blacked out. My memories are rather confused, yet I do recall what took place.

  It feels like the trailing fragments of a dream. The near-drowning… the fury of battle… fire blazing from my skin. And most of all, an intense heat.

  Heat… energy…

  These words are imprinted on my mind. I lift a hand, holding the palm before my face. There are no signs of burns.

  I could have sworn I was scorching myself before.

  I stare long at my fingers, thinking of the heat I felt while fighting. Dawn watches me, puzzled. Then she blinks, startled.

  From my rain-soaked hand, steam is rising.

  “Well, if that’s not mayea!” says Sisoes, also intent on watching me. “You didn’t say you were a mage, when Kendeas asked.”

  “There’s no symbol,” says Dawn, dumbstruck as she stares at my hand. “There’s no…”

  I say nothing. I feel great warmth in my palm, and I’m sure I ought to be burning, yet my skin remains intact. That warmth… it’s as if it were something tangible, gripped in an invisible hold created by my mind.

  I… now there’s no longer any doubt: I’m manipulating heat… and earlier, I controlled fire! Now I clearly sense the feeling that lets me do it, like the one you have when moving any muscle!

  Though still a little dazed, my wonder is such that it drives me to understand more. So, I focus on the thought of raising the temperature further.

  But I achieve no appreciable result. Then, after a few moments, I release the incorporeal grip I had kept on the heat. The steam stops at once.

  Wh…?

  I feel cold again. I shiver.

  “Hey!” says Dawn, placing a hand on my arm. “Are you all ri…?”

  I feel a sort of electric jolt shoot through me for an instant. Right after, warmth floods back into me. The girl, instead, makes a startled sound and suddenly jerks her hand away.

  “Cold…” she says, shaking her arm. “You’re… cold…”

  “Cold?” I echo. “That’s not true… I mean, I was cold just now, but I’m fine now.”

  She tries again to bring her hand closer. She touches me cautiously, but this time she doesn’t draw back.

  “Strange,” she asserts. “Now you’re normal.”

  “This kind of couple’s experiment we can save for later, all right?” Sisoes cuts in.

  Dawn withdraws her hand from my arm, pressing her lips together and turning her gaze away from mine. Embarrassed? Annoyed? I certainly am. Was that comment really necessary?

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  But the rebel doesn’t care.

  “There are Republicans around here,” he goes on instead, “and we absolutely need to reach the velivus… assuming they’re still there, which I doubt.”

  “Surveillance at the port was tight,” says one of the newcomers. “By now it’ll be locked down. We’ll have to find another way out.”

  “For now, let’s head back to the village,” Antony decides. “We need to rejoin the rest of the group.”

  “We can’t go to Aniketos,” the other warns him. “The Republicans have taken him.”

  “Damn it.”

  Antony turns towards Dawn and me. Then he picks something up that was leaning against a tree.

  “Do you know how to use these?”

  He’s holding out a pair of mayeutic rifles, probably taken from the soldiers we fought.

  I feel an emptiness in my chest. Bit by bit, I’m beginning to work out, deep in my mind, what happened in the fight earlier. The image of the soldier vanishing into the flames I hurled flickers through my memory.

  They said I didn’t kill him, right? Or at least, he wasn’t dead yet. I can hold on to that doubt, can’t I?

  But now I’ll have to point a weapon at someone again…

  “I know how to use a pistol, but these…” I hesitate, trying not to dwell on it.

  “Better than nothing,” Antony replies. “The pistol could betray you and jam after being so long underwater.”

  We accept the rifles. I examine mine. It has no hole at the tip; rather, the barrel is a smooth cylinder with small pointed protuberances jutting out at regular intervals.

  “Ethan, you aim and fire,” says Dawn. “It won’t be too different from pistols. The trigger’s in the usual place.”

  That’s not the problem. However much I try to suppress it, I can’t completely ignore the unease rising inside me. Now the memory of the fury that drove me in the fight is surfacing again.

  Did I really feel emotions that extreme? It’s… frightening.

  “Let’s go,” Antony orders, taking up a weapon for himself as well.

  Soon after, we move swiftly through the forest, taking great care to stay hidden. The sound of the rain and the darkness work to our advantage, covering our advance.

  After a few minutes, all nine of us emerge from the thicket. I lift my gaze: the sky is dark with a black cloud frighteningly close to the fragment. I shudder. Earlier I heard thunder; if lightning starts to fall…

  Not again, I think, glancing at the metal barrel of my rifle.

  Being emotionally shaken is making me hypersensitive to many things.

  Just as I turn my head to the side, a bolt of lightning lights up the landscape for an instant. In that moment I glimpse the area where the entrance to the ruins lies—the very place where we almost drowned. Only now, from this perspective and without a fight to occupy me, do I truly see the condition of that part of the fragment: a vast swampy pool seems to have been created by the rain. A sheet of water formed in just a few hours, very wide, which well explains how the underground could have flooded in mere minutes.

  The “lake” does not, however, extend into the plain we crossed to reach the remains of the ancient building, so the village is safe. In the settlement, several hundred metres away, lights are visible. On the land around it, four dark figures are moving from the direction of the ruins back towards the houses. Even in the gloom it’s clear they are gendarmes, each holding what may be a torch.

  “They want to raise the alarm,” says Antony. “They certainly didn’t expect us to escape.”

  “Let’s intercept them,” Samuel adds.

  There it is. The moment I realise we’re seeking a clash, I feel my insides twist. But my only choice is to follow the others.

  Dawn makes the glowing symbol of the universe vanish, and our group runs towards the Republicans heading for the village. Thanks to the din of the rain, the soldiers don’t hear us coming until we’re almost upon them. Then they turn. Shouts go up…

  … and then the shooting begins.

  The sound of the mayeutic weapons reminds me of some electronic instrument, the kind used for modern music back on Earth. Low, vibrating noises, accompanying bursts of glowing darts that form around the barrels of the rifles and fly towards their targets.

  The others and I duck into the tall grass to hide, and before I know it, I’ve already aimed my weapon. The tension is sky-high as I watch the brilliant bursts streak out, trying to hit us… trying to HIT ME.

  At that, the survival instinct takes over. I don’t think too much: I pick out a point where the enemy darts are coming from… my finger hesitates on the trigger… then, suddenly, a hostile shot whistles just past my head. At once, I pull the trigger.

  A violet dart shoots from the protrusions on the barrel of my rifle, followed by a short cry of pain. Maybe I hit the mark. A scream comes from our side as well. I ignore it, now firing again and again, my mind emptied of thought, leaving room only for instinct.

  At some point the enemy counterattacks stop coming. We wait a while, on guard, then rise and move to check. The Republicans are all four on the ground, dead or dying.

  Sisoes begins delivering the coup de grace. A scene I turn my head away from so as not to watch.

  I don’t know whether that unsettles me more, or the state of mind I was in just moments ago. My thoughts and doubts are starting to flow back, but it disturbs me how I had set them aside in favour of pure, simple survival.

  Meanwhile, Kendeas approaches Antony.

  “We’ve lost Hilarion,” he says.

  “We can’t take him with us,” the junior sergeant replies. “Let’s take his rifle and go.”

  “What?” I blurt. “We’re leaving him here?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “But… that’s not the point!”

  Even I don’t know what drives me to protest like this, right now. Perhaps I just want to see a little humanity in this absurd situation.

  “He’s your comrade!” I press. “You can’t—”

  “Ethan,” Samuel cuts me off. “Enough.”

  I’m stunned. I’m trying to endure the fact that people are being killed, telling myself it’s the only way to survive. But this…

  “Ethan,” Dawn intervenes. “We can’t carry him… or we’ll risk dying too.”

  I lower my gaze.

  Even so, though…

  “Let’s move,” Antony urges.

  There’s nothing I can do. Nothing I can say.

  The seven other survivors and I set off. I stare at my rifle. I’ve seen the kind of wounds it inflicts: as if some terribly hot fluid—or acid—were liquefying the struck area. Mayea can be terrifying.

  Don’t think about it now.

  We reach the houses. There’s hardly anyone about, and when the few people in the streets catch sight of the rifles, they quickly vanish. At once, our group heads for the harbour.

  “A frigate,” Samuel says.

  “They’ve done things properly,” Antony comments. “I wonder who tipped them off.”

  At those words, I look more closely ahead. Then I notice a large airship hovering just beyond the edge of the fragment, near the harbour. It’s not as big as the battleship I saw when Cyrus Sanders was captured, but it still cuts an impressive figure.

  So, this other ship is called a frigate. If Maltian terminology corresponds even roughly to English, it should be a vessel less powerful but more mobile than beasts like the one that attacked Dawn’s fragment.

  “Let’s stop,” Antony orders.

  We crouch in the grass beside the road linking the settlement to the harbour.

  “Even if we reach the velivus, with that thing it won’t take them long to shoot us down,” Samuel asserts, referring to the frigate.

  “What do we do?” Sisoes asks.

  “I don’t know… I need to think for a moment,” Antony stalls, furrowing his brow and resting a mud-stained hand on his chin.

  “We’d need a diversion,” Kendeas states.

  Even in the agitation of the moment, an idea flashes through my mind. It’s vague, and I don’t know if it’s worth anything, but I know we need to get out of here, and I’d rather look a fool than discard a potential chance of survival.

  “Couldn’t we… make them think we’re on another ship?” I then suggest.

  “What do you mean?” Samuel asks.

  “Perhaps I see,” Antony nods. “But how?”

  “Exactly: there’ll be a departure block,” says one of the men who joined the group. “With no ships leaving, we can’t give that impression.”

  Unfortunately, my idea was only in an embryonic stage. I hadn’t thought of how to actually put it into practice.

  “Let’s make a ship fall,” Dawn suggests.

  Everyone turns to her.

  “We break into the harbour, reach one of the vessels moored at the edge and release it,” she continues. “It’ll fall to the limit of the fragment’s magnetism, and further still if there isn’t much air to slow it down. The frigate might fire on it and destroy it, and then they’ll think they’ve killed us. If instead it chases it, we can take a velivus and escape in the opposite direction. Certainly, if truly no ships are meant to depart, it will draw the enemy’s attention.”

  “Makes sense,” Antony agrees. “The important thing is that on the frigate they don’t realise we’re still on the island, otherwise they’ll smell a rat.”

  He’s accepted the plan rather quickly. We must be in dire straits indeed, if there’s no time to think it through. Indeed, on such a small fragment we’re like rats in a trap. By killing those soldiers earlier, the rebels bought some time, but it won’t be long before others realise we’ve broken free, and then they’ll comb through this place with forces far too great for us to face.

  When we reach the harbour, we find the last four members of the Resistance left in the village. They’re on guard at the entrance, waiting.

  “About time,” they say on seeing us. “But unfortunately there’s no way to get out.”

  “We have a plan,” the junior sergeant tells them. “Take up your weapons. We need to break in.”

  The young man quickly explains how we’ll act. Then our group advances into the harbour. It consists of a cluster of warehouses and other buildings gathered around docks and piers. Between the constructions run alleys that allow us to move unseen.

  Thanks to the information from the men we’ve just met, we immediately identify the position of the guards.

  “They’re not expecting us,” Antony observes.

  He begins giving orders to encircle the enemy, when an exclamation rings out behind us:

  “Hey! What are you doing?”

  Despite the hour and the rain, there are still people working at the harbour. At his shout the soldiers take alarm and draw their weapons.

  Once again, a wave of tension crashes over me.

  Taking cover behind the wall of a building, Antony and the others open fire. I myself dart behind cover.

  The soldiers return fire. Then, an object flies into our midst. I follow it with my eyes, and a dreadful foreboding grips me.

  In video games and films, when the enemy throws something at you, it’s a very bad sign.

  “Scatter!” the junior sergeant orders.

  We sprint in all directions. Moments later, an explosion erupts where we’d been a moment before. An annoying ringing fills my ears after the blast.

  Grenades? They’ve got those too?

  I find myself beside the elder Sanders, the only rebel near me. Some soldiers are running towards us from the neighbouring alleys.

  “We mustn’t get pinned down,” Antony says. “Let’s rejoin the others.”

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