Young Flame

Despite being completely cut off from the outside world, the inside of this island remains decently lit. Lines along the ceiling glow just bright enough to illuminate every corner, even through all this water.

The main hallway at the top of the stairs is wide. As large as the entrance from the bridge on the other side of the cubical entry hall. It’s obviously made to accommodate hundreds of people passing through, but with only us to fill the space, it feels empty.

Unlike the last corridor, this doesn’t have any doorways at all. It simply continues straight, unmarred by anything besides the lines of some large inscription. The sight of which leaves me concerned we are walking into another trap ready to blow on us.

These long inscription lines travel everywhere through this structure. Any single wall is only a small part of the overall design, so it is impossible to get a glimpse into what each does. These lines travelling beneath our feet, by our sides, and over our heads leave no warning of what to expect.

“So what do we do if this explodes on us, too?” I ask.

“Leave that to me,” Śuri says. “I will protect everyone long enough for Leal to take control of the water flow, just like we did on our way in.”

Well, if he’s confident, then I guess I shouldn’t worry.

The passage is long. Each step we take seems to bring us no closer to its end, yet we keep striding forward. I pass a flame over the metal beneath my feet, but even the metal inside has that strange cooling system built behind it. Though it is nowhere near as strong as what I witnessed in the cube.

The vents appear the same as the last corridor we walked through, yet that chilled energy seems almost inactive. It’s probably a good thing considering how much more difficult it would make our travel if all this water was frozen.

Each minute we walk, the more green the end of the hallway appears. It is subtle at first, but the colour soon overwhelms the white light of the above lines. What’s strange is that the glow doesn’t have a distinct source. The metal tunnel ahead is simply bathed in that sickly green light.

To my side, Yalun passes her hand over the wall. Her eyes digging into the metal. I try to see what has her attention, and after staring for a few seconds, a very slight green seems to permeate out from the grey steel. I’m not sure whether I’m simply mistaking the shine from the rest of the hallway, or it actually shines out from the metal, but Yalun doesn’t make note of it, so I continue striding onward.

We’ve been walking through this hallway for nearly twenty minutes when it finally ends.

It ends in a wall. A dead end.

There are no side passages, nor doors or any other place to lead off from here, only the flat metal barrier before us. I’d think this was a waste of time if not for the wall glowing green. It is still mostly indistinct, but the colour is strong enough to be clearly coming from the metal now.

While green isn’t something I haven’t seen before, this poisonous shade seems almost otherworldly, but I can’t put my finger on why I get that feeling.

“Does anyone know what this glow is?” I ask, mainly looking at Yalun and Leal. Those two usually know the most about the strange oddities of the world.

“Nope,” Yalun says, her flames already brushing over the wall. “Not a thing.”

“Neither.” Leal’s face is bare millimetres from the metal.

I shake my head as I turn to the only two of our group with some restraint. “So what now? Should I test what’s on the other side of this wall?” I offer to do so, but I really don’t want to be stung by water again.

“You don’t have to,” Śuri says. “I’m going to burn it out of our way, regardless.”

Uh… I’d really rather not have him cause any other disaster while we still have such limited knowledge of this place. What if it sets off an explosion? What if there’s ranked water behind it that Leal cannot hold it from crashing over us?

“Give me a minute.” I step away from Grímr and Śuri to place my hand on the slightly glowing green metal.

Absently, I notice that while it glows, it doesn’t actually illuminate either my hand or any of the other members of our group.

My fire pushes into the wall, but it feels strange, like I’m being constricted as soon as I’m inside the wall. The green glow condenses, brightening around the area my flames push through. The strange energy pokes and prod at my ethereal blaze, only to back off. In seconds, the metal loses all its green lustre and returns to the dull grey of steel.

I exchange glances with Yalun and Leal, but neither has an explanation, so I push on. There are much of the same internal workings as the door I felt earlier, pipes and compressed gasses — that I make sure my flames are ethereal enough not to interact with this time — along with more copper-based alloys that channel wind hyle.

When I reach the other side, I hesitate. Tensing myself for the possibility that I will have to snap myself back at a moment’s notice, I breach the other side.

Air. Stale and musty, but it still burns the same. My flames spread, but it seems the corridor continues past this wall.

I pull back my flames and make way for Śuri. “It’s dry air on the other side.”

“Great, this shouldn’t take two seconds,” he says as he steps forward. Blue flames swirl out from his body and cover a large section of the wall. A sizzle roars from the wall as the metal vaporises from the heat.

“Wait!” Leal shouts, but it is too late. Śuri eats through the section of wall and an intense wind assaults us. I’m lifted from the ground and sucked through the hole before I can comprehend the roaring of air and crashing of water.

I skid across the ground for a moment before I feel flames wrap around my chest and tug me back. Rushing water tears along my side, returning us to the same intense flow we escaped not long ago.

Physical blue flames grasp each of us and hold us behind Śuri, whose stream of intense black fire is the only thing stopping the powerful flow now gushing through the hole we were just sucked through. The water bursts into steam before coming close to the dark flame, but that steam still washes over us with unmitigated pressure.

The blue flames drag us girls behind Grímr, whose tries his best to protect us with his wings but only manages to be sent sprawling by the intensity of the steam gust. All five of us skid along the ground a hundred metres in a second under the strength of the stream, before Grímr slams his wings into the metal beneath our feet and brings us to a halt. Śuri somehow able to keep the main flow of water off us at all times.

“Leal,” Śuri commands, and that is enough to snap her back to focus. She pushes her own stream around Śuri and slowly takes command over the flow, giving the grand elder space to pull back on his fire.

Before Leal can get enough of a grip to give us space to move, a screeching siren blares through even the roar of rushing water. The inscription above flashes red. A grinding clank accompanies the fall of another wall slamming into place mere metres in front of us.

The new wall cuts off the flow of water. What was an intense blast of water immediately collapses into nothing. The water that made it past the barrier keeps its momentum, carrying it further down the hallway, but some water pools back toward us, only to burn up in Śuri’s proximity.

Śuri’s flames let go as he turns to face us. His arms and face blister with a sheen of charcoal that sizzles and crumbles after only a few seconds.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such an injury. Ever since my binding increased, the flames of my body don’t react the same to injury as the rest of my race. As I look at Yalun, I find her flames visible and trying to recover what body they lost. They do so rapidly, but it’s still enough to tell the mist hurt her.

“For fuck’s sake, Śuri. What was that?” Yalun stomps over to the other grand elder.

“Sorry. I didn’t expect the water to move again.”

“Of course it would,” Leal mumbles beside me. “With that much pressure? We’re lucky not to be paste.”

“Are you alright?” I ask as stand by her side. Even as she sits, I’m only barely taller than her. Leal is the one I’m worried about the most. Of the lot of us, she has the least enhancement. I’ve been trying to enact the inheritance ritual for her whenever I can, but it still isn’t enough. Her body can’t take the same beating many of us can, so that initial burst through the hole might have caused her serious injury.

“Yeah,” she says, rising to her feet and making me the small one once again. “I think your elder took all the blow for me.”

She walks up to the new wall now blocking the way out. The idea of such unsettles me, but I have overcome my fear, so I can bundle up my reservations and burn them whole. I step in tow with a deep breath to gather myself.

Grímr tears his wings out of the floor. His feathers a little scratched up, but he seems mostly unharmed.

Leal runs her hand along the smooth surface. The slight green glow permeating this barrier just as much as the last. I’m tempted for a moment to push my flames through to see if it will flee again, but the thought of accidentally touching the water on the other side stays my hand.

Leal turns to the far end of the corridor. “It looks like the creators don’t want whatever’s down here to be flooded, even when the entrance itself can be.”

“Do you think it’s designed to flood?” I ask. With how water is used through this structure, it might be intentional. The original hole Śuri burnt away in that cannon barrel likely flooded that entrance section, but I don’t think it’s a leap to say whoever designed this place either expected such an occurrence, or even had ways of doing so themselves.

Maybe the creators are a race of fish people? I can only imagine a species that can breathe underwater ever designing the island in such a way. But if that’s the case, then why the stairs? Fish can swim, right? Or could they be a really heavy fish race? Wait, can fish even breath outside water? If not, then why would they block off the water like this?

I don’t think I know enough about fish.

“No,” Leal says. “This appears more like an emergency contingency.”

“So… not fish people, then?”

Leal looks at me oddly. “What?”

“Ah, nothing. Don’t worry.” I didn’t mean to ask that out loud.

❖❖❖

After a few minutes to gather ourselves, we return to our trek along the wide hallway. The green glow imbued within each surface around us continues to deepen. As it intensifies, the colour seems to flow, like wisps of flame or currents in water.

This green permeation is clearly a type of energy, but unlike fire, lightning, or any of the other hyle states of elements, this energy doesn’t have a recognisable feeling to it. The metal is visibly strange, but to my flames, it’s as if it is completely normal.

Eventually, the passage reaches its end. As we step out from the dimly lit space into a bright open space. For a moment, I think we’ve returned outside, only for the heavy rain to have ceased, but upon looking up, the steel ceiling kilometres above puts an end to that thought.

Our tunnel exited at the beginning of a bridge with plentiful stairs leading down the side into what looks like city divisions. Each separated section is only barely recognisable as a residency because of the pathways leading into a thousand chunks of steel. Otherwise, the city would appear just like any other flat surface of metal I’ve seen in this island.

The bridge leads toward the centre of the enormous chamber where a spherical dome takes up a decent majority. Metal piping, at least as thick as the first cube we came across, pierces out from the central sphere and connects to the outer walls.

Considering the number of them, and the directions they are pointing, I won’t be surprised if they lead to the geysers outside the island.

What stands out the most amongst this massive chamber is the visually inverted tower dropping from the ceiling and connecting to the top of the sphere. It stands out not for its size, or the impressive stalactite-like design, but the deep ethereal green shade swathing the structure.

The emerald glow tears away any semblance that it is metal. In fact, the green moves and sways in such a way that the tower doesn’t even appear physical. Like a flame suspended in space and swaying without movement.

It is exceedingly eerie, but I can’t help the feeling that it is calling for me.