The Rubbish Realm

Chapter 14

Evander tossed the book to the side, careful to leave it on the page it was at. He had ordered the candles exactly like the diagram had told him to, measuring them exactly. He stepped in, expecting to be taken to another place... and nothing happened. He stepped out, then stepped back in. Nothing.
"What?" he asked to nobody in particular, frustrated deeply at his inability to work such a seemingly simple spell. Granted, he couldn't read the instructions, but why should that stop him? The pictures seemed pretty clear.
He stepped in again. Again, no effect.
Picking up the ruler, he measured the distance between the candles, made sure the chalk guiding lines he had made were perfectly accurate... they were. He hadn't done anything wrong.
He figured he might as well step in another time. Couldn't hurt, right? And... nothing. Not even tired, except from the tiredness of trying many times and not succeeding.
He held the book up to the window light, wondering if it could illuminate anything he had missed. The candles were how they ought to be, the lines written as they had been on the diagram... maybe they had to be lit? Melton had a lighter, after all, the one he had made. He grabbed it from Melton's pack and pushed in on the sparker. A grinding sound was audible from the inside, then a few sparks flashed out, sizzling to nothing on the wooden floor.
"Sweet, it works," he mumbled to himself as he ran back into the room. He sparked it again near one of the candles and it lit. Putting down the lighter, he lit the other four candles with the first one, being careful not to drip wax on the floor. He then measured the first candle again, restoring it to its original position. He checked to make sure... yup, they were all lined up. He stepped in, felt his foot brush against something and a slight thump, then he was tired and slumped unconscious as the world faded to black.

Melton awoke from his nap, resting his ankle, to the smell of smoke. Was Amberly burning something in the kitchen? He limped over there, using the wall to support him... no fire, nobody there. He sniffed again. Still a strong smell of fire... "Amberly, something is burning!" he yelled. She'd be faster.
He didn't hear a response, so he yelled again as he followed the scent. "Something is burning, Amberly!" The slight pain from yelling so loud burned in the back of his throat as, while limping to a hallway, he noticed smoke billowing out of a doorway inside of it. "Amberly!" The pain in his ankle suddenly an afterthought, he ran towards the room. That was where Evander had been working, clearly. The door had been shut, and he pulled on the rather warm doorknob, ripping open the room to see... a conflagration. The whole room was ablaze. Melton peered in for a second, but when not seeing Evander inside, slammed the door shut. Had the portal worked? "Amberly! There's a fire!" No response.
He sprinted up the stairs to her room, adrenaline drowning the sharp pain from his ankle, as he started to yell with all his breath, rapid-fire, yelling her name over and over again. He threw open the door and she startled awake.
"There's a fire!"
Already startled, she jumped to her feet. "A fire?" She didn't even sing it, the terror was so audible in her voice. "Where?" She glanced at his ankle, realizing he was upstairs on it.
"Downstairs. It's big." Melton, glancing backwards, saw opportunity and followed it, sliding down the bannister to the first floor. Amberly ran down the steps, not undignified enough to slide down after him. They sprinted towards where Melton had seen the fire... and it had spread. The fire was no longer contained in the room, and the smoke was stifling.
Melton turned to Amberly, downcast. "We're not stopping that."
Amberly nodded resolutely, or at least as resolute as Melton had ever seen her be. Raising her hand, she tested her fear affinity on the flames, but they only shied back for seconds before spreading again. The heat grew more intense, the smoke threatening to smother them.
Melton glanced in the room again, looking for a sign of Evander, and then a thought flashed across his panicked mind - what if he had used magic wrong? There was nothing visible through the screen of smoke, and when he began to cough, he fled the way he had came. Amberly beckoned towards him, leading him to the nearest exit- and his ankle gave out in a spectacular flare of pain. Not really caring anymore, he screeched slightly, the sound cutting through the fire's dull crackle as it burned towards them, the smoke thickening ominously, as if foreshadowing their doom.
He attempted to rise, but his ankle would not permit such an undertaking. His adrenaline was no longer hiding the pain from the deep wound the arrow had inflicted, but he knew he had to escape the fire. Crawling, he worked his way away from the smoke even as it crawled towards him. Amberly turned, seeing his plight, and ran back to offer him leaning on her shoulder. Together, Melton limped towards the front door as fast as his legs could carry him.
An ember lit upon the back of his shirt, but Amberly snuffed it out, knowing there would be more. The air was getting worse and worse, becoming almost as dangerous as the fire itself. But at last they could see their goal through the smoky haze. Melton remembered something Evander used to say often: "Don't look back. Someone might be gaining on you." He always said he got it from Allistaire, but Allistaire never remembered having said it.
Amberly began to cough, lightly at first, but as they reached the door, they could hardly see three feet in front of them and the heat was becoming stifling. Melton reached into his satchel with his free hand, Amberly opening the door with hers - and they realized a still-worse truth: the soldiers were still waiting outside and the barrier was failing as whatever was keeping it up burned. They didn't slow, limping out of the burning conflagration, and then, as if things couldn't get worse, Melton noticed something else - the grass around the house was also catching on fire. Soon they would have a full-blown forest fire on their hands if nothing abruptly changed. And that also meant there would be nowhere to hide.
As his hand brushed through the familiar items in his satchel, all far too basic to help them, they broke into the clear - and what is that? He found something he had not been expecting at all. Pulling it out, it seemed to be a set of colored marbles, one of each color of the rainbow along with clear, black, grey, and brown, with a note inside. He pulled it out and read it, careful not to drop any of the marbles.
"These are affinity candies. Put one in your mouth, and for however long it stays there, you will have that affinity in addition to your own. Remember, don't swallow them until you're done with them, and use them sparingly. Good luck. Alistaire."
And a subscript was written at the bottom: "Your affinity is stronger than mine. Find some use for these. Evander."
Melton ran through his options - telekenesis couldn't save him here, invisibility wouldn't really help, the black one wouldn't do anything, healing never worked with fire, compassion could only save Amberly, luck was too valuable, he couldn't maintain surprise long enough to save them with that, the anger couldn't possibly be potent enough to get rid of a flame... he twirled the purple one around in his fingers. Could fear save them? His mind flashed back to when Amberly had scared the flames back, if only for a moment. Were these candies strong enough to hold a wildfire away from them?
Melton noticed the soldiers setting up little rings of candles hurriedly as the flames spread in all directions. Sweat ran down his back from the terrible heat as he knew he had to make a choice. He placed the marble into his mouth - and felt absolutely nothing. The heat was no longer there, the pain in his ankle as if it had never happened, the air around perfectly breathable as if there were no smoke, though he knew it was all around them. He yanked Amberly to the ground, not concerned about her disposition towards it, and, though he'd never done it before, cast an aura of fear around them.
The fire burned all around them, cutting off their view of everything else - but did not burn them. Melton noted the sour taste of the candy as he noted the horrified, frozen expression on Amberly's face, as if she wanted to run away as fast as she could but was even more scared of disobeying him as she was of him himself.
He felt distinctly the saliva dissolving the marble in his mouth, remembering that he wasn't to swallow it. The fire was spreading quickly, and if it could spread quickly enough... the marble seemed as though it could last for several minutes if he tried. So far it was holding up and Amberly was still alive too, though certainly not looking the best she'd ever looked. Her face looked as though it had lost circulation, it was so pale. It was especially remarkable in the contrast to the bright orange flames all around them.
The heat must have been terrible outside, but he couldn't tell. The embers seemed to bounce off a layer a couple feet in front of them. But the fire seemed to be moving on, if slowly. Vaguely he heard an explosion in the distance, or so it seemed. Considering he couldn't hear the wildfire raging around him... there seemed to be about half of the candy left. And worse yet, he could feel it starting to falter. Flashes of heat started to break through, the embers quit bouncing off the invisible barrier, and he could feel it wobbling within him as he realized the awful truth - he couldn't keep the barrier so big. Amberly wouldn't be able to make it - and as he said it, she finally gained the countenance to back up away from his terrifying presence - and he could only watch the flames consume her in a matter of moments. He turned away, consoling himself with the fact that only one of them could have survived anyway. He was starting to become scared of himself.
Time passed, presumably, and the fire moved on. Finally, he could see what was around him, the wall of flames having moved on. And it was terrible.
Everything was blacked, burned, pieces of everything everywhere. He could see parts of what had been Amberly, fragments of the house, fragments of trees, the fire continuing to burn in a circle around him, getting further and further into the dried woods. And Evander was gone.
He remembered the last time he had thought Evander was dead. It had been years ago, they'd gotten separated on a raid and Evander had missed the rendezvous by two months. Eventually Melton had just given up on him, sure he must have gotten captured somewhere, but when he trekked to Allistaire's house, Allistaire had told him that Evander had simply gotten lost. Incredulity aside, it was one of the brightest moments of Melton's life. He didn't expect it to happen again. Nothing could have survived that, he knew, glancing towards what remained of Amberly and trying not to puke. He started to feel the heat as the marble neared its finish, while he tried not to cry, before realizing its futility. Everything around his was burnt, and he didn't know how to use a portal. Now that he had survived the fire, he could do nothing but starve.