A World in Flames

I woke because someone was screaming.

For several seconds, I remained beneath the blankets without moving, too tired to understand what I had just heard. The sound stopped moments later, which made it easier to believe that it had belonged to whatever dream I had just been having.

Then another scream tore through the manor.

I sat up so quickly that the blankets twisted around my legs. My room looked almost normal: moonlight between the curtains, clothes folded over the chair, my practice sword beside the desk. Nothing in here explained that sound.

Then something thin moved beneath the door.

At first I thought it was mist, because smoke was supposed to rise and this was crawling across the floor in pale grey streams. The smell reached me a moment later.

Burning wood.

I threw the blankets aside and opened the door.

Smoke rolled over me hard enough to steal my first breath. I coughed into my sleeve, eyes watering while heat pressed against my face. The corridor beyond slowly returned in pieces.

The wall at the far end was burning.

Flames had already climbed into the ceiling beams, throwing orange light through the smoke until the hallway looked like the inside of a furnace.

“Mother!”

My voice vanished into the haze.

“Father!”

Nothing came back.

For the first time in my life, I had shouted for my parents inside my own home, and nobody had responded.

That frightened me more than the fire itself.

I stepped into the corridor anyway; the floorboards were warm beneath my bare feet. I had taken only a few paces when hurried footsteps sounded behind me.

“Master Leon!”

Elara came running through the smoke.

I had seen her angry, tired and ill, but I had never seen her afraid.

Her hair had come partly loose, soot covered one side of her dress, and when she reached me she caught both my shoulders as though she needed to make sure I was actually there.

“Thank goodness,” she said, catching her breath. “Leon, we have to go.”

“What happened?”

“There’s no time.”

“Where are Mother and Father?”

“They’re safe. They sent me here to find you.”

The answer should have fixed something inside me, but it didn’t. Elara was gripping me too tightly, and I could feel the shaking in her fingers.

“Then take me to them.”

“I will, but you need to do exactly as I say and stay behind me. Can you do that?”

A sharp crack came from above us before I could answer.

Elara’s head snapped up.

Her face changed, and then both her arms were around me. The corridor lurched sideways as she threw us backwards.

Burning timber crashed across the floor where I had just been standing, scattering sparks and plaster through the smoke. I heard myself make a sound against Elara’s shoulder, although I could barely remember deciding to make it.

She kept one arm around my head until the noise stopped. When she released me, her hands were trembling worse than before.

“We’re going now.”

I nodded because speaking suddenly became rather difficult, and we ran.

The upper corridor should have led towards the grand staircase. I knew every turn without thinking, yet smoke had swallowed the ceiling and fire had changed every familiar colour until I barely recognised the home I had spent my whole life in.

The portraits were burning.

Faces I passed every day warped inside their frames while the heat curled the canvas.

Then I saw the family portrait.

Father stood beside Mother, her hand resting on my shoulder, while I sat between them staring straight ahead. Fire had reached the bottom of the frame and was climbing through Father’s coat.

I stopped walking.

“Leon.”

The flames reached Mother’s dress.

“Leon!”

Elara caught my hand and dragged me away as the canvas folded inward.

The three of us disappeared together.

Through a window further ahead, I saw the gardens.

The hedges were burning from end to end. Near the eastern wall, fire moved through the old oak trees.

There would have been nowhere to hide in them now.

Steel rang from somewhere below.

One strike became another, then several more, too many to belong to a single fight.

Elara tightened her grip around my hand.

“Stay close.”

“Who are they fighting?”

She kept moving.

“Elara?!”

Still nothing.

Elara always had an answer, even when the answer was that I’d chosen an inconvenient time to ask.

We turned into the next corridor, and she stopped so suddenly that I almost hit her back.

Something dark covered the floor ahead.

For a moment, I thought somebody had spilt wine. The firelight moved across it in red patches, and my mind kept trying to make the colour belong to something ordinary until I noticed the people lying between the walls.

One wore a servant’s uniform, another still had the silver wolf of Valemont across his armour, while beyond him lay somebody from the kitchens whose shoes I recognised before anything else.

I looked back at the floor.

It wasn’t wine.

Elara moved in front of me, but not before I saw the crimson streaks continuing beneath a fallen sword.

“Don’t look.”

“I know them.”

“I know.”

“Are they—”

“Leon!”

Her voice cracked on my name, so I stopped asking.

We continued walking through the hallway with my eyes fixed on the back of her dress. If I looked anywhere else, I would recognise another shoe, another sleeve, another hand, and each one would become somebody I already knew.

Footsteps sounded somewhere further ahead, slow and distant, with a faint clink following each one.

Elara pulled me through a partially open door and crouched until our faces were level.

“Stay here,” she whispered.

“What about you?”

“I’ll be right outside.”

“No. Come in.”

“Leon, listen to me. Whatever happens, you don’t make a sound.”

Whatever happens.

My stomach tightened around those words.

“Elara—”

“Please!” she whispered harshly.

I had never heard her say it like that before.

I stepped backwards as Elara pulled the door almost closed, leaving a gap no wider than my hand so it wouldn’t click shut.

A few moments later, an Imperial Knight walked into view, and I stared at the crest on his armour until my eyes burned.

Three days earlier, men wearing that same armour had stood beneath the palace gates while Father went inside to meet the Emperor. Imperial Knights protected people; Father had spoken about their duty and honour. This one stepped across the blood without looking down.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is Leon Valemont?!”

My name sounded wrong in his voice.

Elara backed away without looking towards the door.

“I haven’t seen him.”

“You were seen heading towards the eastern rooms.”

“I was looking for other survivors.”

“And did you find any?”

“No.”

Her voice barely changed, and I understood she was lying for me.

The knight drew his sword, and the sound of metal leaving the sheath was quieter than I expected.

Elara dropped backwards and tried to push herself away. One hand landed in a pool of blood, slipping against the floorboards each time she tried to move.

“Last chance.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

I pressed both hands over my mouth.

The knight’s shoulders were steady, his sword was already in his hand, and there was nothing uncertain in the way he stood over her.

I knew what he was going to do, and knowing should’ve helped, but my legs wouldn’t move.

I tried anyway.

One step would reach the door, another would put me in the corridor, and I could shout or throw something or make him look at me instead.

My knees stayed locked together while my hands crushed my mouth harder.

“Please,” Elara whimpered, looking up at him.

The sword moved.

There was a sound I didn’t understand at first, much smaller than the crash of wood or the ring of steel downstairs. Elara’s body jerked, and the arm holding her up suddenly gave way.

A dark patch began spreading through the side of her dress.

For a few seconds, I watched it without understanding why the fabric kept changing colour. Then something seeped from beneath her and crept between the boards in thin red lines.

Blood.

Elara was bleeding, but bleeding was different from being dead, and my mind clung to that difference immediately.

People bled when they were hurt. I had split my knee open once, and Elara had cleaned it without looking worried.

She only needed to get up.

I waited for her fingers to move against the floor.

Maybe she had hit her head. Maybe she was pretending because the knight was still there. Maybe if I stayed quiet long enough, he would leave, and she would look towards the door and tell me it was safe.

She always knew what happened next, but even after the knight turned away, Elara didn’t move.

Why aren’t you moving? Why aren’t you moving?

Move. Move. Move.

Something hot slid over my hand, and it took me several seconds to realise tears had reached the fingers pressed against my face.

A voice thundered through the corridor.

“You!”

A Valemont Knight charged through the smoke, and steel crashed against steel.

More men followed him, and the narrow strip of corridor still visible to me filled with sparks.

I barely saw the fight because my eyes kept returning to Elara’s hand.

The Imperial Knight fell somewhere beyond her.

She still hadn’t moved.

Elara had come to my room because my parents sent her. She had pulled me away from the ceiling and walked in front of me through the blood. She had stood outside this door to distract the knight who was looking for me.

If I had opened it, she might still be alive.

The thought arrived whole, with nowhere to put it, and my knees folded beneath me.

I fell against the wall and stared through the gap until the smoke blurred everything together. Mother and Father were somewhere inside this burning manor, while Elara lay only a few steps away from me.

Mostly, I wanted to go home.

The thought hurt because I was already there.

A quiet knock struck the door.

“Master Leon?”

Every part of me froze solid.

“Master Leon, are you in there?”

I knew the voice.

Sir Edmund.

Knowing that should’ve made me answer immediately, but my throat still refused to work.

Instead, Elara’s hand filled my thoughts while I tried to piece together a few words.