70 - Girl on Fire

“I thought you gave up,” says the Phoenix construct.

“Nope,” I say. “Just needed to work a few things out.”

“Does that mean you’re ready?”

“Yes.”

Without hesitation, she punches, sending a beam of fire at me. This time, rather than dodging, I catch it. Or at least, I try to catch it. Unlike the relatively gentle and normal oum of the bonfire, hers is dense, powerful, and violent. Even though I can kind of resonate with it, I don’t come anywhere close to controlling it, and it burns a hole almost straight through me. Before I can even hit the ground, the construct catches me and heals me. 

“That was pretty dumb,” she remarks as I gasp for breath in her arms.

“Just- copying you,” I say with a cough and a smile.

“You’re a few dozen years early to be trying that.”

At that, I laugh.

“And you’re a few years early to be saying something like that to me. Again.”

I pull myself back to my feet and step away, getting back into a fighting stance. She regards me with a look I have yet to see from her, then she begins as well. 

Pain is nothing new to me. I’ve died in more ways that many can imagine, and I’ve experienced just about every injury and illness under the sun. However, I’m not a masochist.  That hurt a lot and I didn’t like it. I don’t try to take the fire straight to the chest again.

Instead, I take a step back and let it sail past me, surrounding it above and below with my hands. My hands blister from the residual heat, but I hold them in place as I guide my own oum to try to catch even a little bit of her attack. 

I fail. Her oum is too concentrated and too directed. I can’t sway it from its course. But then again, I didn’t expect to succeed the first time anyways.

She waits an unusually long time before attacking again, and it’s another beam of fire. I do the same thing again, trying to catch a bit. Once again, I fail. 

Usually, this is the point where either the Phoenix construct or myself would rush forward to begin a melee engagement, but this time, we both stay put. This surprises me a bit, as it’s different from her usual patterns. Instead, she just waits a second, almost as if making sure I’m ready, then launches another fire attack.

That’s good. I’m definitely on the right track. Or at least I assume so. They wouldn’t have programmed a red herring into her, right? If that’s the case, then I am well and truly screwed, so it’s not worth even considering. I just need to go all in on this method.

When the fire comes this time, I try a different technique. Rather than taking control of her oum, I just try to manipulate it. Move it. Bend it. The first attempt fails, but the second one, I manage to do something. It’s barely noticeable, but the beam of fire curves slightly upward as it goes between my hands. 

“Nice,” says the Phoenix.

“Do I pass?”

“Not even close. But you’ve earned some healing. Hold still.”

She points a finger at me, and a beam of oum too fast for me to react to hits my body. It travels through my veins and into my hands, and I watch as the are restored from burnt messes to pristine condition. That is not a technique that a 2* is capable of.

“When you heal me, are you a different version of yourself?” I ask.

It would have to be, based on what Sam told me about her healing. If she didn’t learn it properly until later in her Climb, then the 1st Floor Phoenix should know almost nothing about it. I already knew that her healing techniques were more advanced than her combat ones, but now I’m curious.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says.

Looks like that answer’s out of reach.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

“Yep.”

For a full six hours, I drill my fire resonance on her attacks. Progress is slow, but steady, as I get more accustomed to bending her fire. Eventually, I get to the point where I can bend it a full 180 degrees, sending it back at her. I hoped that would be the end of it, but she just smiles and copies me, sending the same fire back again. Not ready, I fail to catch it, and need another round of emergency healing before we start again.

From there, we basically play catch with the fire. Of course, it’s not just that, or else it would be easy. She throws in all kinds of twists. She curves it toward me, amplifies it, splits it, fires secondary attacks while I’m occupied, and more. But with each new twist she adds, my control over fire resonance gets better and better. 

I have no realized that I was thinking about it slightly wrong before. While it’s possible to control unclaimed fire oum like it’s my own, controlling someone else’s is completely different. However, I can guide it, which, at higher levels of mastery, is functionally the same. That’s what she was doing before when she took my oum as well. She didn’t “catch” it. She turned its momentum inward so it curled on itself like a ball, then released it to let it circle around her arms. It never lost its momentum, nor my signature, but she controlled the path it traveled on to head back toward me.

Another six hours pass as I rapidly make progress on this skill. By the end, I feel like one of those people from that kids show my brother used to love. We’re no longer fighting. It’s more like a dance. A violent, dangerous dance, but a dance all the same. She throws fire at me, and I throw it back at her. She splits the beam, and I merge it back together. She curves it, and I turn the curve into a full circle right back at her. For the finale, she fires three beams at me, one after the other. I catch the first and spin with it, letting it circle around me, facing her just in time to catch the next, which is aimed higher. I guide this one above me, then in another circle around, before doing the same with the third. Then, I take the three rings of fire encircling me, and with great effort, break the loops, sending them forward in a spiraling helix at the construct.

She smiles as it approaches and holds out a single hand. The fire all seems to get sucked towards it where it coalesces into an impossibly dense ball. I brace myself for her to send it back to me, but instead, she closes her hand in a fist, and the oum dissipates. 

“Congratulations!” she says.

Her demeanor has changed. She has the same confident smile, but she looks a couple years older, and she has a much more mature air to her. 

“Did I pass?”

“Yes. You have successfully completed the first challenge in inheriting my Legacy. And in doing so, you have incidentally also inherited the first part of my Legacy. When I was younger, I called that technique Divine Phoenix Nine Heavens Fire Mastery, but when I got older, I thought that was embarrassing, so I just call it Fire Authority now. Your mastery of it has reached the point where you no longer need my teachings, though if you pass the third challenge, you will be free to stay here as long as you’d like to continue practicing with me.

“The next challenge is very different from this one. Would you like to-?”

She vanishes. 

“Alright, that’s enough,” says Sam’s voice. 

A moment later, the man himself appears in the place where the construct just was.

“That was all the useful information you were going to be able to get from her, by the way,” he adds. “So, congratulations! You did it! With almost two full days left in the Starter Quest too! At this rate, you might even make it back in time.”

Shit. I was so engrossed in that challenge that I almost completely forgot about the Starter Quest. Two days might not be enough time. I won’t be able to get any sleep until it’s over at this rate. Not if I have to fight my way through the ants to get to the surface. At least the most recent round of healing took care of my fatigue as well, so it’ll be doable. 

“Any chance you can bring me to the surface?” I ask.

“Unfortunately, no,” he says. “That would be directly interfering with the Starter Quest. You got down here on your own. You have to get back up on your own too.”

“Figures,” I grumble. “Before I leave, I have one final question.”

“Ask away!”

“What I just did was one of the methods to pass the first challenge. Defeating her was the other. What was the third way?”

“If you had lost to her 10,000 times. She wanted to reward talent, skill, and perseverance, and anyone who goes back for a beating 10,000 times certainly has that third quality.”

“I see. Makes sense.”

“Anything else?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I need to leave. But… Thank you. For everything.”

“My pleasure,” he says with a bow. “Good luck out there!”

With that, he vanishes.

I rush out of the challenge room to find Timmy idly petting Trinity. As soon as he sees me coming out, he stands up.

“Time to leave?” he asks.

“Time for me to leave,” I say. “You’re staying here.”

“I wanna come with you.”

“You can’t. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m strong now!”

“You’re stronger,” I correct. “You’re not strong enough to follow me yet. You’re staying here. End of story.”

He has definitely gotten quite a bit stronger. He’s already well into Middle 1 star. If he keeps eating those mushrooms, he might even touch Late 1 star before he gets teleported out.

“No!” he says.

“Yes,” I say.

As I argue with him, I’m running around the room, grabbing our bags with the trophies we’ve collected. I rummage through my personal bag to find a small leather bag that cost Kat 100,000 Tower Credits. It’s got some kind of preservation formation on it to keep anything placed inside it as fresh as when it was picked, similar to the box containing Timmy’s ginseng. We were saving it for something truly special, and there’s nothing more special than the mushroom in the center of the antechamber. 

Timmy watches in horror as I pluck it and stuff it into the bag and then gasps as the bag vanishes from me tossing it into Trinity’s voidspace. Trinity yowls angrily as I shove the rest of our bags in there too. I guess she’s angry that I’m using her corpse storage for non-corpses, but that’s too bad for her. 

“I wanna come!” says Timmy as I double check my things and walk toward the door.

“Nope,” I say.

But I still stop. At this rate, he’s going to follow me. I can’t have that. I don’t plan on eradicating the ants. I might clear a path temporarily, but if he tries to follow, he’ll probably be eaten alive. And I don’t want to send him to the voidspace because I still think that would be worse than being down here. I turn and walk back until I’m standing right in front of him. 

“We are not even going to be separated for two days,” I say sternly. “I will see you again very soon. I’m not abandoning you. You won’t be alone for long. But you cannot follow me. You aren’t strong enough to protect yourself, and you’ll slow me down. I need to move quickly, and I can’t do that with you. Do you understand?”

“I’m strong now!”

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll give you a chance. If you can hit me, you can come with me.”

“What?”

“Hit me,” I say, holding my hands up. “If you can hit me, that will prove that you’re strong enough to follow me.”

“Um…” he says, hesitating. 

“Do you remember how to punch? It’s like this.”

I punch at him, my fist stopping less than an inch from his face. He flinches backward and stumbles and falls on his rear.

“You aren’t ready,” I say. “You’re staying here. Understand?”

He doesn’t respond, but his eyes are welling with tears. I sigh and crouch down.

“Timmy, listen,” I say. “Where I’m going is very dangerous. If you try to follow me, you’ll get hurt really badly or die, and if that happened, I would-” I would be sad? “I would be angry with you. So listen to me. This is for your own good. I’ll see you again soon. Got it?”

A tear rolls down his cheek. 

“Got it?” I ask again.

Finally, he nods.

“Alright,” I say. “I’m leaving now. Remember, I’ll see you soon. Okay? If you get lonely, just call for Sam. He’ll keep you company.”

“Yup!” says Sam, popping into existence before disappearing again.

Timmy nods again.

“Alright. Bye. See you later!”

“D-don’t abandon me,” says Timmy suddenly, clutching at my pant leg. “Please?”

I look into his eyes, and I realize that perhaps the other night when he told us why he was in the Tower, he wasn’t telling the full story. I didn’t really expect him of all people to be hiding anything, but I guess maybe he wasn’t. He just wasn’t asked the right question. He’s been abandoned before. 

I hesitate for a second longer, then sigh.

“I’m not abandoning you,” I say. “But there is one option. It won’t be fun though.”

He looks up at me with glistening eyes.

“Trinity is a special cat. She has her own personal space that follows her wherever she goes. I can put you in there. However, it’s dark, small, and lonely, and there’s a dead body in there. But as long as you’re in there, you’ll be right beside me and completely safe.”

“I want to do that!” he says.

“You won’t be able to come out until I’m safe,” I say. “And it will be dark and cramped and lonely.”

“I want to go with you!”

I sigh again, then hold out my hand.

“Alright, take my hand. And remember, you can still change your mind after to go in.”

He eagerly grabs my hand, and I connect him to the voidspace. He vanishes, and I sense him reappear within the voidspace. I glance down at Trinity who’s sitting at my feet.

“Wanna keep him company?” I ask her.

“Mraw!”

She vanishes and reappears within the voidspace, and I observe within to see him hugging her, leaning against the wall. I guess that will have to do. 

I take one final look at the antechamber to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything important, then turn for the exit.

“You’d better keep your promise, Sam,” I say.

“Wouldn’t dream of breaking it!” his voice replies. “See you again soon.”

“Bye!”

Now, let’s see about those ants.