Eirian Soliel, the Sun Princess. Bearer of Ardain. Princess of Aontacht. Lady of the Camelia. General Commanding of the Crimson Army of the Central Plains.
Eirian the exile. Sent to the far edges of the kingdom to marry a stranger. Exiled from the two homes and unable to return.
Eirian, the wife of a dying man, who wasn't dying anymore. Guardian of the baby brother who was supposed to replace her in all things.
Eirian, who was supposed to be a figurehead of a dynasty, distant and untouchable, but she could never remember to do that.
She might perish here, at twenty-five, barely having lived.
The flames crawled across the ground, consuming everything and leaving blackened earth and piles of ash behind it. It stretched farther than Eirian's eyes could see in any direction. The valuable crops of the borderland, which fed so many, were gone, and famine was sure to follow for those few who survived.
It made Eirian angry. Angry had the injustice of it. Angry at the sense it made. Angry that Song and Snow wanted it so badly that it had come to this.
She screamed again, felt a little bit of the anger leave her, and reached for her magic.
It answered in a tidal wave, pouring out of her in a way she rarely allowed.
Out and out and out it went.
It rolled over the wildfire, mixing and driving the flames ever higher and brighter.
Eirian poured it out, searching for the edges of the flames, trying to find the edges the same way she'd searched for the last remnants of the miasma in Chenzhou's blood.
Hunger started to gnaw at her as more of it poured out of her, but she ignored it. There was no stopping now that she'd started.
As her magic spread, she could feel the changes in her terrain. The rolling hills and bubbling rivers, mapping it all in her mind so clearly, it was like she could see it right in front of her eyes.
So much destruction, but then Song and Snow had never cared about the quality of the land they took, just the numbers.
Eirian had never found the limit of her magic. It wasn't like Mingzhe's or anyone else's that she'd ever met, and she knew why now.
She'd brought it from the land of the dead; it wasn't supposed to be here.
Just like her.
She found the edges of the fire. It was so large she couldn't keep hold of it all at first, and so hot she started to sweat, which dried into salt crystals on her skin.
If she managed to recover from this at all, it would take a long time, but eventually she managed to sink her magic into every corner of the wildfire. Trying to control a living thing was vastly different than trying to find poison hidden in veins or moving liquid. Every time she thought she had a handle on it, it shifted and changed.
She was going to die of exhaustion trying to hold it still, she realized.
She didn't need to control all of it all at once. Fire wanted fire; it didn't like to be alone, which was why it always spread.
So she took hold of what she could, took a deep breath to center herself, and pulled.
Pulled her magic and the wildfire back inside her, into that void inside her where her magic waited. It took so much concentration that she barely registered the blistering heat that dried and cracked her skin. Her robes caught on fire, burning away where her overheated armor touched them.
She had to close her eyes before they dried out completely as a vortex of fire formed in front of her chest, sucking in the wildfire and her magic. She could feel it taking up space inside her, the same place her magic occupied, pushing at the seams, but she just kept drawing it in.
It started to feel full too quickly, but her magic had always been like that. Always trying to escape, to force its way out. Eirian had never let it, and she wasn't going to now.
She kept pulling and pulling and pulling, longer than she'd expected, but she didn't stop. Not even when her skin started to blacken and peel, when she could feel her lips crack and split. Her throat and nose burned from trying to breathe in the hot air.
But she didn't stop.
This was what she was meant to do, she realized. This was what she'd been born for, or reborn, depending on how you looked at it. This was the ultimate cost of her freedom, and it was a price she was more than willing to pay.
There was no price that was too high for freedom, Eirian had learned.
So she didn't stop, even as her skin started to melt, and her armor fell to pieces, the thin joints melting in the heat. An acrid smell rose as her hair started to burn.
A terrible wind came with the fire, scalding hot and so strong it nearly toppled Eirian over. It roared like the dragons of old, so loud her ears ached and started to bleed.
Eirian carried an ocean inside her, and now she would carry a wildfire too.
~ tbc