Matthew was high. He had honestly not felt this good in his entire life. The dream he had been having for the past months was vividly flooding to the foreground of his mind. Smashing those handfuls of magma into the body of that wicked fictitious banker had been the highlight of his evenings. Now that dream had come to life.

  Every human body that came into contact with his burning right hand morphed before his eyes into one of the myriad individuals that had looked down on him, spat on him, and held him back through his life.

  His murderous, lazy, gambling, drunken father showed up in the form of a cowardly paladin that had fallen down. Matthew melted his breastplate to his flesh.

  His mother, too meek and afraid to defend her own son? She had been a sweaty, portly woman he had seen fanning herself in the line to enter the city. When Matthew blew off her arm, she fainted immediately.

  The victims he had not had the chance to get a good look at tended to transform into one of the many Tarly hitmen and musclemen that had accosted him and his family for years.

  As his excitement and emotions built, he decided quite consciously that it was time to conjure up the one that had nearly destroyed his life. Nearly destroyed the dreams of power that Matthew had slowly cultivated his entire life.

  In reality, she was a skinny young woman carrying a bundle of fancy groceries that had been swept up in the stampede. She transformed, in Matthew’s eyes, into Kaitlyn. The groceries undulated and shifted until they were a swaddled infant. He reached, his hand surging with raw, internal fire.

  Pop!

  The girl screamed and fell as flaming bits of bread and vegetables were strewn across the bricks. The crowd surged past her as she turned to look at Matthew, madness in his eyes. The murderer slowed to a determined walk and held his smoking palm out to her face. Veins, turning black with the overcharge of mana spidered across his open palm.

  “You’re done taking from me,” Matthew said, his voice hollow.

  The woman squirmed and cried as Matthew’s hand heated against her skin. It was becoming hotter and hotter. Just when it became unbearable, it got hotter.

  But suddenly, relief. The woman opened her eyes slowly, her whole body trembling. A colossus of a man was holding Matthew’s right arm high.

  “Matthew, that’s enough,” Benji said flatly.

  “Let me go!” Matthew spat.

  “You are done. You aren’t here for the heist anymore. You’re just killing.”

  “I said let me go, Benji! I’m the leader!” Matthew was beginning to lose control.

  “So I let you lead, then?” Benji asked, hot tears showing up in his eyes. “Where will you lead me? To die in the woods, like Jack? To wander off in the night by myself, like Sarah? Or how about leading me to die, alone in a church?”

  Matthew wailed as his hand fired off a burst of energy. Benji did not flinch. But he kept such a focus on Matthew’s right hand that he was not prepared for the left to swing in, hitting him under the ribs and firing upward.

  The punch left Benji gasping and doubled over. He released Matthew who screeched as he scrambled around to put his hand on the forehead of one of his oldest friends. The heat began building as Benji silently wept.

  “You made me,” Matthew urged.

  “I tried to stop it,” Benji replied. “Too little too late though.”

  Matthew’s eyes teared up as well as the heat built. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see what he was about to do. But he needed to do it. Benji was too big. Too emotional. If Benji lost faith like he just did, he could crush Matthew utterly. He needed to die.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Benji’s pained groan came as a surprise, though. Matthew let the heat subside and grimaced when he saw Benji’s torso being pierced with three spears of golden light. The massive man’s eyes were rolling, focusing on nothing at all. With a final sigh, Benji fell face first onto the bricks.

  Matthew watched the blood beginning to pool when he heard a woman scream his name.

  “You missed,” Captain Starlight observed through a pair of golden binoculars. She stood immediately beside Brother Abraham, her foot tapping impatiently. The streets were becoming largely empty, offering them a distant, but unobstructed view of the relic thieves.

  “Astute, Captain,” Abraham replied. He was holding his rapier forward with two thin limbs of light emerging from the top and bottom until it resembled a bow, with the blade taking the appearance of a nocked arrow.

  “At least the big one’s down,” she shrugged.

  “The one that was helping us, you mean? He could have ripped that other man in half if he’d wanted.”

  “He was sentenced just the same.”

  “That is true, sister.”

  “Brother Abraham, it’s Flametongue, I see him.” The third Inquisitor’s voice came through a pearl-colored earpiece each of them wore. A small golden chain dangled from it, ending in a pearl, to pick up the voices of the speaker.

  “Captain, we hear you.” Abraham snagged the pearl and moved it closer to his mouth for clarity.

  “Let me say, nice shot.” Flametongue’s laughter led Abraham to roll his eyes.

  “So you have eyes on the relic thief?”

  “Yes, Brother. What would you like me to do?”

  “What needs to be done to carry out the Justicar’s sentencing. We are on our way.”

  “Will be Well, Brother.”

  Abraham turned to Starlight and smiled. “Shall we be away, then?”

  Starlight hooked an arm around the lanky priest’s waist. Her pitch black cloak spread wide, seemingly of its own volition into the shape of two feathery wings, and with a hushed whoosh, the two leapt down the great hall.

  “Matthew!” Kaitlyn screamed. The last people of the stampede were disappearing from around her.

  Her husband swung around to look at her. And when their eyes locked, the emotions nearly destroyed her.

  Devotion blended with fear. Hopelessness that she could never save him was dashed against glee that he was not the one lying face down on the bricks. But then she remembered what it had been like to know she was carrying a child.

  To be doted on by the entire natural world. To be smiled at by every passing person and thing who could “just tell.” And how it felt that it was to be an experience shared with the man she loved.

  And yet he was the reason she had lost that reality.

  The rage arrived and she could feel herself indulging it. The temperature around her soared as she looked at him and saw that silver armband with blood splattered across it.

  Kaitlyn was somewhat surprised when she began to sink. Looking down, she saw the earth melting at her feet. Magma illuminated the immediate area, casting her in a ferocious light.

  Matthew watched in horror as his wife became the frightful shamaness from his dream. The difference though was clear. All of her bloodlust in this world was directed at him, and no one else.

  “Kaitlyn,” Matthew said softly.

  The pain of the paladin’s flail crashing across Matthew’s left side did not register at first. He was too numb from seeing his wife. But the aggressive roar of the Inquisitor caught his ear.

  And Kaitlyn’s sudden reaction to the strike had him curious. All of the sudden, the heat and the hate were gone. Replaced by fear and concern. Matthew saw Kaitlyn looking past him.

  He turned with a great amount of effort, noticing as he did that he had trouble staying balanced with only one arm and a freshly broken leg.

  Captain Flametongue was a siege engine of a man. But the Halcyon Band was a legendary weapon. Matthew wondered which would be stronger.

  His vision blurred as he raised his right hand and aimed it at Flametongue’s face. That weaponized heat was comfortable in his hand.

  The frantic clank of metal boots on the bricks did little to drown out Kaitlyn’s pained screams as she tried to draw her feet back up from the re-hardened stone. She was stuck in brick up to her ankles. She could have asked the stones to free her, but after feeling the raw, unfettered power of her emotions just then, she was panicking.

  “Kaitlyn!” Sam called as he placed his hands around her.

  She thrashed in his arms, tears flowing. She knew she would not make it in time, but she hated Sam for not letting her try.

  There was another clatter, but Kaitlyn paid no mind as the priest and paladin of the Fifth Inquisition arrived immediately to her left.

  She watched Flametongue unceremoniously and inhumanely slam his flail across the center of Matthew’s mass. Behind the spiked head of the weapon, nothing was left standing.