23. A Conversation in the War Room

A Conversation in the War Room

A dozen ironbeaks plunged from the sky, their sharp mouths opening to spew roaring flame.

Chen Jin and Zhou Xiaorui raised their new weapons.

Deep crimson fire erupted from them in torrents as thick as a human torso, surging upward to meet the monstrous birds.

Every stream struck a giant iron bird with perfect accuracy. In an instant, each was engulfed, as if swallowed whole by a sea of fire.

Most of the enemy’s forces used flame in some form during battle.

Fire breath. Molten metal. Pursuing fireballs. Superheated blades. Their methods of attack were full of it.

They also possessed great resistance—one could almost say immunity—to ordinary fire and heat.

But they could not withstand a particular kind of magical flame, one that generated itself by drawing energy out of the surrounding environment.

The first ironbeaks struck began to wobble. Their flight lost stability, then stopped. They dropped straight down like twenty-ton lumps of metal.

Flame still poured from their mouths, but not because they were trying to attack anyone. The fire was being forcibly drawn out of them.

They tried to move, but their motions were clumsy and slow. The internal heat that kept parts of their metal bodies pliable had been sharply reduced.

As the deep red flames around them grew stronger, the ironbeaks’ bodies turned rigid and brittle. A skin of frost even formed across them.

At last, under the stress of uneven heating and cooling from second to second, their bodies shattered.

The enemy’s other airborne units soon met the same fate.

Even at a great distance from the battle, Chi Li could clearly feel a surge of power flooding into her, as if a flame had been lit in the depths of her soul. After all, the killing had been done through magical weapons she had made with her own hands.

The distant battlefield wavered, flickered, and finally faded away. The real world intruded once more upon Chi Li’s awareness.

By then, the two wands’ energy had been completely exhausted, and Chi Li could no longer track anything through the remnants of power there.

Besides, I and the soldiers were deep in enemy territory, far too distant from Chi Li. Without a special connection, she had no way to scry on us.

Chi Li stood, stretched, and tried to coax feeling back into stiff muscles.

Sweat had soaked her clothes until they were damp and foul-smelling, while the surface of her body felt dry and oily at once.

She decided that the next time she performed a scrying ritual, she would do it in the bathroom.

By the time Chi Li had washed herself and reached the war-planning room, it was almost empty. Only Liya remained, studying the city map with focused attention.

As each team advanced across the battlefield, the map continued to update, and Liya extracted more information from the enemy’s movements.

“Why did you send Sister Lin with those two soldiers?” Chi Li asked, without bothering to circle the question. “They barely contributed anything substantial to the mission.”

“Because if I had not, they would have been in danger of dying,” the human-shaped outsider replied without hesitation. She had clearly expected Chi Li to ask.

Chi Li was full of curiosity. She badly wanted to know what face lay beneath Liya’s childish mask.

Would she look like an alien from a movie? A blazing demon from the depths of hell? A mass of formless energy? Or something mysterious that human beings could neither understand nor imagine?

“Also,” Liya continued, “after the long and exhausting week Miss Ye has endured, she needed someone she could talk to. Did you not notice? The younger of the two soldiers made it very easy for her to open up, to speak about herself, and to forget the anger she felt at not being taken seriously.”

“You could have sent me with her,” Chi Li insisted. “I’m her best friend! I should have been by her side while she fought.”

“After completing that delicate piece of magical work, successful though it was, you were…