“Vhalla!” Aldrik called from atop the wall.

She stared up at him, offering an apologetic expression before plunging herself into the chaos of the streets.

While she had lived in the capital all of her adult life, Vhalla had spent most of it in the palace. The alleyways could be tricky and maze-like even on the best of days, but now they seemed like passageways through the horrors of the afterlife for evildoers. People pushed against her from every which way, fleeing from the place she was struggling to reach. Some had burns covering their bodies, their clothing hanging in tattered rags. Others had open wounds with blood flowing from them.

Vhalla stepped in something warm and soft that squished between her toes. She looked down in horror to see the remnants of a man who had been trampled to death by the stampede of people. His skull had been crushed and his bones shattered on the street. Unable to handle the sight a second longer, Vhalla darted down a dead-end ally and vomited, screamed as she stared at her bloody feet, and her stomach heaved again.

A third explosion thundered through the air. Vhalla cried out and dropped to the ground covering her ears. She was much closer this time, and she could hear the houses groan around her as the earth shuddered with the force of the blast.

“Vhalla! Come here!” A man’s voice cried loudly, and she looked up. Aldrik stood atop the palace wall. He had run parallel to her as she descended the city, but the wall was going to make a turn.

She clutched her knees to her chest and trembled, her mind going numb momentarily. A woman’s cry pierced the air, jolting Vhalla back to her senses. Roan and Sareem were still out there. She stood and looked back again at Aldrik with apologetic eyes.

“You stupid girl!” he roared and then jumped from the wall.

First, he landed onto a thatched roof not too far below, ran along it to a single story home that lined Vhalla’s alley and rolled down until he caught the edge of the roof. Releasing himself, he landed fairly easily and stomped over to her. Vhalla could almost feel his palpable anger as he grabbed her arm.

“You—are—completely—mad,” he ground out through grit teeth, shaking her.

“You didn’t have to come!” She shrugged him off with a step back.

“You must think me soulless if you really thought I’d sit back and watch you gallivant to your death!” he shouted, though in the mayhem she could still barely hear him.

“So are you forcing me back into the castle?” Vhalla asked, ready to turn and run once more.

“I should,” he snapped. “But I can see you desire nothing more than to be the martyr, and since no one else is here to prevent that, the task falls to me. So lead on.” She looked at him in shock. “Go!” he snarled.

She ran with him at her back.

Back in the pandemonium no one seemed to notice—or care—that the crown prince was among them. Vhalla saw women clutching babes to their breasts, struggling to escape from the horrors below. She saw an old man simply sitting on a step, waiting for his fate to come.

Slowly the crowd began to thin and the temperature rose.

“Vhalla,” she turned. Aldrik pulled off his coat and handed it to her. She looked at him strangely. “For the heat, and for some protection from the flames.” Vhalla considered the orange glow on path before them and took his coat with a nod. He rolled his eyes and pulled off his shoes and socks.

“Don’t you need them?” she asked as she quickly donned the garments. The shoes were too large, even with the laces as tight as possible, but they were better than nothing.

“Remember who I am before you ask stupid questions.” He rolled up his sleeves and stood barefoot in his trousers, white shirt, black vest, and tie. She might have laughed at the sight, if the world wasn’t ending around her.

Vhalla turned back to the road ahead. Soon they began to pass more dead bodies than living ones. The smell of burning flesh assaulted her senses. After they were six flaming houses deep, the scent forced her to stop and retch again. Aldrik placed his hand on her back and she looked at him weakly.

“I don’t smell it anymore,” he explained. His face had taken on a freakish stillness, whereas Vhalla felt she was slowly loosing herself to madness. There was no choice now but to press on.

The fire popped and cracked around her, and she heard a building collapse not far away. The square wasn’t far now. Aldrik used his magic to gain control over smaller flames, to extinguish fires with waves of his arms as they went, clearing their path.

Vhalla came to a sharp halt.

Bodies littered the square. Men, women, children scattered about with their remains twisted in unnatural positions, their faces locked in horror even in death. Some of the corpses were aflame, others soaked in pools of their own blood. They had been blown apart, limbs scattered this way and that, disconnected from their previous owners.

“By the Mother...” Vhalla raised her hand to her mouth, a renewed panic pulsing through her veins. The street with The Golden Bun was off to the left. At first, she tried to step carefully over the bodies, but in the end she ran over them, a horror rising in her gut with each sickening soft spot her feet landed on. She was crying, despite the heat and the flames, tears streamed down her face.

Then she was falling.

Tripping on an arm, a leg, or over her oversized footwear, Vhalla landed across a woman’s body, face-to-face with a girl who had a piece of wood lodged in her skull, one eye staring at her blankly.

Vhalla screamed and tried to move away, but all around her was death and carnage. Two strong hands helped lift her up and back onto her feet.

“It is not far now, is it?” Aldrik asked almost mechanically. She shook her head. “Go on.” He pushed her gently, and Vhalla found her feet again.

She rounded the corner and broke into an all-out sprint. Half of The Golden Bun had collapsed, the rest was aflame. The building next to it had been reduced to rubble, and a small crater in the street suggested one of the explosions’ epicenters.

“Sareem!” Vhalla put her hands to her mouth and called frantically. “Roan!”

Her voice was raw after shrieking three more times. She looked at the bodies on the ground, turning them over or trying to imagine what their faces may have been. By the outside patio she shifted a fat man and saw a tuff of familiar, cropped, blonde hair beneath.

“Aldrik!” Vhalla screamed frantically. “Aldrik, help me!” He was at her side in an instant, pulling the fat man off Roan. Vhalla looked at her friend, she was bruised and broken but in one piece. Vhalla put her ear to the other woman’s breast.

“She’s breathing!” Vhalla cried. “We have to find Sareem.”

Vhalla looked around; if Roan was here, Sareem had to be close. She began to shift more bodies, treading closer to the former bakery. Vhalla tore at the rubble, leaving bloody handprints behind, no longer sure if the blood was hers or others. Aldrik took control of the nearby inferno and kept the fire at bay while she searched. Larel had said that Firebearers could not feel heat, so the beads of sweat that rolled down his temples could only be explained by exertion.

“Vhalla,” he said faintly, looking around.

“He’s here somewhere,” she pleaded, more with the universe than her companion, hoping that she was not wrong.

“Vhalla.” Aldrik’s voice was sterner.

“I know he’s here. He wouldn’t leave Roan, and he was waiting for me.” Her voice was frantic as she lifted a rock and heaved it aside. “I-I never told him I wasn’t coming. He thought I was still going to come for him.”

“Vhalla!” Aldrik shouted.

She let out a scream.

Underneath the rock was a face—half of a face—that she had known since she was a girl. A face who had made her laugh, who had taken care of her, who had been a friend, like family. Vhalla fell to her knees over Sareem’s burnt and debris battered body, her shoulders heaving with sobs.