Chapter 259: The Tide Hearth

Neither of them moved for a while.

Ren stood on the shelf with empty hands and let the Tidefire look at him. It remained in the shallows, spear point down in the water. The blue fire in its chest rose and fell slowly while black grit turned through its body.

Behind it, the small red Lawfire the Emberfire had climbed out of drifted farther away.

Ren didn’t trust it.

It clearly didn’t trust him.

But it had lowered its weapon after watching him kill another Pyreborn, which was more than most things in dead worlds had ever offered him.

A panel appeared.

[TRANSLATION: CONCEPTS AND INTENT ONLY.]

’That’s fine,’ Ren thought. ’Concepts I can work with.’

The Tidefire moved.

It didn’t attack.

It stepped backward into deeper water, and its tall body sank and spread until the man-shape disappeared. A broad sheet of black water remained on the surface, blue fire moving underneath it.

The spear stayed upright.

It rose from the middle of the water, turned, and pointed away from the shelf.

[INTENT: FOLLOW.]

Ren looked at what had become a raft.

’One a day.’

One revival in this fragment. After that, death meant death.

He kept the thought where it belonged and stepped on.

The water held him.

It gave slightly beneath his boots, warm and strangely firm, like standing on something that knew exactly how much weight it was carrying.

The blue fire moved beneath him and settled farther back.

The Tidefire turned and carried him away from the shelf.

The arch slowly shrank behind them, his own cool morning still visible through it.

Ren looked at the spear sticking out of the water.

’Spear,’ he decided.

He needed something to call it until he learned its actual name.

— • —

They went a long way.

The fires on the water reacted as they passed.

Small red flames turned toward them and leaned after the moving Tidefire, the same way the Emberfire had leaned toward Ren earlier. None of them climbed out.

Ren watched the first few carefully.

Then the next few.

Whatever Spear was, the smaller fires recognized it and left them alone.

They passed close to one of the volcanic islands.

Up close, it was less an island than a mountain with its top blown away. Black rock covered most of it, streaked orange where parts were still cooling. Smoke poured from cracks along the slope and carried the smell of a forge across the water.

Something white burned inside a cleft near the upper ridge.

It didn’t move.

Ren filed that away.

Spear rounded the island.

Then Ren saw where they were going.

A huge blue flame stood on the sea.

It was tall enough to be mistaken for part of the island behind it, a single steady fire rising from the black water. Its upper edge bent slightly with air currents Ren couldn’t feel from this distance.

It didn’t roar like a normal fire.

The sound was lower and steadier, almost like surf.

Blue light spread through the water around it.

Platforms surrounded the flame in a broad ring.

Black stone. Flat-topped slabs of cooled lava, cut and stacked into streets and platforms, with short bridges connecting them.

Figures moved across them.

Closer to the great flame, dozens of much smaller blue fires floated together on the water.

The System read the place.

[HEARTHFIRE: TIDE.]

[LAW COMPOSITION: FIRE / WATER.]

[FUNCTION: ORIGIN OF LINEAGE.]

[NEW HEARTFLAMES ARE BORN FROM THIS HEARTH.]

[GRADE: NOT APPLICABLE.]

Ren looked from the enormous fire to the small ones gathered around it.

That explained enough.

The large fire wasn’t an individual Pyreborn.

It was where Tidefires came from.

Everything around it had been built because of that.

’A village built around a nursery,’ Ren thought.

Except the nursery happened to be on fire.

— • —

Four guards waited for them at the outer platform.

All Tidefires.

Black-water bodies. Blue Heartflames. Long spears made from hardened flame.

Spear reached the platform and rose beneath Ren.

Ren stepped onto the stone before the raft turned back into a person underneath him.

Spear spoke to the guards.

Steam and stone.

Longer this time.

One guard looked at Ren.

Then at Spear.

Then back at Ren.

[INTENT: CAUTION.]

A moment later:

[INTENT: PERMITTED.]

Their weapons lowered enough for him to pass.

Ren kept his hands visible and followed Spear.

He walked slowly, the same way he would have crossed somebody else’s field back home.

Look where you step.

Don’t touch things that aren’t yours.

The settlement continued around him.

Three figures worked on the nearest platform.

They weren’t Tidefires.

Their bodies were made from clear volcanic glass layered around bright white-orange cores. Fire showed through every joint when they moved.

One held a glowing lump of stone between both hands and slowly pulled it apart.

The material stretched.

Not like stone.

More like hot dough.

When it finally separated, the Pyreborn held a long transparent blade with orange fire trapped inside it.

Two others placed finished blades onto racks.

[HEARTFLAME: GLASSFIRE.]

[LAW COMPOSITION: FIRE / EARTH.]

Ren kept walking.

On another platform, two white-blue Pyreborn carried blocks of hot stone up from the waterline.

Their bodies were less stable than Spear’s.

One strained under its load and briefly dissolved into boiling mist around the rock before pulling itself together again.

Steam rolled across the road behind it.

[HEARTFLAME: STEAMFIRE.]

[LAW COMPOSITION: FIRE / WATER.]

Ren looked around again.

Smiths worked glass.

Laborers moved stone.

Guards watched the roads.

Bridges joined homes and work platforms around the Hearth.

He had entered the Burning Sea expecting creatures and useful materials.

Instead, he’d walked into a town.

A small blue fire drifted toward him from the Hearth.

It was barely larger than his two fists.

No body.

No weapon.

Just a bright little flame floating over the water.

It stopped directly in front of him.

Ren stopped too.

The System flickered.

[HEARTFLAME GRADE: CINDER.]

[CONCEPT: YOUNG.]

A Tidefire hurried across the nearest bridge.

It scooped the small flame against its water-body and carried it back toward the Hearth without giving Ren more than a glance.

Ren kept his hands open until they were gone.

Then he followed Spear again.

So that was Cinder.

Ember.

Flame.

He was starting to see the shape of their grades.

— • —

The elder waited close to the Hearthfire.

Ren knew it was old before the System said anything.

Every Tidefire he’d seen so far carried black grit through its body.

This one didn’t.

Its water was almost perfectly clear.

The Heartflame in its chest was a deep blue, closer to the color of the Hearth itself than any of the others.

It rested on a low block of stone with the great fire behind it.

[CONCEPT: OLD.]

[CONCEPT: RESPECT.]

Spear stopped.

Ren stopped beside it.

The elder studied him.

Ren let it.

After a while, the elder rose.

Slowly.

It came closer until only a few steps remained between them.

Then its Heartflame shifted.

The blue flame inside its chest bent toward Ren.

Not toward his body.

Toward something deeper.

Ren felt the reaction inside his world.

The Worldroot noticed.

So did Kaia.

"It can feel me, Ren," Kaia said quietly.

The elder began lowering itself.

Ren understood before it reached the ground.

Behind it, the guards started doing the same.

"Oh, no."

Ren caught the elder by the arm and pulled it upright.

Its body was hot enough to sting his palm immediately.

He held on until the elder was standing again.

"No," Ren said. "Don’t do that."

The words meant nothing to it.

The gesture apparently didn’t.

The elder remained standing.

[CONCEPT: WORLD.]

[CONCEPT: YOURS.]

Ren released its arm.

His palm was already red.

He ignored it. It would heal.

The elder looked at him differently now.

Ren wasn’t sure that was an improvement.

— • —

A spear shot into the sky.

Ren turned.

One of the guards on the far side of the settlement had thrown its weapon straight upward.

High above the platforms, the spear burst into a red signal that hung against the iron-grey sky.

Every Tidefire in the settlement reacted at once.

The small Cinder flames near the Hearth disappeared from open water, gathered inward by waiting arms.

The Glassfires stopped working.

The Steamfires dropped their loads.

Spears rose along the outer platforms.

All of them pointed toward the same part of the sea.

The elder’s Heartflame dimmed.

Ren followed everyone’s attention.

Black water stretched toward the horizon.

Flat.

Empty.

For now.

Something was coming.