I targeted the ropes.

  The ship was large enough that we could have started taking people off the island towards a safer city, but if I had to choose between passage or supplies, I was going to choose the supplies. We could live on the island for months with those supplies. Given that there were a couple craftsmen that had survived, we could feel trees and have a large enough raft that a few of us could make it to shore and go get a bigger ship from one of the other port cities.

  The ropes didn’t catch on fire at first, but the grass under the trees did.

  “He’s trying to release the ship!” Kaeso screamed. Shoot HIM!” The dark-haired man ran over to the ship and yelled something to the men on deck.

  I wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying because I was too busy dodging crossbow bolts. Starting the fireballs in my hands was giving the archers a clear target of where to shoot in the dark forest. So I started focusing on creating the flames beside me instead.

  The further away from my body that the fireballs were started, the more concentration that it took on my part to form them. It was also more difficult to mentally launch the projectiles than it was to simply throw them, but the extra effort was making it easier to dodge the almost constant barrage of poison-tipped bolts that were fired whenever I formed one.

  I lost count of how many, four or five I think, fireballs it took to catch the ropes on fire. I saw unarmed men carrying buckets running towards the burning ropes and realized that there were a dozen sailors on the beach now as well as another pair of ropes that had been thrown from the ship onto the beach.

  I released a gout of flames in an arc. The magic expense was draining, but it forced the sailors to move away from the treeline. Even if I was able to burn the ropes, the fire would get put out and more ropes would be tethered onto new trees.

  I needed a longer-term plan.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  I imagined flames continuously shooting out of my hands in a sustained blast. Instead of fireballs, I started making a floor of flames as I lit the entire underbrush on fire, then turned the flames towards the leaves on the trees. At first it was like they melted, then the canopy was on fire and I didn’t need to feed the fire at the treeline for it to keep growing.

  “You think this will stop us!” Kaeso had put his sword on his back and now had a bow with a notched arrow. The arrow sliced through the leather on my left shoulder.

  I stumbled back away from the bonfire that I had created as more arrows fired almost one behind the other. My magic was running out, but I had more that I needed to do. I started dropping fire as I moved. I didn’t want to create a line where the flames wouldn’t burn, but I needed to make sure that the sailors weren’t able to get around the flames and reach the bunker. Which meant that I had to spread the fire even more. I started wondering if I’d be able to put it out once I got back with Val, but that was a worry for later.

  I just hoped that the entire forest didn’t catch on fire.

  It was a gamble, but I was hoping that it wouldn’t get so out of hand that Val wouldn’t be able to put it out once I got her. If it got that big, she might head this way before we got back. I realized that sending up a flare might have been a better way to get her attention, though she might have sent Eveth instead of coming herself.

  “Get more buckets!”

  I threw another round of fireballs at the men who were trying to get to the treeline, then started backing away. The heat was getting more intense and I found myself being thankful that I’d lost the unprocessed heartstones that I’d been carrying around. Zombie blood was very flammable and that was only more true for the unprocessed heartstones. I’d been lucky to have survived my first encounter with fire, I didn’t want to chance it again. That was probably why the masters never carried the heartstones on their person. Instead, they had apprentices who would be away from the fighting hold them.

  While we had a young boy in our group, I couldn’t imagine asking Ziggy to hold onto something so dangerous. I wasn’t even able to protect myself, but that was the difference that I was realizing between myself and the masters. I hadn’t been ready to ascend. THere were still too many holes in my training. But now wasn’t the time to dwell on what I was missing.

  I threw some more fire to cut off anyone who would try to go around the wildfire, then took off in the direction that Captain Jace had been carrying Fyga. I just hoped that I made it back in time.

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