Zach Allenbaum swore it was the perfect spring-break gig. Paid lodging in Manhattan and enough cash for tickets to a Yankees’ game. All we had to do was help clean up a few phoenix nests.
“Good things are coming, Brady.” Zach clapped me on the back as we signed the contract. “I swear it.”
After they stole my boots, they tied a necklace of dynamite around my throat.
Georgie, an unkempt prospector who stank like a skunk in a manure pile, knelt into the stream and lifted my pan, surveying its sandy contents as dawn glimmered orange in the fuming mist of Yellowstone hot springs.
My fingers hover over the ivory keys, and I smell smoke. I don’t have to strike a note to hear a sound. But it’s not a clear, crisp middle C ringing in my ears—it’s screaming.
The memories flooding my mind haunt me more than any discordant melody ever could.
By Hailey Huntington They called me the Guardian of the Last Phoenix. In truth, I was the caretaker of the last phoenix, meaning that I basically just cleaned up after Ignis’s messes. But I loved the magical old bird, even if she had a nasty temper. Looking after phoenixes was in my blood. I think
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I run backward through time, toward the mushroom cloud that will soon be my invention warehouse, thankful that the inversion suit I’m wearing wasn’t destroyed in this inferno.
The eruption shrinks over the warehouse, and the fire bursts bright before reassembling the near end of the building.
Perfect.
I run in through the
Toby toddles from his spot at the foot of my bed and starts licking my three-day old stubble. His sloppy kisses don’t tickle my skin. They’re are not cold, wet, or grainy. I can smell his minty breath—must’ve stolen a mint out of one of my pockets again—but, I can’t feel the warmth
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Hey, Dragonbreath. Camping this weekend. U in?
A wisp of smoke accompanied my snort as I stuck my phone back in my pocket. Camping. The only social event I’d been invited to in years. Not that I could blame them after my laugh fried Craig’s gaming system at fourteen.
The rebels had promised a quick, painless Revolution: Down with the king, up with the men living in nothing but dust.
Liars, all of them, Sabelle thought, grimacing. The rebels’ notion of freedom excluded anyone connected to the nobility, no matter how far-removed the relation.
It was the fire that called Elvira out that night.
She gazed at the burning watchtower through her binoculars, and as she recognized the arsonist’s handiwork, a familiar sensation rose within her—she was closing in on her target. The sensation swelled, and she spurred her horse down the hillside into the desert valley.
Though I was eager to rush into a burning building once, now I sit on the sidelines, watching friends risk their lives to quench the flames, knowing they will hate me if they discover the real reason I’m in this wheelchair.
Bill stumbles out of the building with a pale-faced boy in his arms.
“Dragon Armor?”
“Something the mages cooked up to resist dragon fire. Arrows and spears go right through it, though. Once the dragons were hunted to extinction, it became useless. But I hear you could run straight into flames and not even singe your eyebrows.”
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