CHAPTER 458: FIRE FIGHTERS

“Why?” Maiya whispered, staring down at the goddess’ feet. “Why am I so weak?”

The nearby wolf’s judging eyes only doubled her guilt.

“You are not weak, Maiya,” Ashani replied gently, crouching down to hold Maiya’s head against her chest. “It is simply that they are too strong.”

“No,” Maiya said, pulling away to wipe the tears that welled up in her eyes. “If you knew how hard I trained, how hard I fought to be here… I thought I’d finally achieved strength, yet after all this time, it turns out I was just deluding myself.”

Maiya had guessed as much back when Vir had told her about the demons of this realm. Still, she’d seen the Pagan Order—seen what they’d been capable of. Maiya thought that with enough training, with enough relentless determination, she’d claw her way to the upper echelons of power.

She now saw the impossibility of that futile endeavor. She’d never get there. Not without tremendous effort.

Not without subjecting herself to the Ashen Realm, just as Vir had. Just as his Asuras had. If she wanted the same strength, she’d have to survive the same forge.

Ashani’s smile turned sad. “There is more to life than combat proficiency, you know?”

“Thanks, Ashani,” Maiya replied as she rose to her feet, coughing. The smoke was so thick that Maiya could barely see the nearby buildings anymore. “This is neither the time or place for self reflection. Vir brought me here to save the kids and fight these fires, and that’s what I intend to do. What’s the situation?”

“Not here. Come.” Before Maiya could react, Ashani wrapped an arm around her waist and took to the sky.

Maiya glanced back to see Shan darting off to who-knew-where.

So unlike Neel, she thought.

“I’m afraid the fires are beginning to get out of hand, though thanks to your additional forces, I am now free to fight the fires,” Ashani said as they flew. “I’m ashamed to say I had my hands full stopping the Chitran agents. They seem to pop up everywhere, at the most inopportune times.”

‘Out of hand’ was quite the understatement. From their new aerial vantage, Maiya could see just how much damage the fires had caused, as well as Pagan Order squads rushing through the city, searching for children and anyone else who might’ve gotten caught up in the fire. Greesha had ordered an evacuation, but Maiya doubted even half had complied.

The few Asuras in the city were hard at work attempting to douse the fire with their water arts. They put up a valiant effort, bravely rushing into the flames to fight the worst of the fire, but it was plain as the eternal sun that their efforts were for naught. There were simply too few of them to make a difference.

Worse, Samar Patag was not a large city. Nor were its districts separated by internal walls that might slow the spread of such a disaster.

Maiya had cursed Sonam’s construction time and time again, but she now realized just how forward thinking its builders had been. Travel was a pain, but it’d be nigh impossible for Sonam to burn the way Samar Patag was now.

The Commons District that occupied most of the city was the worst hit, and while she saw few fires by the walls—where the slums were—they wouldn’t remain that way for long if the fire continued its course. Even the castle, which had remained untouched until now, wouldn’t be spared in that case.

Maiya took stock of her orbs as Ashani flew her around the city. She’d burned through her pre-charged A-grade orbs in the previous fight. Recharging them now was out of the question, which left her B-grade ice orbs. She might as well have been armed with a bucket of water.

"Think, Maiya. What can you do in this situation?" Maiya muttered.

Even with a water affinity, her Ice Affinity wasn’t nearly as effective for dousing fires. And even if it were, she’d need several A-grade water orbs to put this out. What she really needed was a deluge—an unending source of water, like a pond or something larger.

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Something akin to S-Rank magic, but less destructive.

Maiya glanced at Ashani beside her. Ashani’s lightning ability was useless here—better for starting fires than putting them out. But then Maiya froze.

“Wait. Ashani, what about your Ash Gates?”

Ashani landed on a nearby rooftop, setting Maiya down.

“Your Gates!” Maiya cried. “Can you create them underwater?”

“Of course,” Ashani said. “I visited the Gargan Sea to the west earlier, just for this purpose. However, I ran some calculations, and I’m afraid not even a dozen Gates placed above the city would suffice. The issue is not water quantity, but spread. We require a moderate quantity of water over a wide area. Concentrated blasts are effective at putting out isolated fires, however we will require hundreds to contain a blaze expanding this rapidly. I simply cannot create that many Gates without exhausting my core.” ŖαΝȮᛒÈṣ

Maiya frowned. “What about attaching them to doorframes and wielding them like hoses?” she asked. “That would save you from having to recreate the Gates.”

Ashani nodded. “I thought of this as well, and if I had another dozen able to move as quickly around the city as I could, it might work. On my own, two Gates are all I can manage. I’m afraid this again is wholly insufficient to extinguish the blaze.”

Maiya frowned. “What if… What if you had an ability that could spread your torrent of water over a much greater area? Say, ten times the spread?”

Ashani raised a brow. “Then I would say we have a chance. I don’t suppose you’d have such a power?”

Maiya flashed a devilish smile, bringing out a green orb. “B Grade Wind Blast. It’s human magic, and not nearly as versatile as demonic magic, but a heckuva lot easier to use. And to re-use in quick succession.”

It was a spell with limited usefulness, so Maiya only had one. There weren’t a lot of situations that called for blindly blasting everything in front of her away—especially since the increased spread meant it did far less damage than Razor Gale. As such, she’d have to flex her prana cycling to the limit to charge it as quickly as they’d need it.

But first, they’d need an appropriate frame. Maiya scanned the city for debris and quickly found what she was looking for.

“Ashani?” she asked, pointing to the collapsed wall of a burned down two-story building. “Is that too big?”

Ashani’s ever-present smile widened. “Why, not at all!”

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Maiya realized she would never get over Ashani’s ludicrous strength. Despite her dainty arms, despite not using a single art or Lighten Load orb, Ashani hefted the two-story wooden wall as though it were nothing. A wall that spewed a veritable torrent of water from a counterpart Gate at the bottom of the Gargan Sea.

It was the same principle Vir used on his airships. Gates placed in air couldn’t be moved, while Gates attached to a physical support could be.

The incomprehensible pressure of the ocean did the rest.

Maiya had precious little time to admire the incredible feat, however. At that pressure, the water acted more as a jet of water—destroying everything it touched instead of merely dousing flames.

Which was where Maiya came in. Activating her Wind Blast orb, Maiya dispersed the jet, covering the building in so much water that the raging flames were doused in mere seconds.

This, however, was where the true challenge began. Concentrating all her attention on the task, Maiya forcibly charged the orb as it was being drained.

It was a risky technique as likely to destroy the orb as it was to work, and even then, the prana drain was incredible.

But Maiya was not an average mejai. With Vir’s prana manipulation techniques and through immense amount of often life-threatening practice, Maiya had become quite proficient at the magical arts.

Nonetheless, it took everything she had to collect enough prana from the relatively dry surroundings, and even then, she only managed to keep up the task for another half minute before the orb’s charge emptied and the spell stopped.

“Now, Ashani!” Maiya yelled, prompting Ashani to divert her jet blast up to the sky, where it fell back down as rain.

While her spell might only have lasted a few tens of seconds, even that had been enough to completely douse the immediate area.

“Shall we?” Ashani asked, extending around Maiya’s waist.

“Let’s do this,” Maiya replied, already recharging her orb.

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Maiya and Ashani flew around the city, tackling the worst areas first before moving onto lesser fires, and within the span of a half hour, the rampaging inferno had diminished into a handful of isolated flames.

The Asura swiftly stepped in, quashing the remaining flames, and a good thing too, for Maiya’s orb had finally cracked under the pressure, forcing Ashani to rely on arcing the jet up and spraying rain on the surroundings.

Thoroughly exhausted and on the border of prana saturation, Maiya stared out over the city in content disbelief. They’d really done it. They’d singlehandedly stopped Samar Patag from burning.

Her eyes drifted past the south wall, where the flickers of war raged in the distance.

Her Vir was out there, fighting, and with strength like his, the fact that the battle hadn’t concluded told her all she needed to know.

Yet there wasn’t a thing she could do.

Maiya clenched her fists and shut her eyes.

If only I were stronger…

Maiya swore she’d equal the Asura one day. As much as she wished to help, she knew she’d be nothing more than a liability if she approached that battlefield as she was.

Maiya would have to stay in the city, and yet, strength came in many forms.

For Maiya had the ability to do something that even Vir dared not.

“I know I’ve no right to ask this of you,” Maiya said, “but I must.”

She knew full-well just how much Vir detested relying on Ashani’s godly image. She knew full well that Ashani herself wished to stay out of the limelight. And yet…

“Please,” Maiya said, kneeling before Ashani. “I beg you to help Vir. Please!”