My skin starts to heat up. It’s like it’s matching the warmth of Medley’s blood and then saying look what I can do by one-upping it. The heat isn’t uncomfortable, but any hotter and it would be.
I gasp when I see that the blood that was about to drip down my arm and fall onto the floor betrays the laws of science and slinks upward. In a blink, my skin starts to soak it up, drop by drop, like I’m a thirsty sponge.
I gape as the blood disappears from my arm, and heat forces its way into me, like whatever power is in Medley’s blood is injecting itself into my skin, my veins, my muscle and bones and my every cell, and I actually feel the last of the wards shatter.
And then I ignite.
10
X-men was one of my favorite things to watch when I was younger. It was one of the movies I was lucky enough to view while I was in the asylum for movie night.
Even though one of the orderlies put a stop to it for being too violent and giving some of the other patients ideas, I watched it as much as I could before it was taken away. It fascinated me. Maybe it was the thought that being different made you special instead of broken, and that perspective spoke to me on a visceral level. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for special effects and action. Either way though, I always thought Jean Grey’s character was annoying.
It’s not until now, when fire is consuming me from the inside out like I’m a phoenix rising from the ashes, that I sympathize with her plight. I might’ve found it hard to choose between Wolverine and Cyclops too with this inferno building in me. She clearly had every right to be a little whiny and indecisive, and then flip to murderous psycho if this is how she felt inside. Who can really blame the girl for being a tad unhinged? No one should be held accountable during these kinds of hot flashes.
Fire licks up the insides of my body, and Medley reaches out to hold onto me as every muscle in my body tenses. I clench my teeth against the scream that wants to rip free from my throat, my entire body taut.
I know that I can’t let the scream out or make too much noise, because I can’t bring any attention to what’s going on in here. We’ve been left alone so far, but I have no doubt that Morax’s guards will report anything suspicious back to him. It takes everything inside of me to stay quiet. I wish for the darkness that cloaks me in numbness, but it doesn’t come. Instead, I feel something inside of me grow so hot that it starts to melt.
All I can picture is glass as it’s melted by some master craftsman and blown into a figurine or maybe a bowl. The liquid glass grows red-hot and malleable, and with seasoned, practiced hands is shaped into something beautiful and then cooled so it can keep the shape forever.
The only thing is, I don’t know what I’ll be shaped into, or whose hands are guiding the molten substance melting my insides. I feel like I’m liquified and reshaped in less than a minute, and all I can hope is that I come out whole and that I don’t come out looking like a dolphin figurine jumping over water, but something harder, designed to withstand the test of time. Something strong enough to withstand Morax.
Wings shove out of my back. Each hair follicle flares with heat and then cools like the shaft of each hair is imbued with power now. Parts of myself I never knew were locked away break open, and I find things like vengeance, power, and innate knowledge unfurling inside of me.
I fall to my knees with the heaviness of it all, and I’m torn from Medley’s grasp. A weight alights in my palm, and I clutch my newly fire-baptized hand around the scythe as I lay it across my lap. I look down at the weapon in my grasp, and it’s like I know exactly what I need to do. Like my hands are moving of their own accord with knowledge I didn’t have before, I open my other palm and use Toreon’s weapon to slice open my hand. With a bloody palm, I wrap my fingers around the scythe and seal myself to it, somehow knowing