#//its mentioned verybriefly in passing but i thought i'd tag

[divineluce]

A Trail of Fire || Adam & Luce

Timing: Late May 5th, 2021

Location: The Outskirts

Tagging: @walker-journal & @divineluce

Description: Adam spotted an out of control spellcaster raising hell. He enlists the help of Luce, but all isn’t quite as it seems.

TW: Brief mention of sibling death tw

Slamming the door of her Jeep shut, Luce slung her bag over her shoulder and waited for Adam to lead the way. He’d mentioned shit going down, seeing some kind of… out of control fire spellcaster. And, of all the people who could help in town, he’d asked her. While she’d normally have more than mixed feelings about this sort of thing, maybe helping protect the town would be the nudge in the right direction her magic needed. She was trying to be… fucking better. She’d been trying for months. But, it wasn’t working and she was running out of ideas. Maybe she’d be able to talk to thispellcaster-- granted that they weren’t part of the coven-- and get some answers on how she could get her spark back. If they were even able to talk. As they began to hike into the woods, Luce spoke up, “So… You said there’s an out of control fire witch out here?” She asked before wryly adding, “I thought I was the only one of those in town.”

As they walked, Luce reflected on the first time she and Adam had met in the woods. That was… huh. It’d nearly been a year. It had nearly been a year since Bea’s death and since she had raised 20, 30 foot tall flames in the clearing while sparring with Adam. Flexing her hand, Luce swallowed uncomfortably. She couldn’t even light a candle right now. She’d been without her magic for so long, been so vulnerable for so many months. She needed her magic, she needed to get it back.

“Yeah I thought it was just average Scorch Street stuff,” Adam allowed, referring to a particular thoroughfare where even snow was prone to spontaneous combustion. “But they melted their way through a car and didn’t respond to anything I said and fucked off into the woods.” The Hunter pushed his way through the brush and led the way down into a steep gulley.

The depression might've been filled with brush and played host to a stream once. However the river gulley was now just a furrow of blackened earth. Adam pointed to footprints in what’d once been a stream bed. Each print was like a miniature blast crater, surrounded by broken veins of obsidian and glass.

Scorch Street. Luce had hung out there more than a few times in her high school days, cutting class to hang out with some of her art class friends in the one place in town that seemed dangerous to even normies. Little did they know the entire fucking town was dangerous. Listening to Adam’s description, Luce frowned. “They melted through a car?” That wasn’t just out of control magic, that was strong magic. Power, don’t fuck with me magic. Even at her strongest, Luce couldn’t do create a flame that hot without significant effort and time. Whoever this way, they were a danger to everyone, including themselves.

Following after Adam, Luce let out a low whistle of astonishment as she took in the scene before her. There used to be a stream here, but this person, they’d changed the fucking landscape. Just like she’d done. Picking up a hunk of obsidian, Luce stared at the glossy, black surface. Who hurt this person? What had happened? “That looks like as good a lead as any.” She trailed after Adam, keeping her eyes and ears open for any movement in the brush. She didn’t know if her lack of magic also affected her fireproof situation, but she didn’t want to find out first hand. “Hey. That’s… that’s still burning.” She said, pointing to a patch on the ground that was smoldering, the dirt itself ignited with a bizarre, deep red flame. 

“Mhm, didn’t even really pause or anything just kinna walked through it.” Adam knelt on the ground and slipped off his backpack. In a few practiced movements the Hunter had retrieved and assembled a military folding shovel. He slipped on some gloves and approached the smoldering patch of pure scarlet flame, boots snapping on the gulley’s new layer of obsidian glass.

Adam scrutinized the blaze for a moment before lunging forward and lifting something up with the shovel. “Is this like…?”

On Adam’s shovel was the indanscent outline of a single feather, the pulsing vermillion core within red flame.

Or at least it was before the feather melted through a whole through Adam’s normally heat-resistant shovel and plopped back onto the ground. “Shit…”

“Jesus.” Luce muttered quietly, trying to imagine just how much magic would be needed for something like that. The strongest magic user she’d ever met couldn’t do something like that, not without significant help from someone else. Just who the fuck were they? And would she even be able to do anything to stop them, to reason with them? Watching as Adam pulled out some new prepper tool, Luce continued to stare at the chunk of shiny black rock in her hands. She’d done a lot of destructive shit, but she’d never done something like this. Could this have been her? If… if they hadn’t been able to bring Bea back, would this have been her? Would she have continued to set fire to the forest, would she have continued to kill anyone who could ever pose a threat to what remained of her broken family?

Adam’s curse shook Luce from her thoughts and she blinked in shock as she saw the pulsating glow within a single feather that had melted through the end of his shovel. “Holy shit.” Luce echoed, tossing aside the rock. A feather. A burning feather-- there was only one thing that could have left that. Flexing her fingers apprehensively, Luce hesitantly extended her fingers towards the feather. But, even before she could touch it, she could feel the power radiating from it in waves, the radiant heat starting to sear her skin. She jerked her fingers back before reaching for her water bottle. “That’s a phoenix feather, but it’s not. It’s… There’s something wrong with it.” She said, unscrewing the cap of the bottle. She unceremoniously dumped water onto the feather and was startled as a cloud of steam filled the space between her and Adam. Waving it away, she was startled to see that the feather was untouched. “That’s-- what the fuck. What the actual fuck,” She looked at Adam and at the still glowing feather that sat between them, “We need to find them.”

“Uh not to be that guy,” began Adam, “But what I saw was definitely a person not a magic bird.” In truth the only proof Adam even had Phoenix's even existed was those tears mom had given him as a college fund. They were allegedly among the rarest supernatural creatures and Adam’s training had focused on common threats to human settlements, not fairy tales and miracle cures.

But here were molten feathers along the trail of someone he’d seen burn through solid objects. Adam felt compelled to revise his understanding of the legendary fire chicken. “So uh...do they look like people sometimes?”

Glancing up from the feather to Adam, Luce frowned. “You do know that phoenixes have a human form, right?” She asked, a bit surprised that Adam “Hunter Bro” Walker didn’t know that. Of course, Luce had a feeling she knew more about phoenixes than your average spell caster, even in White Crest. Leave it to Bea to have made friends with the phoenix family in town all those years ago. An entire childhood of having her mom not only compare her fire to Bea’s but a literal incarnation of flame, thanks Leah. “I’ve never actually scene the full flame on situation, so I can’t actually say what that looks like. But they’re not full on fucking... fire chickens.” She said with a shake of her head.

“Like I said, they look human most of the time. But if they’re putting out this much fire, they might be in their true form. There’s no way they could just cut through a car without it.” She said, hoping she was right. “But why would they do that? Most phoenixes don’t go around torching things on purpose. And definitely not in public, that’s a good way to get yourself hunted down.” Which was only slightly different from what they were doing. They were hunting this person down to help them. Not to hurt them. Help.

Adam frowned in thought. “They’re some of the rarest supernaturals around,” he explained, “I only knew they were real because of some tears mom had.” He considered Luce’s words and took in the charred trail of obsidian and everburning feathers that been carved through the woodland ravine. He motioned for the sorceress to follow, now keeping a healthy distance away from those patches of blood scarlet fire.

“Kay so what you are saying is this Phoenix is probably like sick or cursed something,” Adam reasoned with the air of resignation from constantly encountering new things that fucked with peoples’ heads. “So question is if we catch up with them and they like don’t wanna talk, and we can’t like ...contain them or whatever, what’s the game plan? The Hunter’s question was spoken Adam’s usual aimable baritone, but couldn’t quite disguise the grim implication in how open ended it was.

Rarest around? Well, that was news to Luce, particularly when she’d been saddled with one since childhood. She had some kind of inkling that Leah and her family were different-- the idea of a reincarnating family that stayed together for years and years had always struck her as weird, but… after last summer, she couldn’t help but rethink that perspective. “Well, they’re human looking most of the time. Whatever happened to this person is definitely not normal.” She said with a shake of her head. Sick, cursed; either seemed likely. But, when Adam’s tone shifted, her head jerked up to stare at him

“We’re not hurting them.” Luce snapped, “I’m not killing someone again.” The words came out before she could stop them, but the similarities of the situation to Lydia stared back at her. A young Hunter who she was familiar with, maybe even respected, asking her for help. Asking her to deal with an out of control supernatural person, someone who was dangerous. Someone who could kill. She’d made that mistake before, she wasn’t going to do it again. Not for Adam, not for anyone. “We’re going to find them and if we can’t talk to them, we keep trying to help them.”

Adam turned his attention from the ravine of burning feathers and looked at Lucinda for a time, leaning on the ruined shovel. The Hunter’s brown eyes faintly reflected the scarlet flames all around them, but didn’t hold any surprise. This was the second time he and Luce had a conversation in the woods about doing whatever it took while surrounded by eldritch flame. Some things had changed before the blue and red fire.

Then again, maybe he wasn’t quite the same dude either.

“Kay, I respect that,” Adam assented eventually, “let’s see what we are dealing with.”

The trail of pinion bonfires led up the ridge, something passing through enormous boulders where the Phoenix had simply bored their way straight through solid rock, leaving a tunnel of cooling obsidian. The air was choked with acrid smoke and breathing became increasingly difficult as they gained on the traveler. Eventually the hikers cleared the treeline and got above the smoke. A small valley stretched out below them, and Adam raised a hand to his sweaty brow to see through the evening glare.

But the glare turned out to not be from the setting sun at all.

It was as if a meteor had struck the valley, still incandescent from the plumet. Even with his mutant eyesight, Adam could barely pick out the humanoid form at the heart of the roiling inferno. Scarlet fire roared out in a blastwaves from the figure, leaving a swath of ash and glass in their wake across the valley. Great red sheets of fire and sparks seemed to wrap around the Phoenix like enormous wings, flexing and spreading outward on thermal currents.

“Well shit.”