Marina had long grown used to the stench of flames.

    The acridness. The pungency. The smoke tarring her nostrils like a final spite from whatever enemy it was she’d reduced to melted goo and burning embers.

    And more often than not, it was a casserole.

    Despite her reputation, what she most frequently turned to cinders wasn’t her enemies. But rather a combination of beef, carrots and onions with a sprig of parsley.

    Not because she was tragic in the kitchen, but simply because she was stubborn.

    She could use a saucepot, of course. But she also had her cauldron.

    An expensive cauldron. High quality stoneware with a silver bottom.

    Perfect for that little bonus which gave her popular hangover tonics a strawberry aftertaste.

    And since she paid for every inch of that cauldron, she also wanted to use every inch of it … even if by her own admission, a heavy duty cauldron sat upon a flame hot enough to melt a typical hearth wasn’t truly appropriate.

    These days, however, the things she burned were far less palatable than her usual ingredients.

    She burned the faces of headmasters, the doors in her path and the eyebrows of bathhouse owners when she was clearly being charged the tourist price for entering.

    But most of all … she burned towers.

    Always a tower. Mages loved them.

    And since the people she needed to deal with were usually other mages, that meant towers.

    This one was considerably smaller than the Royal Institute of Mages, yet the flames engulfing it were no less. The combination of a single vial of cinderwake oil from her satchel combined with a click of her fingers had done more than she could have expected, but also less than what she’d hoped.

    As she stepped through the ashes of a former study, what she found so far was only disappointment.

    Her closest friend.

    Marina’s shoes swept through the ashes of a study, disturbing sprouts of flames still burning like freshly lit braziers.

    Here and there, the carcass of a tome, an instrument or an entire shelf came toppling down, the flames having melted it all against the stonework. Embers drifted down like snow.

    She ignored it all.

    These were her flames, born of magic so ancient she scarcely understood how it functioned.

    Few could. And of those, most were con artists or deluded. After all, the magic which flowed through her didn’t just burn. It pricked at her. Like a thousand needles scratching beneath her skin.

    Her blood was a curse. But it was also a gift.

    Marina was powerful.

    More than she’d ever been in her life.

    Destruction came to her as easily as the caws of the ravens as they spied her through the charred windows. Her magic was so potent that a dozen apprentices without a single lesson in self-restraint could let loose in a pottery shop and cause less damage than what she could do with a frown.

    And that … was infuriating.

    Marina frowned as she observed the largest source of ash.

    That’d once been an arcane golem, made to work in concert with the paralysing runes beneath the floorboards and the charged lightning rods designed to ward against both intruders and pigeons.

    Blunt but practical.

    It mattered little. Her flames were even blunter.

    She was the Witch of Calamity. And calamity rarely came with subtlety.

    It’d been centuries since any mage bearing that title last threatened the kingdom. There had been others, of course, in Rozinthe and the Summer Kingdoms among others, but they’d melted alongside their flames.

    Marina, however, knew as certain as the invisible weight upon her brow that there was now no mistake–even if she wished it wasn’t so.

    Others might rejoice before burning down a barn like a child playing a dragon. But others also wished for talent when they should be wishing for a personal organiser.

    There was no substitute for a fixed schedule, a hard working ethos and a balanced diet. And while eating charred vegetables didn’t help the feeling of being doused in grease halfway through the motion of exiting bed in the mornings, it was certainly enough to read Adonian’s Elementary Guide To Breaking The World with one hand while stirring ladles in a cauldron with the other.

    This made a mockery of her studies. Of all the weird shapes engrained upon her forehead, the frequent illnesses and the sore back as she fell asleep at her desk.

    Marina refused to accept it.

    But if it was a means to an end, she would at least tolerate it.

    For now.

    There was a mystery to solve. And now she was a piece of the conundrum.

    The rest was still her mother.

    Marina paused as the tip of her shoe met the only thing not to be melted. She leaned down and brushed her fingers through the ashes before lifting up the least auspicious of objects.

    An elven puzzle box.

    Burned but not broken.

    Marina hadn’t expected anything else.

    Despite the destruction, she’d chosen cinderwake oil and not strictly her magic for a reason. To overwhelm the tower’s defences required only this much.

    Anything more would threaten what she needed.

    A toy woven with more enchantments than any alchemical concoction could break. Or indeed, most magic by even the most proficient of mages–of which the owner of this tower certainly wasn’t.

    If Marina squinted hard enough, she’d just be able to make out the fleeing silhouette through the window.

    Instead, she flicked the keyhole upside down.

    Click.

    As the puzzle box unlocked, she responded with a snort.

    Those at the Royal Institute would have hurled fireballs at it for years. But for better or for worse, a fireball couldn’t solve every problem.

    Otherwise, she’d already be rid of her.

    “It suits you. The hair, that is.”

    Marina chastised herself for even glancing.

    Idling upon the window was a girl whose scarlet smile only became less wholesome each time she appeared. That was her greatest talent. It was never wholesome to begin with.

    The Dealer sat with one leg crossed over the other, elbow perched upon her lap while her cheek rested within her palm. There was no sense of caution in her mismatched eyes of gold and scarlet. No curiosity or terror at the extent of Marina’s new powers.

    Only faint bemusement.

    After all–for all her outrageousness, she at least didn’t have hair tinged with ends of luminous pink.

    “You’re welcome to it,” said Marina, forcing her eyes away from what she continuously failed to erase with either fire or scissors. “If you believe you can whisk them away, feel free to.”

    “I would never dare do something so uncouth. Strands of glowing hair are very much in favour. Boldness and eccentricity has always been the purview of great mages.”

    “This isn’t boldness or eccentricity. It is someone else’s humour. And I’m the one suffering. I can’t even purchase reagents without drawing attention. And herbalists have seen everything.”

    “Perhaps that’s less because of the hair and more the dissonance when a pair of common eyes witnesses the Witch of Calamity purchasing powdered sweetroot and dried snowberries for their favourite fruit cordial. Those before you were not known for their law abiding nature.”

    Marina wrinkled her nose.

    She didn’t know how the previous Witches of Calamity navigated daily life, but she cared little for whatever precedents they’d set. Least of all concerning their purchases.

    She was hardly a saint, true. But she’d never rob from a fellow shopkeeper. That was a red line.

    Shooing away her would-be colleagues with unholy amounts of fire, however, wasn’t one of them.

    “I’m stunned you haven’t been harassing me more,” admitted Marina, all the while carefully and very deliberately opening the lid of her puzzle box. Sear?h the n?velFire.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    “I’ve been overworked,” replied the Dealer with her usual smile, not looking at all like someone who’d lifted a finger to raise a teapot. “As a poor cog in the machine, I can only spin so fast. Contrary to what you believe, I’m a shameless nuisance to others as well.”

    “I’m owed several favours, then. I can feel the relief from everywhere not here.”

    “Everywhere not here can still see your work at play. The tower lit up so brightly that perhaps even Her Excellency might have deigned to spare a glance. I’m most impressed. You’re almost as subtle as I am.”

    Marina rolled her eyes.

    It used to be so much easier. When they first met, there was almost a thin veneer of professionalism to this girl. Mystery, even. Now she was telling jokes and quips.

    The ignorance was wonderful.

    “What do you want?” said Marina, as she lifted a crystallised dew from the puzzle box. She examined it closely. A perfect droplet without flaw glittered in answer. “I’m busy. If you want to bother me about my calamitous powers, it’ll have to wait.”

    “I’ve endless ways I can be an inconvenience. But querying you isn’t one of them.”

    “... And what do you mean by that?”

    Marina spared a second glance. The Dealer shrugged.

    “The Witch of Calamity. The Barrow Knight. The Cursed Shipwright. Yours Truly. Lotus House is ever the home of the lost and the dispossessed. And to ask questions is to be tactless. Others may fulfil that role. Tonight, my only task is to offer a note of caution.”

    “Really. And what is that?”

    “There are other ways you may proceed with what you wish. The past is a tale written only in memories. And to force the ink is a dangerous game.”

    Marina almost scoffed on instinct.

    Instead, she paused as the edges of the Dealer’s lips lowered slightly. Her mismatched eyes narrowed so imperceptibly that only an odd lessening of irritation hinted that her words might almost be genuine.

    That was a first more rare than any magic she could wield.

    “I’ve played worse games,” answered Marina, as she crushed the perfect dew between her finger and thumb into fine shards. “Namely by associating with you.”

    The Dealer’s smile returned in full.

    “True. But I do hope this isn’t where your gamble will fail.”

    Marina didn’t allow herself to hesitate.

    Not now.

    Not when all she’d worked for would finally come to fruition.

    “[Ignite].”

    Speaking only a word, a blaze of flames appeared in the centre of the study. The ashes burst into flames, their withered crumbs forced to life once again.

    Then, the crushed dew between her finger and thumb was flung into the flames.

    A moment later, so was everything else–each precious reagent drawn from her satchel.

    “Dew of captured starlight, bearing echoes of words once said. Feather of the raven king, with wisdom beyond the boundless sky. Eye of the ashen basilisk, granting a glimpse of a world lost in time. The mirror of a banshee, offering clarity of the soul.”

    Finally, she took out the final memento of her hardships … and swallowed a deep breath.

    It sparkled in her palm. A thing which even as a broken shard was more beautiful and rare than anything she would likely ever see. She hoped to never need it again.

    “Crown of the Winter Queen, ruler of a season passed. By these relics, I call upon the veil of eternity. Let the embers reveal what once was, and allow the past to burn anew … [Dream Of The Forgotten].”

    Magic blossomed in answer throughout the scorched tower.

    And Marina waited.

    The sweat formed upon her brows as she stared into the heart of the flames. But there was no uncertainty. No doubt even as the flames flickered and began to settle.

    After all–this was more than a magic incantation.

    It was a witchly one, the required reagents drawn to cast a spell so old that she had pieced it together from both parchment and scraps of bark. That she herself was the Witch of Calamity couldn’t have been a finer coincidence.

    Meaning it was never that at all.

    Even so–Marina stared into fire. And then the fire stared at her.

    What happened next swept her off her feet.

    She had violated a law of the world. And all the world pushed back. Memories, colours, emotions all coursed through her mind. Overpowering. Overbearing. Days, months and years crashed into her, sending her spiralling like a ship caught in a whirlpool. Again and again her vision spun as images dragged her thoughts in every direction. Every moment. She saw figures she’d never seen, faces she didn’t know, voices she’d never heard.

    All was dark. All was scowling. And all was seething.

    All except for one.

    She caught a smile and a whistling hum.

    Stillness came as sudden as the dropping of an anchor.

    Then, for a moment so fragile she dared not raise her eyes, she glimpsed the sight of a home now lost.

    An evening when all was quiet, save for a fire burning within a stove and a figure tending to a pot.

    Marina dared to look upwards.

    As the faintest gasp left her lips, the edges of the image darkened like water creeping upon a page. She held herself steady, forcing herself, focusing even as the weight of the world sought to usher her away.

    There she was.

    Apron, ponytail and overly loose cardigan, as serene and carefree as the many burned pots waiting in the sink would dare to suggest.

    Roseline Lainsfont.

    A terrible cook. An even worse knitter. And a very lost mother.

    A decade later and her whereabouts were unknown. Most believed she’d befallen tragedy at the hands of flames. A common enough cause.

    But Marina knew otherwise.

    After all–

    Her mother was the only mage more talented than she was.

    Suddenly, the stirring ceased. And as though drawn to an unexpected sound, she turned and blinked past her shoulder. Not at some unseen corner.

    But at her.

    Puzzlement filled a face as familiar today as it was a decade ago.

    As intuition defied impossibility, she left her cooking pot, academic curiosity lighting up her warm eyes as she approached with a poking fingertip raised. Yet whatever ethereal cheek she hoped to prod, her attention was drawn instead to a white envelope swooping in like a diving swan through the window.

    All thoughts Marina had of raising her own fingertip in turn were forced aside at once.

    She watched instead as panic overtook her mother as she read the contents.

    That panic turned to frantic pacing in circles. To desperate concern.

    And then finally–a cupboard being opened.

    Marina couldn’t believe it.

    Out came a broom. The same crooked one she could always remember.

    So crooked, in fact, that it was clearly more suited to anything else other than sweeping.

    A suitcase promptly followed, lifted from the very back of the cupboard. Out it came upon the table, sending out dust so thick it clouded even whatever magical eye Marina was gifted.

    It didn’t matter how much there was.

    She could still see the robes of violet and black that were practically flung out. The absurdly large hat finished with a crumpled tip. That the suitcase was always there in the cupboard where the monsters were supposedly residing filled Marina with nothing but exasperation.

    It was gone a moment later, replaced by a surge of triumph, joy … and also extreme confusion.

    Because even as her mother struggled to fling her robes on, she still rushed to write a message, spilling ink from a pot as she left a hurried note on the back of the very same letter she’d received. It was all there, waiting upon the table as she rushed out of sight, her hat possibly worn the wrong way and a broomstick in hand.

    An explanation.

    Marina could see it, the words so scribbled they were an unreadable scrawl. But it was there. And still all that awaited Marina and her father’s return that very same evening were ashes and cinders.

    That’s when she realised–

    Her mother was leaving the house … without putting the stove fire out first.

    “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo … !!”

    Marina cried out in equal horror and indignation.

    She reached out, willing herself against every force. And this time, she failed to find her footing.

    As she stepped forwards, the ground broke before her. She was flailing, falling, tumbling through an ocean of colours without a horizon. It was the sight she saw for a fraction of a moment whenever she teleported. And now it was constant. Like a picture frame she could not escape.

    Marina found herself sinking. Drowning. Fading.

    Click.

    And then–she found herself blinking up at the sight of a promiscuous smile.

    Golden and ruby eyes looked down at her.

    “Ah.” The Dealer tilted her head slightly, drawing attention towards her fingers having just snapped Marina from the abyss. “How fortunate. I see you won your gamble. Beginner’s luck is such a lovely thing, is it not?”

    Marina blinked again.

    It took her several moments to realise she was on her back. On the hard floor.

    The bed of ashes had been completely spent, leaving only what remained underneath.

    Relief unlike anything she’d ever known filled her. Not only because she’d been spared whatever waited at the bottom of the sea, but also because she now knew the truth.

    Her mother was very much a witch. And something had drawn her away.

    Something urgent. Something desperate. Something unresolved.

    … And something to think about after regaining her senses.

    “Thank you,” she murmured, her voice scarcely more than a groan.

    “I did nothing,” replied the Dealer simply. “But you’re welcome nonetheless.”

    Marina took a deep breath.

    She raised herself, sitting up as best she could. She failed.

    Her head spun around and around, her vision swirling as all sense of vertigo left her like a belated punch to both her stomach and her face. Instead, she waited for the worst of the nausea to pass, eyes blinking repeatedly as normal colours filled her eyes, albeit most of it scorched black.

    Then, she gave a nod, her brows furrowing as she thought to her next task.

    “I need to find the witches.”

    The Dealer smiled.

    “Oh? … But the realm of the witches is such a perilous place. They do not entertain guests. Not even one they would call the Witch of Calamity. Should you force entry through the door, you may find even your hand to be scorched.”

    Marina gingerly stood up.

    Her hands brushed down her travelling attire. An increasingly familiar motion. For even as the flakes of ash went spiralling away, she knew she’d soon be doing it again.

    Witches.

    She never once considered that anything could be more tiresome than other mages. Yet even before they’d hid themselves from their peers, witches were already outcasts in the world of magical academia.

    After all, anything a bumbling apprentice could do, a witch could do worse. Somehow.

    But that was fine.

    Marina knew what to do now.

    For every problem, there was a solution.

    This meant handling it just like she did most things these days.

    Subtly. With lots of fire.