The Emblem of Fire

"I could have let you go, but you ssseem to have chosssen to die inssstead!" The boa constrictor was furious after being attacked by surprise. The snake decided to let the humans leave after asking a few questions, but she never thought they would attack her. She did not offend them by any means.

A blue light appeared in front of the snake's eyes, forcing the boa to turn serious. Before the blue fire could reach the frozen boa's eyes, it opened its mouth, swallowing the whole ball of fire.

The action taken by the boa constrictor caused the insides of the frozen snake's head to shatter. Thomas could see smoke going out from its nostril, the eyeballs melting under the high heat. He knew the attack was strong, and it probably damaged the internal structure of its head, but the corpse was a fake one. Thomas suspected the boa constrictor's real body was hidden nearby. But the utmost priority was to destroy the gigantic ice body to deplete the reserves of Stellar Energy of the snake.

While Thomas was distracted by these thoughts, the frozen snake's body was moving towards him, ready to attack. The snake deformed her lengthy body, elevating hundreds of sharp ice shards above her head, aiming at the human group.

The snake shot the ice shards in barrages of ten, crossing the skies at high speed. The sight from afar looked like it was raining fragments of ice.

"It is coming!" said Thomas, yelling with all his lungs to warn his teammates. He got hold of the blaze he was going to fire at the snake and turned the flame into a protective fire barrier around him.

The fire barrier was at a high temperature, melting the ice shards before they could even reach the shield. But even though Thomas was unharmed, he was wary. Maintaining the protective fire barrier was taking a considerable toll on his reserves of Stellar Energy.

The situation turned for the worse when Thomas noticed blue ice shards in the air, bigger and tougher than the previous white ones. They were getting near to the fire barrier without melting. Thomas's face had sweat dripping down his face. He made the hard decision to increase the heat of his fire, even if it took all his Stellar Energy, because he would die otherwise.

Thomas focused all his attention and energy on strengthening his fire, ignoring the condition of his allies. His fire was turning into a brighter blue, his extended hands giving off traces of smoke. A blue piece of ice passed through the surrounding flames around him and slashed his leg, almost making Thomas fall to the ground. A severe pain extended over all of his body, his vision turning blurry. Dizzy, he did not even notice the throat ache from his howling.

His leg was severely wounded, dripping blood and staining the brown ground with a red dye. During the short time in which Thomas lost his concentration, his barrier lost a portion of its heat, turning yellow and enabling two white shards to go through. The white shards pierced his body, making more blood staining the ground.

'Luckily, they did not hit any vital organ.' said Thomas in his mind while wailing in pain. It was the first time he got this much injured in a battle. Not even human Ascenders could make him reach this condition. Getting hold of himself, he focused his attention back on maintaining the fire barrier.

After the flame's color turned blue again, no more white ice shards could go through. This lifted a heavy weight from Thomas's mind. He continued increasing his fire's temperature with the aim of stopping the blue ice shards.

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On the battlefield, the snake made from ice was crumbling completely. After using big icy chunks of its body to compact them into the blue ice shards, the boa constrictor's body was almost depleted of Stellar Energy.

She could not maintain the frozen snake form for long. Her blue ice shards wounded the fire Ascended human at first, but later on, his stronger fire melted every piece of ice she threw at him. She took the decision to crumble her fake body with the objective of condensing all the ice into a massive ice shard to kill the fire human. But she was too slow.

A figure's black shadow was shading her original body. Her eyes almost popped out of her head. From the start, she was in the depths of the river, controlling her surroundings using her ice ability. If she needed to breathe, she just had to turn the ice into a pipe to the outside. The water was her domain. This was the reason for her not understanding how she was found. Closing her eyes to feel and freeze the surrounding water, she disregarded the enemy's presence as she was about to freeze him to death.

"I found you!" bubbled a bearded man. His slightly dark skin contrasted with his blonde beard, but it seemed to reach a harmonious balance under the water. The snake could see the broad shoulders and powerful arms of a human, feeling somewhat jealous because of her inability to have hands. But she knew she had to lead her anger toward evolution and not to humans.

Before she could freeze the water and kill the human, the man quickly lengthened his arm and grabbed the boa constrictor by her neck. The snake was shocked, but she knew the reason for her failure was her Stellar Energy storage was depleted. Nevertheless, she still had the reason her species was famous around the world: her body.

The body of a boa constrictor could reach 4 meters long and weigh up to 45 kg. An adult boa could constrict their prey in a few minutes, interrupting the blood flow between the heart and the brain, and therefore, producing death.

She was already moving her body through her tail into the human's arm. The bearded man noticed what the snake was trying to do and transformed his fingers into talon claws. "You better be still for a little more, like when you were controlling the ice snake."

The boa constrictor could do nothing in fear her body would be slashed and separated from her head. "Do not kill me. I will be ssstill." asked the snake. She wanted to find a way out of her current situation, and she quickly finished to form the enormous chunk of ice made using her fake body.

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Thomas was charred black, with a lot of burns on his body. As a fire Ascended, his resistance to fire was higher than other Ascenders, but he still was severely injured from his own fire.

He concentrated all his flames in front of him, leaving the blanks exposed, with the sole aim of melting the massive iceberg forming above the river. His jaw ached, his whole body was trembling, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was sure. He was going to die here today, and to a f*cking fake!

At this moment, the entire iceberg dissolved into water, flooding the waterway of the river. The water's level of the river increased, and Thomas looked at the real fishes jumping out from the water and the snakes floating around. His shaking, black burnt hands, which were raised into the air, lost all their strength and fell back onto his body. His legs dropped to the ground. Tears falling from his eyes, eyes that now glinted with hope.

Thomas glanced around, and the scene shocked him. He saw a decimated human body slashed apart by blooded ice shards. He was not sure what part was the head, the chest, the legs, or the arms. Pieces of meat and organs were scattered around a dyed red ground.

He glanced in another direction, and he saw the impaled corpse of a huge wolf. The body was pierced through his chest, his corpse elevated into the air by a large piece of ice.

"Chirp! Reporting to Captain! I found and killed the boa constrictor's real body. Chirp! I also discovered the snake was protecting a submarine cave under the river. Orders, Captain? Chirp!"

Thomas glanced at the dead bodies of two of his teammates for the last time before turning to Eagle. "I am wounded, but take me there. Also, why are you chirping? You are not in your eagle form."

"I am used to chirping. Then, Captain, I will take you there. Chirp!"

The cave was a few dozen meters under the surface of the water. One would not find it easily. Luckily for Thomas, Eagle killed the snake next to the entrance. It was a piece of cake to locate the entry again.

After entering the cave, they found out there was no water in its interior. They took one hour, at a slow pace because of the injuries of Thomas, to reach the end of the tunnel. A spacious, gloomy expanse greeted their sights, the bare light coming from luminescent plants. In front of them, thousands of snakes were crawling around the ground and walls of the cave.

Thomas could see a diversity of snake species here, poisonous snakes included.

"What do we do now? Chirp!" chirped Eagle, who was in his eagle form, perched on Thomas's shoulder.

"We burn this all."